Goals 53 & 74: Norway

So if I've learned anything so far, it's that Scandinavia is beautiful. I think this point was best made with a Norwegian conclusion of fjords and mountains.

We began the trip with an overnight bus trip to Oslo, in the summertime.

Oslo

This is the Oslo Opera house. It's pretty excellent looking, and recently built and opened. You can climb all around it and get all up ons the roof. Megan and I even took the opportunity of sloppiness to roll down.

A wild segment of parade appeared and danced from time to time. They were filming a morning show of sorts, and I made sure to walk around to get in front of the camera in the background.

This is the parliament building.

Here's the royal palace.

After seeing the main sites in the center of the city, we decided to head over to the Vigeland Park. It's pretty famous, and it houses one of my favorite statues of all time.

Yes. This man is fighting babies. I imagine he's saying something along the lines of:

"I've had enough of these muther $#@&ing babies!"

While walking around the streets, I found a dumpster filled with a bunch of stuff from someone's house. I initially saw a stroller, and thought it would be a really good thing for carrying all of our bags. Then I found some ties, and even that awesome rain jacket.

We went to a pizza buffet at this place called Dolly Dimples, and ate till we were stuffed full. The place only had two slots for pizza, and there was 5 of us, so as soon as the fresh pizzas were put out we effectively demolished them.

After the 10:00 pm sunset, we boarded an overnight train to Bergen. We were equipped with blow-up pillows, a blanket, ear plugs, and an eye mask. Now, something I ate earlier that day (very possibly the pizza buffet) had left me especially gaseous. Throughout the night on the train I leaked methane into the compartment, and unfortunately Megan Lombardo fronted most of the blasts, who was sitting one row in front of me.

Bergen

We arrived early in the morning and the streets were dead, but beautiful. I still had my yellow raincoat, and I had a plan to put it on a statue rather than throwing it away. I found the perfect statue to jacket up.

The final product.
This was a big weekend for Norway. Constitution day was coming on Monday, and the weekend was a saint's day. The streets were filled with marching bands and jovial Norwegians, and it was a good time to be around.

Goal 53: Eat an Absurd Foreign Delicacy

So in Norway they feed you whale if you get too close to the fish market. (That's whale in the middle) It's smoked, and fairly delicious. I later spoke with a Norwegian about whale, and it turns out it's become illegal to hunt whale! However, the authorities won't really do anything about it, but only so long as the whaling boat is Norwegian. That still makes my whale sandwich a poached whale sandwich.

Most everyone expected the whale to be really blubbery and chewy, but it tasted like a mix between steak and smoked salmon.
After spending some time in the fish market, and deciding what we were going to do about seeing Norway some fjords, we figured it was a nice day out, so we should go climb a mountain to see Bergen a little better.
There are a couple mountains you can climb in Bergen, but Ulriken is the tallest. You can see the mountains going for miles in that direction. We were able to hike from our couchsurfer's place which was nice, and it only took us about four hours to climb it to the top!
The view was pretty beautiful, and you can also see the city and fjords in the other direction.
We stayed with an actual Oregonian in Norway! He was an exchange student in Bergen from OSU, and he grew up in Corvalis (heh). He was a great guy, and we ended up all sleeping on his floor. Before we slept on his floor though, we went to visit my friend Helen! (I worked with Helen at Walt Disney World) Fantoft was the international student area that we stayed in, and I found pretty interesting, and very reminiscent of Junior.

The next morning we departed on our little tour of "Norway in a Nutshell." This was a pretty extravagant tour of some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen, including waterfalls, fjords, lakes, rivers.

We start on a train....

Then we get on another train to Flåm on some famous train route.

Then we hang out in Flåm for a bit. Here, we turn on the theater without asking, I take some towels and consider swimming in the cold, and we watch some marching band from Ireland play some songs.

Then we get on a boat. This boat goes down a couple parts of the largest fjord in the world, Sognefjord. The second half of the boatride goes through a UNESCO World Heritage site, called Nærøyfjord. This area was breathtaking, and it makes me breathe heavy looking at these pictures again.

You can see that the water was green and gorgeous.
Then we get on a bus that takes us on the steepest road in Norway, and shows us some more fjords. This was a hotel cottage with a grass roof.

Then we got on another train to head back to Bergen. Once we were back in Bergen, we basically called it a night after eating a bit. The next morning was another early one, and we got on the train route between Bergen and Oslo for the fourth time (we were on it twice for the tour). Called the "most exciting and beautiful train ride in the world," you go from following a fjord, to training over a mountain, to seeing the forests of Norway.

On our way to Bergen, it was about 4 am when some of us woke up to this snowy scene. We were all shocked because we hadn't seen snow in at least two weeks. On our way back we heard the conductor say that the stop is the highest in Norway.



Oslo

We arrived back in Oslo just in time for Constitution day. There was a ton of people out in the streets, occasional parades, and lots of Epcot uniforms.

The first thing we did when we got back, was accomplish...

Goal 53: Visit that famous wooden viking/Nordic chuch

It turns out they're just called stave churches, and they exist all over Norway. There are some that are really beautiful and old, a lot have been restored or replicated, and some are just boring. This was a replicated one in Oslo.
It looks just like the one at Epcot!
As if seeing Helen and a Norwegian stave church wasn't enough, on Constitution day we were surrounded by people wearing their regional outfits that looked just like the ones from the Norwegian pavilion at Epcot!

Apparently they are different depending on where you're from. There were some really cool ones too.
Some Really cool ones.
We walked around Oslo all day, and saw some cool stuff. I saw this sign for Laughter... or is it Slaughter?
After a really good, trip, we decided it would be a good time to have a final dinner meal. We took about eight hours to agree on a place, and we only did after sitting down at the Hard Rock Cafe, and then ditching our hostess for a new place. Food was super expensive everywhere, so it was hard for us to get comfy with spending so much. Eventually we agreed on a little Italian place, and everyone got pasta. Mine was with salmon, and it was filled with humongus chunks of delicious fish. It was well worth the expense to eat good food and dine with good friends.

We realized that this was probably the last trip we would all be able to take together, and it was a good way to end the group adventures. We laughed and chit-chatted, and eventually had to make it to our overnight bus that would bring us back to Västerås just hours before our class.

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