Yesterday we arrived in Oslo! The first part of the experience came when we got off the plane. We had seats very close to the door, so we were among the first off the aircraft. All three of us immediately made a beeline for the restrooms in the airport, which were located just before passport control. I was the first out of the bathroom, and the line for passport control was just a few people long. Nick came out a couple minutes later, and now the line was about 30 people long. Then Patrick didn’t come out. And still didn’t come out. Finally I went back in to check on him, and he was just casually brushing his teeth, haha! Well when he finally came out, the line was now hundreds and hundreds of people long. :-/ Well we got in line, but thankfully almost immediately afterwards they started routing people through alternative checkpoints (people with non-EU passports were allowed to go through the EU passport line) and we were whisked off to stand before a passport control officer. Nick was ahead of me and got grilled on all kinds of details- dates, times, proof that we were students who would do a study abroad, intense questioning about why he had a visa for Russia in his passport… all of which he stumbled through awkwardly. Finally he was given a Schengen Zone stamp in his passport, and was granted entry into Norway. Then I walked up to the counter and was stamped without having to answer a single question.
Next was finding our way to the express train into Oslo, as the airport is actually a bit of a distance away from the city. It wasn’t very hard to find the Flytoget (express train) where after a brief kerfuffle of accidentally leaving Patrick behind the toll-gates, we were on our way! The view of the fields and trees was nice, although we were slightly surprised and disappointed that there wasn’t any snow here in Oslo. As we began to pull through the city, our first impressions were that the city had a definite “alpine” feel, but also had a surprising amount of graffiti. We also spotted numerous pizza places from our train windows, which continued to be an amusing discovery throughout the day just how many there were- apparently Norwegians really like pizza.
At Oslo Sentralstasjon I bought a street map and we navigated our way to our hostel, only a short distance away on Storgata Street. We were intrigued to find that this part of Oslo is evidently the international/immigrant district, with lots of Mediterranean, Arab, African, and East Asian food places and markets. Being the international district and among relatively non-Christian cultures, there were also many other people walking about who evidently had no Christmas Eve plans keeping them home.
We got to our hostel, checked in, and got our dorm room set up. We were in a room with eight beds, only one other one apparently occupied, though as of yet we knew not by whom. Our dorm room was locked by an electronic key though, so after locking our bags shut and to each other’s bags, we decided to leave them behind while we went to explore the city. We went in search of an ice bar that was supposedly open, but sadly it was not, so we continued to just wander around on foot looking for anything that seemed interesting. We passed by a museum that was closed but had some interesting statues outside, and then by a gigantic inverted Christmas tree sculpture? that was in the middle of a roundabout, where we started hearing church bells ringing non-stop. We walked along the road following the sound of the ringing bells when eventually we discovered what we seemed to be a Korean church that was holding Christmas Eve services. After poking our head in briefly, we decided we were starving and it was time to find food. Before we found anyplace open, we came across the Akerselva river running through the city, and discovered a pleasant park walkway running along the riverbanks that we followed for a while. Eventually we came upon a pizza place near the river banks where we ordered a large "Thornvald’s Special" pizza which had a bunch of things on it we didn’t recognize the name of, particularly it seemed to be loaded up with what was perhaps beef, and also “Kreiling” which we still don’t really know what it is. It was also drizzled in spicy mayo! While waiting on our pizza to bake, we met an Australian traveler named Julian who, like us, was vainly looking for entertainment on Christmas Even in Oslo. We invited him to come eat our pizzas in the riverbank park, where we decided that while it took a little while to mentally adjust to the unique taste of Norwegian pizza, that it was delicious.
Julian and ourselves then managed to check our reference materials to find what was supposed to be an open tavern in town, but of course was not. As luck would have it though, we found the Buddha “Sportsbar” which turned out not to mean TV sports, but barsports like darts, billiards, and shuffleboard. We all grabbed a local pilsner beer except for Nick who found a local IPA in a bottle- all delicious. Julian had never played shuffleboard before, so we broke into teams of myself with Julian, and Patrick and Nick. After losing our first game narrowly, and losing our second game dramatically, we agreed that the third game would be the winner-take-all championship round… which after going into extra rounds, Julian and I won, meaning we won the championship!
We said goodbye to Julian, returned to our hostel where we discovered that our additional roommate was a pro-Duerte Pilipino man who wanted to convince us that it was necessary for the President to murder criminals in his country, but we were too tired to argue, and were asleep by 2100h. Now it’s time to head out in search of breakfast!