Last day in Oslo; First Day in Balestrand!

Oslo Day 3
We started our chilly, slightly rainy day by heading to the Opera House that's entire roof is also a floor! It's great slabs of stone that leads you over the city for some great panoramic views of Oslo. There were loads of adorable sea birds. MASSIVE, but adorable. I've never seen sea gulls so huge! The walls to the interior of the building are all glass, and it would have been nice to see more of the inside, but they were closed, and we had much more to see. After taking our obligatory photos of the city and ginormous cruise liners, we scuttled off to our next stop.



















Vigeleund Park. We were originally sort of wishy-washy about going to this park of sculptures, but we were so glad we decided to go! What a beautiful park! Landscaping on this scale, its like I've never seen! The park just keeps going on and on and on in every direction, lovely trees, flowers in different designs in the beds, stone walkways, and nude sculptures everywhere! Not hedonistic stuff (not that I'm criticizing hedonism! I'm all for it, of course), but these sculptures, that at first we thought might be a bit corny, turned out to be wonderful expressions of pure human experience and joy. Some are twisted up and tangled, showing the emotions of humankind at our worst, and others are embracing, dancing with children, tenderly looking at each other. I was impressed and moved. Art never ceases to keep me thinking, talking, and feeling, which is why art is so necessary for human expression. Get out those paints, people! Fire up your kiln! Tune your piano or just sing in the shower! It's great to be alive, and to crow about it!! I can't wait to post photos and hope they inspire you!



































After this lovely, romantic stroll, we headed off to check out the National Bibleoteket, also known as the big daddy library! Well, our fear of the language barrier kind of stopped this one short, and we took a very quick walk through, struggled to even get the doors opened as we left, and decided it was good enough to have made the effort. It was all modern inside, and looked really cool, but we just didn't know what their rules are. Did we need a card to gain admittance? Are backpacks allowed? Is that huge, delicious-looking buffet for any Joe Schmoe walking by, or is is just for employees? From the strange glances we were getting, we opted to take the safest route out of there and find somewhere else to gawk :)



Halvorsen's confectioners was the next place we gawked, but didn't go into. We wanted to eat there, or at least get coffee and cake, but like any downtown chic establishment with Norway pricing, this place was charging a small fortune for their eats. We thought it'd be so cool to say we'd eaten at Halvorsen's, perhaps some distant relation of John's, but we just couldn't bear to part with the rest of our available Kroner for a piece of bread with some veggies thrown on it. So we checked in using Facebook, and meandered off to find Norli's Book Sellers. John buys stuff from these guys through work, and we spent some time looking at cookbooks and then went to the used Norli's to try to find some Norwegian versions of Dashiell Hammet books for John's brother, who is graciously looking after the kitties and condo (as well as my loving mother!), but we found no books to bring to Bill. We'll check in Bergen if we can!

After a bit of the crabbies because of my sore feet, and an attempt at getting into the National Gallery, we thought it best to get me to the hotel to put my feet up and take a brief nap. We decided a good ole moving picture might be in order and found that an original (English) version of Batman was playing. We trumped off to a rather interesting area of town (students, junkies, lots of homeless, the occasional punker, etc.) and had quite a thrilling experience trying to figure out how in the hell you're supposed to purchase movie tickets. We finally asked someone and they pointed us to a very friendly counter person. We got our soda, popcorn that they kept in these huge warming things that looked liked refrigerators, and got our seats. To watch one of the worst movies ever made. There was no excuse for how badly this movie turned out, especially considering how awesome Batman Begins was, but we had a great time snuggling and making fun of it, so as far as the evening went, it was two thumbs up! Then it was home to the hotel for another night of loud construction and late night drunken debauchery over at The Lorry! As much as we enjoyed Oslo, we were ready to get into a quieter area :)











Some take away thoughts about Oslo: just about everyone is skinny, and with those food prices it's no wonder, everyone wears "skinny", closely tapered 80s-style jeans, and nearly everyone looks like they should be in A Flock of Seagulls video! They've really got the NuWave thing going on here. I felt unbelievably frumpy in my duck-footed, orthopedic Birkenstock's! BOINK!

Flam/Myrdal/Balestrand Day 4
What an incredible day! We rose early, grubbed down some peanut butter on flatbread and tea, said goodbye to the Cochs Pensjonet and to Oslo. Hopping on the morning train to Myrdal, we embarked on one of the most scenic train adventures we're likely to ever see. To Myrdal was a four hour journey, which started with grubby, city landscapes and the strange beauty we find in them, and turned quickly into hilly tree-covered mountains very reminiscent of the Black Hills, then into an inhospitable and cold, rocky, snow-covered scene that got the most "Ooooo's" and "Ahhhhhh's" the entire journey. Everyone was clamoring to get photos, and we'd all grunt with aggravation each time the train passed through another dark mountain tunnel blocking our view. There was a large group of Japanese tourists sitting in our coach, and each time the train went into darkness, we all got louder and more humorous with our vocalizations, a cute and funny repetitive silliness probably only those over 30 could appreciate :) We shared a seating area with two very nice ladies that I must give snaps to for sharing their chocolates and entire lunch with us! Each of their tour-provided lunches came with three sandwiches and a sweet cake dessert, so the two of them shared one because they didn't think they could eat two, and they were sweetly generous to give us their other lunch! I was feeling pretty motion sick, so I was hesitant to eat, but smelling the delicious food prompted me to eat, and it was exactly what I needed, I felt better immediately! Of course, closing my eyes to the backwards, reeling scenery helped, as well.









The Flam Railway took us from Myrdal down an absolutely stunning mountainside, covered in pine trees and waterfalls. The train must make a complete 180 turn by journeys end, and it's so steep the brakes (of which there are seven sets) are squealing, groaning and shrieking the entire way. They make a stop at one particularly fierce waterfall and let everyone get off the train to enjoy the photo opportunity, and "ooooo" with delight as two water maidens, Norwegian mythological creatures similar to sirens called, Unge (?). It was really enchanting to see them prance against ethereal music in the water mist, although John and I couldn't help but chuckle at the gleeful exclamations of the crowd, and the eye-rolling expression of the train porter as he waited for the corny display (that he's likely seen thousands of times) to finish.















As if this amazing train journey weren't enough beauty and wonder, it was a mere warm-up for the sights to come! We boarded the express boat in Flam to travel along Noway's largest and deepest fjord, Sognefjord, to bring us to our destination for two nights, the charming little mountainside village of Balestrand. I've often said that a picture really cannot do a natural wonder any justice, just as a recorded album cannot offer the emotion and raw nature of live music, and this will undoubtedly be no different, words and even photos aren't enough. This land is so brilliantly unadulterated, unchanged, I imagine it feels as it did to our earliest ancestors as they looked upon this same sights. This is truly where one can believe in gods and giants. The rock formations are unfathomably massive, covered in green foliage, grey, jagged rock and dripping with waterfalls at every turn. There are slate rock cliffs that look like bluff country Minnesota times 1000. The hills all look like giant trolls turned to stone by morning's sun, it's no wonder troll legends abound here. Their faces and hulking forms are everywhere in this landscape. The water itself is as gorgeous and alive as water ever is, and imagining its depths here reminds me of how small and unknowing we mortals are of even the worlds residing beneath us. The water here is perfectly clear. It's amazing how far down you can see, not like our beloved but very brown, sediment-rich Mississippi. The journey was both long and short.



























We disembarked at Balestrand to find our hostess waiting for us in her little green Volvo. The hotel is cushier than Cochs, but there are no in-room amenities such as fridge or coffee maker, so we dumped our stuff and wandered down to the restaurant she recommended, Gekken's, and what an absolute gem!! We enjoyed a huge, home style meal cooked by the single chef of the place, a little Filipino lady and what must be her daughter, the hostess/waitress. The daily special was meat cakes, boiled potatoes with fresh dill, gravy, peas, carrots and currant jelly and a cup of coffee. We set out for an evening walk and were greeted with one of the most beautiful sights we'll keep in our memory banks; the rising Blue Moon, hanging on the air above the fjord like a glittering bubble made of diamond. We walked, talked and kissed by the moon light. We stopped to admire trees, Larch and Scots Pine, honored with signs, and flowers blooming amid the rocks. We watched the birds sail silently by. We dipped our hands into the fjord and tasted its salty liquidity. We made memories :)















Love and magic,
R&J <3

Oslo Day 2

Norsk Folkemuseum, Vikingskiphuset, Norges Hjemmefrontmuseum, Akershus festning

Say that ten times fast!

We had an awesome day! The weather was absolutely, perfectly summer/fall: sunny, cool 70s, wind that ruffles the leaves and invigorates the soul. Despite sketchy sleep and dreams of John pulling hundreds of leeches off of my legs, we got a fairly early start, finding our discount breakfast place after a few turn arounds. The buffet consists of coffee, tea, bread and cracker-bread for open faced sandwiches called smorbrod, fixin's of tuna salad, tomatoes, cucumbers, hard boiled egg slices, salami, ham slices, brown goat cheese, cow cheese, jams, butter, the whole Norwegian smorgasbord. We lounged over our meal and then headed down to catch the Bygdoy ferry to see some museums.





We started with the Norsk Folkemuseum, a massive (155 houses), open-air, working museum celebrating Norwegian and Sami culture and folk customs including music, dance, baking, crafts, farming and domestic animals; we saw two horses and a mama and baby cow, and we could hear goats in the distance. Every structure has a green roof, and the farm houses, store houses, stables, privies and elevated sleeping lofts were all beautifully hand built and smelled of divine woodiness. The original Gol stave church from 1200 was incredible, we fell in love with it. It smelled deeply woodsy and maybe hints of incense still present in its pores. It was huge on the outside, having cavernous innards that were covered in detailed carvings of dragons, serpents, what looked to me like eagle heads and an interesting figure that I would guess is no Christian symbol. There were other human totems carved near the altar space, each with dragons eating their way down the pillars. We were fascinated and enchanted walking in that place! They do an amazing job of keeping the place running, it seemed like it would be a neat job to have. I kept remarking that it would be cool if our hometown Renaissance Festival could be more like that, more of a historically accurate picture of life, and a year-round, real-time working Renaissance town.





















We snacked at the folk museum, enjoying the calm breeze and shade beneath charming trees, then headed off to the Vikingskiphuset, or Viking Ship Museum. That is some incredible ship building, I must say. Massive doesn't even describe these boats, and the thought of dudes like Erik the Red spring frightfully to mind as we stood in their presence. I wondered how many dozens of men it would have taken to even maneuver the boats. The intricate sea serpent carvings were amazing, and one ship had elaborately painted dragons, as well. The artifacts found on these boats, which were also used as burial vessels, we're astoundingly beautiful. I am hoping to get loads of pictures up, but without the proper cords with us, this will have to wait until we return home.





















Back on the ferry to zip over to the Akershus Festning (fortress) and the Norges Hjemmefrontmuseum (Norway Resistance Museum) for stunning and sobering journeys through military time. The fortress is still an active military post, so there are still formal guards marching around the place. We saw loads of giant sea gulls, an interesting species of bird that was black and white and flittered around as ADHD as blue jays! The clouds moved in making our walk through the grounds blustery and lovely. It was quite relaxing to walk about the cobbled stones in the open air. We headed into the Resistance Museum knowing we had very little time to see it properly, but chilling even so. They recreated scenes from WWII with miniatures that made for some startlingly evocative memorials. The artifacts, hundreds and maybe thousands of items, letters, radio equipment, old secret printing presses and typewriters used to get underground information to resistance fighters (farmers and boys), even an old can of cyanide and leg-screwing torture devices used by the Gestapo were on display. There were many chilling things that covered the walls, but the thing that took my breath was a display of three Norwegian resistance fighters who were shot to death outside the very building we stood in, and their pictures were printed onto three huge slabs of metal, each with many bullet holes through them. I could feel my spine turn to ice as I looked into the eyes of their dead photographs. Another eerie display was that of a torture chamber where they had a recording of disturbing thumps and sounds, and a moving image of a man trying to break his way out of his confinement. One man in such a chamber had detailed his stay by recording his hellish existence onto toilet paper. We had to hurry through the last of the exhibit because they were closing, but as I was choking up at every scene, that was probably for the best.





















Taking the ferry back to the hotel for a bit of a rest, then finishing our evening of perfect weather with a stroll around the grounds of the Royal Palace. A beautiful park with loads of people still about, we had a romantic walk and talk, then headed back for a full nights slumber!

First Day in Oslo

We've arrived in Oslo! After a very long traveling day, we are finally settled into Cochs Pensjonet, relaxing with tea, snacks and soft beds. Once finally checking in, we both crashed promptly for a nice, long nap that even a major street construction project right outside our window couldn't disrupt! It's a bit rainy and we're so wiped out from jet lag, poor airplane-cramped catnaps, the time difference, and walking around the city since 10am while our room was being readied. The walk-around was welcomed after so long on the plane, but soon my feet were screaming in pain thanks to old lady crap like plantar fasciitis to deal with, and after fetching a few groceries we made our way back to beg for our beds.





From Minneapolis, we were bubbling with the excitement of hitting the road again. We arrived very early to the airport, anticipating a major security hassle. It was fairly quick, and I didn't balk at getting x-rayed, in fact, I gladly hopped in the full body scan booth to avoid any groping by our Big Brother, TSA. Our flight to Newark was delayed by 45 minutes, being notified of this delay as we were taxiing on the runway. Oddly, the time seemed just part of the suspended moments known as "a butt-long time to get overseas". We knew we had 5 hours of waiting once arriving in Newark, anyway, so it just shaved more time from our sitting around there. As seems to be the norm on our travels, there were some celebrities waiting for the same flight we were, and this time it was serendipitous; a Minneapolis band we tentatively planned on seeing while here, The Hold Steady, guitars and Twins caps in tow :) I'd been quoting one of their songs at every security checkpoint, muttering quietly to John, "I got busted by the cops, and they found it in my socks and I got probed!"



The flight to Oslo was on Scandinavian Airlines, which was much more pleasant than any other flight we've had, and yet the first realization that we were heading into a foreign-speaking country. Every announcement was first in Norwegian, then in English. We sat next to an adorable couple who spoke flawless Norwegian and English, and bless them for their assistance with our jackassery of trying to figure out all the funky, hidden contraptions on the plane! Each seat has its own entertainment centre with movies, music, even camera shots from the front and below the plane! But as anyone who has hopped The Pond knows, it's long and arduous sitting there for so long. Kids were squirrelly and everyone else was restless. I resorted to sticking my face into my hoodie to try to get some broken sleep. Though it didn't feel like I slept at all, I had broken bits of dreams that escape me now, but I seem to remember were fraught with worries expressed in Norwegian phrasing that I couldn't understand. Thankfully, getting through the Norwegian passport checkpoint was no biggie (not like the mega questions we had to answer in Gatwick airport in London, years ago!) and after a spacey walk though what seemed like a giant IKEA store, we made it through the airport and onto the bus to the city centre of Oslo!!!



The scenery here is remarkably like Minnesota. Loads of evergreens, cliffs just like bluff-country and the wonderful grey, ocean-like clouds of my favorite kind of days back home. They do have very strange looking crow-type birds, though. They are grey and black, having sort of a pigeon-y feather look, but cawing, flying and hopping exactly like black crows. They have interesting mallards, and teensy-tiny funny jumping birds that have yellow heads and are so quick I could hardly see them. I'm a bird-nerd, so I notice these things :) The area we explored today was very like San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, even Minneapolis. I had envisioned Oslo as a lot cleaner and happier than other cities, but it is exactly as any other: rude and rushing business people, skinny fasionista women on teetering heels, grubby streets, lots of construction and a very noticeable population of street urchins. There seemed to be lots of scammers, so we kept our wits about us and kept moving. We finally decided we had to eat, and though we swore we wouldn't eat out in the prohibitive restaurants here, it was clear we needed to eat and had no idea where a grocery store could be found, and we still had time to kill before we could get into our digs. We happened across a cute little cafe, and after the scary prospect of ordering off of a menu that may well have been written in Martian subsided, we dropped a cool $40 USD (NOK 228) for two pieces of focaccia pizza and two OJs. Obviously, we spent our time there searching for the nearest market!! After finding a nearby store to fetch some foodstuffs, and the adventure of trying to guess what we were buying, we spent the same amount for a bunch of healthy items that should sustain us for a few more meals.



Now, it's time to chill with some British comedy, hit the sack and get refreshed for a new day! Hope all is well at home!! We miss our two little furry nutters and hope they are behaving themselves <3
Goodnight Moon! Love, R&J

Heading to Norway!

In honor of our 40th year of life and our 20th year as a couple, we decided to plan something big: NORWAY!!!! It's been a lifelong dream of John's to visit Norway, and when I learned that my blood ancestry also trickles from Norwegian waters, we just had to plan a vacation in the Motherland! I cannot believe the days are even upon us! All the planning and dreaming and saving and learning Norwegian...finally here. On Monday, we leave for the land that I've now come to think of as Asgard itself. The harsh and beautiful world of the Jotunheim, the North Sea, the Aurora Borealis and the land of the midnight sun, and so many incredible fjords that even pictures make you think you could jet off into them!

We start off in Oslo, where we will be staying at Cochs Pensjonat. There are tons of museums, the grand opera house whose roof is a destination in itself! We hope to catch some walking tours, visit the Viking Ship Museum, the Akershus Castle & Fortress, the Norsk Folksmuseum (check out this panoramic shot of their Stave Church), a tour of the Parliament, and maybe even The Hold Steady, a Minneapolis band! We're excited to try the Pølse med lompe (sausage in potato flat bread, sort of like lefse, here's a photo), although eating is so expensive there that we may just live on mead, as the god Odin did! As home brewers, we'd like to try some Norwegian beer, called øl (pronounced uul). They brew a special kind of beer there for the winter holidays, Jule (Yule), and that will be our first order of brewing business upon our return, brewing up our own version of juløl, as its called.

From Oslo, we take one of the most spectacular train rides on the planet to the little village of Balestrand, situated on the magnificent Sognefjord. There we will be staying at the Balestrand Hotel, and we are told to expect a little green Volkswagen to fetch us! It will be all about the scenery here, and we plan on walking and photographing to our heart's delight! We are hoping to catch a tour of one of the original remaining stave church's while we are there. We'd love to take one of the glacier walks, but we may run out of time as some of these destinations take a whole day to get there and back. When having to choose, we figured seeing one of the last remaining original stave churches, which are pretty unique to Norwegian culture and heritage (hand carved everything by our ancestors!) or a glacier...well, we had to go for the Norwegian thing and check out the beautiful wooden structures. We will have to settle for catching glimpses of the glaciers from the sea!

From Balestrand, we then take a ferry boat to Bergen! We are thrilled to have booked the apartment unit (and splurged mightily for it!) in the raved about, much sought-after, totally pimped-up lodging of the To Søstre Guesthouse. This guesthouse gets some of the best reviews we've ever read on Trip Advisor, so we are very excited to check it out. As it will be our last stop, we thought we'd splurge a little. We are firm believers in spending money on memories and unique experiences, not simply on stuff. All I can say is: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!