Scandinavia Trip: To Oslo

[cjsmith]

*** Mon Sept 23:

Up at 8:30. I should describe the beds. We had two twin beds with thin, spongy mattresses that wound up giving a fairly firm rest. On each bed was a big fluffy down comforter, with its edges tucked in so that it looked much smaller than it was. We later learned this was fairly standard in Scandinavia: thin spongy-firm mattresses, separated even in a "double" bed, with individual down comforters folded up small when the bed is "made".

Rob made a lot of noise showering and eventually I saw why. The bathroom is tiny, and there is only a curtain between the shower and the rest of the room. There is one drain in the middle of the floor. A squeegee is provided, which is what was making the noise; Rob was wiping down the room. After my turn in the shower, I did the same. I felt much more human! I was now awake enough to realize I hadn't eaten any birth control pills since Friday night. Been pretty fried, I guess. Took two; will catch up with two more tonight. Wonder how the regularness of those is supposed to work with half a day's worth of jet lag, anyway.

I came downstairs just before Lars-Erik arrived. He lent Rob a plug converter, stayed very briefly, and left again.

Breakfast included yummy "crunchy musli" with apples and cinmamon. Rob ate almost the entire loaf of sliced white bread we had bought last night, and together we polished off all the orange juice.

We left some stuff behind, stuff we wouldn't need until we had to call, and we left the parking pass too at Arne's request. Our first stop was a big store called "On/Off". It's a bit like a Good Guys. Fortunately, it had many of the cables and adapters Rob needed. Now we're only missing a Hilton preamp, and we can borrow one of those.

After the store, we headed east for the Sweden/Norway border. The scenery was pastoral: low rolling hills, farm country. Once we saw an enormous thing that looked like a cable car in the distance, but as we got closer it became clear that it was for cargo. No clue what or why. It went on for miles, crossing right over the road. Never saw another.

The border crossing was an anticlimax. We couldn't even find the precise border line; there was no enormous "You are now in Norway" sign. There were two iterations of customs (one for westbound and one for eastbound) with a touristy money-change shop in between. I got forty dollars' worth of Norwegian kronor. We wanted some cash in case we ran into stuff like tolls. (Confusingly enough, customs is TULL.) We drove through the "nothing to declare" lane and went on our merry way.

On the Norway side, the roads were slightly different. Some of the international road signs used white instead of yellow as a background, and the center lane divider line was yellow, thank goodness -- for the first time this trip we could tell whether to expect oncoming traffic. The pavement was reddish, too, although after a while that faded out.

Along the way we passed a house with grass growing on its roof. Rob saw this somewhere in a book: this is typical rural Norway, as the grass and soil help insulate the building.

We stopped for gas and got quite confused. Apparently some gas pumps are set up to take credit cards, but only the company card, not something like a Visa. Also, pump first, then pay. A helpful woman restocking the snack shelves inside the station walked us through the procedure. I told her "Takk for hjelpen" and she said something that sounded a lot like "Bare hyggelig". Wow, the language stuff I found on the web just before departing was real.

When we reached Oslo in the lingering dusk, we realized we had no idea what we were doing. We had no city map and no hotel reservation. Rob was starting to need the bathroom very badly. We drove aimlessly in the heart of the city for a while, passing stuff like Radissons, until we luckily found a parking spot on a side street. Rob immediately made use of an empty water bottle, while I figured out how to use the ATM ten steps away. Success! It spoke English at the touch of a button, my new short PIN worked, and I soon had two thousand kronor in a mixture of bills.

There was a little snack shop on the corner, and the clerk was very helpful: she directed us to the Anker Hotel a few blocks away. ("It's not too expensive," she said. "Go through this construction zone...") It turned out to be a slightly longer walk than we expected, but we found the place, and for somewhere between 900 and 1000 kronor a night (we guessed $120) we were successfully lodged. Registration required both our passport numbers, which surprised us. Finding a way to get our car back there was a bit of a puzzle, since the road we had walked was buses and taxis only... we think... can't quite read the sign. But we managed it, following along a back road.

The hotel had the now-standard individual fluffy down comforters, a pretty view of some of the lights of Oslo, and a television screen saying "SMITH CAROL JEAN Welcome to the ANKER HOTELL". I spent a long time trying to take a picture of that screen.

By now Rob was ravenous. He had seen a sign for a McDonald's, though, somewhere along the far corner of the hotel. We set off on foot following the arrow. It turned out to be a healthy walk. We passed a bookstore along the way, closed of course -- might I get a Norwegian/English dictionary there in the morning? I was already pretty desperate for one of those.

The cashier at the McDonald's spoke English. So far, just about everybody did. We felt like we'd been given a big reprieve.

Rob spent some time repacking so that he would only have to bring his carryon suitcase, the camera bag, and the laptop into hotel rooms; the big blue bag could remain in the trunk as long-term storage. We drugged ourselves to the hilt in hopes of an early morning and went to sleep.

Comments

[lkeele.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm only to here so far and I'm fascinated. You're such a descriptive writer, I feel almost like I was there with you. And now I have jet lag again, thanks a bunch. ;)

Off to bed... read more in the morning.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

jet lag again, thanks a bunch

*giggle*

You would like Norway, and from where you are it's only an hour of time difference! :-)