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I arrived in Oslo on Saturday morning after thirteen hours of flying, and was met at the airport by a friend of the family (my grandparents' ex-exchange student), who I haven't seen since I was about three years old. It was only as I was carrying my stuff out to the car that I realized he could be somebody else and I would never know. Judging by how much he knew about my family history, this seems doubtful, it you never know. (Don't worry, Mom, I'm taking my safety very seriously).
That first day, we took a walk around downtown and drank Norwegian beer at a TGI Friday's, and I pretty much fell asleep at the table because of all the not-sleep I'd been getting for the last few days. On Sunday, I did the museum thing, and saw the Viking ship museum and the Edvard Munch museum. I don't think I'd really seen any of his work before this, other than The Scream, and I really enjoyed the way all his plants look like people and all his people look like they might be monsters.
Yesterday I took the train west across Norway to Bergen, which is the point at which I started whispering to the scenery about how pretty it is. That continued today when I took the funicular (funiculi, funicula!), a cable car, up to the top of one of the seven hills that surrounds Bergen, and hiked to another of those seven hills.
Seriously, it's like magically beautiful. I know I live in a beautiful place, too, and maybe this is just the wonder of new things, but the colors seem deeper here, everything seems a little wild, both the forests that seem to be encroaching on all sides and the winding, spiraling cobblestone streets, and most shops are closed on Sundays. I don't mean to say anything about how it's a "simpler time" or unnecessarily quaint-ify it, because it's not that. But, especially out away from the city today-sometimes feeling like the only person in the world-it just felt like the setting of every medieval-esque fantasy story I've ever read.
Which obviously led to me pretending to be Frodo Baggins crossing the Emyn Muil for about an hour. I mean, come on.
Tonight I take a night train to Copenhagen. In the meantime, here are some more pictures of the prettiest country at the party.
Norway has TGI Friday's?! My dad wants to go there this weekend...in Longmont! It's like we're at the same place yet so far away!
ReplyDeleteWonderful pictures and wonderful writing! I think I could get used to this. (This being you blogging about how you're off doing amazing things in Europe and I'm sitting at my desk--under horrible lighting that's probably killing my eyes--at work and reading your awesome posts.)