One of the benefits of staying in this particular hostel in the suburbs is that it comes with free breakfast. Not just breakfast - hotel style buffet breakfast. Yeah, sure, maybe you have to pay extra for clean sheets and okay, the price of one night is three nights anywhere else, but yes, the breakfast was great. I hadn’t eaten like this since I left home 8 months ago. Admittedly my stomach can’t stretch the way it used to, having eaten like a rabbit for the last few weeks, but I made sure they regretted offering the buffet. I wasn’t hungry until much later that evening. And it wasn’t just a normal buffet either. It was like a traditional Norwegian buffet, with fish eggs on knackerbrod and salmon slices baked into cheese over toast, it was pretty nice.
That set me up for the day. I had worked a list of must-see’s, collaborated by an American girl, Fulbright scholar, who felt bad she couldn’t meet up with me and Øystein and Chris the first night. Over the last few places that I’ve been, I’ve slowly been getting more and more tired of relying so heavily on the guidebooks that I’ve been using. They are good and useful, no doubt, and they offer good ideas for places to stay and maps and things like that. But as far as must-see things, I’ve found these guide books much more useful in the remote places of the world. In China, there are endless adventure style trips that these guidebooks plan out and without their help, finding them on your own is really, really difficult - even with a command of the language. But the cities of Europe don’t really need their help. There are only so many museums you can go to before you explode. I’m at that point. Instead of the guidebook then, I’ve decided to put my faith in the New York Times travel section. I may have mentioned this before but the Times does this “36 Hours in (pick a major city)” series where it describes what you should do, as a middle to upper class, well informed, man of the world, in a major city if you arrive on a friday afternoon and leave on a sunday morning. The series is incredible. It does a great job of bypassing the mundane, obvious sites and museums, and takes you to places that make the city stand out, which restaurants and bars and clubs and of course, major sites that make the city tick at that particular moment. I recommend this to anyone thinking of traveling anywhere. But of course it doesn’t always work. The Times hasn’t published a “36 Hours in Jiayuguan” for example. But they’ve hit every major European city, and some minor ones too. The other approach I’ve started to take is to message someone I know who is either from that city, knows someone in that city, or has at one time traveled to that city. And I just go see what they recommend, blindly. I’ve never regretted missing the national museum of wherever because it wasn’t on a friend’s must-do list. So Annie put one together for me and I let that guide me through the day.
With that said, I started my day with a stroll back to Karl Johans Gate, following its end at the Norwegian Palace which houses the royal family. I took my time, slowly walking the cobbled streets leading up to the palace. There is a nice, royal park (probably nicer in the summer) where you could stroll through secluded, quiet patches of lawn amongst scattered trees. But in the distance I heard some trumpets playing up the hill towards the palace. That caught my attention so I headed up in that direction. I stumbled upon a small crowd of people gathered on the lawn in front of the palace entrance around maybe 20 or 30 uniformed soldiers at attention in three rows. They were led by one man, very tall, in the front. They looked like some sort of ceremonial rifle guard. They were all wearing some dress uniform, long black cloaks, shiny black shoes, and a two point cover, black, with a small tassel draped down the side. The leader turned around from time to time and commanded the group to do various movements with their rifles as onlookers took photos. But there would be long pauses in between these rehearsal drills. It seemed like everyone around me knew what was going on. But I sat there in excited anticipation, waiting to see what would happen. Eventually, one soldier at his post in a fancy booth by the palace entrance turned to receive a call inside the booth. Then he re-emerged, gave a kind of nod to the leader, and the leader, turned, gave some commands, and the soldiers stood at attention and the buglers started to play. An Audi, driven by a high ranking uniformed officer drove up the road from the hill below, up to the palace entrance and inside a small archway. He got out and walked to the back and opened the door for a women in a business suit. She got out and walked into the palace and then everyone waited. For a really long time. I just kind of stood there wondering what to do. Eventually I gave up on whatever was supposed to come next. I walked around through the palace gardens along the side and circled the building. By the time I returned, the group of soldiers were marching in formation away from the entrance to a small building along the side. So maybe I missed it. Or maybe they were just waiting to be dismissed. Either way it was pretty cool to watch. I guessed that they do this daily to welcome a member of the royal family to the palace, but that’s just a guess. I never found out.
Then I walked down to the harbor’s western bank known as Akker Brygge, an area now developed along this upscale promenade, lined with marinas and ferry landings, and restaurants and cafes and expensive apartments on the bank. At the end of the dock is this new modern art museum that Annie had said was a must-see. So I went in. I don’t usually go out of my way to seek out modern art, I prefer the more classical works generally, but this museum was pretty cool. Its current exhibition was a collection of pieces from the US from the 70’s - some pretty radical pieces. There was another room for just Scandinavian artists. Many of the pieces were so wacky that I didn’t quite follow the message they were trying to convey, I think. But I really liked most of them. It’s kind of gross, but one of my favorite pieces was of a cow, an actual cow, completely cut in half lengthwise. Everything was preserved somehow, you could get a glimpse of all its organs and innards. Each half was enclosed in a glass case and you could walk between them. Weird. But cool.
After the art museum I walked back along the dock, ducked into a cafe for a coffee and a chocolate muffin (yum), then walked to the harbor’s eastern bank where the new opera house was located. The opera house was built only a few years ago and is an astonishing piece of architecture. Although you couldn’t walk inside to the stage, even the waiting hall inside was impressive, wood panelling rounding around the outside of the stage. The outside of the building had ramps that you could walk up that lead to the rooftop where you could wander around and get decent views of the harbor and the surrounding city. The sun was out too, rare for this time of year, and so standing out on the sundeck, basking in the sunshine and looking out towards Oslo Fjord was really nice.
Last up on Annie’s list was a place called Frogner Park, a huge park just outside the city center. Even in the wintery weather this park was nice for walking around. The park, oddly, had some sort of erotic statue theme. Everywhere the park sported random nude statues in different poses. Hundreds of these statues, actually. I don’t know what the idea behind that was but the park, despite its odd erotic statues, or maybe because of them, was hugely popular with walkers, mothers with strollers, bike riders, and dog walkers. I strolled around the park until late in the afternoon as my legs began to buckle under the long walks of the day. I was meeting Annie later for dinner and drinks so I wanted to head back to the hostel, relax and take a shower, before the night. I hopped the tunnel bane, Norway’s metro system, back to the hostel.
I met Annie by this large statue of a tiger outside the central station. She was with a friend, Tiffany, a Vietnamese American, also a Fulbright scholar, in Oslo teaching English. We were all pretty hungry so we walked to a little local Vietnamese restaurant, tucked away in the basement of an old stone building, underneath a strip club. Sketchy setting but the food was amazing. And the place was packed with both locals, Norwegian and Vietnamese and everything else. We got some spicy beef noodle bowls, similar to ones you might find in Chengdu, and split this sort of vegetable crepe, served and eaten in these lettuce wraps. Excellent food, cool local setting, and reasonably priced. I really liked it. We talked a lot about our life plans and where we hope to be - we all had pretty similar goals and are all about the same age. Annie, a Chinese American, speaks fluent Chinese and is doing her Fulbright on researching the Chinese shipping industries, hoping to use those talents in a professional setting. She mentioned Seattle. I talked up that city ad nauseum. And Tiffany, fluent in Vietnamese, is using her Fulbright to teach English in a small Norwegian village south of the city, also hoping to find similar work after her time in Norway. They’re two very intelligent young women and it was really nice to speak with them over dinner, meeting interesting people and getting ideas about what I could use my Chinese experience to do and my upcoming plans for graduate school in Washington. I’m excited to get back in the swing of things and start working again (but not until I’m done traveling - I’ve got priorities...)
After dinner we hopped the tram back to Annie’s apartment for tea. Annie also lives in Øystein’s old neighborhood, near where my hostel is in a nice apartment building. The interior is decidedly Nordic, a very nice blend of modern facilities and old wooden furniture and cabinets and things. She has a Norwegian roommate who was there with his Norwegian girlfriend. Really, really friendly people, fluent in English, obviously. Over tea I had asked if Annie or Tiffany had ever heard of this small movement in Norway, a recent musical movement of what I can only describe as Norwegian gypsy rock. My sister discovered them a few years ago and recommended them to me, a band called Kaizer’s Orchestra. They play this really bouncy, gypsy music, set to rock. It’s very unique and very awesome. Since I was in Norway, I thought I’d ask around to see if they were well known in Oslo. Annie and Tiffany had not heard of the band. But I played one of their songs, well received by the two Americans, and then Annie’s roommate’s girlfriend walked in the room and said, “Oh! Kaizer’s Orchestra. Good choice.” I was pretty happy she said that. She said they were popular with locals and that their live shows are very entertaining. I have no doubt. Check them out for yourself - try the older albums...
We decided to head out to get a drink at a place nearby. We walked through quiet neighborhood streets, slowly working our way down the hill towards the river, the one that divides the city, back over the spanwire bridges that cross over the high cliff walls, back to the area near the old factories that I had dinner the night before with Øystein and Chris. We walked into a small local bar, a clean place with good beer on tap. We stayed for a drink, Tiffany ordered a pear cider, a good choice, and then we walked back around midnight. I had to get an early start the next morning so that I would make the 7 AM train to Gøtenberg and I wanted to get a little sleep. I didn’t want this to turn into another St. Petersburg train fiasco (I did find that girl’s email by the way and properly thanked her for her help in waking me and sending me on my way to Helsinki - she said she was glad I made the train, people are awesome). I thanked them for their company and advice and then left to walk up the hill towards my hostel. We’ll keep in touch. In addition to being really cool people, they also traveled to a lot of the places I’m traveling to pretty soon and will be able to give some further advice on things to do and where to stay. I’d be glad for the tips.
I’m in Copenhagen right now. I’ve been here for one evening and one morning. I’m writing this before happy hour at my hostel - oh yes, my hostel has its own bar. This is an awesome hostel. And then me, an Aussie guy, an American girl, and a Danish girl are going to this place called Loppen in Christiania, a funky island in the heart of Copenhagen, to watch a live show at a cool local music venue. Doors open at 9. I’m excited. I’ll talk about my experience so far in Copenhagen in the next post. Copenhagen is awesome and is quickly becoming my favorite Scandinavian city.
I’ll leave you with that!
That set me up for the day. I had worked a list of must-see’s, collaborated by an American girl, Fulbright scholar, who felt bad she couldn’t meet up with me and Øystein and Chris the first night. Over the last few places that I’ve been, I’ve slowly been getting more and more tired of relying so heavily on the guidebooks that I’ve been using. They are good and useful, no doubt, and they offer good ideas for places to stay and maps and things like that. But as far as must-see things, I’ve found these guide books much more useful in the remote places of the world. In China, there are endless adventure style trips that these guidebooks plan out and without their help, finding them on your own is really, really difficult - even with a command of the language. But the cities of Europe don’t really need their help. There are only so many museums you can go to before you explode. I’m at that point. Instead of the guidebook then, I’ve decided to put my faith in the New York Times travel section. I may have mentioned this before but the Times does this “36 Hours in (pick a major city)” series where it describes what you should do, as a middle to upper class, well informed, man of the world, in a major city if you arrive on a friday afternoon and leave on a sunday morning. The series is incredible. It does a great job of bypassing the mundane, obvious sites and museums, and takes you to places that make the city stand out, which restaurants and bars and clubs and of course, major sites that make the city tick at that particular moment. I recommend this to anyone thinking of traveling anywhere. But of course it doesn’t always work. The Times hasn’t published a “36 Hours in Jiayuguan” for example. But they’ve hit every major European city, and some minor ones too. The other approach I’ve started to take is to message someone I know who is either from that city, knows someone in that city, or has at one time traveled to that city. And I just go see what they recommend, blindly. I’ve never regretted missing the national museum of wherever because it wasn’t on a friend’s must-do list. So Annie put one together for me and I let that guide me through the day.
With that said, I started my day with a stroll back to Karl Johans Gate, following its end at the Norwegian Palace which houses the royal family. I took my time, slowly walking the cobbled streets leading up to the palace. There is a nice, royal park (probably nicer in the summer) where you could stroll through secluded, quiet patches of lawn amongst scattered trees. But in the distance I heard some trumpets playing up the hill towards the palace. That caught my attention so I headed up in that direction. I stumbled upon a small crowd of people gathered on the lawn in front of the palace entrance around maybe 20 or 30 uniformed soldiers at attention in three rows. They were led by one man, very tall, in the front. They looked like some sort of ceremonial rifle guard. They were all wearing some dress uniform, long black cloaks, shiny black shoes, and a two point cover, black, with a small tassel draped down the side. The leader turned around from time to time and commanded the group to do various movements with their rifles as onlookers took photos. But there would be long pauses in between these rehearsal drills. It seemed like everyone around me knew what was going on. But I sat there in excited anticipation, waiting to see what would happen. Eventually, one soldier at his post in a fancy booth by the palace entrance turned to receive a call inside the booth. Then he re-emerged, gave a kind of nod to the leader, and the leader, turned, gave some commands, and the soldiers stood at attention and the buglers started to play. An Audi, driven by a high ranking uniformed officer drove up the road from the hill below, up to the palace entrance and inside a small archway. He got out and walked to the back and opened the door for a women in a business suit. She got out and walked into the palace and then everyone waited. For a really long time. I just kind of stood there wondering what to do. Eventually I gave up on whatever was supposed to come next. I walked around through the palace gardens along the side and circled the building. By the time I returned, the group of soldiers were marching in formation away from the entrance to a small building along the side. So maybe I missed it. Or maybe they were just waiting to be dismissed. Either way it was pretty cool to watch. I guessed that they do this daily to welcome a member of the royal family to the palace, but that’s just a guess. I never found out.
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| Soldiers at attention in front of the Royal Norwegian Palace |
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| Locals buying fresh fish from a fisherman on the bow of his boat |
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| A look down Akker Brygge |
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| The Asrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art |
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| Visitors admiring the art in the museum |
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| A look inside Oslo's new opera house |
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| Oslo's opera house - you can climb the slope to get views of Oslo fjord from the rooftop |
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| A view of the harbor in Oslo from the top of the opera house |
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| A beautiful day in Frogner Park |
After dinner we hopped the tram back to Annie’s apartment for tea. Annie also lives in Øystein’s old neighborhood, near where my hostel is in a nice apartment building. The interior is decidedly Nordic, a very nice blend of modern facilities and old wooden furniture and cabinets and things. She has a Norwegian roommate who was there with his Norwegian girlfriend. Really, really friendly people, fluent in English, obviously. Over tea I had asked if Annie or Tiffany had ever heard of this small movement in Norway, a recent musical movement of what I can only describe as Norwegian gypsy rock. My sister discovered them a few years ago and recommended them to me, a band called Kaizer’s Orchestra. They play this really bouncy, gypsy music, set to rock. It’s very unique and very awesome. Since I was in Norway, I thought I’d ask around to see if they were well known in Oslo. Annie and Tiffany had not heard of the band. But I played one of their songs, well received by the two Americans, and then Annie’s roommate’s girlfriend walked in the room and said, “Oh! Kaizer’s Orchestra. Good choice.” I was pretty happy she said that. She said they were popular with locals and that their live shows are very entertaining. I have no doubt. Check them out for yourself - try the older albums...
We decided to head out to get a drink at a place nearby. We walked through quiet neighborhood streets, slowly working our way down the hill towards the river, the one that divides the city, back over the spanwire bridges that cross over the high cliff walls, back to the area near the old factories that I had dinner the night before with Øystein and Chris. We walked into a small local bar, a clean place with good beer on tap. We stayed for a drink, Tiffany ordered a pear cider, a good choice, and then we walked back around midnight. I had to get an early start the next morning so that I would make the 7 AM train to Gøtenberg and I wanted to get a little sleep. I didn’t want this to turn into another St. Petersburg train fiasco (I did find that girl’s email by the way and properly thanked her for her help in waking me and sending me on my way to Helsinki - she said she was glad I made the train, people are awesome). I thanked them for their company and advice and then left to walk up the hill towards my hostel. We’ll keep in touch. In addition to being really cool people, they also traveled to a lot of the places I’m traveling to pretty soon and will be able to give some further advice on things to do and where to stay. I’d be glad for the tips.
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| Oslo's central train station |
I’ll leave you with that!
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