Warming up to Oslo.

Destination: Oslo, Norway and the fjords.

Next stop on the journey through Scandinavia was Oslo. I passed through Goethenburg/Göteburg, Sweden on the way and was pleasantly surprised to se a bustling metropolis there, with an excellent shopping mall right next to the train station, and a kroner that went much further than the danish one. Sadly, this was not the case in Oslo. I arrived in Oslo late at night so I got some quality sleep and then started off a fresh new day in the frigid cold of Norway. Norway, so I learned, is a fairly new nation. It got its independence in 1905 from Sweden, before that it was under the rule of Denmark although it had a form of governmental administration of its own, for a major part of the 1600 and1700s only 3% of the land was cultivated so it was actually impossible for the territory to exist on its own footing without funding and supplies coming from an outside source, hence its subjugation over the years. I really was not impressed at all by Oslo, it did not have any cool architecture or sculptures, it was on a sea/body of water but again the landscaping or use of the intersection between water and earth was not very aestheticall pleasing, nor were there giant ships even that might be cool just to see the shipping industry in progress. compared to other European cities it differed in that it seemed much more of a skyscarper city, comparable to cities in the United States. There were lots of big conference centers, 20 to 30 stories, with glass windows like you'd see in Chicago even, just not arranged in a grid layout and by far not as imposing or numerous. Even their old fortress, Akerhus, typically European and built into the cliff, did not stand up to any other fortresses I've seen around. From there I walked along the pier, saw the Nobel Peace center and the city hall (which was a square brick building with an ugly metal design attached to one side like a lapel pin), down to Aker Byrgge which is a big shopping area on the pier, then up to Oslo university and Slottet the Royal Palace and the park around the palace-again unfurnished  or really planned out in any way. Along the way in one of the squares I saw a bunch of people protesting against Sri Lankan war crimes which was interesting, it seemed to be an Indian population and they were by all means peaceful- unlike in France where every protest is accompanied by police here there was no authority surveillance. I continued the walk through a residential area to Vigeland sculpture park, which was probably the bset part of Oslo. It's not really a sculpture park because the main portions of the park are just grass and trees, but the middle walkway had a bridge of sculpture figures and a fountain with large sculptures in the center and then a big tower designed by the same artist (Vigeland), and his work was great. Most of it was just human figures, lifesize, made out of either bronze or marble (I think), unclothed, and in varying positions of life. The first figures on the bridge were babies and they grew to children and became old men and women by the end, but the positions that Vigeland sculpted were very real and personable, expressing key human emotions and natural beauty. So that was good. I also went over to the other side of the bay where there's a lot of museums in this hilly and wooded part of Oslo, there's the Kon-Tiki museum (kon-tiki was the boat used in the 1950s by an explorer from Norway who tried to prove that the Polynesian islands may have been settled by people coming from the east, specifically Peru, rather than from Euro-Asian peoples as the main theory says. He used only technology they would have had back in the day and successfully landed in the Polynesian islands, but most anthropologists still consider his theory to be fluff and highly unprobable. There was also the Fram museum, displaying Norways strongest viking hsip that has sailed farthest North and South in the world, and the Norwegian maritime museum, again centered around Norwegian naval feats. While all of this was interesting, it was really not my favorite types of things to learn about. I would have liked to go to the Edward Munch art museum (he painted the scream) but unfortunately I did not make it there. The next day I did the "Norway in a Nutshell" tour that the country so heavily advertises to see the real beauty of the fjords. A long, long 24 day but very worthwhile! We took a train to Myrdal and then another line, the steepest tracks in Europe, through the fjords down to Flam, where we boarded a riverboat fjord cruise and went through the fjords to Gudvungen, then took a bus to Voss and then a train to Bergen, a city in the west of Norway, and took an overnite train back to Oslo. The fjords were definitely amazing, very pristine, clear air, there were thinwaterfalls trickling down everywhere and we stopped at one that was a 500 foot freefall and the sound of the water hitting the rocks was deafening as it was the only sound around, apart from the squawking of gulls that followed our cruise. On the way to the fjords we went through snow white outs and a lot of people on the trains were going skiing. Along the fjords there were places where you could not even see the sky, except directly above you,  but it felt like you were in the middle of a giant container trapped on all sides by water, air, and the steep steep cliffs. Then on some flatter parts of the fjords there were tiny villages with maybe seven or eight houses, the tour tape always pointed out the churches that were built in the 1200s and 1300s, and one of the towns had no direct road access and had its own school until the 1970s, completely self sufficient. Bergen, the final town we went to, was also very very pretty a lot like little resort towns anywhere, cobblestone streets and little shops on a winding path and a giant green park with lots of runners in the middle, quaint but at the same time a moderately sized village, I would have liked to spend more time there but was unable to. So that was basically Norway-excellent nature, not so excellent cities. On to Sweden!