Norway (Part 4)

When I opened the curtains on Wednesday, the sky was still grey. Surely the sky shouldn’t stay grey for 3 days? But it did. And it was raining too. Today was meant to be the day for our trip to Aker Brygge and the boat trip up the Oslofjord, and that wouldn’t be too nice in the rain. I went to Aker Brygge last year. I was really surprised when I found it. It took me about half an hour to walk there. I went via Dronningparken, along Parkveien, and indeed along many other veiene, across the E18 (a road that showed signs for Stockholm, which really confused me), and through some interesting blocks of offices and flash apartments. I was impressed by my ingenuity and navigational skills. Of course this time, I discovered that Oslo Sentrum is much smaller than you think, and you can get there just as easily by going up Karl Johan’s Gate and turning left at Skippergata. Silly me.
It was still raining when we got there, and we had to decide whether to go and climb up Akershus fortress or go to the Nobel Peace Museum. Of course when I was there last year, the weather was lovely (I actually got a bit sunburnt), and there was a big festival going on, and a funfair that played lots of old Eurovision songs. So I didn’t do much other than sit on a bench at the top of a hill trying to be inconspicuous with my red and yellow disposable camera, while trying to dodge the wasps. I’d actually read an article on VG last summer about the sudden wasp plague of Oslo, so I should have been prepared. Anyway, we went to the Nobel Museum and cunningly got money off the entrance fee. They’re a trusting lot in Norway, you can just say you’re a student and they believe you and give you money off of things. We looked around the funky exhibition rooms (looking for anything Mother Teresa related really), which included a particularly funky room of little presentations about all the past winners on little screens on stalks, among all these pretty fibre optic stick things that changed colour. For a museum it was pretty radical. I liked it. There wasn’t that much to look at there, which was just as well, as we had to go and find the boat by 1 o clock. Which we did after having a quick look at the Aker Brygge shopping centre, which actually consists of several buildings that all look the same, and quite possibly have the same shops in. It looks like the German conspiracy has reached Norwegian shores- ANOTHER fire alarm had gone off in one of the buildings. Mmm…