Monday 9 February 2009

filled with awesome: Norway

Holmenkollen
We visited the Holmenkollen of course.

I've been thinking about last summer a lot, not for sentimental reasons but because I keep having sudden flashbacks, especially about Norway.
It was a truly special holiday, awesome from beginning to end, except the tiny part when we realised that my mum had forgotten her driver's licence...and we had to run round Oslo to collect documents and talk to the police...and were really scared that we wouldn't be able to rent a car and drive all the way to Bergen as we had planned. But everything worked out in the end. As soon as we had gotten our rented car we started laughing about the whole incident and appreciated that the police officer had been the most beautiful person we had ever seen (he really was). And we got the chance to see the "dangerous" parts of Oslo as well.


Naked man
Frogner Parken

As it is, I fell in love with Oslo the first time I went a couple of years ago and I was giddy to be back there, utterly happy to be in Norway again, to be able to practice my Norwegian on poor befuddled waitresses, triumphant that I understood jokes in the tramway:


Bil

We walked around and did our thing and were content even when it poured. I didn't want to leave the city because it's one of the very few where I've felt at home almost immediately and where I plan to return to again and again. Only three cities have made me feel this way: Vienna, which is where I live obviously, Oslo, where, when I went there for the first time, I met a bunch of academics which made me realise what I want to do with my life, and Utrecht, which is where I learnt a thing or two about friendship and bikes and very flat land.

Gold
gold in the nasjonal galleriet

And that was only Oslo. We rented a car and took to the road. We drove all the way from Oslo to Bergen, very slowly as you're not allowed to drive fast at all which suited us just fine. We saw the most amazing scenery I've ever seen, including all the mountains I've ever climbed. It was surreal and beautiful and I could put a lot of clichées here, but I won't. I'll show you some more pictures. Later.
For today it is enough to say that I decided to go there again in the summer.

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