July 14, 2001 - Saturday - Oslo, Norway
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| A peddler with his life-like monkey in Oslo. |
I landed in Frankfurt a little past 6AM and then caught my plane to Oslo at half 9. The flight was uneventful and one thing I did notice was that there weren't too many blonds going there. I took the bus into downtown Oslo and waited for Øyvind to show up.
Øyvind strolled up eventually to give me a handshake. It was just great to see somebody I recognize in this strange country. We exchanged our greetings and started heading over to his apartment. He just moved into the apartment and it was pretty much empty except for one single mattress in his bedroom along with some of his belongings.
I dropped my stuff off and we went off exploring a little in his car. We drove to his friend Gunvald's place to pick a mattress and sleeping bag to bring back to the apartment, then we headed to the mountaintop that overlooks Oslo.
We drove through some nice hills and eventually ended up at top of an area looking over the valley, the city, and the large bay. It was a nice sight to view; much different than the Southeast Asian landscape. It's more like the European / North America landscape. We then headed back down into the city and went for a bite to eat.
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| "Typical" Norwegian food in Norway. |
I wanted to try something local so Øyvind took me to a cafeteria where they were serving things like Norwegian meatballs and fish pudding. The clientele are mostly older people. I tried a beef stew and some of Øyvind's meatballs and found it OK. I don't know if it's because my appetite was still being affected by the Dengue fever, but the food wasn't that great.
I noticed right away that things were every expensive - food especially and it cost me about US$10 for that lunch, which was about the same amount as my total cost-per-day while in Thailand. The food in the supermarket is also expensive and they are about 1 tenth the size of a US supermarket with even less selections to choose from. 7-11's are all over the place and they have the typical higher-than-normal prices for their stuff.
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| Statues of various stages of life. |
Øyvind took me to a park where there were many sculptures created by a famous artist and we strolled through the park along the fountains and grassy knolls. There were even some crazy Norwegians swimming in the bone-chilling river. That's another thing I forgot to mention - the weather was chilly at best and I had all my layers on. The sculptures were really nice, more than a hundred of them displaying various stages of human life.
We went back to his apartment because I was dead tired from both the fever and the flight, so I thought I would sleep a little bit and it turned out that I slept from 6 until 10. I had a very hard time getting out of bed but I finally did and we went out to dinner. At 10:00, there was still plenty of daylight and we went to a place that didn't serve any good food. It was another bad experience for eating in Norway I guess.
Øyvind and I chatted through the whole time, about the difference in people in Norway and people in Oslo and travel in general. He was very interested to see some of the photos I've taken while traveling and it peaked his interest for traveling also. We also talked about his studies in Law and his desire to work either in Asia or the USA.
After dinner, we went out walking a little bit and bumped into some of his friends and chatted for a while. The Norwegian are fairly reserved but once they know you as a friend, they are a friendly bunch and it was nice to hang out with some of the locals at the pub and cafes. The big thing they do there is to hang out at pubs and cafes and socialize.
We eventually headed back to his apartment at 2 AM, where the skies still had a little bit of light out. It was a really strange experience, but cool.
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