It was so good - Norwegian Wood

My favorite thing about Europe:

If you bump into an acquaintance Monday morning and say, "hey, man! What did you do this weekend?" they may perfectly well respond with, "oh, nothing special... just went to [insert fabulous country here]."

You: "how was your weekend, Franni?'

Me: "Pretty good... just went to Norway. nbd."

Steven, Emily (herendeen), Caitlin and I decided to leave the Copenhagen shuffle for two nights and see the rest of Scandinavia. Both Steven and Caitlin are 1/4 Norwegian, so they were very interested in 'getting  back to their roots.' Off we went to Oslo.

Now, my family believes in very long car trips. Basically, if there is no ocean, we will drive there. Before 2008, I think I had only been on a plane 4 times. This whole "get to another country in under 2 hours" thing is crazy to me. But the plane ride from Copenhagen to Oslo was only about 55 minutes - I didn't even finish the episode of "Degrassi" I was watching on my iPod!

From my experiences with hostel culture, they are very very rarely in nice neighborhoods. For instance, when asking for directions at 'Le Village' in Paris, I received the following information: "take a right, and you will be at Sacre Coeur. Take a left... actually, just don't go left."

Well, our hostel was in Oslo's red light district. Right smack in the middle of it. (You didn't know Oslo had a red light district? Neither did we.) The place was nice, though; we had a private room with ridiculously comfy beds and a TV/DVD player. But when we tried to go out and explore on Friday night, all we found was hookers and falafel. We only tried the latter, but it was delicious.

The next morning, after dragging Steven out of bed (which took more effort than you would imagine), we went to the museums at Bygdøy. The Vikingskiphuset (Viking Ship House) was really baller. They had a fully-intact Viking boat, along with 2 burial boats and lots of crazy Viking paraphernalia, such as axes, sleds, statues and the like. There were even scraps of textiles from the Eastern villages that they plundered. It was amazing how much remained after over 1000 years.

Viking museum

Ship
Tools
Leather boots. How are they still intact???

After that, I dragged the group to the Norse Folkmuseum, which was described in the guidebooks as "a living textbook of Norwegian culture." I cajoled my friends into "at least an hour" there. 3 hours later, we decided we had finally seen it all.

The Folkmuseum is like a Scandinavian Old Sturbridge Village, with replicas of old farmhouses and people in costume doing old fashioned-y things, like milking cows or brewing beer. Since it is so close to Christmas, the place was all decked out with vendors and music and dancing Santas. It had snowed the night before and the entire place was a true Winter Wonderland. Take a look:

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the Oslo theater district, taking lots of pictures. It was pitch black outside, and we were hungry and found a cute Indian restaurant awkwardly located on top of a Burger King. It seemed kind of dead for dinnertime. Then we looked at the clock. It was 4PM. Oh right, we are in the friggin' Arctic. No matter, afternoon snack/dinner was really tasty and we wound up staying inside the toasty restaurant for several hours.

Forgot to mention that:

Norway is COLD. Like, colder than Boston. By a lot. Its not a windy, blustery cold; its a bone-chilling thing. Under the scarves and the turtlenecks and the leggins and the jeans and fur-lined boots and hat and mittens cold. I don't know how that works, but it does. Brr. Denmark felt tropical compared to that nonsense.

But the landscape is gorgeous. We kept finding children's books to compare it to. "Noway looks like Narnia!" "These woods are like the Secret Garden!" Personally, it reminded me of what I imaged the universe in "The Golden Compass" looked like when I read those books as a kid. Cigaze. right? Wasn't that the name? With all the snow and polar bears...

Sunday we went to the Gustave Vigeland sculpture park to frolic and giggle at the overly-sexual nature of the sculptures. Then we got hot chocolate. Next the National Museum, which has an amazing Edvard Munch collection and saw his most famous work, "The Scream." I liked the Munch-s more than I had anticipated, especially his self-portrait. Then we got hot chocolate. Afterwards, we visited the Akershus fortress and got a spectacular panorama of Oslo. Then - guess what? - we got hot chocolate. (What did you expect? It was balls cold!) We did a little shopping, had supper, and caught our flight back to Copenhagen.

Vigeland
See what I mean? That shit was weird!
...Weird, but beautiful...

Busy weekend. I would like to go back to Norway in the summertime, particularly the fjords up in Bergen. That would be beautiful. But I'm really glad we saw it around Christmas. This was exactly what I had hoped Scandinavia would look and feel like!

Hold Up, Wait a Minute

I am a firm believer in the gospel of Willy Wonka. And I quote the Good Book when I say, "so much time, so little to do! Wait, strike that. Reverse it."

My plane leaves Copenhagen airport at 12:20 on the 17th. I have only just now realized how much I need to get done before I leave, so I will be hitting a museum/monument/place of note a day until that time comes.

Studying abroad is strange, because you are not a tourist, not yet a local. There is a limited time to see and do anything, yet you don't feel pushed like you do on vacation to get out every morning. Although I have done a LOT in CPH (read the blog if you don't believe me! Plus other things that I forgot to mention), I have missed a couple of necessities. The next few days will be spent remedying that. Plus studying for finals. Plus packing. Plus eating at St. Petes every day so I can experience the 12kroner special in sequence. That is a necessity.

Today was the National Museum Day. The National Museum is HUGE, dense with artifacts from the Stone Age to the Baroque period. You can't possibly absorb it all, but that didn't stop me from trying! I found the sections on thoughts, beliefs, religion and mysticism the most interesting. Cro-magnon man had imagination, as evidenced by the fantastic cave drawings. Huh. Who knew?

The Prehistoric section was crammed with various tools and weapons and jewelry and skeletons. There was gigantic elk skeleton that was weirdly well-preserved, thanks to a peat bog which was so gnarly. My favorite part was the photos of burial mounds and funerary caves, along with skeletons of people from various social positions. This is probably due to the fact that I just read that book about dead people, but it was still fascinating. Why did prehistoric man do such things? What was the point? How did burying or burning the dead become a global practice? Why didn't they just, I don't know, throw them in the river or something? Food for thought, people. Food for thought.

Next I visited the replicas of 18th century interiors. Frankly, once you've seen Versailles, you've seen every fancy Baroque/Neoclassical residence. It was still amazing and beautiful, though, especially after the Stone Age stuff. I find it so unbelievable that man felt the need to create social institutions. Walking around the fancy dining area, I couldn't help but wonder, who invented "manners"? How did we go from Neanderthals ripping apart the freshly-killed moose to, I dunno, Puritans? Why? I know we have evolved, but what does that mean? Are we always moving up, or have we gone laterally in some respects?

Anachronistically, I checked out the Middle Ages section afterwards. There was an odd clock with a mechanism that pulled a stone upwards every minute or so. Gears clicked with the seconds, but I couldn't figure out the hours. There were lots of creepy Jesuses and icons all over the place, so I didn't spend too much time in the Church rooms (read: most of the exhibit), but I did learn a fun new tidbit: Did you know that some people believe in the Virgin Mary's mother, Anna? Apparently, Anna married 3 times and had 3 different daughters, all named Mary. Each Mary had children, so Jesus had a few cousins running around. There were reliefs of Anna and her family on the walls of several churches at the time, a few of which are now in the museum.

I really need to learn more about Christianity. I think I am pretty knowledgable about the basic tenets and stories, but reading more about it would absolutely enhance my understanding of world history, art and literature. Any book suggestions? (Besides the Bible. I don't think I'm ever going to find the motivation to hunker down with the King James for a relaxing evening of reading)

After the museum, I wandered around the area by the canals between Kongens Nytorv and Christianshavn. I got a hot dog from one of the pølser carts. (Copenhageners take their hot dogs very seriously: if you order one 'with everything,' you will receive ketchup, spicy mustard, remoulade, chopped onions, fried onions, pickles and - sometimes - honey mustard dressing. Its ridiculous, messy and makes your breath reek , but very tasty) Copenhagen really is a beautiful city, different than any other place I've been. It has more charm. I think that's it. It's very charming and quaint, with the lovely, colorful buildings and canals. The cobblestones don't even bother my feet anymore! How strange it will be to come back to the rowhouses of Boston...

Tomorrow, I'm taking myself out on the town all day. I plan to visit many of the free art museums and do some shopping. In the evening, we are having supper at Norrebro Bryghus and then drinks at Bar Celona. It should be a classy and cosmopolitan affair with lots of hygge. A perfectly Euro 21st. Dejligt.