About that Oslo....

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Hi Everybody,

how's things? Hope you're all well and good wherever in the world you happen to be.

After Stockholm, I've headed west into Norway and stopped at Oslo and Bergen.

I caught the intercity train from Stockholm to Oslo, and the person who sold me my ticket was a lovely person who knew I was after the cheapest ticket possible, and he duly found me a seat for a mere 255 swedish kroners (less than 30euros). Bless his soul. What he forgot to tell me was that I'd be sitting on a train for 6 hours in the 'Pets allowed' section, which meant travelling amongst a few dogs, and also numerous families with rowdy little kids (And no, I'm not casting any aspersions as to what the definition of a pet is). You can only laugh in these situations, and then turn the MP3 player way up.

What I've found about traversing from country to country and city to city, is that as I get closer to a new destination, I get a little more excited. I really warm to the idea nowadays of walking out of an airport or train station and into a completely foreign city. It's an exciting challenge to just walk out of those automatic doors and never be quite sure what to expect.

Arriving into any new city, the first challenge is always to find the hostel you plan on staying in, and in Oslo this was no different. The one I had picked was supposed to be only 4km out of the city. 30mins later on a tram, I get off at my designated stop and discover that I'm pretty much out on Oslo's city limits. This was vastly different to the 'only a short tram journey out of the city centre' that was promised in the brochure. I alight off the tram and after a 10 minute walk up a hill, I arrive at my hostel in the middle of nowhere. On checking in, I've noticed that I've unwittingly booked myself into a hostel with no backpackers, but a hostel choc-a-block full of german families.

I honestly can't tell you too much about the nightlife in Oslo as the trams stop far too early (11pm), and so my nightlife generally consisted of hanging around the hostel beating German teenagers at table tennis and having interesting chats with the hostel janitor (Her name's Jackie, she's 21 and originally from Brisbane Australia, and she's working as the hostel janitor until her Norwegian improves). I know, I'm a party hard kind of guy.

But that aside, Oslo was a really interesting place. I got to see ancient viking ships that were over 1000 years old, as well as visit the Kon-tiki museum (yes, it's about the Kon-tiki man). My personal favourite though was the gallery dedicated to Edvard Munch's work (He painted 'the Scream'). Truth be told, I must say I have a fairly superficial appreciation for art galleries, but this was far and away the one I related to the most.

Munch's work is very much driven by his preoccupation with existentialist philosophy, and his main collection, known as 'the frieze of life', contains paintings with titles such as 'loss', 'despair', and 'separation', and each painting captures each emotion so truly that your heart moves with each mood that is depicted.

However, far and away the biggest highlight of Oslo for me was finding a Vietnamese restaurant. I haven't eaten any Vietnamese food for almost two months and I was definitely suffering withdrawal symptoms. This restaurant was remarkably authentic, and I had to order in Vietnamese because they didn't speak english and I didn't understand the Norwegian translation.

When I ordered in Vietnamese, the waitress of course was happy to meet someone else who could speak vietnamese (or so she thought) and proceeded with a flurry of vietnamese words. I could only smile and nod, as my vietnamese is so bad that I couldn't even explain to her that the only vietnamese I am capable of is being able to kind of read a menu and telling her to go forth and multiply.

I ordered 'bun rieu', which is rice noodles in a tomato soup with pork and crabmeat and it was absolutely delicious. It even came with all the right herbs (vietnamese basil, fried shallots, coriander, ngor gai), and I have no idea how they get them in Norway. I would have topped it all off with a durian smoothie but they didn't have it on the menu (If you've never heard of or tried durian, I recommend going to your local asian grocer and requesting it).

Okay, enough typing already, I'll tell you about Bergen and the wonderful food I got to try there some other time.

Miss you guys,
Ben

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