Munching on Mussels

We have spoken often of the "must see list" in each of the countries we have ventured to so far. In Oslo however, there wasn't much of a list. So we started the day without any direction. Where we would end up was anyones guess. Many people did try to guess. We couldn't tell anyone what we were going to do. We simply didn't know.

We started off with the rest of the tour group at Vigeland sculpture park.Like the good and respectful tourists we are, most of us used this an opportunity for another set of interactive photos, posing with the mostly nude statues and risking life and limb for a funny snapshot. We also used and abused the life of the youngest and smallest member of our group who was often hoisted into the air renacting the female sculptures in provocative positions against his will.


And when in Norway... well we had to find a way to do something Viking related. The Viking Ship museum provided the opportunity to see how the ancestors of the friendly Norwegian people were once, well, what were they like? You learn about how information can be biased to portray the view that the source wants to present. The Viking Ship museum was prime example as to how truth can be portrayed differently by omission of details. The museum consisted of 3 Viking ships recovered from the 8th Century AD with heaps of information regarding the boat building expertise of the Vikings and how they used to send off the dead. Nothing at all eluded to the fact that Vikings may not have been very friendly to small surrounding neighbours.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking the streets of Olso, checking out the local clothes shops and supermarkets. Not only was there a shop called 'Boys of Europe' (where we were disapointed to discover that they sold clothes, not men) but in the supermarkets there was even a slicer where you could slice your own bread! Needless to say we took photos of both.

Our meandering eventually took us to the King of Norway's palace where we witnessed another changing of the guards (almost as exciting as the bread slicer) and Megan taught Kate the pretzel dance. (sidenote: how on earth could Kate not know the pretzel?)

Impressed with how much of the city we had already seen, and absolutely certain that we did not want to go on a canal cruise around the city we had just walked we decided that we had to visit the museum housing the work donated to Oslo by their most famous, world recognised artist, Edward Munch. The museum was a far walk from the city centre and there was every possibility that being a Monday it might even be closed. However, we set out on our mission and after walking in the wrong direction for a good 15 minutes (a tour that we shall call 'the highways of Oslo') arrived at our destination. Being such talented artist connisseurs ourselves we brisked through the musum pointing out possible pictures that might look good in our houses of the future and knowing very little about the conceptual framework of each work. And then we got to the end of the exhibition and realised we hadn't even seen the Scream or Madonna - we did know they were his 2 most famous artworks... the sign told us so.

We did back track and found the paintings and we were impressed. So impressed we took photos and then spent ages in the gift store laughing at spoof books filled with "Scream" themed comical pictures.

All this art had made us quite hungry and we walked back looking for a place to eat dinner. We passed kebab shops, pizza resturants, 'Asian cuisine' resturants but we were both after the authentic Scandinavian experience - seafood - so we kept walking. And walking. Occasionally we would sit down to look at our map. Then we would keep walking. After almost giving in to our urge for a kebab we eventually found what we were looking for. Our Oslo experience was capped off by a meal of salmon (Megan) and mussels (Kate) sitting outside with views of an old Norgwegian fortress and watching the sun travel slowly across the sky.

After waiting for a bus home we were tired after our 12 hour sightseeing day but decided it was time to bite the bullet and do some laundry. Way too traumatic an experience to fathom doing again. Romanians, Irish 12 yr-old whores and drunk New Zealanders.Several hours later (and with some clean but feral smelling clothes) we needed a drink.

Say Ossloooo!