Jeg hadde ei Jennifer!

I'm sure my Norwegian is wrong there, but oh well. :) As usual, you can go here for more pictures.

My dear friend Jennifer visited me this past weekend, and this morning I had to escort her to Oslo S. so that she could make her flight back to Germany, but that certainly didn't stop us from having one wild and crazy time! Well, certainly crazy. ...perhaps nerdy and snarky are better words. We're not exactly the wild or crazy type.

We started off the adventure at Waldemar's on Friday night, mine, Tim and Mike's favorite pub, but the real adventuring started on Saturday morning when we hurried to make the T-bane up to Holmenkollen. Tim served as our adventuring compatriot for the day, and he very kindly took most of the pictures of Jen and me together so that we wouldn't have to go pestering complete strangers. As you can see from this photo, the view of the fjord is just as spectacular during spring as it is during the winter, and I am delighted to say that my good friend seemed to enjoy this first adventure into Oslo immensely.

I do have to say, however, that this Saturday was the single most bizarre day I've spent in Oslo yet, and I've been here for four months now. For one thing, the russes were out in abundance.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with russ tradition, but Wikipedia actually dedicates a pretty detailed article to this particular aspect of Norwegian society. Russes are Norwegian high schoolers (videregående skole is their equivalent to high school, I believe) weeks away from graduation, who partake in an excessive amount of partying and general silly behavior traditionally from May 1st through 17th until their exams. The red (and blue) overalls are apparently a requirement, and they aren't supposed to wash or remove them except for sleeping purposes. Sounds a bit, uh, scary. For some reason they're out rather early this year, but I managed to snap lots of pictures of them.

Here we spy the russ in their natural habitat, sporting their bright scarlet seasonal plumage.

And here we find even more russ doing nothing particularly useful in Vigelandsparken. But even more peculiar than red-clad Norwegian teenagers chilling on sculptures of oddly positioned naked people was, well, this:

Why yes, those are Danish flags billowing in the breeze in front of Rådhuset! Why were there Danish flags everywhere? I don't know, but I blame the gigantic, 30 meter tall lego statue. It seemed quite suspicious to me. Actually, these peculiarities just made the day all the more exciting for us, and I'm delighted Jen was able to see such eccentric aspects of my favorite little European metropolis. I'll write another entry detailing our adventures on Sunday; I just wanted to touch on the highlights of Saturday for now.

Hadet!