Entre Les Murs

Weekend in Oslo

Janet arrived home from Maastricht with just enough time to swap a few items out of her suitcase before we were hopping off to the airport again.  This time for a weekend in one of the lesser-frequented European capitals, Oslo.


Oslo was lovely; like Ottawa, but tidier and better organized.  And less daylight: it's just a smidgeon below the 60th parallel.  The people were very friendly, in an open and direct way (as opposed to the insincere "My name's Todd and it's my pleasure to serve you today" kind of way).  The city is small enough that you can easily walk anywhere, but you don't need to because public transit is efficient and easy.  Despite being the second last weekend before Christmas, the commercial streets were only busy, not thronged; and there were just as many people walking in the parks.


Janet found us a gorgeous little hotel, the Gabelshus Hotel, in an old building of character.  It has been redone in a sleek modern style in the functional areas like the dining room and the bedrooms themselves.  It was rather nicer than you'd get on a business trip (on my business trips, anyway), but that's what holidays are for.  But we were a little nonplussed by the glass walls around the bathroom.  Aren't cultural differences interesting.

We spent our time exploring different neighbourhoods on foot, stopping in cafés and shops.  Janet had seen one or two of the major museums already so we skipped the big ones, but we spent a couple of hours in the Munch Museum.  More varied work than the exhibition that came to the AGO a couple of years ago - but one can see that the poor guy was clearly even more troubled than Van Gogh.

We found that we could often puzzle out something written in Norwegian by pronouncing it aloud the way it's spelled.  That makes it sounds like recognizable English words; of course, when the locals pronounce the same words they sound completely different.  But mostly they spoke English anyway.

posted 20.12.06