Let me quickly update you on the past couple of days.
Saturday Sarah and I decided to go down to the water and visit the Akershus Fortress in Oslo. It's basically a stone castle built around 1300 CE to defend Norway from its enemies.
These are some pictures by the water right next to the castle.
And these are a couple pictures from yesterday when we went skiing. That's Sarah and Joschka in the top picture (hopefully they don't mind I put this up here). I was really trying to get a picture of everyone with their skis on the metro, but it is kind of hard to see. It is very common to see people in cold weather gear with their skis riding the metro, especially if you ride line 1 on the weekend. You can ride up the mountain, ski or toboggan back down and ride it back up. Everyone goes over the weekend. There were toddlers skiing yesterday.
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Let's see..what did I do Friday? Ah yes, I slept in a bit and took a bus tour around the city. The tour guide was a student and was not quite as involved as I would have liked, but it was a nice ride and she handed out a really useful little booklet of places to go and see in Oslo. We ended up stopping for a photo break at the place with the giant skill hill. I was glad that I had gone there before because I thought we got a better experience walking all the way through it.
There was a coffee hour (free tea and coffee) at Chateau Nuef, the place where the student society is based where we had trivia night last week. Some of the student organizations were there recruiting. And we got free pizza! Any free food here is the best because everything is so expensive! There was so much pizza left we ended up taking about half a pizza home with us and eating it later that night. Even better. We came back to the same place later that night for a dance party. It was really fun and only slightly resembled a club in America. There was a lot more space between dancers (if you know what I mean) and guys actually danced, and danced well! One student was trying to get me to swing dance and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing which confused him a little. I guess everyone in Europe knows how to swing? Anyway, it was a ton of fun. The music wasn't that great, but the people were so that made it a great night.
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A few more things about yesterday. Disregard anything I said about it being cold before because yesterday was definitely the coldest it has been yet. Last night traveling to the club and back was awful. It is just that cold that you can't escape. It was certainly further into the negatives than I have been experienced in a while. I was commenting to Sarah yesterday how at home there is no way I would be out in that cold, let alone stand and wait for the train for 10 minutes in it. I guess that's called adaption.
Saturday Sarah and I decided to go down to the water and visit the Akershus Fortress in Oslo. It's basically a stone castle built around 1300 CE to defend Norway from its enemies.
For a small price we were able to walk through the castle into the various rooms. Much of the castle has been restored over the years, but there was one section dubbed "the daredevil" where you could see the original stonework meeting the brick that was added later.
On the same campus sat the Norwegian Resistance Museum. It was interesting to spend time in because I was not accustomed to the role Norway played in WWII. The museum went through Germany's invasion of Norway and what resistance Norway offered against it. If you didn't know, Germany was convinced that the British were planning to attack them via Norway. This is one reason Hitler was so concerned with its occupation. Norway was one of the three sites that Great Britain considered, along with France and North Africa. One of the most interesting things was looking at all of the secret ways the Norwegians had to transport things. One display case featured a can of meat in which some meat had been taken out in the center and used to hold secret messages and film containers. A loaf of bread might be used for the same purpose. We were also able to look at a number of the resistance newspapers printed.
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Let's see..what did I do Friday? Ah yes, I slept in a bit and took a bus tour around the city. The tour guide was a student and was not quite as involved as I would have liked, but it was a nice ride and she handed out a really useful little booklet of places to go and see in Oslo. We ended up stopping for a photo break at the place with the giant skill hill. I was glad that I had gone there before because I thought we got a better experience walking all the way through it.
There was a coffee hour (free tea and coffee) at Chateau Nuef, the place where the student society is based where we had trivia night last week. Some of the student organizations were there recruiting. And we got free pizza! Any free food here is the best because everything is so expensive! There was so much pizza left we ended up taking about half a pizza home with us and eating it later that night. Even better. We came back to the same place later that night for a dance party. It was really fun and only slightly resembled a club in America. There was a lot more space between dancers (if you know what I mean) and guys actually danced, and danced well! One student was trying to get me to swing dance and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing which confused him a little. I guess everyone in Europe knows how to swing? Anyway, it was a ton of fun. The music wasn't that great, but the people were so that made it a great night.
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A few more things about yesterday. Disregard anything I said about it being cold before because yesterday was definitely the coldest it has been yet. Last night traveling to the club and back was awful. It is just that cold that you can't escape. It was certainly further into the negatives than I have been experienced in a while. I was commenting to Sarah yesterday how at home there is no way I would be out in that cold, let alone stand and wait for the train for 10 minutes in it. I guess that's called adaption.
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