So I’m finally back from my awesome Scandinavian adventure in Oslo and Copenhagen.
It was great great fun. Part of it had to do with the people I was with. Chaz, Sara, Max, Kristina and Anna (in copenhagen) were really good company. We barely, if ever, fought and played a lot of spades to pass the time, one the main highlights of the trip I think.
We arrived in Oslo around 8pm on Friday night, after taking a very pretty train ride from Stockholm straight after our Swedish test. We really lucked out with our hostel. Instead of 5 beds cramped in a dinky room, we got our own little suite with 2 storeys, the top floor had a hang-out area with a TV, kitchen, bathroom and coffee table plus comfortable chairs. The bottom floor had really soft and fluffy beds. We spent a lot of time in the hang-out rooms playing “Questions” and spades and carousel.
Norway is outrageously expensive. Really outrageously so. We often ate at Macdonalds (10 krona cheeseburgers!) to save money but splurged on this great thai restaurant on our final night there. I visited a bunch of museums in Norway-including the Edvard Munch museum with the Scream and the Viegeland Park, with gorgeous sculptures all over. The Opera House in norway looks like an ice-cube and gave us the best night view of Oslo that I could imagine. We also played around with the lights and shadows and came up with this great little video of us playing with shadows. You can visit Chaz in Sweden to watch it.
Other fun things: The fortress with the gorgeous view of the ocean. We paid for a fjord boat trip around the city. We saw them have their marathon. The norwegians go “haiya!” to cheer people on, in place of our “jiayou!” or “gambatte!”.
Because we were in a group, we felt safe going around at night and visited a lot of pubs, including gay and lesbian ones. At the gay pub, we lucked out and caught their karaoke competition. I kept bugging Max to go up and sing until I realized it was in this American idol type format and the songs were preselected. It was also at the gay pub that we had this REALLY GROSS guy who must have been at least 60 come up to our table, start gyrating around Sara and hitting on Max and Chaz. That was funny but not very fun.
It was also Oslo where this mean drunk guy told us to shut up in a bus.
That’s not to say the norwegians are not nice. Our hostel owner for example, was awesome and bought me a cup of hot chocolate after Max regrettedly messed up his coffee. Not that it had anything to do with me but it was nice of him to do anyway.
That said, I prefer Stockholm to Oslo by far. I didn’t feel as safe in Oslo as I do in Stockholm, the people aren’t as friendly, not as attractive as the Swedes (which is an odd criteria I know) and just generally, the Swedish vibe is better.
After 4 nights (they really zoomed by!), we hopped on the train to transit in Gothemberg for about 15 minutes before heading to Copenhagen!
