Surviving the Apocalypse and Arriving in Oslo

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April 24th 2010

Published: April 25th 2010

Emma and I finally escaped the volcanic ash cloud that stopped flights from leaving or entering the UK for six days and arrived today in Oslo, Norway. I will write more about my semester at LAMDA when I have more time, but I want to stay up to date with this current journey. Sorry about my ridiculous lack of entries throughout the semester...

So to begin: the initial plan for studying abroad in London was to come home the day after the course ended (April 17th) and go back to the real world and my American life, but shortly after spending time in London and falling in love with it, I realized that this was the perfect opportunity for me to do some traveling throughout Europe after school. I realized I had both the time and the money to do it and did not know if I would ever be in a similar situation again anytime soon. I finally got up the courage to officially change my flight and settled with a return journey exactly a month to the minute from when my original flight would have been, arriving stateside on May 17th and having four weeks to travel. The initial plan was for me to join about 7 or 8 of my friends from LAMDA on a journey to Amsterdam and then go from there, but an explosive Icelandic volcano had other plans. I guess volcanos erupt, and don't explode, but an explosive volcano is a much more interesting image...

Continuing on... The volcano erupted in Iceland around March 20th or so. It is in a very remote location with only a few villages nearby, so it was not really a major concern for the world. However, the volcano decided to spew out enormous amounts of ash 6-7 miles in the air for a few weeks. Little known to most average human beings, large amounts of ash cause major problems for jet engines. The air traffic advisors for most of the major European countries decided to close the airports until they could determine if it was safe to fly. No one was able to even estimate how long the closure would last- it seemed like it would be somewhere between 2 days and 2 years. There was talk of food shortages of produce due to the lack of timely transport, and more ominous talk of a second, larger volcano erupting in the near future. We basically determined that it was the apocalypse.

Everyone had their flights cancelled. We were able to extend our stay at our residence hall, paying night by night because our length of stay was undetermined. We made dinner together every night to avoid buying large amounts of groceries and having leftovers when we were finally able to leave. It actually turned into a really exciting and interesting experience. We jokingly called ourselves the "inseparable apocalyptic volcano gang" and talking about the end of the world as we know it with the bankruptcy of major airlines. We got to experience new places in London without the time restrictions of a LAMDA schedule. We went to Hampstead Heath, a large park in north london (not one of the British landscaped parks, but one that was left to be natural). Other highlights were high tea in a swanky hotel in Knightsbridge, exploring Harrods (an enormous store with gourmet and designer everything), the British Library (with one of Shakespeare's first folios and the Magna Carta), and Burrough Market (a food market consisting of gourmet cheeses, olives, etc). My small group of LAMDA students that were left in IES grew really close and it was great to have more time to spend in London.

After awhile, I started to wish that I was traveling in Europe as planned. We had searched for buses to Amsterdam or other parts of Europe when we found out flights were closed, but decided to wait until the airports opened up again. The flight ban lasted from Thursday to Tuesday, but the airports were not completely up and running until Wednesday. Emma and I decided to begin our journey in Oslo on the following Saturday after having lost five days from the volcano. Emma's American aunt married a Norwegian and two of their children live in Oslo. We are staying with her cousin Jan (a male's name pronounced Yahn) and his wife Anne-Marie who have a two year old daughter named Sara, who actually makes me consider having children someday, if you can believe it. They live in an apartment with an amazing view of Oslo, just 10 minutes by underground train from the city centre.

We arrived in a small airport near Oslo and took a 1:45 bus ride to the city centre. We met Emma's cousin, Kristi, at the bus station and she took us to Jan's house. We had a long, relaxing dinner and went to bed after tea and dessert.

We decided to sleep in an unwind the next morning and woke up at noon. We had a leisurely breakfast of Jan's homemade dairy-free bread (Emma's lactose intolerant) and various toppings. Apparently caviar is a common thing to eat in Norway and can be expensive or very cheap. It is also common to eat things out of tubes, as if you are going to space. We had bread with cheese and caviar, brown cheese (a Norwegian caramelized cheese), jams and Norwegian mayonnaise, which is like ours but just a bit sweeter.

We then spent the next few hours trying to figure out our travel plans, to no avail. It took us awhile, but we figured out that we could go from Oslo to Amsterdam, Prague or Croatia, but we did not know how to travel from those places to anywhere else... We decided to eat dinner and go out to the city and figure it out later.

We left Jan's house and took the T (underground train) to Jernbanetorget station near the opera house that was built a few years ago. I am surprised at the prevalence of the modern architecture in Oslo. Very few buildings seem older than 1900. They are all fascinating and many of the formal ones are gorgeous, like Parliament, the National Theatre, and the place where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded. You are able to climb on the roof of the opera house, that slants from the ground level to the top, and get a great view of the city. We walked from the opera house to the national theatre to meet Kristi and took the bus to a music bar called Bla (pronounced kind of like Blo, but there really isn't an English equivalent for the pronunciation). It was in a more run down area with a lot of character, from Yoda graffiti to a riverbank with a sculpture of an angel. We went inside to get a table and have a drink, which was another surprising experience. The currency here is the Norwegian Kroner, which is about 6 US dollars. An average cocktail in Norway is about 88 NOK, which exchanges to about $14. A beer is 58 NOK, or about $10. Everything in Norway is expensive, particularly alcohol, which has a high tax to discourage drinking. You are also not allowed to buy alcohol after 8pm on weekdays and 6pm on weekends. I was not expecting this at all.

The band at the bar was fascinating. They were called a quartet, but there were about fifteen people. The instruments ranged from the standard guitar, drum and bass to soprano sax and upright bass. The sound was very jazzy and bluesy with other musical influences that were harder for me to identify. Perhaps Eastern European? We stayed for about an hour and then went back to Jan's to figure out our plans and go to bed early.

We came back and Jan said that he had found out what we should do. We took his advice and for $100 total we are taking a train through the mountains to another Norwegian city called Bergen on Tuesday, and flying from Bergen to Split, Croatia on Wednesday morning. Croatia and the Dalmatian islands are supposed to be the new, cheap Greece. I've looked at images and it is absolutely gorgeous. We do not know what we will do from there, but until then we have another day in Oslo and a great train to Bergen to look forward to.

Surviving the Apocalypse and Arriving in Oslo

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