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!

A Deutschlander decides a bit of Norsking is on the agenda!

Tomorrow, I get one of these!

A Jen! Assuming all goes swimmingly at the airport, of course. Iceland, no more vomiting up ash and volcano, at least not until Monday evening, svp.

I've got a general idea of what we'll get up to during her visit. Friday night, we will introduce her to Uglebo, the student pub lurking beneath Sophus Bugge on Blindern campus, and then afterwards scoot along to mine and Tim's favorite haunt these days, Waldemar's. Saturday morning we'll head up to the end of Holmenkolbanen (line 1) via both T-bane and bus so that we can get some gorgeous shots of the fjord in spring time, and also spend an insane amount of kroner on the reindeer steak that I still have yet to eat in this country. I figure we can make good use of the rest of the afternoon by visiting the Munch museum, then perhaps taking the ferry across to Bygdøy so she can explore Kon-Tiki and the Norwegian folk museum. Maybe the Viking ship museum, too. Sunday will probably be a little more chill after walking our feet off on Saturday, and then on Monday, alas, I will have to ship her back to Germay. ): Sad day, sad day.

It has come to the point in my trip where I need to look at planning out the rest of my travels instead of just saying, "Oh, I'll do that later." It's a little bittersweet for me to realize that I'll need to start planning out when I will be flying to London, and from there back home to Huntsville, but I've done a lot of traveling over the last four months and should probably cut myself some slack in that regard. And who's to say my traveling will necessarily come to an end once I'm in America again? After all, there are still quite a few Canadian provinces I haven't seen, and I still haven't gone to Mexico.

Ahh, the possibilities!

I dag gikk jeg til båthavn--igjen!

I may or may not be in love with Oslofjorden. ...okay, I pretty much am. :D

The harbor and Aker Brygge weren't part of my initial agenda for today; after all, I spent most of yesterday tooling about the city with both Tim and Mike as is our wont for Wednesdays, where we hit up the Cultural History Museum and a few different exhibits within the Natural History Museum. (I do have pictures from Wednesday, but they're all on my blackberry and for some reason I can't get the thing to cooperate with me at the moment. That blog entry will have to wait until another time.)

But this afternoon, I had arranged to meet with one of my father's childhood friends, an Englishman who emigrated to Norway after marrying a local some thirty years back. Mr. Peter Martin and I met at a Deli de Luca across the street from Saga Cinema, which is about a stone's throw away from Nationaltheatret and incredibly easy to get to, where we chatted for about an hour about.. well, lots of things, really. My studies, mainly, the general peculiarities of being foreigners in Norway, how it feels to be a native English speaker struggling to learn a new language, etc. It was a fascinating encounter for me, since I know that Mr. Martin and my father haven't actually had much contact with each other since their school days, but I hope we'll meet up for coffee again.

I took most of my pictures during the hour I had to myself before our meeting, wandering around and generally enjoying the diffused sunlight. There's a tiny ice cream stand right beside the waterline that sells some of the most delicious chocolate ice cream ("sjokoladeis!") I've ever had before. Definitely going back there!

København!

See you soon, Denmark!

I am ridiculously excited right now, because today Mike, Tim, Richard and I booked our bus tickets from Oslo to Copenhagen! We will depart on March 30th in the evening, enjoy a scenic drive through Sweden (or we would if it wasn't past sunset), and arrive in Copenhagen, Denmark, in the morning. I expect to sleep very well on the bus, and once we've checked into our hostel, I'll probably linger there just long enough to wash my face and look a little less like a travel-worn zombie before heading out into the city.

There are a few attractions I absolutely must visit while in Copenhagen:

• The National Museum
• Museum of the Danish Resistance
• Christiania, which Rick Steves terms "the hippie squatters' community." I really want to check it out just to see what kinds of "alternative lifestyles" feature here.

Half the joy I've derived from living in Oslo thus far has come from just wandering the streets with good company, portable food, and the promise of a beer at the pub in the evenings. It's crazy how much traveling can thoroughly wipe you out, but after a long day spent exploring fantastic sites in new places, I'm always in a great mood.

UiO essentially gives us two weeks' off for Easter holidays, which is fantastic, and once we've exhausted ourselves in Copenhagen for a week, I'd like to take advantage of the rest of our free time by exploring up and down Oslofjorden some more. My Eyewitness Travel Guide to Norway has an entire section devoted just to the area surrounding the fjord, so I figure we can probably choose a few of these places to visit as well. There is a major train route from Oslo to Halden, which is very far south along the fjord and close to the Swedish border. Halden has an old 17th-18th century fortress preserved in excellent condition in this city which lights up very brightly at night, but since it is so far away, I think we'd have to book lodging there overnight. I'm guessing it would be pricy, which means no more than likely. ): Anyway, those are my plans thus far, and even if we don't do much exploring of the fjord, I'll be glad to have gone to Copenhagen.

I forgot to mention that yesterday, in addition to watching Vålerenga's victory over Viking, I finally tried lakka! Tim, Mike and I ducked into the liquor shop at Ullevål stadion and I picked up a bottle of port, as well as the bottle of cloudberry liqueur you see pictured above. :) It tastes very much like the jam I tried while visiting my friend Beth in Vancouver... but alcoholic, of course. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is a drink best enjoyed with accompanying coffee or ice cream, so when I'm next at either the Kiwi or the Meny shop, I think I'll pick up some plane vanilla or something. At any rate, it tastes very good all by itself, but a little too sweet for me to enjoy without something to dilute the flavor.

So scratch that one off my list! Now, where's the reindeer steak?

Østre Gravlund and Frognerseteren

Yesterday was undoubtedly my favorite day in Oslo so far. And I've been here for over two months now. To look at more photographs, go here.

It was absolutely gorgeous weather yesterday, with lots of sunshine, not a cloud in sight, and probably the bluest sky we've had since we've been here. It was even above freezing, making my coat mostly unnecessary during the day though by night time I was glad that I'd brought it because temperatures plummeted predictably. Anyway, on a day like this, why stay inside?

The agenda for Mike, Tim and I was as follows: check out Østre Gravlund, and Jødenes Gravlund within it, near Helsfyr station, and then take the Frognerseteren line to the very beginning to

check out one of the best views in the whole city.

The cemetery is tucked away right beside the station, though most of it is hidden beneath a thick layer of snow right now. It's a very quiet place despite the presence of a T-bane and a major motorway mere feet away, and the Jødenes Gravlund--along with the Holocaust memorial--is on the far side of the cemetery, about a ten minute walk from the entrance.

This is just one shot of the full memorial, which stands in the middle of a Star of David across from the rest of the graves. On each side of the star is a list of Holocaust victims by name and date of death. Some parts of it were mostly inaccessible due to all the piled up snow, but during the spring we're going to come back and take a better look--and hopefully some better photographs. All in all, however, I found the site incredibly peaceful; it was interesting, to me, how the majority of the gravestones bore epitaphs and details written only in Hebrew, and not Norwegian as well. I remember a walk through Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville, in 2008, that there were a few gravestones in the Jewish section with exclusively Hebrew epitaphs, but to my knowledge the majority were written in English. I'll have to go back next time I'm in Huntsville and look at them again.

Next: adventuring up to Frognerseteren, which, I have decided, is probably the nicest residential area in Oslo. Maybe the entirety of Akershus. Line 1 is the oldest of the existing metro lines, and so I think it's fitting that in order to get to the end of the line, you've got to take one of the older model rail cars to do it. While winding up through the mountains (at an admittedly slow pace), we were frequently caught off-guard by the view of the fjord, and the surrounding neighborhood, and other little details like 19th century churches and peculiar schools tucked away like secrets in the woods. It turned out to be something of a blessing that, due to snow, the train couldn't take us to the end of the line, because that allowed us the opportunity to get off the train and explore the neighborhood near Skådalen station. We took a bus to our final destination, and the whole point of this day trip:

Oslofjorden!

Sorry about the cable line. Couldn't be helped.

The boys, lookin' suave.

Words and photographs don't adequately describe how fantastic this view was, or how reluctant we were to eventually leave it. We went inside Frogneseteren Hovedrestaurant (incidentally, serves reindeer! But I haven't tried it yet), which is this gorgeous, late-19th century wooden lodge situated right across from this lovely view, in order to have ourselves some tea, coffee and a bite to eat, then took everything back outside so we could enjoy the picturesque setting for a little while longer.

On the train ride back into the city, we ended up talking a little bit about how much of this city we haven't actually seen, despite having been here since early January. Once you get settled into a place, it's tempting to slide into the every day routine of schoolwork and socialization, forgetting that you're in a remarkable new location with exciting new places to visit and experience. I've got my Norway travel guide with me now, so I expect lots of new adventures in the future.