Saturday 9 June 2007

Norway (Part 3)

I had about an hour’s sleep that night. So on Tuesday, I was fucked. However, I did still enjoy the fabulous breakfast of salami and cheese rolls with ridiculously sugary tropical fruit juice and gorgeous Biola blueberry yogurt drink. I’ve been looking everywhere for yogurt drink over here since I’ve been back (well, Tesco, Sainsburys and Chatham’s Eastern European supermarket) but I can’t find anything except Yop. And that’s not the same. Tuesday was shopping day. However we were rather early in leaving, and the shops didn’t open for an hour and a half. So we went back to Dronningparken, where we were accosted by Retard Duck. Retard Duck was sweet, but she did quack funny. And she was a bit of a stalker. I’ve never had a duck that close to me before, and I was a bit unnerved. But I didn’t show it. When she realised we didn’t have any food, she waddled off back to the lake with her friend Limpy (he walked funny). She did however, come back to say goodbye to us when we left. Which was nice. We’d already discovered that Norwegians are friendly people, we didn’t realise the ducks were too.

I was slightly disappointed with the shopping in Oslo this time round. Researching before I went, I decided I wanted an ethnic-y type scarf from Bik Bok and some zebra print shoes from KappAhl. Could I find either of these things? No. I couldn’t. I was disappointed. I went to Byporten shopping centre in the fabulous aforementioned Oslo S, to look for Margaret Berger and Aleksander With’s albums. I didn’t find them, so I carried on walking around. I realised I was walking through rather a thick cloud of smoke at one point, but again, just thought that was probably something to do with tiredness, so I didn’t take much notice. It wasn’t though, it was an actual real fire and we all had to evacuate the building. That was a bit odd. Feeling the distinct lack of purchases, I hurriedly bought a nice but small top from Vero Moda and 2 CDs. Both of which are rather fabulous. We then went to the National Gallery (we had to attempt to do that twice actually, for reasons that I won’t go into), but to be honest, I was too tired to take much notice. I do remember seeing The Scream though. But I’ve never liked that picture anyway so I wasn’t too excited.

We got the T-Bane to Frognerparken after that. I asked a nice Norwegian lady with a pram which tram you have to take to get there. Obviously my Norwegian was shit, because she immediately detected that I was British and told me in English to get the underground to Majorstuen. Majorstuen is the posh part of Oslo. In the world’s most expensive city, it’s the most expensive bit. Apartments there cost anything like £800,000 but they are very lovely so it’s probably worth it. I’d never used Norwegian public transport before, and I conclude that it’s fun. It’s better than ours anyway.

After a quick visit to Ordning&Reda on Bogstadveien (well it would have been rude not to) and after asking another Norwegian in Norwegian how to get to Frognerparken, we got to Frognerparken. I think it would have been much nicer in the sun, but seeing as the sky was grey, and it was quite windy, that’ll just have to be a theory that I test out some other time. I don’t like Vigeland’s statues. Particularly the Monolith. I find that one a bit creepy, and the others I just find a bit boring. But the park itself was rather impressive, it’s huge, and the fountain and bridge are rather attractive. We got the tram back to Hausmann’s Gate, which was another new experience. I like the trams, but there seemed to be a stop every half a metre, which was a bit annoying. However, it was a nice tram line (tram 12 to Kjelsås) as it went all through town and Aker Brygge and everything. Which was nice.


Not much else happened on Tuesday. We had a nap when we got in. But that didn’t last long. Then we had dinner (from Narvesen), and watched an odd Swedish film (with subtitles in Nynorsk- a minority language only spoken by the people in the most northern part of Norway). I could understand some of the subtitles, but for the most part, had no idea what the hell was going on. Although there was a sexy blond man in it. And you saw him naked about halfway through the film. Which helped.

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