Shipping Off

After our cross-country train trip to Bergen on Sunday, we’re back in Oslo.  Ali will be posting pictures of the train trip shortly, which, suffice to say, was BEAUTIFUL.

Bergen is a very unique city.  It reminds me of the East Bay of San Francisco, except it’s been there for over 1000 years.  That’s right!  There is even a church with a canon ball stuck in it from an old battle in the harbor.

Anyway - we flew back to Oslo, which only takes about 40 minutes compared with 8 hours on the train.  Price: THE SAME.

That’s all.

We’ve been sightseeing like crazy, so I haven’t had much time to write.  But here I am.  This post is going to be about some of the more interesting observations I’ve noticed in Norway.

• They make very smart use of space.
• When they say “everyone speaks English”, they mean EVERYONE.  And not just “conversational English”, but FLUENT English to the point where you feel really crappy for not speaking at least one other language. (I speak Spanish, so I don’t feel crappy. Oh, and Ali speaks Norwegian)
• the IKEA catalog is second in importance only to the Bible
• Showers have the highest water pressure of any developed country I’ve ever been to.  Ditto for the sink water pressure.
• The back of the milk carton has famous athletes, not missing children.
• Did I mention that everyone speaks English?
• A 300 sq/ft apartment for two people is not uncommon.  That includes the kitchen and bathroom.
• Norwegians are very sensitive about the environment.  Not so much in that crazy political way, but in the sort of way that their climate has changed noticeably in the last few years.
• Washing machines are about 1/3 the size as in the US.
• Gas is about $13 per gallon.

It’s 11:17 in the morning, and I’m going to eat breakfast.

For this:

Well… Maybe not the smallest car EVER, but wow.

I think the part I like the best is that you can park ’straight in’ instead of parallel parking. They’re even electric!

I guess I kind of knew that Norway had a king, but never really gave much thought to it. Anyway, today, as we were walking back through Oslo to our place, we happened upon the “castle”. It’s not really a castle, it actually looks more like a big government building. But, if you notice the flag up in the middle, that means the King and Queen are home.

As we were walking past (you can actually get right up to the front door), we noticed a band playing in the background. Turns out, we were just in time for the changing of the guards.

I don’t really know what the big deal is, but it was an interesting process to watch:

Anyway - That was kind of cool. You can see the rest of the guard pictures here.

So today, we spent a LONG time walking around this massive park here.  Gustav-something-or-other was/is a famous Norweigian sculptor.  The only strange part is that he primarily made copper statues of naked people.  The place was HUGE, and the artwork very good.  But still, an odd place to be.

That last one is supposedly the most famous.

Hi Gang -

Ali and I are off on a trip to Norway at the moment.  We left Saturday night at 8:40pm PST (GMT-8) and ended up in Oslo at 9:50pm (GMT+1) on Sunday night.  It was a very nice flight and we’ve actually managed to adjust to the time change relatively quickly.

We flew Lufthansa from LAX to Munich, had a three hour layover (with wonderful German beer), followed by a quick two hour flight to Oslo.  I must say that the International carriers do a much better job of taking care of their passengers than the most recent domestic carriers I’ve been on.  And, among the more amusing parts of the first flight - when we were about to land in Munich, the pilot came on to give us the updates of the latest Formula One race.

Oslo is a beautiful city, and we’ve had the luxury of staying right in the heart of downtown for the first two nights.  Tonight, we’re off to a house about 2 miles away, so, still close, but not in the thick of things.

I’m fascinated by the Norweigian language.  It’s comprised of the same alphabet as English (with a few extra letters thrown in for good measure), but has very different sounds.  I’m still trying to figure out the basic rules of pronunciation myself.  They have a wonderful way of stringing together consonants that would blow your mind.

Finally - It’s not cheap here.  The Norwegian Kroner exchanges at about 5.7 NRK to the US Dollar.  That makes a Big Mac about $5.00 and a glass of beer about $10.  The prices are not outrageous, but your money certainly goes faster than you’d expect.

I’ll have more updates and pictures to share soon.  Check out my twitter feed for more current updates.

Oh, and you can see our current travel album here.  It’s not edited yet, so expect lots of random pictures.

This is an awesome building and one of the largest in all of Norway.  You can actually walk on to the roof!

Here we are on the roof: