Norway I

Hello folks! This is the first post in my first ever travel blog and I hope you will enjoy.

I spent my first three days since getting to Europe in London getting over my jetlag and generally just getting adjusted before the real trip starts. Yesterday, I flew from London’s Stansted airport (which takes a pretty penny to get to from the city) to Torp airport about 2 hours outside of Oslo, Norway. I got into the city and checked into my hostel around 6 last night and basically passed out. My jetlag is unfortunately not gone yet so it is currently 6:30 in the morning and I am WIDE awake.

Anyway, a few things of note from yesterday… First, Norway is GORGEOUS right now. The countryside is supposed to be beautiful year-round but now that the trees are right in the middle of turning it is pretty amazing. I’m planning on taking lots of pictures today so stay tuned.

Second, Oslo is ABSURDLY expensive. Like, to the point where you look at a price tag and actually do a double-take. I feel a little silly now for ever suggesting that London was exorbitantly expensive. My first wake-up call came when I had to pay 40 dollars to get from the airport into Oslo. My second came when I realized that a McDonald’s hamburger costs…brace yourself…15 dollars! That’s JUST the sandwich, with no meal attached. Not that I had any intention of getting Micky D’s anyway, but I figured I could get some insight into the general price level by looking at something that is sold pretty much everywhere. In the interest of keeping to my budget, I bought the cheapest groceries I could find (a box of Cheerios, some banana chips and some snack mix) and then began trekking through town to find my hostel.

The place is pretty nice. It’s on a fairly quiet street a few blocks away from the train station and the people at the front desk are young and very friendly, as hostel people go. There is a big computer lounge in the lobby with free internet, which is SUCH a luxury. They do charge for sheets which is lame, but I brought a sleeping bag so I passed on the 10 bucks that would have cost.

I checked into my dorm room, which had 3 bunk beds, a little kitchenette, and a private bathroom. A really nice Norwegian guy named Anderson was already in the room and I talked to him about life in Norway for a while as I got settled in. At some point, one of the guys from the front desk knocked at the door. He had come up to talk to my second roommate, a Norwegian girl with a shaved head who, we now realized, had been sitting in the bathroom for the past half hour doing God knows what. Erik and the girl (who I think is named Corrita) had what seemed to be a slightly heated conversation in Norwegian, and then Erik left. All along, Anderson kept shooting me funny looks when Corrita wasn’t looking

Once Erik was gone, I introduced myself to Corrita and we had a fairly normal conversation for a few minutes. She said she was from up north and was trying to make it as a theatre actress in Oslo. Then, gradually, she became completely insane. She started talked casually about friends that had stabbed her the back and how it was going to be hard to make it in the theatre industry with so many enemies. At this point, I was still smiling and nodding. Then she started talking about getting revenge on the people that had harmed her and how she was going to inflict pain on all of them that was equal to “seven times” what they had inflicted on her. At this point, I stopped smiling and nodding and started to just sit in silence. She gradually transitioned from talking to me to just talking to herself. Eventually, she was facing the other way just muttering under her breath, switching between English and Norwegian. I could make out the words “pain” and “revenge” over and over again. At this point, I tried to strike up another conversation with Anderson, but any time we got too loud for Corrita to hear herself, she would just talk to herself louder.

Eventually, she left the room and, after making sure she wasn’t listening outside the door, Anderson told me that she had been living the room for a few days and had gotten in trouble with Erik for yelling at others in the room. Also, she was on drugs (go figure). Her conversation with Erik was supposedly her last warning. I told Anderson it was very nice meeting him and I wished him the best, but there was no way in hell I was staying in that room.

Luckily there was another bed available in a room on the third floor, so I am currently staying with a woman and two men in their 40s from Spain. They are all really nice and were kind enough last night to let me have some of the chicken they cooked for themselves. They have been in Norway for 2 weeks and have several recommendations for me, most of them involving going up north.

Right now, I need to decide if I can afford to stay in Norway at all…if all of it is really this expensive, I may need to cut short my stay in this hostel and book it to Stockholm, adding Norway to the list of places to go when I am not on a just-got-out-of-college-and-don’t-have-a-job-just-some-savings-that-will-be-gone-at-the-end-of-this-trip budget. In the mean time, I plan to at least check out some of the scenery. There are supposed to be some nice scenic walks not too far from the hostel, so that’s what I plan to check out today. The good thing about scenery is it doesn’t cost anything, and not spending money on attractions should hopefully balance out the huge amount I’ll have to spend on food. If I find after being here for a day or two that I can’t stay within my budget, I’ll try to shorten my hostel reservation and book it to Stockholm, possibly with a stop in Bergen for the day. That’s the great thing about having a Eurail pass…I don’t have to plan anything.

Anyway, that’s all for today. I will update soon with pictures. Hope all is well with everyone back home!