NORWAY! Oslo 10-14 May 2010

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Norway welcomed us with the frosty arms of a chilly windy with fleks of snow breathing down our necks matching the chill in my heart of the impending financial crisis I felt was imenent. This mattered little however as the exitement of sandy joining us warmed us like a sleepness night before santa comes when your 6.

The fear of overpriced watery bear lead us to stock up on as many spirits as we could in england before we left. This turns out to be a good idea for anyone who is thinking of coming up here, but a bad idea if your pack is allready in the super heavy weight category, clocking in at around 19,2 Kg and your backpackers is at the top of a deceptively steep hill. The packers I mention is a youth hostel, with the average age of about 50 and people who appear not to consist of lifepulse with heads rolled back like open pez dispensers lazing around in front of the television. So i guess we stayed at a retirement village? PAAAARTTTYYY!! I ended up deciding it was light enough out to go for a run so headed up further into the mountains for a look over Oslo. It was then i realised that it was 21:30 when i got back and that it was only just sunsety. A quick iphone app to tell me sunrise etc. told me that the was about 16 hours where the sun is above the horizon and the 8 hrs in between are twilight. After that we ended up doing some washing and bedding down for the long awaited day, the day of reckoning, the day the sky rains liquid joy, the day the rivers of friendship run high and brake the levies of disconnection, the day the car of comradery gets a turbo installed and a full tank of BP ultimate, the day you order a medium meal and McDonalds and you get a large, the day long ago fore tolled by the prophets at Escape Travel Indooroopilly spoke of, the day Sandy 'Black Wolf' Johnston joins our adventures. The wolf pack gained its third member.

The next day saw us sleeping in with the magnificent intentions of meeting Black Wolf with a run down the hill to be collected in the loveing, manly, embrace of our comrade. Sandy instead woke us up in bed which in hindsite is alot manlier... so thats good too. To celebrate his jet lagged-to-hell arrival we decided to hire the worst most uncomfortable bikes you can imagine (as a geologist i find that seats made of granite offer a much desired feeling of security that is otherwise lacking with your softer 'materials' used in less manly bikes. So, the sun was shining and we were feeling fine and the birds were singing in the trees, so we rode down from our hostel nestled surprisingly high in the hills behind Oslo to ride down creeks and through town to an island in the bay that contains some museums, trees, grass and some farms, 2 of which are a shade of green i no longer thought existed in nature. A stop at the Viking museum and a quick discussion with our legs and more importantly, our mashed potato pereniums (we may have taken a while to get down there...) told us it was time to go home. Seeing as how we got lost going down hill, it was a very bad time finding our way home up hill, with no idea where we were, our hostel not on our maps and a strong belief that we would need medical aid for for our underbits. We made, though at time we though we would not and celebrate the fact that we were alive though saw with some of our imported drinks, but instead passed into dreamland at about 20:00 (this is not a reference to drugs but i wanted it to sound cooler than us going to sleep...)

Next day we walked around Oslo city, kings palace, and followed a city guide we found and started drinking our way around oslo starting at the cheapest beers (AU$9.80 or so for 400 mL) and seeing where the road went. The road went home lol. Showers and our classynightimegearladiescantresist was to be equipped and we were going to paint places red but intsead we played a game at a packers.

CG to his credit came up with the game that shall for hereafter, be known the world over as simply Graig Ball. Basically everyone gets iPods, the judge for the round selects a word and the people with iPods must do a search for that word and choose a song from their pod that they think the judge will like most that contains this word. The chosen songs are played for 10 sec and the judge chooses and wraps it up with who won. Loser imbibes, winner gets to play his song, judge rotates. Very cool and fun and musiky + you need to know what the judge likes.

Bergen was on the agenda the next day, or so we thought!! Our plans were to go awry as we would soon find out. We packed and headed to the train station with wide eyed innocence and wonder. We stopped to pick flowers for a group of elderly people we saw and helped them across the road to the park where we helped them scribe letters to their grandchildren. A quick stop off at the orphanage to do a bit a performance for the kids which we repeated at the terminal paediatric ward and a shift over lunch at the homeless shelter we eventually made it to the train station for a ride to Bergen. It was then that it happened. A conglomerate entity of massive evil proportions, a type of hive mind that sought only to destroy all the good we have done. The Norwegian train system. Fronted by a group of emotionless drones with vile slicked back oily hair that moulds to their necks. Their voices ooze a thick miasma of despair over you as they mock you with a smile a manican would be proud of.
'Snakker Du Engelsk' we enquire with a hopeful and polite smile (do you speak english in Norwegian).
'I am fluent in over one form of communication' the automaton informs us.
'Okay excellant i think. We would like to go to Bergen using our Scandinavian Rail Pass's we have here thankyou please,' we continue. (A rail pass is a prepaid pass that gives you a certain number of days travelling in 3 months, in our case 10).
'That will be 50 NOK each'
'Sorry to disturb you but we have these passes that...'
'That will be 500 NOK each'
'Oh, dear ok you win, where sorry' as we handed over our much depleted money since we donated most of it to cancer research.
'Your train will come tomorrow. Goodbye'. And with that it was obvious that we were dismissed. Not quite sure what just happend we realised we had another night to spend in Oslo so headed back to our retirement village.

After that we checked out Iron Man 2 (it was rainy and sometime you just want comfortable things =). All movies here are in original english with subtitles so it was no problem (accept kids movies, they are in Italian..jk, Norwegian). We then hit up a rock and roll bar called Garage. We gots to talking with a bar lady who gave us cheaper and cheaper drinks as the night went on eventually letting us have them at staff prices. She then filled us in on some local info and we found out that the national day was coming up on the 17th and it was massive. Also, the 19 yo kids just finished school and were partying harty. They all have red overalls that are all unique in build and they all sign them and wear them around for the next 2 weeks until that cap it off on the 17th where they parade down to the palace and the king and queen congratulate them. Now im not sure, but i am pretty sure the queen did NOT come and congratulate me when i finished school. WHAT THE HELL!! Our lovely bar lady then gave us free entry to a gig that was playing. They turned out to be excellant, a pretty heavy old rock sound that felt new going by the name of Taliban Airways. A most pleasurable night in the end. The next day we took our leave from the hostel for the second time and went to ride the arteries of the beast to Bergen.

This is turning into a magnificent article so im afraid if you read it i will need to charge you for it sooooo...jk...but seriously if you want too.. =P

Ill fill in some summary points about Norway thus far;

- Alot of stuff is roughly 2 x the price of home, beer, food, accom. Makes me sad
- Hostels charge you for linen on top of the room, and some even charge you a cleaning fee when you leave, which means that you get to pay $60 a night for the pleasure of sleeping on a rectangular piece of foam.
- Dont put jeans in the dryer or it takes 10 times longer to dry your clothes and you will be up until 3 am...or so i heard >.< Lesson lrnd i guess lol
- Sunny days here in summer are goreous, rainy days are still fricking cold.

Not many photos this time but not to worry the next one has a million!!
As alwayz,

Many macho love,

Nikalos

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Photos

Oslo
Looking over Oslo into the harbour (our first Fjord lols=

Oslo Sunset 1
adsf

Oslo Opera house..i think
Looked cooooool

On ze Bike
Around oslo

Viking Museum
A sweet viking ship called the Oseberg. Built between 813-820 AD....bad ass dudes.

A building!
You heard it from me first! (the Royal Palace as it turns out)