Oslo: Our First Random European City Weekend Jaunt (of hopefully many)

After a long four months apart, we were happily reunited in time to plan our first random European city weekend jaunt. Destination: Oslo, Norway. You might ask why we would choose to go to an almost equally expensive city to London, seeing as how Oslo is forth most expensive city in the world; next to London at third. It's also a city further North than London and winter is quickly approaching. Well, we had a couple of reasons. One was that our sister-in-law Kate’s brother, Paul, is doing a semester in Oslo and we thought it would be fun to visit him. Also, we wanted to choose a city in a country that neither of us had been to, and as Dan’s been to most major cities in Europe, that left us with few options. Frankly, though, Norway just seemed like a pretty cool place to visit.

Despite the cold and the ridiculously priced… well, everything… we managed to see some pretty neat things. We flew Ryan Air and landed just outside of Sandefjord, which is just under a two-hour bus ride from Oslo. We were amazed to see how similar the landscape was to our familiar Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, with the ragged coastline, colourful houses, and little fishing villages. Once in Oslo, we hopped on the tram and headed to our hosts’ flat in the trendy neighbourhood Grünerløkka.

To help keep costs down and have a more enriching experience we decided to try couchsurfing.com. We joined the website and requested to stay on the couch of a couple named Linn and Brom, who happily welcomed us into their home. We learned a little about Norway and Norwegians (such as the fact that Norway is so wealthy that they had a surplus of $360 billion last year!) Also, Linn is Sami, who are an indigenous people from the far north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The Sami are known for herding reindeer, which is still practiced by a small minority. Brom is from central Norway, near the Arctic Circle. They also have the two most beautiful cats you’ve every seen, Pixel and Stella. Luckily, Dan's allergies didn't act up too badly.

On our first night, Linn took us to see a couple of local bands. She works for the venue and was able to get us in free. The music was great, and we absolutely loved the band, Katzenjammer. They're a female quartet, who rotated among 12 instruments between each song, featuring the accordion, mandolin, guitar, piano, balalaika bass, glockenspiel, trumpet, kazoo, melodica, drums, banjo and xylophone. They also took turns on vocals and had a guest violinist. It was a really, really fun concert. Check it out for yourself:

On our second night, we feasted on smoked trout, warm bread, salad and dilled potatoes with Linn and Brom. They were great hosts and we will definitely couch surf again on another weekend jaunt.

Over the three days in Oslo we walked all over and saw some fabulous sites, including the Nobel Peace Museum, the Munch Museum, the National Gallery, the Norwegian Royal Palace, the Vigeland Sculpture Park with it's dozens of bronze and granite nude sculptures, the Akershus Fortress and its museum detailing the Norwegian Resistance to the Nazis, and the Museum of Architecture, which features the plans of other European museums. We also had lunch with Paul and visited his school in the north of the city, which is in an incredible building. We sampled Norwegian fish and brown cheese, and Dan sampled the expensive beer (about $12 per bottle). And we shopped a wee bit at the massive complex of Aker Brygge.

We loved how the pubs, restaurants, and cafés not only provide outdoor seating and tables for smokers or dog walkers, they also leave blankets on each chair to keep them warm. We enjoyed sitting outside a café on our last day and sipped cappuccino while snuggled up with warm woollen blankets and watched the city bustle by.

We’ve posted our pictures on facebook. Enjoy them here.