This post covers the weekend I spent with the other exchange students in Oslo. We did a LOT in three days, so this is going to be a really long one. Consider yourself warned!
We arrived at the hostel near Oslo on Thursday afternoon, and spent the evening catching up with exchange students, and meeting the new ones from the southern hemisphere. |
| Picture from Hannah |
Friday morning we started off with breakfast with the mayor of Sandvika, a Suburb of Oslo. We were served sandwiches, juice and coffee, a meal I would usually consider lunch. I’d never had a shrimp sandwich with caviar before, but it was good.
After the meal we filed into a big meeting room where the mayor talked for, well, what felt like a long time. He touched on every topic from the history of the Norwegian parlimentary system to women's rights and abortion, and was honestly hard to follow, even with his impressive english vocabulary.
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| One of the viking ships |
Then we drove to a viking museum, which was really interesting. It holds the three best preserved Viking ships in the world, which were used for burying important people after they were finished on the ocean. The museum also held the remains of people found buried in the ships, along with weapons and the remains of horses and dogs buried with the people.
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| Viking ornament |
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| Kate and I with another viking ornament |
The Viking ship museum was followed by a more recent marine history museum, which housed a ship taken to both the North and South poles. We were given sandwiches and drinks, then went on a tour of the ship.
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| Exchange students beside the "Fram" |
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| Top view of Fritjof Nansen's ship "Fram" |
The ship "Fram" was built in the 1890's, and their goal was to make a ship strong enough to become trapped in the ice, and drift in it to the North pole. It is the only ship in the world to have sailed so far North and South.
The third museum in the area was another one involving sea history in Norway
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| Peanut butter :) we also found "Jif" peanut butter |
After a quick tour of the third museum and a short film, we went back towards the hostel we were staying at in Sandvika. We didn’t make it all the way though; we chose to get dropped off at the biggest mall in Scandinavia instead.
Every shopping centre I’ve been to here has pretty much the same clothing stores, so there wasn’t much new, but we had fun wandering through a huge grocery store and seeing all the variety you don’t find in the normal grocery stores here.
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| A display for the world cup |
We took the bus back, walked up the giant hill to the hostel, then went bowling in the evening. It was a packed day!
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| Fransisco (from Ecuador) and me at the bowling alley with the newest addition to the exchange student family :P |
The main event for Saturday was the team finals in men’s ski jumping, and we got ready with that in mind in the morning. It was sunny after two days of grey fog; the weather picked a good day to cooperate.
Noellen and I with our face paint, you can't see the Canadian flag on the other side of my face.
We painted our faces with Norwegian flags as well as our own countries’ flags, bundled up in warm clothes, then left – for a war museum. They don’t tend to give us a very good idea of what we’re doing each day, so we were a little out of place wandering solemnly through exhibits about world war two, dressed for a ski race.
The war museum is at the site where Norwegian patriots were executed during the second world war, near the Akershus castle in Oslo. Norway was occupied by Germany during WW2, and the museum was about the resistance movement in the country.
Illegal newspapers that were circulated around the country by the resistance
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| Film hidden in a shoe |
In a loaf of bread
and, well - you can read the caption yourself
A model of Norwegians escaping to neutral Sweden during the war. I remember going for a run during language camp in September, south of Oslo, and coming across a point with a sign in the middle of nowhere, where Norwegians escaped to Sweden. I didn't really understand it then, but it all makes more sense after learning about WW2 in Norway.
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| A sign announcing that it is illegal to stand on a train so long as there are free seats. This stemmed from Norwegians refusing to sit beside German soldiers. |
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| Red hats were illegal after the Germans began to see them as a demonstration. It says that santa hats were also illegal. This picture is from the Trondheim police. |
I found this museum really interesting, as I'd never known anything about WW2 in Scandinavia. After finishing with the museum, we ate our packed lunches we were given before we left. These included massive chocolate bars, which I think the majority of us finished throughout the course of the day. I roughly figured out the calories in mine, and wish I hadn't. Oh well, I'd much rather eat a whole bunch of chocolate than, say, a big mac and fries, and the calories were about equivalent to that. Although I've actually never had a big mac, I just felt like comparing them to make me feel better.
After lunch, we were given these:
That's about 50 dollars for each student - we're definitely lucky to be Rotary exchange students!! Tusen takk! We followed our guide with his Norwegian flag and cowbell through downtown Oslo.
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| "Ok guys, you get five minutes in the souvenir shop" - we came out looking much more patriotic than when we went in. |
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| There was a little ski jump in downtown Oslo, for kids |
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| And a kids' cross country ski race - so cute! |
We followed the clanging of the cowbell to the Nobel Peace centre, where we were given another presentation.
The presentation there was also really interesting; it dealt a lot with Lui Xiaobo, the most recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
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| Chinese flag projected into the sky at one of their biggest shopping centres |
I didn't know much about Chinese government, Lui Xiaobo, the censorship of the internet in China or the Nobel Peace Prize, so I learned a lot.
We were finished there in the middle of the day, and ready for the ski jumping. Even in downtown Oslo
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| Some random girls dancing |
It seemed like everyone had made an effort to dress as ridiculously Norwegian as possible, especially once we got up to Holmenkollen. At first there was just the odd person, and I could dismiss it as “well, he just really likes wool socks,” but after a while I realized a ton of people had actually made the effort to dress like stereotypical old cross country skiers, at least that was my interpretation of it. Hiking boots, knitted patterned wool socks over ski pants, a knitted Norwegian sweater, mittens and a backpack with a Norwegian flag sticking out, was pretty typical. Everyone looked so Norwegian that it seemed like a joke, but it was really funny to see.
Miki and Devin
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| The ski jump from where we sat |
When we got to the base of the ski jump, we were given a meeting time and wandered off on our own to find a place to watch. It was packed with people standing and sitting on the banks and up against the railings. Noellen, Kate and I decided we were sick of standing after a morning of walking through museums, and found a big cardboard box to squish down and sit on. It was a good decision. We propped it on a muddy slope behind the garbage cans and tried to arrange ourselves so neither we nor our bags would fall off. We were pretty much the only ones sitting on the little slope; most people were standing up around us.
It doesn’t sound all that great – camping out on a cardboard box on a muddy hill behind some garbage bins, staring at everyone’s dirty hiking boots – but it was great! We had a clear view of most of the ski jump, and it was warm and sunny
Noellen and I on our cardboard box
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We bought waffles and jam and hot dogs, ate the chocolate bars rotary gave us, and tried to figure out what was actually happening on the ski jump. We had a clear view of most of it, although we couldn’t see the landing because of the garbage bins. I ended up watching them fly in real life, then land on the giant tv screens that were set up around, which were much easier to see. Without commentary I had no idea who was jumping; the muffled announcements were had to understand.
Apparently the rest of the crowd knew what was going on though, because the casual Norwegian flag waving turned into a frenzy when a Norwegian went.
We had an excited group from Finland above us, waving a giant flag attached to a ski pole and singing when Finland
This little video clip was taken when Norway was jumping - you can't actually see the jumper in the video though, just a lovely view of the garbage cans. Gives an idea of the cheering though.
I think Austria won, with Norway
So that was Saturday, yet another packed day.
Sunday: (I wrote this on the train, not today, so the tense might be a bit off)
Continuing the tradition of telling us little about what we we’re actually doing until it happens, all I knew about today was something about a ski jump that wasn’t the Holmenkollen one. We ended up going to an old ski jump that isn’t in use anymore, climbing up to the top, then getting a presentation on its history. It was built in the 1920’s, and restored several times until 1995 or so, when it was last used.
I can’t imagine how scary it would be to ski off one – it’s insanely steep looking down from the top! We walked back down the 600-something steps, then we were given soup and baguettes at a nearby school for lunch and shown some old videos of competitions on the jump.
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| From the top.... |
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| ...and the bottom |
We were finished around noon, and my train back to Bergen
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| A little bored..... |
What to do at a train station with a little grocery store and convenience store for two hours? I spent at least an hour in the little grocery store, trying to decide the best combination of foods to buy for dinner on the train. When I have that much time I get ridiculously indecisive, and the people working there gave me odd looks when I deliberated in front of the yogurt case for the fifth time.
My thoughts went something like this, on repeat:
-Ok, I should be healthy for once and buy fruit or vegetables. Nah, there’s nothing here that looks good.
-Maybe I’ll get knekkebrød, then find toppings! Hmm…rice cakes are half the price, ok
-Nugatti would be amazing on rice cakes! Picks up a jar..
-No, I’ve never eaten so much chocolate in such a short time as I did this weekend – I can’t justify it for dinner too.
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| Shrimp flavoured cheese..... |
-Liver paste? A bit expensive and I still think eating liver is weird, even if it tastes good.
-A million different spreads in a tube – practical, but I don’t really want to try shrimp flavoured cheese
- BRUNOST AND JAM.
-Hm…granola and yogurt! Yes! And the muesli isn’t THAT expensive. Oh wait, they don’t have vanilla yogurt, and I have no spoon or way to mix the two. Never mind.
-Ok, I’ll get liver paste and rice cakes.
-But wait, I haven’t been down this aisle!
-mmmmm tacos
-Does guacamole work with rice cakes?
-I know, I’ll abandon everything, buy some tortillas and pesto and lettuce and tomatoes, yesss!
-…or not, I don’t think dealing with an entire head of lettuce, whole tomatoes and spreading pesto, all without a knife or plate, is very smart. Never mind that pesto in a tiny train station grocery store isn’t exactly cheap.
…and so on, and on, and on. But when you have nothing else to do, comparing food is an entertaining way to pass time.
I ended up with rice cakes, liver paste, a little single serving yogurt and granola container, and two apples. That way I can use the spoon from the yogurt to spread liver paste on the rice cakes. Yum :P
There was no internet on the train, so I passed the time writing some of this, sleeping and watching part of a movie until my laptop battery died
It was an insanely busy weekend, with so many great experiences I'll always remember!
Here's one last picture of the redhead exchange students, or as they call us in Australia, "rangas" (from Oranguatang)
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| From left: Connie(Canada), Miki (Australia), Noellen (USA) and me. Missing Jack |
What a great weekend Lauren. Thanks for pictures and for writing the blog. I think I went to the same museum when I was in Norway years ago.Mom
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