Blogs from Oslo, Eastern Norway, Norway, Europe - page 7

Monday, 19th March 2018 Breakfast at the hotel was a happy affair for me every morning. Even though I spent no more than 30 minutes at the buffet table each day, the spread filled me up and the coffee gave me a good head-start for the work day. I normally arrived at my work place before eight in the morning and finished work by five or five thirty in the evening. For dinner, R brought me to the Brugata district in Oslo where there were a couple of Asian restaurants and supermarkets operating within the vicinity. Prior to dinner, I had my Mcflurry treats at Mcdonalds before popping over to Lille Saigon 1. This is a no-frills Vietnamese eatery where it was filled with dinner crowds on a Monday evening. It wasn't difficult to explain why. ... read more

Sunday, 18th March 2018 I arrived a day ahead of my meetings in Oslo so that I could have some decent rest before heading to the office on Monday morning. This was my second business trip to Oslo, the capital city of Norway. Everything seemed somewhat familiar. I was staying at the same hotel and taking the same train service to work. Arrival at Oslo Gardermoen Airport at 7.30am on Sunday, R was expecting me at the Arrivals. He had been working out of Oslo office for the past two years. We were great buddies in the Singapore office together with J and it was nice to meet him again since our CNY lunch in Singapore in February 2018. Temperatures in Oslo today was in a low -12 degrees even though we were assured of clear ... read more

Norway was once part of Denmark. From 1205 to 1814 there have been 21 wars between Denmark and Sweden and in 1814 Norway was ceded to Sweden in war reparations. Given how wealthy Norway is today that was an expensive “gift”! Norway proclaimed independence from Sweden in 1905 so it is a relatively young country. Oslo is a small city of only 660,000 people but is growing rapidly (30% since 2000) and expects to have a population of one million within the next decade or so. It is also transforming itself into a modern city with state of the art buildings and skyscrapers. An example of this is its spectacular new opera house situated on the waterside. The architecture not only makes it visually stunning, it also a building you can walk around, in and on ... read more

Started the day at Popcentret, a cute interactive exhibition about Norwegian pop music. A lot of it was obviously aimed more at a Norwegian audience than an international one but it was fun to see the chronology and the few artists I did recognise. You could even record a song in their studios but I gave that a miss... After that, the Oslo museum with its interesting exhibition on Norwegian dialects. I learned that even Oslo itself is divided into different dialect areas according to class boundaries, one of them influenced by Danish. And that there's great dialect flexibility, and people mix bokmål and nynorsk. No wonder I get so confused. Next stop, the history museum. Decided to focus solely on the Viking era and got to see the Nordic gods as never before (pictured). Then ... read more

A long day's travelling that included being subjected to the young couple in the train seats in front of me making out from Hallsberg onward (I'm not even joking) finally landed me in Oslo. Armed with my Oslo Pass, I took the metro to Tøyen and to my room in a shared apartment. The district reminds me of a jazzed-up Högdalen (suburb of Stockholm) if that means anything. The apartment is clean and has all the amenities I need but my actual room has a view that I can only describe as interesting (see pic). But it's fine for a few nights. As long as I can sleep, I really don't care. As I arrived early evening there was no time to hit the museums so I got my bearings and did some sightseeing. Visited the ... read more