Oh Oslo

Have you ever been so frustrated that you are reduced to a crazed laughing fit? Oslo ripped out our souls & trampled them to a standardized pulp. And since its a country and not an actual opposing force, we could do nothing but sit back and decide to simply get thru the day & survive the barrage of horrific bad luck.

But Im not going to expand on all the bad things that happened. In a nutshell: food is ridiculously expensive (imagine paying 15 euro for a cruddy hot dog from 7 Eleven, because thats what we had to do), we missed a once-an-hour train by 10 seconds (literally watched the doors shut in our faces), got locked out of our hotel for 6 hours (when theres a specified check-in time, dont ever get there early), and lost Jons camera (left it on the 12 tram and spent the next hour and a half tracking it down). These are some of the worst things. The lesser things were just bonuses that Oslo decided were totally necessary to our trip. Like the heavy rain the entire weekend, making us move hotel rooms half way thru the night, and to top it all off the sun doesnt even set this time of year! Hell is an eternal day!

But we all agreed that once we were back in Dublin, we started to forget the pain. Like childbirth. Looking back through our photos, we started to remember just the good things: the way fresh pine permeated the air, photo bombing other tourists' pictures in the statue garden, cooking ramen noodles in a hot water kettle in the hotel room to save money. And of course our invented games of rubber-sock-umbrella golf/baseball in the park at midnight, under the gorgeous ever-lit sky. Raw boredom fosters creativity like nothing else can!

The biggest highlight of the entire weekend for us (other than rubber-sock-umbrella golf/baseball of course) was the incredible Norwegian fjords, and the trains getting there. We took the historic Flam Railway, which is said to be the most scenic one in Europe. And we think it truly must be! It starts in the snowy mountains of Myrdal, and takes about an hour to travel slowly back downhill to the town called Flam. On the way down we got to see serene nature, roaring waterfalls, and picturesque valleys. The town Flam itself is graceful in its tourist-trap position in life. At the mouth of Flam is the fjord called Nærøyfjord, on which we took a ferry to the other side.

Being inside the majestic fjords on a slow ferry was heart-stirring. The weather wasnt great for photos, but it was entirely something else in person. The boat ride was a long one, and it took us by innumerable waterfalls along the way. It was freezing cold, and we were the only ones on the boat to stay outside the whole time! We didnt want to waste the once-in-a-lifetime view looking at it all through some foggy glass windowpane.

Every minute I kept expecting & hoping to see a narwhal, or even a mermaid. The bottomless water was a darkly luminous green and navy blue. The carved mountain peaks loomed over us like so many imposing sentinels guarding something precious. The air was cold and clear, and deeply refreshing. Other than our ferry, the only other human life we encountered was a group of (super lucky) people on kayaks. We went away from this place happy to be alive, thankful to be together experiencing what Norway had to offer.

Overall I definitely think this trip was a big helping of bad, with a side dish of good. But sometimes even that little bit of good can be great, and can carry over into the memories that will last forever. We will most likely never go back to Norway, but we are very glad we went at all.