A Great Good Time in Oslo

Many moons ago now, when I was in my senior year of college at USC, I had the pleasure of taking a film class with renown critic Leonard Maltin. The class enjoyed legendary status on the 'SC campus. In the class you got to pre-screen movies before their release in theaters. After the movie was over, someone involved in the production of the film would be present to talk about it and take Q&A. Previous classes had been graced by the presence of the likes of Al Pacino and others. Our semester had no such luck in terms of star power. Why am I rambling on about a film class I took nearly 10 years ago on a blog about my travels through Scandinavia? Well, I learned one very important lesson in that class. I vividly remember Prof. Maltin talking to us about the importance of expectations in movie-watching. If you go into a movie with high expectations and it turns out to be just so-so, you often walk away thinking that it was awful. By the same token, if you go in expecting the film to be terrible and it turns out to be so-so, you walk out of it with an overly positive impression.

In the 10 years or so since I took that class, I've found that Prof. Maltin's insight into movie-going applies well beyond the cinema and over the last couple days, I found that it certainly applied to my experience with Oslo. After reading up on Oslo over the last few months, and consulting friends who have lived or traveled through Scandinavia, I had arrived at the conclusion that there wasn't much reason to be excited about Oslo. I actually made a case to my mother that we should just skip it entirely on our itinerary for the Great Scandinavian Adventure. She resisted and, in the end, we're both glad that she did.

I have to say that Oslo didn't exactly impress on first sight. I had expected Oslo to be the worst of what capital cities can offer - lots of bureaucracy, boring architecture, little flavor. Flavor it certainly had. Within a few steps of our journey from the train station to our hostel it felt like we might as well be in Dar es Salaam, instead of Oslo. It was a bit overwhelming after the homogeneity of Scandinavia, but it also fit with the standard ghettoization of ethnic communities that we had seen throughout our trip.

We made it to our hostel exhausted after a lengthy but spectacular train trip from Bergen to Oslo (which I'll get into later, this being a postmodern blog and all). We wandered around the surrounding neighborhood of Grunnerloka (I'm pretty sure I butchered the spelling there), which was decidedly hip for Oslo, but lacked depth shall we say. There were plenty of cool looking shops, bars, restaurants, but not nearly enough given Oslo's overall size. We finished our walk relatively non plussed and returned back to our room to finish off what was left of the amazing fish that we had bought from the quay-side market in Bergen, which mind you was delicious.

The next day, we woke up and got out on the town around 10 in the morning, which is early for us on this trip. We stopped briefly at a Salvation Army in our neighborhood which, according to our Lonely Planet guide, was the place where all the best donations where siphoned. That turned out to be true, but the idea of paying $20 for a shirt from Salvation Army proved to be a turnoff. Undeterred, we wandered into the heart of Oslo. I had charted out a route for us that ran along King Johans Gate (the main pedestrian/shopping thoroughfare), past the royal palace (which was also relatively unimpressive) in search of what the guidebook claimed to be the best bakery in Norway. After some searching, we found the bakery/cafe tucked away down a side street in the diplomatic section of Oslo. We had probably the best cup of coffee of our trip to Norway and some great pastries.

The weather had turned out to be just perfect, with temps in the upper 60s and barely any clouds. It was the first time that we had been able to go out with out layering up in about a week and it felt so good. After a leisurely coffee and pastry we wandered back along the plotted course for the day, which took us down to the waterfront. We checked out the Nobel Peace Museum and decided that we did not have $25 to invest in peace on that particular day. Instead, we walked over to the adjacent City Hall, where they actually award the Nobel Peace Prize and which does not charge for admission. It turned out to be one of our best decisions of the day. The main hall is cavernous and is almost completely surrounded with very impressive murals that depict Norway's history and culture.

After ogling the art, we made our way towards the opera house, which we had been told was a can't miss. Along the way we passed by a fortress along the waterfront and discovered that the state television network was sponsoring a World Cup match watching space that featured stadium seating and a giant screen. We couldn't go in just then on account of the bottle of red wine we had just bought but decided that we should come back for the evening match. We then made our way down to the opera house that did not disappoint. It was designed by a Norwegian architect and it features a slanted roof that people are free to walk on all the way to the top of the building. I'm not doing it justice here, but I promise to post photos later that will demonstrate just how unique a structure it is.

Once we were done ogling the opera house, we walked back to our hostel and picked up some pretty good Thai food from a takeaway joint down the street, which we brought back to our room with the bottle of red wine. After a stop at an internet cafe, we walked back down to the fortress for the evening match between Spain and Honduras. The game itself was pretty mediocre and the result was never really in doubt (Spain ultimately won 2-0) but we had the best time there. There had to be about 8,000 people there and in very good spirits. It made for great people watching (including the conclusive experience for my latest post on Scandinavian trends). One of the most interesting aspects of the people watching was seeing just how diverse the crowd was. It really was the first time that we had seen white Scandinavian folk hanging out with people from ethnic immigrant communities. That's not to say that it was a Benetton ad, but there were definitely social groups that included people from all backgrounds and people from different groups were comingling quite happily. It also represented one of the few times on this trip where we were able to be in a social atmosphere with locals, which as mainly been related to the cost factor (to be taken up in a later post). All in all, it made for the end of a great full day in Oslo.

The momentum carried into our last few hours in Oslo this morning. I got up to go for a run along a path that wound alongside a small stream that runs through the city. I picked up the path not far from our hostel and ran away from the city center curious to see what some of the further out communities might look like. I dodged the occasional biker on his or her morning commute while I ran up a series of steep hills. Alongside me was a series of waterfalls and dams that had been used in earlier years to power mills on the other side of the stream. It was a beautiful atmosphere and exactly what I needed for a little peaceful exercise before getting on a train in the early afternoon.

When I got back from my run, we packed up our things, stored our bags in the hostel and made our way over to the National Gallery. We had mainly decided to go to see the original version of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" but quickly found that there was more to the collection than just the one classic. A great deal of the paintings were nice, but were also derivative of the great masters that the Norwegian artists had clearly gone to Paris, Berlin and other places to study. But there were a few pieces by Munch and others that really were quite stunning and they were really quite captivating. The museum itself wasn't much to write home about (even though I'm doing that now), but it certainly did the trick.

Sitting in Gothenberg, Sweden at the end of a travel day, I have to say that it really was worth spending the time in Oslo. Which brings me back to Prof. Maltin's lesson on expectations. Objectively speaking, none of the experiences we had in Oslo could be listed in the superlative. We've seen more beautiful cities on this trip. We've eaten more delicious pastries. We've walked down far more beautiful avenues. But given our expectations going in and what we encountered and the gorgeous weather, I think we have both come away a little charmed by Oslo.

So, that's my story for today and I'm sticking to it. It's nearly midnight here and I think I'm going to walk back over to our room to call it a day. Hope this finds everyone back home well and I'll write more soon!