Norway! - Part 1: Oslo

On Sunday, June 21, we left our tiny apartment in Uppsala for Norway and a fjord tour, of which we had heard good things. We rode the commuter train to Stockholm's airport, Arlanda, and took a 12:20 flight to Oslo. The flight takes only an hour since the distance from Stockholm to Oslo is only 300 and some miles, about the distance from Seattle to Spokane. Upon landing, we found the train from the airport (or lufthavn - I love that word) to central Oslo without much trouble.

We were hoping to visit the Munch Museum in the afternoon and, since 2:00PM was fast approaching and I believed I had read that the museum closes at 4:00PM, we were running out of time. We needed some info (stat!) on how to get to the museum which is just outside central Oslo. In Stockholm, the central railway station has a large and prominent tourist information office easily visible from a distance. Expecting something similar, we gaped vacantly looking for the large letter "I" we expected to see. No dice. We asked someone in a store about it but they had no clue.  We noticed an official-looking person who suggested we go thataway, take a right, and we would find it near the station exit. We went thataway but, with comical looks on our faces, realized there were multiple right-turn possibilities and we didn't know which one led to the information promised land. The first one we tried led to a pizza restaurant. Eventually, we found a semi-hidden opening with a modest little "I" sign containing a single person at a single desk.  As we approached, she appeared to flee into a mysterious inner chamber. We followed and finally confronted our quarry, about three people at an information desk. Cunning, these Norwegians, and very secretive. We attempted to make contact but were told to take a number.

Eventually, we obtained some relevant information on how to take the subway to the appropriate stop and bought the required tickets. We also were informed that the museum closed at 5:00PM so we had an extra hour. The smiles returned to our faces and our famously sunny dispositions reasserted themselves.

We did, in fact, reach the Edvard Munch Museum around 3:00PM and had two hours to savor an exhibition comparing works of Munch (of The Scream fame) with his contemporary, Vincent Van Gogh. Being a bit of an ignoramus when it comes to art, I had no idea of their mutual influence. While Munch was ten years younger than Van Gogh and lived much longer (Van Gogh killed himself at age 37 in 1890), they had similar attitudes toward their art, as was illustrated by side by side comparisons of individual paintings along with timelines and descriptions.

Pastel version of The Scream. We saw this!

Afterwards, on the advice of the Info people at the train station, we took the subway to one stop beyond the station which, we were assured, was closest to our hotel. We did that, got off the train, returned to the surface and found a street that, according to the map, intersected the street on which our hotel was said to stand. Unfortunately, we didn't know whether to follow the street to the left or to the right. We tried the left option because it gave me a warm feeling of correctness. However, none of the cross streets corresponded to the crude map we were given at the "information" center and we soon found ourselves bewildered. A kindly fellow American we accosted on the street allowed as how he too was lost, but thought we were at a spot on our map that was definitely not where we wanted to be. We retraced our steps, continued beyond our starting point and, counterintuitively at least to me, we found the street we were looking for. After much gnashing of teeth, we reached our figurative port in the storm, the First Hotel Millennium.

The hotel, as it turns out, is a 4-star but, in American terms, it was dirt cheap at the equivalent of about $150 per night. The room was nice but it was on the second floor and, with the windows open (it was quite hot when we arrived), we could hear every word people were saying as they walked by on the sidewalk. Even with the windows closed, trolleys squealing and rumbling down the street all night were something of a problem.

Since we needed to catch a train at 8:25 the next morning, after a short rest we reconnoitered the walk to the station (super easy as it turns out - you turn left at the astonishing opera house), found the ticket purchasing location, and ate dinner at the aforementioned pizza restaurant. At least we knew where to find it.

The next morning we had an excellent breakfast at the hotel's extensive smorgasbord, headed to the station, and boarded our train without mishap to begin the next day's adventures.