Oslo, Norway - land of loads of water and snow (and fish)
reading week this year was spent doing something uncharacteristic of me - holidaying. usually i spend it catching up on work that has been piling up over the first half of term but this time i made the exception because antonia was in the area (by area i mean europe) and was coming to visit. using the excuse that we will probably never see each other for a few years since she is stuck on the southern hemisphere and i hover between europe and singapore, we made plans to go to somewhere where ryanair would take us cheaply. in all sense of randomness, we chose Oslo, Norway (because the price for return plane tickets were a mere GBP 10).
we spent the night sleeping in Liverpool John Lennon airport because we had a 7am flight. and may i say, the airport was freaking cold because the winds kept blowing in when the automatic doors swung open and we were freezing. furthermore at 5am, the people who were in front of us in the queue all had overweight luggage so we spent ages watching them unpack at the counter so that they could get their baggage down to the maximum 15kg per person. sigh. later on we realised we could have gone upstairs to the departure area to sleep because there were SOME sofa seats at Burger King and no sliding doors to worry about.
anyway, we landed in oslo at while in the queue for the bus to the city centre, we took our first photograph in Oslo! yes, we are all bundled up but it was not as freezing cold as i expected though it still was really cold...
on the 1 1/2 hr bus ride from Torp airport, we got a chance to peak at the snow-covered landscape... so pretty... saw a woman doing cross-country skiing as well... looked really fun...
once we checked in at our first hostel, we decided to take a walk down Karl Johan Gate ('gate' isnt gate - it's pronounced 'gar-ter' and sort of means street or road... i made that mistake when reading the map and antonia pointedly corrected me...)
we decided to view the Oslo Catherdral - sadly no interior pictures because no photography was allowed. someone was inside practising her singing for a church service (if i am not mistaken) so we had a treat of listening to beautiful soprano singing with organ accompaniment.
it started to snow while we were outside which was pretty but meant that we had the annoying problem of snow blowing into your face. the cathedral really is located right smack in the middle of the major pedestrianized street and you can see all the shopping buildings in the background... btw, H&M seems really big here...
i absolutely needed food in my stomach so we stopped at this little cafe to have our first bites in oslo. i had a pasta salad because they were out of quiche and everything else was bready, and a cappucino. i got a taste of how expensive food is in oslo - this cost me GBP9!
it was snowing pretty much the whole evening and as we trudged through the already thick layer of snow on the ground, the lion in the middle of the square outside the Sentralstasjon (Central Station) seemed pretty out of place, covered wth snow and all...
the next day we visited the Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum) on the Bygdøy peninsula (which btw is such a beautiful bit of Oslo - sort of suburban which gorgeous houses and a little bay where everyone keeps their yacht... i'd love to live there! it seems to be a really family-friendly place because every other house had a swing set on their front lawn)
the Folk Museum is a huge area that showcases Norwegian way of life - from the little museums and gallery buildings that display folk art to reproductions of how peasants and townspeople would have lived. everything was covered in snow because it had been snowing the whole evening and night the day before. the picture above is of one of the museum buildings in the square near the entrance of the museum.
we walked into one of the stand-alone buildings that was a mini-museum of a family that is the largest publisher in Norway and their place in Oslo society...
... and wandered around the little cottages of lower-middle/middle class Norwegians not living in the cities...
i thought the cottages looks so homely... all so pleasantly decorated...
we visited the 'grocery store' and the pottery place where the potter busy at work making even more pots...
the quaint little streets of the Norwegian 'town'...
then we visited the reconstructed block of apartment buildings from Oslo city centre - apparently when the government wanted to tear it down to do recevelopment, they moved the building bit by bit to the museum for heritage reasons. they refurnished the entire block with each apartment reflecting a different period during which actual tenants lived there... one was the room of a relatively well-off young family, one was of a more modern couple who were architects (so you had the really post-modern interiors). on the top floor they had a recreation of how the apartment of Torvald and Nora from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House would have been (to represent the newly-rich living in Oslo). they had a copy of the play on display!
outside we wandered around the different houses from the different regions (and time periods) in Norway. look how much snow there was! it came halfway up my shin...
this is apparently how houses used to look in Norway in the 1700s... doesnt it remind you of the Gauls in Asterix and Obelix?
there were live demonstrations of typical Norwegian life in some of the small cottages... one had traditional Sami (a sort of ethnic gypsy-ish group in Scandinavia) children's stories told in Norwegian...
while in another a lady was making traditional lefse - sort of like tortilla but nice and sweet because it is made with buttermilk. we got to try some (for only NOK 20 = GBP1.75?) with butter and it tasted soooo good... reminded me of a mix between Indian roti and pancakes. mmmmm....
was so excited try this... guess what it is! it's... REINDEER MEAT! (and in the cup beside is marrowbone broth). it tastes like beef but smells like mutton... the broth was wonderful... packed with flavour and nice and warm which was great for my stomach...
they had an exhibition on toys in Norwegian culture and i learnt that dolls were pretty big in a typical Norwegian girl's life (especially after they realised how important play was to mental development of children) which is why Ibsen's A Doll's House hit hard when it was performed in the National Theater in Oslo (see? it was an educational trip!)
i think the teddies and the monky on the bottom shelves looks so adorable...
in the next room was an exhibition on Sami culture - these are typical traditional Sami costumes. they kind of look like what the tribes people wear in Mongolia/Tibet (or Yunan in China...). Many Norwegians actually have Sami heritage though they will scoff at you if you hint that they do. they are considered inferior people in Scandinavian societies though they are beginning to get more voice (i think they have their own elected government in some areas). Samis used to be pretty nomadic and they live all across the northern regions, in some areas of Finland and even in Russia...
one timer-camera-balanced-on-a-wooden pole photo at the Museum!
that evening antonia and i decided to meet at the open-air skating rink at 7.30pm since she wanted to go to church for mass and i was going to go grocery shopping so we could prepare some sandwiches to take when we went skiing. we asked at the hostel for directions to get to the church and for us to get to the skating rink later and basically the guy at the reception gave me the wrong tram number to take. so i was on tram number 12, thinking that i definitely was not where i was supposed to be because the journey was taking longer than it should have... i finally got off when i was definitely sure the tram was not going to pass through the national theater area and waited in the cold on the other side for the tram number 12 going back, then changed to the right bus number finally get to the rink at 8pm.
upon reaching the rink, i met up with antonia and she told me that the guy's instructions for her to get to church sent her off the map so she never made it to church and came straight to skate. like what?!?
the open-air skating rink is free - you pay only to rent skates... it's in the middle of the park right along Karl Johan Gate and next to the National Theater. the streets look really pretty at night with snow falling all around you... rather romantic actually...
the National Theater! they have statues of famous Norwegian playwrights - of course Ibsen was one of them :)
antonia woke up the next morning not feeling very well so we had a lie-in and decided to postpone our skiing to the following day and take some time off to see more museums (yay!).
we did a day of maritime-related museums, first stopping at the Viking Ship Museum just next to the Folk Museum.
Oslo in winter is all about snow... and it actually is so pretty - not like dreary winters in the UK...
it's a pretty small museum, showcasing the 3 Viking ships that were discovered buried under some mounds along the coast and some of the treasures that were buried with them.
i learnt that Vikings travelled along coasts and often slept on shore in tents rather than on the boats (because they did not have any covered area/cabins - unlike pirate ships which had an area under the deck). they followed routes that had been charted by men before and when they did sale across the Atlantic, they probably slept on deck and ate dried food all the way (urgh... poor things...).
one of the artifacts found - i think it was either a handle of a chair or something similar?
the ships were all used as burial chambers for important people. the one above was for a queen and the ship, judging from it's structure, was probably only a leisure craft used on calm waters. this one below was for a chieftain and was actually a sturdy ship that might have been used for battles even...
they were doing some reconstruction work on a carriage because it was disintegrating... the historians/archaeologists work in a studio at the back of the museum behind one-way mirrors (so that they wont be distracted by visitors).
this ship did not fare as well in terms of natural preservation from the elements... but any artifact provides vital information for a historian...
a few bus stops down towards the fjord (a long, narrow, deep inlet of the sea between steep slopes) is the Norsk Sjøfartsmuseum (Norwegian Maritime Museum).there they have loads of model ships on display as well as maritime-related paintings and artifacts...
here's how a kitchen would have been on a ship... not too bad... sort of like a kitchen in a cramp student home (haha...)!
they made a reconstruction of a luxury liner... and we couldnt resist a perfect place for another time photograph!
the view out onto the fjord... the museum has got gorgeous scenery... see how cold it is? even the top of the sea has frozen a little...
they have on display items found in shipwrecks which help historians understand how people lived in the past...
loads and loads of model ships!
they had a giant steering wheel on display. antonia kept asking me to take a picture with it but erm, i am not really the kind who likes taking pictures with displays in museums...
can you guess what this ship is made of...? it's soooo coool!
YUP! it's cloves! and it even had clove sailors manning the ship!
we both took turns to take cheesy pictures with the women who adorn the helm of the ship...
they had so many model ships and some were just HUGE! they had a section on ships that have explored the artic as well... which i found really cool...
right next door (which you get entrance to once you've paid for admission to the main museum building) is a building housing boats from the different regions in Norway. each region's boats are different because of the specific needs of fishermen due to the different types of catch they get along Norway's long and vast coastlines...
after a day of museum-hopping, you have to top it off with some cake! dont know the name for this though because i just asked for it from the display fridge but the cake was not soft and spongy but actually quite hard. a bit like a softer and more moist scone and it seemed to have a hint of coconut. yum...
finally on day 4 we went skiing. which was an entirely new experience for me. we had a 90min private lesson with this nice old man who made us walk down this really steep slope which we had to climb up at the end carrying our skis since we couldnt take the ski-lift as we hadnt even made it 1/4 of the way down. i learnt to stop when going down a slope and how to make turns... natually antonia was a fast learner (it is NOT FAIR!) because she skates and she never fell or went out of control like i did... as our instructor said, she has the advantage because skating is about gliding and dance is about friction. oh well...
after scaling our 'Everest' back to the top of the hill to get the bus back to the ski rental place/T-Bann (subway) station, we rewarded ourselves with a meal at a restaurant called Schroeder which serves cheap and traditional Norwegian food in a relaxed atmosphere. Lots of locals (middle-aged especially) were in the restaurant and we ordered the cod on the daily specials. it came with sauteed courgettes and carrots on top of the cod and a serving of potatoes, topped with a buttery sauce. YUM.
on a side note, i realise that many Norwegians read the paper over dinner... hmmm...
the next day we decided to try one of the slopes. which freaked me out because while it looked relatively gentle at the beginning, the gradient of the slope got steeper and steeper, finally ending at THIS!
and in my first few tries, i could not control how fast i was going down so guess what... i ended up taking a LOT of tumbles. not falls. TUMBLES. like rolling down a part of the slope, skis and poles ending up a few feet away from me. antonia was gliding down so poor girl had to wait for me while i got up and got my skis on again. which is really hard especially when you are not on a flat part of the slope. because once you strap one on, your ski wants to run away from you and go down the slope when you havent even got the other one on. this all done while you are sideways to the slope, not even when you are facing the bottom of the slope.
after a while i realised why i kept falling - it was because i was pretty much going straight down the slope, rather than going side to side down the slope. so i started making really wide 'S'es down the slopes and soon was able to go down without a single fall/tumble. YAY! antonia said i improved a lot on my control (hehehe...) and we had a funny conversation that went something along the following lines:
antonia: "I dont understand how you manage to go so slowly down the hill. I cant control... I just zip down..."
me: "I dont understand how you can go down the hill so fast. I'd freak out and take a tumble. How do you manage to stay up?"
we had our last Norwegian dinner at Fyret along Youngstorget which was decorated with the owner's maritime memorabilia. it's a cosy little cafe lit only by candles which added to the ship-like feel of the place.
we ordered a fish burger and a skipperburger (their speciality - it's a beef burger). the fish patty was rather starchy and really reminded me of fishballs at home and came with some prawns and 2 mussels! fabulous! the skipperburger was yummy too except that antonia doesnt eat pickles or raw onions so i got to benefit from it. :)
so we bade a goodbye to Oslo and boarded the bus to Torp airport. on a final note about Norway, their chocolate brand Freia (which apparently Norwegians swear is the best chocolate in the world) makes rather nice and very milky-tasting milk chocolate. but the funky thing is the logo they print on the chocolate squares...
flamingoes! soooooo cute! :)
we spent the night sleeping in Liverpool John Lennon airport because we had a 7am flight. and may i say, the airport was freaking cold because the winds kept blowing in when the automatic doors swung open and we were freezing. furthermore at 5am, the people who were in front of us in the queue all had overweight luggage so we spent ages watching them unpack at the counter so that they could get their baggage down to the maximum 15kg per person. sigh. later on we realised we could have gone upstairs to the departure area to sleep because there were SOME sofa seats at Burger King and no sliding doors to worry about.
anyway, we landed in oslo at while in the queue for the bus to the city centre, we took our first photograph in Oslo! yes, we are all bundled up but it was not as freezing cold as i expected though it still was really cold...
on the 1 1/2 hr bus ride from Torp airport, we got a chance to peak at the snow-covered landscape... so pretty... saw a woman doing cross-country skiing as well... looked really fun...
once we checked in at our first hostel, we decided to take a walk down Karl Johan Gate ('gate' isnt gate - it's pronounced 'gar-ter' and sort of means street or road... i made that mistake when reading the map and antonia pointedly corrected me...)we decided to view the Oslo Catherdral - sadly no interior pictures because no photography was allowed. someone was inside practising her singing for a church service (if i am not mistaken) so we had a treat of listening to beautiful soprano singing with organ accompaniment.
it started to snow while we were outside which was pretty but meant that we had the annoying problem of snow blowing into your face. the cathedral really is located right smack in the middle of the major pedestrianized street and you can see all the shopping buildings in the background... btw, H&M seems really big here...
i absolutely needed food in my stomach so we stopped at this little cafe to have our first bites in oslo. i had a pasta salad because they were out of quiche and everything else was bready, and a cappucino. i got a taste of how expensive food is in oslo - this cost me GBP9!
it was snowing pretty much the whole evening and as we trudged through the already thick layer of snow on the ground, the lion in the middle of the square outside the Sentralstasjon (Central Station) seemed pretty out of place, covered wth snow and all...
the next day we visited the Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum) on the Bygdøy peninsula (which btw is such a beautiful bit of Oslo - sort of suburban which gorgeous houses and a little bay where everyone keeps their yacht... i'd love to live there! it seems to be a really family-friendly place because every other house had a swing set on their front lawn)
the Folk Museum is a huge area that showcases Norwegian way of life - from the little museums and gallery buildings that display folk art to reproductions of how peasants and townspeople would have lived. everything was covered in snow because it had been snowing the whole evening and night the day before. the picture above is of one of the museum buildings in the square near the entrance of the museum.we walked into one of the stand-alone buildings that was a mini-museum of a family that is the largest publisher in Norway and their place in Oslo society...
... and wandered around the little cottages of lower-middle/middle class Norwegians not living in the cities...
i thought the cottages looks so homely... all so pleasantly decorated...
we visited the 'grocery store' and the pottery place where the potter busy at work making even more pots...
the quaint little streets of the Norwegian 'town'...then we visited the reconstructed block of apartment buildings from Oslo city centre - apparently when the government wanted to tear it down to do recevelopment, they moved the building bit by bit to the museum for heritage reasons. they refurnished the entire block with each apartment reflecting a different period during which actual tenants lived there... one was the room of a relatively well-off young family, one was of a more modern couple who were architects (so you had the really post-modern interiors). on the top floor they had a recreation of how the apartment of Torvald and Nora from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House would have been (to represent the newly-rich living in Oslo). they had a copy of the play on display!
outside we wandered around the different houses from the different regions (and time periods) in Norway. look how much snow there was! it came halfway up my shin...
this is apparently how houses used to look in Norway in the 1700s... doesnt it remind you of the Gauls in Asterix and Obelix?
there were live demonstrations of typical Norwegian life in some of the small cottages... one had traditional Sami (a sort of ethnic gypsy-ish group in Scandinavia) children's stories told in Norwegian...
while in another a lady was making traditional lefse - sort of like tortilla but nice and sweet because it is made with buttermilk. we got to try some (for only NOK 20 = GBP1.75?) with butter and it tasted soooo good... reminded me of a mix between Indian roti and pancakes. mmmmm....
was so excited try this... guess what it is! it's... REINDEER MEAT! (and in the cup beside is marrowbone broth). it tastes like beef but smells like mutton... the broth was wonderful... packed with flavour and nice and warm which was great for my stomach...
they had an exhibition on toys in Norwegian culture and i learnt that dolls were pretty big in a typical Norwegian girl's life (especially after they realised how important play was to mental development of children) which is why Ibsen's A Doll's House hit hard when it was performed in the National Theater in Oslo (see? it was an educational trip!)
i think the teddies and the monky on the bottom shelves looks so adorable...
in the next room was an exhibition on Sami culture - these are typical traditional Sami costumes. they kind of look like what the tribes people wear in Mongolia/Tibet (or Yunan in China...). Many Norwegians actually have Sami heritage though they will scoff at you if you hint that they do. they are considered inferior people in Scandinavian societies though they are beginning to get more voice (i think they have their own elected government in some areas). Samis used to be pretty nomadic and they live all across the northern regions, in some areas of Finland and even in Russia...
one timer-camera-balanced-on-a-wooden pole photo at the Museum!
that evening antonia and i decided to meet at the open-air skating rink at 7.30pm since she wanted to go to church for mass and i was going to go grocery shopping so we could prepare some sandwiches to take when we went skiing. we asked at the hostel for directions to get to the church and for us to get to the skating rink later and basically the guy at the reception gave me the wrong tram number to take. so i was on tram number 12, thinking that i definitely was not where i was supposed to be because the journey was taking longer than it should have... i finally got off when i was definitely sure the tram was not going to pass through the national theater area and waited in the cold on the other side for the tram number 12 going back, then changed to the right bus number finally get to the rink at 8pm.upon reaching the rink, i met up with antonia and she told me that the guy's instructions for her to get to church sent her off the map so she never made it to church and came straight to skate. like what?!?
the open-air skating rink is free - you pay only to rent skates... it's in the middle of the park right along Karl Johan Gate and next to the National Theater. the streets look really pretty at night with snow falling all around you... rather romantic actually...
the National Theater! they have statues of famous Norwegian playwrights - of course Ibsen was one of them :)
antonia woke up the next morning not feeling very well so we had a lie-in and decided to postpone our skiing to the following day and take some time off to see more museums (yay!).we did a day of maritime-related museums, first stopping at the Viking Ship Museum just next to the Folk Museum.
Oslo in winter is all about snow... and it actually is so pretty - not like dreary winters in the UK...
it's a pretty small museum, showcasing the 3 Viking ships that were discovered buried under some mounds along the coast and some of the treasures that were buried with them.
i learnt that Vikings travelled along coasts and often slept on shore in tents rather than on the boats (because they did not have any covered area/cabins - unlike pirate ships which had an area under the deck). they followed routes that had been charted by men before and when they did sale across the Atlantic, they probably slept on deck and ate dried food all the way (urgh... poor things...).
one of the artifacts found - i think it was either a handle of a chair or something similar?
the ships were all used as burial chambers for important people. the one above was for a queen and the ship, judging from it's structure, was probably only a leisure craft used on calm waters. this one below was for a chieftain and was actually a sturdy ship that might have been used for battles even...
they were doing some reconstruction work on a carriage because it was disintegrating... the historians/archaeologists work in a studio at the back of the museum behind one-way mirrors (so that they wont be distracted by visitors).
this ship did not fare as well in terms of natural preservation from the elements... but any artifact provides vital information for a historian...
a few bus stops down towards the fjord (a long, narrow, deep inlet of the sea between steep slopes) is the Norsk Sjøfartsmuseum (Norwegian Maritime Museum).there they have loads of model ships on display as well as maritime-related paintings and artifacts...
here's how a kitchen would have been on a ship... not too bad... sort of like a kitchen in a cramp student home (haha...)!
they made a reconstruction of a luxury liner... and we couldnt resist a perfect place for another time photograph!
the view out onto the fjord... the museum has got gorgeous scenery... see how cold it is? even the top of the sea has frozen a little...
they have on display items found in shipwrecks which help historians understand how people lived in the past...
loads and loads of model ships!
they had a giant steering wheel on display. antonia kept asking me to take a picture with it but erm, i am not really the kind who likes taking pictures with displays in museums...
can you guess what this ship is made of...? it's soooo coool!
YUP! it's cloves! and it even had clove sailors manning the ship!
we both took turns to take cheesy pictures with the women who adorn the helm of the ship...
they had so many model ships and some were just HUGE! they had a section on ships that have explored the artic as well... which i found really cool...
right next door (which you get entrance to once you've paid for admission to the main museum building) is a building housing boats from the different regions in Norway. each region's boats are different because of the specific needs of fishermen due to the different types of catch they get along Norway's long and vast coastlines...
after a day of museum-hopping, you have to top it off with some cake! dont know the name for this though because i just asked for it from the display fridge but the cake was not soft and spongy but actually quite hard. a bit like a softer and more moist scone and it seemed to have a hint of coconut. yum...
finally on day 4 we went skiing. which was an entirely new experience for me. we had a 90min private lesson with this nice old man who made us walk down this really steep slope which we had to climb up at the end carrying our skis since we couldnt take the ski-lift as we hadnt even made it 1/4 of the way down. i learnt to stop when going down a slope and how to make turns... natually antonia was a fast learner (it is NOT FAIR!) because she skates and she never fell or went out of control like i did... as our instructor said, she has the advantage because skating is about gliding and dance is about friction. oh well...
after scaling our 'Everest' back to the top of the hill to get the bus back to the ski rental place/T-Bann (subway) station, we rewarded ourselves with a meal at a restaurant called Schroeder which serves cheap and traditional Norwegian food in a relaxed atmosphere. Lots of locals (middle-aged especially) were in the restaurant and we ordered the cod on the daily specials. it came with sauteed courgettes and carrots on top of the cod and a serving of potatoes, topped with a buttery sauce. YUM.
on a side note, i realise that many Norwegians read the paper over dinner... hmmm...the next day we decided to try one of the slopes. which freaked me out because while it looked relatively gentle at the beginning, the gradient of the slope got steeper and steeper, finally ending at THIS!
and in my first few tries, i could not control how fast i was going down so guess what... i ended up taking a LOT of tumbles. not falls. TUMBLES. like rolling down a part of the slope, skis and poles ending up a few feet away from me. antonia was gliding down so poor girl had to wait for me while i got up and got my skis on again. which is really hard especially when you are not on a flat part of the slope. because once you strap one on, your ski wants to run away from you and go down the slope when you havent even got the other one on. this all done while you are sideways to the slope, not even when you are facing the bottom of the slope.after a while i realised why i kept falling - it was because i was pretty much going straight down the slope, rather than going side to side down the slope. so i started making really wide 'S'es down the slopes and soon was able to go down without a single fall/tumble. YAY! antonia said i improved a lot on my control (hehehe...) and we had a funny conversation that went something along the following lines:
antonia: "I dont understand how you manage to go so slowly down the hill. I cant control... I just zip down..."
me: "I dont understand how you can go down the hill so fast. I'd freak out and take a tumble. How do you manage to stay up?"
we had our last Norwegian dinner at Fyret along Youngstorget which was decorated with the owner's maritime memorabilia. it's a cosy little cafe lit only by candles which added to the ship-like feel of the place.
we ordered a fish burger and a skipperburger (their speciality - it's a beef burger). the fish patty was rather starchy and really reminded me of fishballs at home and came with some prawns and 2 mussels! fabulous! the skipperburger was yummy too except that antonia doesnt eat pickles or raw onions so i got to benefit from it. :)
so we bade a goodbye to Oslo and boarded the bus to Torp airport. on a final note about Norway, their chocolate brand Freia (which apparently Norwegians swear is the best chocolate in the world) makes rather nice and very milky-tasting milk chocolate. but the funky thing is the logo they print on the chocolate squares...
flamingoes! soooooo cute! :)
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