Oslo can you go?

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After a long train ride from Trondheim, we finally arrived in Oslo late Monday night. We managed to find a hotel for the night, but had to get up early the next morning to find another hotel for the rest of the week since so many of the local hotels didn’t have rooms available on Wednesday night. While Jill & I repacked our things, Keith and Ben scouted out the city for a way to make the American laptop plug work in Norway (the adapter we brought with us was only for 2 prong plugs). We got checked into our home for the next few days, Hotel Savoy, then headed out for a tour of Oslo while Keith worked on his presentation for the JavaZone conference on Thursday.

Jill, Ben, and I walked along Karl Johans Gate to the University building, strolled around the National Theatre where many of Ibsen’s plays were originally performed, wandered on the grounds of the Royal Palace where Norway’s Royal Family resides, and saw a changing of the guards at the Palace. We then headed to the waterfront area and explored Akershus Castle and Fortress, which is where the German Nazi occupation of Norway occurred. It then started to rain, so we headed to the Modern Art Museum to stay dry. This was the same museum that I went to last year where they had all of the plushy/taxidermy art, but this year they were busy setting up a new exhibit so we didn’t get to see the very latest of the freaky “Modern Art” stuff. We did head up through the museum to see the more permanent displays… some of which were neat, while others just freaked us out! That night we went out for dinner at the famous “Grand Café” where many celebrities have dined and murals by Edward Munch are featured. Ben ate a traditional Norwegian meal of reindeer at the Grand Café, while Keith was out for a special “Speakers’ Dinner” for JavaZone. Just as Ben, Jill, and I got settled in for bed, Keith called and told us to come out to meet up with some of the JavaZone people for drinks (including Shirley Temples) on the 21st floor of the Radisson SAS. Aside from the striking conversation and few drinks had around the table, one of the highlights was seeing the mens’ bathroom in the bar. The entire wall where the urinals were was a huge window overlooking Oslo from 21 stories up! After one of the boys gave us the “all clear”, Jill and I went in to check it out for ourselves. It actually topped the surprise we found in the girls’ bathroom… stalls with 2 toilets in them so women can really go to the bathroom together (no… we didn’t use them together)!

Wednesday morning, Keith headed off to the conference while Ben, Jill, and I headed to the Akers Brygge harbor for a ferry ride across the water to Bygdoy peninsula where we visited some museums. First we hit the Vikingskiphuset, which had Viking ships that had been used for the burial of royalty and cheiftans in the early 900s. These ships were uncovered in the early 1900s and have been preserved and reassembled, along with many of the contents of the “caskets”. Next we went to the FRAM Museum, which featured the first ship to have sailed to both the North and South Pole. This was more recent (late 1800s and early 1900s), but was neat because the entire ship was available for us to walk around on.

Later that day, we headed back to the hotel to meet up with Keith, then hopped on the T-bane (metro, subway, U-bahn… whatever) to go to Frogner park to see the Vignland statues of naked people. We hung out at the park until it was nearly dark, then went back to the center of Oslo where everyone but me had a real “kebab” for dinner.

Thursday morning, Keith headed back to the conference while Jill, Ben, and I headed to the train station to get our tickets to Bergen for later that day. We then invested a few hours in some Oslo shopping, before heading to the conference ourselves to sit in the front row for Keith’s presentation. After watching Keith do an awesome job (we were all so proud!), we stuck around for the presentation of a new friend from the night out with the JavaZone people, then spent the rest of the night at a café with about 15 of the JavaZone speakers and coordinators. It took a while to get the check, so we were pressed for time to make our night train to Bergen and had to run through the streets of Oslo for quite a while to make it in time. We then settled in to our separate boy and girl sleeper rooms to wake up the next morning on the other side of Norway.

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