Mike takes Oslo and takes it to the AWESOME

Homecoming: Day 5

"Oh-Would you Like a bag?"

We had an early start to the day with breakfast at our exclusive Regence Kristinelund hotel (corn flakes and fruit) and got going to the Norwegian Folk-Heritage Museum.

The Norwegian Folk-Heritage Museum is an outdoor museum that is really just a bunch of buildings from the historical progression of the Norwegians aka really flipping cool- I mean, these buildings weren’t anything spectacular, but the history behind them is amazing. The buildings, made from strong-ass Norwegian timber is not only built to survive all the elements (and survive them well), but they wood was decorated accordingly b the builder. Very intricate, very delicate, and very beautiful carvings usually covered just the face of the house and added a certain comfort to the large, snow-covered building. Inside, the buildings were scantly populated with unused furniture, with most benches being carved from the timber along the walls (this has been done by Norwegians essentially ever-since they became less nomadic). You know that warm and cozy feeling you get when you visit a family cabin or see pictures of warm and cozy cabins? Yeah, it’s like that, but much colder because there was no fire, but you get my point- they seemed like a nice place to live in. So much, even, that I started imagining myself living in one of these places once I get my own mortgage. And some of you will be thinking “wait- that’s what he said about every castle in the UK…?” And you’re right, I did and I do want a castle house. So now, I need to make a hybrid castle-cabin. It can and will be done.

We ended the museum with a trip to the top of a large hill where the church sat. This place was gorgeous, gothic, and ginormous (on the outside). The interior was absolutely fantastic- huge timber pillars held up the roof, with said timber being carved delicately; the small-sized and small amount of windows let in just enough light to add esthetic, while lit candles did the rest of the work; and the deck around the main worship hall (on the outside of the building) was perfect. It’s all I can really say. I’ll let you know when I have pictures posted, because this thing was wonderful.

VIKING SHIP MUSEUM! [vikingshiphuset]

FREAKING FANTASTIC, says I! This relatively small museum holds 3 of the largest Viking ship discoveries of Norway-the Oseberg, the Gokstad, and another one- and they are all HUGE! The Gokstad was the most intact find, while the Oseberg was pretty battered up, but due to careful reconstruction, they were able to make this historical artifact come to life. I read a ton on these ships and how they were constructed by hand and sat anywhere from 16-36large Vikings, royalty, and merchants and I was standing literally right next to it. HISTORY BONER! I would say I was embarrassed, but c’mon, I wasn’t. In any case, the museum was huge and awesome and seriously worth the long-ass walk from the hotel.

Maritime Museum [maritimtgaleriet]

I’d say it was similar to the Viking ship museum, but the only real similarities were both places housed boats. In know, it sounds like a big “doi” but it’s true. Whereas the Vikingship Museum had actual artifacts, the Maritime museum had models and replicas of a progression through the maritime history of Norway. It was cool, but it really wasn’t much of anything spectacular. If you’re into boats and ships, then this is the place to be; unfortunately, I am not so much into those things. Still, worth the visit and I saw a lot of interesting facts about their ships. Ultimately: worth it.

We planned on going to the Fram (one of the strongest and largest ships ever built), but it was closed for renovations. Balls! Minor note, though, the building was HUGE, so the ship has got to be worth the visit. Maybe next time….

Kon-Tiki

For anyone that doesn’t know about this, the Kon-TIki experiment boiled down to this: some smart dudes told other smart dudes that ancient raft sciences could successfully produce a craft that would sail across open bodies of water, namely the Atlantic. The first set of smart dudes got ridiculed by the other smart dudes, and thus, a challenge was born. Led by a Norwegian smart dude, a group of peeps from around the world got together to research and create successful tours across the Atlantic. Ultimately, the goal of the project wasn’t just to prove the neigh-saying smart dudes wrong, but also create an international team of smart dudes and prove that people from around the world could work together.

This was that museum.

The main displays were the two final versions of the individual ships created by the team for separate challenges and my GAWD were these rafts badass! One was made from the extremely light Balsa wood and the other was made from [name it]. In the end, both rafts were successful in their respective journeys and well, the smart dudes with the smart idea showed up the stupid smart dudes who doubted them. Hurrah!

Also, there was a HUGE ass replica of one of the stone carving from the island of [name it], made from a cast the scientists made of the statue (using something like 2000lbs of goo)! It was massive!!!!

Last stop: Vigeland Statue park [Vigelandsparken]

This was a magnificent stop on our Oslo tour. Some guy had an entire , huge-ass park to fill with his sculptures, and these sculptures were of people and various stages in life.

Oh yeah, and they’re naked; all of them.

It’s not like its bad nudity or graphic, its natural nudity and it’s tasteful. Sure, there are a ton of dicks and boobies, but in Scandinavia and Europe have such a different view on nudity that it is ok to see some random boob. I respect Europe for this because America is such a mondo prude and it’s really a drag on our youth, I believe. In any case, this park is wild. There is a bridge that is literally covered in his work, not to mention the entire park. You can say what you will about artistic interpretation, but the work is about people in all stages of life- anger, sadness, joy, etc. There is one statue with a man juggling eight small tots, one of a couple fighting, and even statues of small children playing. The guy knew how to capture human nature and he did it hundreds of times throughout this park and seriously, if you come to Oslo and NOT visit this park-you’re an idiot. The park is much larger than you would think, even by looking at the map of the city. We we’re there for maybe 45minutes and just reached the center via a quick path; like a radius to a circle. Yeah, freaking huge. Awesome place to check out.

So now, the reason this post is titled “oh…would you like a bag?”

Christian and I agreed that we were going to speak in strict Norwegian so I could get as much practice as possible. I had been feeling pretty good about my skills when we decided to stop by a 7-11 for food on the train. I pick my stuff, go to the cash register and say proudly I would like these items. After paying, the dude asks me something and I did really hear him. Upon me saying “what” in Norwegian, the guy looks at me and says “Ohh….would you like a bag?”

What an ass! Totally ruined it for me! I was doing so well!! He just needed to repeat himself!

Anyway, I told Christian and he almost fell over from laughing. He, too, is an ass. Whatever, I’m over it!

Oslo, my friends, is a very fun city. It was simply unfortunate for us to have gone on a Tuesday and Wednesday because I bet the night-life is off the HOOK! Awesomeness also occurred because it was only about 60$ to travel by train. Not bad!

Consider Oslo: Taken by Mike.

Mike takes Oslo- "Victory- US"

Homecoming: Day 4, Part 2-

Previously on “MTO!” …

· Christian and Mike arrived in Oslo, the capital city;

· They bought Oslo Passes, which allow them to see a lot more than they could have originally;

· Mike bitched about the difference in public transit systems.

Now, the continued adventures of “Mike takes Oslo!”

Destination #1: Akershus

Akershus is Oslo’s reining fortress and the most castle-like building I’ve seen in Norway thus-far. Now, if any of you know me, you’ll know that castles give me the biggest and hardest “history-boner” of them all. Castles hold such a huge place in my intrigue because of their architecture, their (typical) grandeur, and their past that it is really hard to contain myself from swearing under my breath at their magnificence. Askershus is not as grand or elaborate as the English and the Welsh because it was a fortress- it was meant to protect and provide for its inhabitants; it is, however, very practical. Scandinavians are productive to the core and their architecture illustrates this very well. The fortress, placed Cliffside, doesn’t have walls nearly as tall as English and its perimeter is jagged and bent, parallel to the cliff’s edges.

[Editor’s Note: I understand the English and Welsh are very much different in history and culture, etc, but I will be abbreviating “the English and the welsh” with simply “English”, unless I feel the need to discern the two]

While walking around the courtyard, we came across what would have been the detention rooms for bad guys. Let’s just say this: hell no. Those containment areas were completely open to the elements and only gave minor protection from on-lookers. Most English dungeons were at least in the basement (of-shorts) so it was most likely damp and cold, but the Akershus rooms were outside, surrounded by open air and enough holes to allow sufficient precipitation to RUIN.YOUR. LIFE. Vikings were vicious, hands-down, to foreigners and traitors all the same.

[Editor’s Note: To be historically accurate, by the time this castle was constructed, history had moved out of the Viking Age; any mention of “Vikings” would be historically ignorant, however, because Norwegian’s were bad-ass in all areas of life, I will refer to them in all bad-ass contexts as “Vikings”.]

Sadly enough, the main part of the fortress is closed during the week, which means we were not able to walk through the main body of Akershus; sad day, indeed. Seriously, we were pissed. But, onto better things, ikke sant?

Or so we thought….

Norway’s Wartime Museum

[Editor’s Note: this museum is absolutely free, Oslo Pass or not.]

Christian and I like Vikings; we like guns; we play Call of Duty more than we should; we like Norwegian history. Ultimately, this museum should have tickled every fancy possible, and it some respects it absolutely did; other aspects proved quite opposite. Being an absolutely free museum, the exhibits don’t quite get the attention and financing as they should. I mean, the museum takes you on a course through the militaristic history of one of the world’s most renowned violent peoples, it should have HEAPS of kroner tossed its way! But sadly, it doesn’t. Examples:

1. Poorly translated captions (with an awful lot of English being misspelled);

2. Misspelled NORWEGIAN names [I.e. Krisiansand. Missing a “t”, anyone?]

3. Exhibits that look like grade-school projects (probably were);

4. Video and Audio displays not working;

5. Gaudy attention grabbers.

I don’t really like being a Debbie-downer, but dude- this place was supposed to be awesome. And to turn it around, I will say this: for the funding it (most likely) receives, the museum makes an ample attempt to create a true tourist destination. With the amount of artifacts and their history, the wartime museum was pretty cool.

And that is all true- it was pretty cool for what it was- a collection of violence that begins with the Viking Age. It’s just too bad that the institution doesn’t seem to get the funding to make a higher-grade exhibit for its patrons. Upside: the museum had tanks outside the building!

The Norwegian National Art Gallery [Norges Najonalgaleritet]

There were a lot of paintings.

I saw them.

Moreover, there were a bunch that I remember from my Norwegian studies.

So that was cool.

The Palace

It’s eerily similar to the Whitehouse in design, but taller, and though I’m in Norway, I’m going to say it- I think the white house is better. Why? Because it has a lawn; Palace= No lawn. But seriously, the palace is a pretty legit building and one of the neat things about it is it is not blocked off like a lot of ‘royalty’ places, such as the White House. You can virtually walk up to the front stairs! As Christian said, Norway is just more relaxed and not as socially dangerous as the US is.

Sad face for America.

University of Oslo [Universitet i Oslo]

It’s a college campus and thus didn’t warrant much time sightseeing, but it was a virtual diamond-in-the-rough because there is no official entry to campus- one minute you’re walking on the street looking for beer and the next you’re standing outside of the campus registrar.

We ended the night with some drinks and pizza. The pizza was a fiasco because we got into Peppe’s Pizza 30 minutes before they closed, had a Swedish waitress (so even Christian couldn’t really understand her) and we were tipsy. This meant that despite her passive attempts to urge us not to have a large Rio Grande pizza and to be content with one beer, we were aggressive in our attempts to feast; we won.

Victory: Team Norway.

Mike takes Oslo, to be continued...

Mike takes Oslo!!!

[Editor’s Note: We were in Oslo [pronounced ”Oosh-lou”] for two days and one night. Because we ended up doing quite a bit, I will be breaking each day into two parts. This will most likely mean four separate entries, so I apologize ahead of time]

Homecoming: Day 4, Part 1-

"Oslo, a bed –and- breakfast, Europe’s advanced bus system"

In order to save A LOT of writing, the trip to Oslo will be recorded as such:

1. We woke up HELLA early to make a 5:30am train [tog, “toe-guh”, short ‘uh’];

2. We rode a train;

3. We arrived in Oslo 5 hours later.

And also to save a lot of writing, the walk to our hotel will be recorded as such:

1. Christian and I miscalculated the distance and walked close to 3,0km when we thought it was closer to 2,0km;

2. This was done in really cold and really wet rain;

3. Neither of us dressed for rain.

Alright, so this brings us to our hotel, Regence Kristinelund, a former house-turned-hotel that was what we’d probably refer to in the states as a bed-and-breakfast. Say what you will, but next trip to Oslo, I will stay in the same place, no hesitation. It was clean, it was simple, and the people were extremely nice; they even tossed in a space-heater! Anyways, the place was nice. We bunked down for a few minutes and let my camera battery charge while Christian made the video-call to his girl back in the states; I tried video-calliing a few people on my Skype list with my iPod; however, it took credit to Skype phone numbers and seeing as Friday we’re going to Stavanger for a weekend long party, there was no way I was paying for that BOWL-Shit. So, sorry to those who would have gotten an update call, but my priorities lie with having a good-ass time haha!

Once we left, we hopped on the number 30 bus which took us down town for 30kroner (roughly 6$) and found our way to the Tourist Center to purchase an “Oslo Pass”, which is basically a city-hopper pass that gets you into really expensive destinations for free or discount, and allows for free-use of public transit. And trust me, if you are touring Oslo, get this pass. You pay for it almost immediately with all the cool things Oslo has to offer.

Also, another thing: the bus system in Oslo (and I think the rest of at least Norway) is far better than the US system. Why? Because it has these advanced systems on the main stops that send signals back-and-forth from the stop to the bus that tracks how far (in minutes) the bus is from the stop; it’s dead on. It’s not the-schedule-says-this-I-do-that system Seattle has, but it is far better and way worth it for America to step up its game and learn something from Northern Europe. And another thing: Oslo’s busses have trash cans!

[coughcoughHINTHINT Seattle]

….to be continued!