Navigating Norway

We arrived in Oslo around 8pm local time after a stopover in London. In our more recent travels, in places like Vietnam & India, it would be a no-brainer to just take a cab from the airport, but Catherine's friend Ryan had recommended we take a train downtown and then a bus to their place. A quick search showed that yep, that's the obvious, best thing to do. The airport is 60km outside of Oslo and so would have cost over $100 and taken over an hour, whereas the train was $20 and took 45min. We haven't been to Europe in a while.

We arrived at Ryan and Bente's place where they had graciously made a dinner for us of cod and mashed sweet potatoes with a chile, ginger, soy sauce. It was some of the best cod I've eaten because it was very tender and not tough the way cod can get. It was also great to see Ryan and Bente again since the last time was in San Francisco when they visited for AGU.

The next morning, we slept in until 9:30 and had a slow breakfast on the deck of the apartment. Their appartment is very close to downtown, but it's right on a little river & path of greenery which was georgeous in the morning sun. You can even hear the waterfall loudly from the apartment, which was great for sleeping, and quite unique in such an uban setting.

After breakfast, we went for a walk slowly downtown following the river. Catherine was having a hard time, so we just took it very slow. Eventually, we got to the central train station and the Opera house, which is a beautiful while marble building made of slopes going back and forth for the roof which you can walk up. At least in the summer. In the winter, apparently a little bit of snow fills in all the divots and turns it into an ice rink. Pretty dangerous, especially for toursits who aren't used to walking on ice & snow.

Downtown is largely under construction. There are a ton of unique, modern, architectural buildings going up to try and give the city some character. Apparently, the city center is traditionally very boring and utilitarian because for the longest time, Oslo wasn't really a major city as Norway was just a poor province of Denmark or Sweden. However, with independence, and with a lot of oil riches, they are now trying to make more of a name for themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the equivlant of Chicago in the 1920's and 1930's.

After seeing downtown, we took a tram up to Vigeland sculpture park to meet Anne Kristine and her daughter Ingrid. The park itself is quite large, with lots of open space where people were just relaxing outside in the great weather (sunny and low 20's), grilling on little portable barbecues, or just seeing the sculptures. Most of the sculptures were done by Gustav Vigeland and were either in bronze or stone. Many of them were just a little crazy, like a guy holding two kids on his shoulders and a third like a hacky-sack on his foot.

We met Anne Kristine and Ingrid while having a coffee and snack at the cafe. Ingrid is a doll. She's only two and speaks a combination of Norweigian and Spanish because her father, Pedro, is from Gran Canaria. She spent the whole time eating, talking up a storm (which of course I couldn't understand) and enjoying herself.

After the sculpture park, we headed back to the apartment to change and then went to dinner at a tapas-like fusion place. It was quite expensive (but so is everything in Norway, except maybe fish), but was interesting and quite good. We had a fixed price menu with a number of entres, like roasted corn with lime & chiles cut in half lengthwise weirdly, some truffle quesedillas, some tuna tacos with a passion fruit vinegrette. The meal was finished off with a strawberry shortcake in a pot where the cream was made of this very tangy goat cheese/milk. After dinner, we went for another drink at an old firehouse, which really just had bottled beer for way too much. It turns out that many American microbrews have taken over Norway so we didn't really see any local craft beer scene. Just the same one we see at home, complete with lots of IPAs (or ee-pa-s as they call them).

The next day, once again we slept in. Jet lag really hadn't hit us much for being 9 hours off but getting lots of sleep was refreshing. After another leisurely breakfast, we hopped on the metro out to the outskirts of town to meet Ola, Hong and their son Ludvig to forage for mushrooms and blueberries. Yes, we took the metro to the forest. People are used to their public transit and so it is super reliable and goes out to places of low density. Well actually, I guess the forest wasn't that low a density when we were there. It was swarming with Norweigians with the white wicker mushrooming baskets looking for chantrelles and porchinis. In the winter, it becomes a cross country ski area with hundreds of km of trails through the woods that people will pop out to at the end of the day for their daily workout. Norweigians definitely love being outside!

The afternoon was a lot of fun, even if we virtually struck out finding edible mushrooms. Some of it was that they were picked out and some of it was just that it had dried up a bit and so it was apparently a little thin. That being said, there were still more mushrooms of a wider variety than I have every seen. Everything from bright purple and white ones to red ones with red spots, to white balls that poof with a spoor cloud when you touch them. Of course, some were definitely poisonous, but both Ryan and Ola knew what to look for.

After getting back from the forest, we ordered some takeout sushi and fried up what mushrooms we did find. Both were delicious. The salmon sushi was, not surprisingly, specacular, while the fresh mushrooms had such a clean flavour. I think I'm going to try one of those mushrooming classes in San Francisco. I know that at the right time of year, you can go into the forest and find a ton of morels, chantrelle's and others.

The next morning, we bad Norway and friends farewell and hopped on a plane to Paris. It was definitely a weekend of nostalgia for Catherine seeing all her friends from Trondheim, while providing a view at a different life if she had decided to stick around (and not meet me of course). It was definitely worth the stopover!