Norge oppelvelse.

3/28/2007 04:58:00 am



I came out of my exam last Thursday feeling not great on the whole, I knew that to pass I had to pick up almost full marks in the 70-mark short answer because the multiple choice had negative marking and well...I screwed them up. The only thing I had to look forward to was our weekend trip to Oslo because at least there I could push out any feelings of depression about having to study for the immuno exam again and have a good time. Luckily it was really great, and I've decided that on a scale of 1 to 10 for discomfort, busses score a 6 while long distance trains to the Arctic Circle score at least an 8 or a 9. Although, on second thought, at least the toilets on the train flushed...



Anyway, we arrived in Oslo at 6am and Robert came to get me from the bus. His place is about 10 minutes walk from the bus station so I didn't have to stumble very far to make it into bed and collapse, where I slept for another 6 hours. The girls on the other hand, were not quite so lucky. They made it to the hotel, but couldn't check in until 2pm, so from what I can gather they spent a large part of that time slumped on the couches in the hotel lobby, a bit of wandering in some museums, some loitering in a cafe, and then another few hours in the lobby. So, when Robert went to work at 2.30 I went to the hotel to meet the others and our energy levels weren't really equal. Oh well. We had a wander around the Palace and some of the rich parts of town, and then went down to Aker Brygge- the harbour- and ended up having a pretty chilled out afternoon.




On Saturday Robert and I went to IKEA! Hooray! Somehow ended up spending quite a long time there (there's a free shuttle!!!) before heading back into the city and meeting up with his mum for coffee. Norway was playing Bosnia to qualify for the European Championship football or something that night and so while we put together some flat-pack we watched that and just chilled (although I did at one point get a little distraught about my exam...). That piece of information in itself is really boring, but I had mentioned to the girls the day before that the game was going to be on, and so on Saturday they decided to head out there and see if they could get tickets... After waiting in line for a really long time they got to the window only to be told that because they didn't hold Norwegian passports they couldn't get tickets (?? it was a security thing, the game was almost cancelled because of a group of non-Bosnian-supporter Bosnians throwing firecrackers at the Bosnian team one minute in). There they sat outside the stadium, dejected and deflated, and had just decided to walk back into the city when a man came up to them and said, "do you speak English?" "Yes," they replied, and he gave them three tickets for free. Just like that.

But then, worried about getting past security as non-Norwegians, they decided they'd better look the part and so decked themselves out in Norwegian scarves and painted flags on their faces, and said not a peep as they went through the gates.

Crazy.

On Sunday we went to Vigelandsparken, a massive sculpture park in a suburb called Frogner. It was so amazing, so many statues all made by the same guy and all naked. It's been there since around the 1920s I think, so the nakedness was fairly controversial at the time.

We saw some other stuff that afternoon and then had dinner in the city before I met up with the others on the bus and travelled through the night again to Stockholm and then on to Uppsala in the morning in time for class. I have to admit, all this long distance public tranport is starting to wear a bit thin. Also, the language thing gets me down a bit sometimes; we were in a 7/11 and Robert was getting money out while I bought some drinks and the guy behind the counter asked me a question in Norwegian. When I looked confused he repeated it again in, but I still didn't know what he was saying so I said "Engelska?"- the Swedish for "English". So he repeated the question in Swedish. He looked a bit confused when I still had no idea what he was saying, sigh. I thought that Norway had a much nicer vibe than Sweden, not as cold and the people just seemed more comfortable to be around.






On a side note, my exam had already been marked when I got back on Monday morning and I got a VG, which is like an HD, so that surprised me a lot. Like I thought I lost a lot of marks in the multi choice, but only 5 in the short answer, so not having to do the exam again is a big relief!

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2 comments on this post

  1. Anonymous10:18 pm

    so im beginning to feel extremely jealous of you about all this traveling... i will have to make up with some mega trip at the end of uni... anyway... nice to see you are well on your way to an ikea in every country.... keep posting the cool photos... the one of you on the stone polar bear is my favourite for this post...

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  2. That polar bear was the coolest thing, there was a seal too but they refused to take a photo of me on it...

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