It all began with a VERY early taxi to the train station on Saturday morning (5 am-ish, I think). The train ride was beautiful, for the part of it that I was awake. This semester I've found that it's a lot easier for me to sleep on a train than in the car or on a plane--I'm almost like a baby, take me on a train ride and I'll fall asleep :) Here's a picture of the sunrise over Lake Mjosa, the largest lake in Norway that we basically follow the whole time on the train to Oslo.
When we got to Oslo, we headed to our hotel to drop off our belongings, and then walked around down with the ultimate destination of a restaurant called KoloniHaugen. It is a restaurant that tries to use local, fairly produced food. Here we listened to a speaker from the global Slow Food movement who is a member of the group in Olso. He told us a little about what Slow Food is overall, and also about some of the Norwegian foods that Slow Food has tried to put an emphasis on. They were mostly fish and cheese, since there isn't a lot of farming in Norway (only 3% of their land is arable). We were able to try Norwegian herring on Norwegian flat bread topped with Norwegian sour cream-it was pretty good for fish! We then ate a lunch there, I got a traditional open-faced sandwich that had olive oil, lettuce, spinach, tomato, and boiled egg on top. It was delicious, but also very expensive. It cost 80 kroner, or about $15! That was one thing that we had read about Slow Food beforehand, and heard about from the speaker. Becuase Slow Food emphasizes giving growers fair prices and since Slow Food is typically rasied organically, it tends to be pretty expensive. This was kind of hard for a lot of us students--we've been learning in our food class about how the food that we tend to eat isn't the healthiest for us in the long term, as well as some of the effects that it has on the environment. I think most of us realize that it would be good for us and the earth to eat local, organic food, but we can't afford it in the US, and certainly can't afford it in Norway. It's hard for this Slow Food movement to catch on when it takes the equivalent of working two hours at my campus job just to get a small sandwich! Ah well, the food was good, and we were given some extra spending money to compensate for the higher expenses!
After our group meal, we were free to do some sightseeing on our own. Laura and I decided to head to Akershus Fortress, down by the Oslo harbor, which was part of the original Oslo, known back in that day as Christania. There we checked out the Norwegian Resistance Museum, took pictures of the parts of the fortress that remains, and toured the old castle residence of Norwegian royalty. My favorite by far was the Resistance Museum. It was really strange to go through and realize how hard life would have been in Norway at that time--no Norwegians were allowed to have radios, since people would listen to BBC, so we saw some pretty ingenious radios. They were hidden in books, chair legs, and all sorts of other things. There were also resistance documents that were printed very small on little screens and hidden so that they could be transported undetected. One thing that I thought was really cool to see was that the pastors and teachers of Norway stood up to the Nazis, even thought it meant losing their jobs and being jailed in some cases. When they were told to preach/teach the Nazi policies, they refused. Good for them! Overall, this museum was really cool, and also really made me wish I knew Norwegian, since there were a lot of newspaper clippings and such that were in Norwegain, and I would have liked to be able to see what they said!
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| The Resistance Museum |
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| Laura and I by the harbor |
That evening I joined some friends of my parents from when we lived here when I was little, Tor and Asbjorg Weatherstone. It was great to see them in Norway again after staying with them on my last trip to Norway four years ago! I was really proud of myself because even though Tor came to show the way to their home, I remembered all of it, including the number of subway to get on, and the name of the stop! I also got to eat a nice home-cooked meal, which was great! The downside was that this was in the middle of our food diary assignment, so I had to write down everything I ate, and see how many calories was in it. UGH. Ah well, Norwegian waffles are worth it! Then I headed back to our hostel, and went to bed. I was sharing a room with Laura for the first time, and was kind of excited becuase she has a reputation for sleep-talking and I was curious to see what she would ahve to stay. Either she slept really well or I slept really well, however, because I made it through the night without hearing anything. Disappointing for me, but probably good for Laura ;).
Sunday was another day of sightseeing, we headed out to an island called Bygdoy, which has quite a few museums. Taking the bus there was VERY busy--I was lucky enough to grab a seat, but I had people almost sitting in my lap, and I don't think another single person could have fit. It was very close, and I opted to get out a stop early and walk that part, I didn't really appreciate the constant bursting of my personal bubble! When we were there I saw the Viking Ship Musuem, which has preserved three ships that were used as caskets of a sort for different Vikings in Norway. It was cool to see the ships we've learned about (they were ground-breaking because they could go forwards and backwards!) and seen in so many typical Viking paintings--they did look pretty similar to the stereotype, I thought. Then I went to the Norwegian Folk Museum, an outdoor collection of typical buildings of all areas and times of Norway. We were there on a special day, so we were able to try traditional foods (some good-lefse, and some bad-dried fish), and hear a traditional Norwegian storyteller (in Norwegian). I had a lot of fun wandering around seeing different buildings and taking pictures. Then I came back into town on my own and wandered around a bit. Overall, I was impressed with my ability to get around and read the maps for public transportation. It was good to spend some time alone going around and fulfilling some of my sense of adventure, and get to know the town I was born in!
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| Stave Kirke (Church) in Folk Museum |
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| The main part of Vigeland Park, a statue garden-type thing |
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| Viking Ship, Obviously. |
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| More of Vigeland |
So, that was my trip to Oslo, it was very fast, but also very fun! It was the beginning of spending a lot of time traveling, a few days after we got back from this trip most of our group went to London, then two weeks later we left for our Germany/Luther trip, and then we were on spring break for 10 days. When we returned from spring break, we were back for four days, and now we are on our trip to Bergen and Copenhagen. Then we will be back for a weekend, and then head to a traditional Norwegian farm for a week. After the farm, we will be home for most of Saturday through Wednesday until we train and fly to Minnesota again! The time has gone so fast, and I am kind of sick of living out of a suitcase, but Norway is amazing in the spring. But more about that later-it's time to go to bed ( though the sun doesn't seem to think it is-still light at 9:45!).
Oh! Also, I recently uploaded pictures on facebook, if you would like to look through the album, here is the link:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.592226990730.2084957.52904562&l=7e85fd8fe0
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