Oh Norway

Alright I apologize for taking so long to describe my AMAZING trip, but I had midterms to study for, hopefully you understand.

Tuesday I had my crazy busy day of classes, like normal, but this time I made sure to take a nap during my break, and ate a big meal at the RU (university restaurant). My classes don't get done until 6:00, and my train didn't leave until 8. Its only a quick walk and a tram ride from school to the train station, so I tried to kill some time at school. I was so nervous, I couldn't do it! Instead I stopped at an ATM, got some money, then went to the station. My friend Alison and I had been trying to figure out our tickets to Normandy, so I figured I'd just hop in line at the train station and ask for help. I got there and started digging in my backpack (my only luggage) for my train pass....which wasn't there. I literally turned my bag inside out, then started panicking. I called my host mom, which was the first time I've talked on the phone in French and it is SO stressful, especially when you are freaking out. She and Charlotte started digging through my drawers trying to find it, and finally they did. Whew! My friend and neighbor Ben was taking a train that left earlier than mine, but was still at his house, so he stopped by and picked it up. I nearly kissed him when he got to the gare. I got on to the train no problem, and pulled out my "D-Day As They Saw It" book, which gives first hand accounts of the days leading up to the "longest day", as the French call it.

After a two hour on the nose train ride, I hopped into the now familiar metro in Paris. I popped out again at Pigalle, which, for those of you who don't know, is the sex-shop red light district of Paris, but also the home of my host parents' son, who had agreed to put me up in his apartment for the night. He met me right outside the stop (after another intimidating phone call) and we started walking towards his apartment when two guys almost plowed us over, one being dragged along by his shirt collar by the other. Alex froze for a little bit, stared after them, then told me that he knew the one being dragged along. So, in an adventurous kind of way, we followed them. I asked him what we'd do if we actually caught up with them, he said he wasn't sure. I was trying really, really hard not to laugh about it all, but agreed when he made me promise not to tell his mom. She would have a heart attack! Anyway, we never did catch up with them. We saw the guy who was doing the dragging in a brasserie, turns out he was the waiter and the guy Alex knew had tried to skip out on his bill! We turned back around and went to Alex's apartment....which was iiiiiiiiiiiiitty bitty tiny. I can't even think of anything to give a good picture...the whole thing could have easily fit into my dorm room last year. By this time it was after midnight, so I took a quick shower (it was about the size of my laptop) then crashed.

5:00 the next morning I was downstairs getting into the cab that took me to Charles de Gaulle. I'm really glad we did that, there were still a lot of people out on the streets and the cab lady was very nice. She dropped me off, I found the right line to stand in, then I listened to two people get into a big fight over getting to join the other people in their party in line, thus passing the people that had been in between them. Oh, I love the French. Everything went very smoothly. Got on the plane, flew to Copenhagen without any problems. I got off the plane, and, being a good traveler, looked at the board to see what gate my next flight left from..."please await information". I figured it was okay, the flight wasn't leaving any time soon, so I sat down with my book and the goldfish I'd brought along with me and hung out for awhile. A half hour passed...still "please await information". Another hour, still the same thing, and it was getting to be the time it'd said on my ticket, I started to get pretty nervous. I went to stand in front of the arrival/departure board, when a group of airline crew walked up. They were speaking some Scandinavian language, but I picked out "Oslo" and could tell from their expressions that they weren't sure what to do either. I figured they would be a good group to follow. After another half hour, now past the time we were supposed to leave, we got assigned a gate. Turns out that, due to the recent problems and retiring of a large part of their fleet, SAS is having a hard time finding planes for every flight. Luckily this was the last leg for me, but there was a really big line of people that had to change their later flights.

We touched down in Oslo and man am I glad I didn't check any luggage. Traveling with just a backpack is SO much easier! I found my way out to the transport center, and bought my ticket for the train into town. I arrived, and after a little bit of searching, found the tourist information center. I bought the "oslo card" which gives you free access to a bunch of museums plus free rides on all public transportation. I also picked up more little tiny maps and pamphlets than I will ever need in my life. I decide that my first tourist stop would be the giant ski jump a little outside of town, but I figured I'd check into the hostel first. I ended up having to sit around for awhile, and while I did I made schedules and lists of the things I was going to see, where they were, when they were open, etc. I realized that by the time I got checked in, found the metro, and went out to the ski jump, it would be closed. I was really bummed. Instead I ended up going to Vigeland Park. Its a park dedicated to the locally born artist, and houses basically his entire life's work. It was about 4:00 in the afternoon by this time, and almost completely dark. It was really interesting, but made it kind of hard to see the park!

After I'd wandered around for awhile, I hopped back on the tram and rode it down towards the bay. I hopped off by the city's fortress and castle. I didn't realize it until I was there, but the fortress is also right next to their city hall and to the Nobel Peace Prize Center. It was really neat! I walked past those, then took a trip all the way around the outside of the fortress. By this point I was exhausted, so I started walking back. I walked into my room, and there were two guys sitting in there. I glanced down at one of the books one of them was reading, and wouldn't you know it, it was in French. We had a very nice conversation (in French, of course!!!!) and then I completely crashed. I was exhausted!

Thursday morning I woke up bright and early. I was really excited, this was supposed to be my big museum day, but I wasn't sure how many I'd be able to squeeze in. I hopped onto a bus that took me out to the peninsula where most of the city's museums are located. I started out at the FRAM museum, which is devoted to the polar expedition ship the FRAM, which is said to be the strongest in the world. It was interesting enough, though not necessarily my cup of tea. Next I walked over to the Kon-Tiki museum, which is devoted to two modern boats built in the ancient style that were constructed to prove that ancient civilizations (like the Egyptians and the Mayans) could have had contact with each other. They actually sailed these ships across the ocean just to prove it. They've also reconstructed the statues from Easter Island, starting at the beginning with carving them, to prove that it could have been done. After that museum I headed back next to the FRAM museum to the National Maritime museum, which had a panoramic video I'd heard was good. It was, but it made me a little sea-sick. There wasn't much else there, except for Norway's oldest boat...which doesn't look like much more than a piece of rotting log anymore. But my next stop was, for me, the thing I was probably the most excited about for this whole trip....the Folkemuseum. It is the world's first open air museum, and I was pumped to see it. The only problem is....it is off-season. WAY off-season. Of the 155 buildings they have on their property, only 6 were actually open. It was a huge let-down. They do have a gorgeous church and some very interesting indoor collections, but I was still pretty bummed.

I made my way back to town, and hopped off of the bus at the Palace. I ended up walking all the way down Karl Johan's gate, the main avenue in Oslo. There were some really neat things to see, starting at the palace. You walk by the national theatre, the university, a Hard Rock care (haha), their parliament building, and it ends aaaall the way down at the train station. I went in and reserved my spot on the train for the next day, and the guy who helped me was super nice and even made sure I got a window seat! My this point in time it was starting to get late, so I poked into a 7-11 to find something cheap for dinner. What I found instead made me almost literally cry...............DR. PEPPER. I bought four bottles, plus a pasta/seafood salad thing that by 7-11 standards was very good. I was just SO happy to find Dr. Pepper! I went back to the dorm and ended up eating in my room with the German guy who had been there the night before, but had come in after I'd fallen asleep and been gone before I'd woken up the next morning. He seemed nice enough, and its really interesting the people you meet when you travel like this.

Friday was awesome....the best part was actually the second train I took, I thought it was going to be the boat, but I think it was kind of a bummer with the cold and the rain. On the train I met some neat guys from Canada, so it was fun to have somebody to talk to. I met some really neat people on this trip! The first train from Oslo to Myrdal I sat next to a mother and her three sons, which was fun. She told me all about everything as we were going past it, and they gave me some food (an apple and some sort of traditional sour candy). Then I got on the "tour" train. I was a little apprehensive about not having a ticket, so I followed a pair of friendly looking English guys and asked them if they'd already bought theirs. They said they had, but that I could buy one from the conductor, though I'd probably get charged more. Turns out I didn't, and they'd had to pay shipping and handling! Hah! Their names were Mike and Jeff and they were Canadians studying in the German speaking part of Switzerland. We ended up sitting together, and had a really great time talking and trying to take pictures. The train stopped next to this gorgeous waterfall, so we all unloaded and took some pictures. The ground had all frozen over where we were so we got to "ice skate" around, it was fun. The rest of the trip was just gorgeous. We landed in this little itty bitty tiny dot on the map called Flam that is pretty much kept alive by the tour. We stopped at a little cafe for fake fish and chips, and then I got on the boat, bundled up, and took a billion pictures. It was AMAZING. It was foggy/misty for a lot of it, plus we were high enough there were clouds right close. It started pouring about halfway through, but I stood out so I could get more pictures.

Once the boat docked we got on a bus, but it was running late so we missed train, so we had to all wait for the next one. I ordered a chicken sandwich at the restaurant in the bus stop, expected a bus stop level chicken sandwich, and instead got this huge sandwich with a giant chicken patty, lettuce, corn, cucumbers, etc. It was really good! We finally got on the train, and then I met up with Chelsea! Saturday I was going to get up and go back down to Bergen (her school is on a nearby mountain) to do some Christmas shopping. We all got up for breakfast, then I came back to shower and was going to lay down until Chelsea came back from a meeting...and ended up sleeping for about five hours. It was nuts. After that we all went to lunch, which was rice porridge with sugar, cinnamon, and raisins. It was really really yummy! They were having their family weekend, so I went along with a bunch of Norwegian parents that afternoon. Chelsea is studying Italian (don't ask me why), so I got introduced to her Italian prof...who's native languages are Italian and Portuguese, but who also speaks Spanish, Norwegian, French and English. Woot! I had a really nice talk with her (in French, of course), and I was SO impressed by how she just flipped, very easily, between languages. They also were giving out samples of parmesan and basalmic vinegar...four year old basalmic vinegar. Which, sounds weird, but it was ABSOLUTELY amazing. We also watched an animated video thing about the differences between Italians and the other Europeans...it was quite funny, though the bureacracy, queues, and smoking definitely would work for the French as well. (http://www.lifeinitaly.com/flash/) Oh, plus before then everybody made their own bruchetta on open grills (sans tomato for me, of course).

After that we all went to dinner, which was beef stew (thank heavens for red meat), mashed potatoes with nutmeg (strange but good), and vanilla ice cream with home made chocolate sauce...amAzing. Went back to Chelsea's room for awhile and did some reading, then they had their big concert/spectacle thing. Chelsea sang in two different choirs, her ethnomusicology group played three songs (she sang once, played the fiddle once, and the horn another time), then she and her instructor played a traditional fiddle duet. It was really fun! They also had a drama production, a tai chi demonstration, and two student made videos. They also had three different group sing-a-longs, during one of which all the men in the room stood up and went to the front of the room and then it was a back and forth between the boys and the girls. Very fun, but did I mention that all of this was in Norwegian...which, fyi, sounds like German with a Canadian accent. After that we had the evening meal...they eat four times a day...which was soup, bread (not French bread, I am spoiled forever), then cakes for dessert. By this time I couldn't really eat anything, so I had some tea and a very small cake. Now I'm getting ready to head to bed so I'm alive to travel this morning, but Chelsea is going down to a big "fruit" party, hosted by the girl whose family won two different fruit baskets in between sing-alongs.
The next morning Chelsea saw me into a taxi, I flew back to Oslo, hopped on another plane to Paris, then got on the train back to Nantes. It was all quite uneventful, though my host dad and I didn't see each other at the gare and I'd already walked to my bus stop by the time he called me.
The rest of this week went pretty well. I ROCKED my phonetics midterm, I mean absolutely rocked, got a good grade on my Palestine midterm, and did okay on my Atlantic World test. Tomorrow I leave for Madrid for the weekend...how crazy is that? I'm taking a night train, so I'll get in Saturday morning, then Monday I get back about 20 minutes before my class. I'll be gross, but hopefully very happy. Well, I'm off to bed, grammar tomorrow morning!

Also, instead of posting pictures throughout, here is the link to my facebook album! http://wartburg.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016774&l=7aa89&id=123700029