At last we arrived to Oslo after another six and a half hours on a train. This time though, we weren’t beat and actually had daylight to enjoy the scenery. Norway has so many lakes next to small mountains, its incredible. Oslo was founded around 1049 by one King Harald Hardrade. The original city was destroyed by a fire in 1624 and has had a few problems with fires since then but not like Bergen. It wasn’t until 1924 that Oslo received its current name(which was the original name) after being changed after the rebuilding of the great fire to Kristiansand.
We had plans to stay with some friends we met at the wedding in Paris earlier this summer. We arrived early in the afternoon and had a few hours to kill until our friends got off of work to pick us up so we put our stuff in a locker in the train station and headed out for a stroll. We walked up Karl Johans Gate. It’s a lively street with lots of shops and people milling about, playing music, and trying to entertain others for a kroner(local currency). We took some pictures of the buildings around the Hard Rock Café like the Stortinget, the building that houses the unicameral parliament that writes all the wonderful tax laws everyone pays for, the National Gallery building, and the National Theater, which had its first performance in 1899. From there, we headed to the Royal Palace where you can watch the guards marching to and fro with a look on their face that makes you think they really need to use the bathroom. Around the palace, there are some very nice gardens that were surprisingly green for being so far north in mid-September. Behind the gardens, we meandered through some neighborhoods and marveled at the interesting architecture of the buildings. There seemed to be lots of buildings with castle like round features. That seems to be the best way to describe them.
After our jaunt through the neighborhood, we headed back to the station to meet our friend Carl. He and his lovely girlfriend let us stay in their apartment during our stay in Oslo. Friday evening, they took us over to see Frogner Park, famous as a large park in Oslo and for housing the Vigeland Sculpture Park. We walked through the park and they told us of how the people love to spend time in the summer in the park having a bar-be-que or spending time outdoors in the sun since they don’t get too much in the winter. The sculptures in the park are of different people in various poses and are supposed to show the different emotions of people. The park was designed by Gustav Vigeland in the early 1920’s. In 2007, a group of people went through the park and covered all of the nipples and other genitals exposed on the statues as a possible sign of protest. After the park, we didn’t do much other than grab a bite to eat at a local Thai eatery and then on for a beer at a local brewery. The prices in Bergen were unbelievable but the prices in Oslo put them to shame but we didn’t mind as much because we had good company. Oslo recently regained its status as most expensive city in the world after losing to Paris and Tokyo for a bit and, believe me, they live up to the expectations.
On Saturday, we had breakfast at the apartment and then headed north of the city to see the ski jump at Holmenkollen. The city has been selected to host the upcoming the FIS Ski Championships in 2011 so a lot of construction is going on in the roads and made some of the trip difficult. The other problem we encountered, as you can see, is the fog. The fog was so thick that we couldn’t even see the jump. So instead, our friends took us to a local lodge built in the typical Norwegian fashion for some hot chocolate. We sat for a while and warmed ourselves by the fire with our drinks and chatted about the history of the place. From there, we descended back to the city and made our way around town with our local tour guides. They took us to the Munch Museum, a great collection of Edvard Munch’s (pronounced like monk not munch) paintings, including “The Scream”, which has a reputation for being stolen. When you walk into the museum, it feels like it has more security than airports. After that, we had a lunch at a local bakery and then headed down to the ports to see the new Opera House. It is part of a redesign project of the area and its called the Barcode City, part of Bjorvika section of Fjord City. The idea is to tunnel all the roads and rip up the roads at ground level in order to put in public parks and shops. The large buildings are all designed so that they look like barcodes from the air. During construction, they have managed to unearth several large ships that had sunken in the harbor a long time ago.
From the Opera House, we headed into the city again to see some other places of interest. The first one we found was the Akershus Fortress, designed by King Haakon V in 1249. It had one purpose, to protect the city and when the city burned down in 1624, the newly rebuilt parts where located near the fortress. It was surrendered to the Nazis in WW2 but later reclaimed and witnessed the hangings of several traitors to Norway. We walked around the grounds even though it’s still in use by the military and the views of the city are quite nice. Our next stop was the Nobel Peace Center, a kind of museum to the winners of the various Nobel prizes given out throughout the years. After that, we made a quick trip by the famous city hall, a three sided brick building and the location of some tourist shops that had some souvenirs we wanted to pick up before leaving. We spent the evening playing games with friends and grabbing some pizza at a local pizzeria since the weather was quite bad. We really enjoyed our trip and are glad we managed to not go broke in Norway. Enjoy the pictures.
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