Oslo

Douze Points
I got stood up on this one by a contrary sometime travel acquaintance and it gave me a moment’s pause, given how tight the schedule was and how expensive things would be if I got things crooked. There was an early morning flight to Oslo (or 150 kms from Oslo) on 21 August and an early morning flight home from Skavsta airport almost as far from Stockholm on the 25^th. I had to spend half a night at Girona airport, find wifi every step of the way for a nightly news related job I was doing. The Norway-Sweden train link didn’t work out, so I’d be travelling by bus overnight between the two.  And to be honest I wasn’t doing this out of desperation to see Scandinavia, more desperation to get away from a summer long Spanish heatwave. A big concern was how to travel with cabin luggage only including the laptop (too much hassle dragging two bags on a trip like this) without roasting/freezing at either end.  

Oslo

If you are not aware of Norway’s pricy reputation then you have way too much money. I am not going to pretend here to be broke – I sold my house – but I was broke for decades and wouldn’t have been able to avail of a free ticket to Oslo for fear of being attacked by the price of a burger once I got there. The first thing you will get attacked by if you fly RyanAir to Torp is the price of the bus to Oslo. Given the distance it isn’t exorbitant and I read on a blog that it was cheaper if you use your credit card (alternative is to pay in Norwegian Krone), which I did. So now I don’t know how much it cost! Here is the Torp Express bus company website anyway and the buses meet RyanAir and Wizzair flights.

I won’t say the scenery was jaw dropping. That honour goes to the up country fjords. But it was nice and green, with rowan trees in full berry in anticipation of the big freeze coming in January (2010). The driver was Eurovision polite, told us to strap up and organise our rubbish in the plastic bags provided and drove at an even pace. There are glimpses before you get to the city of the Norwegians’ weekend life – boats moored wherever there was water and cosy looking log houses. The second nice thing that happened was a girl in a costume was handing out free bottles of drinking water just out of the bus stop, so that probably saved me a small mortgage.   

Accommodation

The room at the youth hostel, the Sentrum Pensjonat cost €55 and I had one of the best nights’ sleep of my life on some kind of a feather mattress, especially after the half night in Girona airport. This was the first of 3 hostels I booked in summer 2009 and I only felt ancient in one (Stockholm). There was no evidence of the old fascist rules or Nurse Ratchett attitude. They let me hang out in the lounge to work before check-in and after check-out. You can leave your luggage. They minded my laptop when I was out, gave me a token for the coffee machine when I hadn’t been to the bank.  I had checked out hundreds of hotels, studios etc and all were impossibly dear and universally cramped. My room at the Sentrum was spacious and clean in a well worn kind of way. I care more about the bedding than the carpet and that was crispy clean. I reserved the Sentrum via HostelBookers, who offer a good range of accommodation in most cities, not just in hostels, and you can book directly with them and print out a docket to take with you. Very reliable and efficient.

Oslo Pass

Oslo isn’t huge, but the Oslo Pass, which you can read all about here, is a genuine asset, because it covers the museums and ferryboats as well as public transport and you want to see the museums and you need to get the ferry to the island where the principal ones are based. It costs from 230 NOK to 430 NOK for 24 to 72 hours, but best to update the price on the site. (and see currency converter just above the sudoku on this page).  

 







Museums 
I think it was five museums I saw in one day – the Kon-Tiki Museum, the Viking Museum, the Folk Park, the Maritime Museum and the Polar Exploration Museum (all free with the card). At least three of them were in tepee like buildings with enough artefacts and information to intrigue without exhausting your head and legs. 

The Viking ships were gorgeous, intricately carved and displayed to spectacular effect. You could feel that raw Viking energy tuned but not tamed in the stories of the polar explorers and pioneering voyages of Thor Heyerdahl. The biography of Fridtjov Nansen, as stoic and fearless a humanitarian as he was an explorer and scientist, seemed to me to draw together disparate strands of the Norwegian character. And it is clear that the citizens of Oslo today are still in love with boats. The bay was busy with ferries, sailboats, small fishing punts and massive cruise liners and the low-lying wharfside apartments that curved round the ferry points had a smart nautical cast to them. After all the traipsing up and down the decks of the Fram, through halls of boats and maidenheads and rafts and viewing points, not to mention through the park full of log homes, bread ovens and reconstructed interiors, I paddled at the edge of a navy blue beach covered in mussel shells, and the water was the same temperature as the Mediterranean in the roasting Costa Brava. No worse anyway. I don’t know how that works.

Opera House

I didn’t even enquire about the price of an opera ticket here, but you can walk up and down the roof of this spectacular white building which slopes down to the lapping water on one side and rises to a viewing height where the city and bay are visible. People were making very good use of it too, as they were of the grounds of the Akershus Castle, where you could picnic and look down at the berthing liners and the bay, and many people were doing just that.

Vigeland Sculpture Park

I was going to be happy enough with this little flit through Oslo if I got to see the sculpture park, and I did. I think I took the T-bane (underground) to a suburb within walking distance of the park. It was quite late in the day, so whatever you might buy a ticket for was closed, but the park was open and full of strollers and it was nice to just wander in a green place after months looking at the red baked earth of Spain. 

The hundreds of sculptures of men, women and children giving exuberant rein to their joy and misery are masterful and meaningful and intended for contemplation by regulars more than whizz-ins. There is just so much, and they are so authentic and funny and sad and sometimes quirky, all naked except for the statue of Vigeland himself, which I didn’t see, but which is apparently fully clothed.  

Weather etc

The end of August weather was balmy - T-shirt weather without goose bumps. I was very pleasantly surprised by this and it was just right for getting around. I didn’t do any eating out because of the price paranoia, but also because on my own I wouldn’t get the same kick out of restaurant eating. I’m happy enough with deli food.

To Stockholm

I reserved all this online before leaving home and had to collect the ticket from a machine in the train station using a confirmation number. All that went well, a bit too well, and I set out a little early to catch the 11.30 pm overnight coach to Stockholm. I was still strolling, having gone three wrong sides of the train station, when I found the departure time to be 11.00pm. All I can say is the teeny Little Infant of Prague statue I carry with me clocked up another notch. I have never, ever had a closer shave. It would have thrown the entire programme, budget, bookings, everything. The journey took nine hours and I thought I would expire, wedged with my rucksack in two thirds of my coach seat up against the knee of the seething passenger next to me who had thought he had the seats to himself. At some point I must have slept, because it was around 6.00 am when I woke up not too far from Stockholm. The bus company is Swebus and you can buy the ticket online here.

Cost

I can’t remember what my RyanAir ticket cost, but it was cheap, and it was August, so you can probably get to Oslo from somewhere in Europe for €20 or €30 and see the city the way I did, ie staying in a hostel, using the Oslo Pass and eating sandwiches. The ticket to Stockholm cost around €32. I think the bus to town cost around €20 or a bit more. But that’s it.