Alt for Norge

It's 5:40 am here in London. The sun doesn't rise until 7:33 am, and (hopefully) Hillary will have been here for about 30 minutes by then. I leaving for Heathrow shortly to pick her up and bring her back to school with me, then going to my class then showing her around the city for the rest of the day (and letting her get some sleep and shower at some point).

Norway... was... AMAZING!! I always wanted to go to Norway, but it always looked a little too much like New Hampshire to me. But truly it is an absolutely beautiful country. Oslo is such a wonderful city, the architecture clearly has some very Eastern influences, the people are all so friendly and willing to help and it's easy to get around on public transportation or even just walking.

And it wasn't even that cold.

Our hostel was in the red light district, but it wasn't even that bad. There was a strip club a few doors down that we had to walk past every night, but everyone was friendly. Even the prostitutes on the corner were friendly. One night we saw someone passed out in the crosswalk right in front of the hostel, and promptly ran up to the hostel to watch his friends and passers-by get him into an ambulance. Practically no one goes out during the day in Norway, everyone waits until the sun sets (and it sets early in the winter) and then they go out and get pissed beyond recognition. We stayed away from the bars and the clubs, because Norwegians can get pretty wild when they've been drinking.

I've honestly never laughed so hard in my life. My stomach is literally in pain from laughing at my friends so much. There were seven of us, and we would go back to the hostel and sit in our room, which was this narrow hallway of a room with two bunk beds (we had two rooms all together) and just laugh and laugh for hours.

On Saturday, which was our only full day, we went to Vigeland Park, which is the statue park with the huge fallice. We got up early and it was a very crisp morning, but when we were there the sun was just coming up. The roses are still budding, some are even blooming, just like they are here, making me think maybe the flowers are just confused because of the bizarre summer weather we all had.

We saw Akershus, which is the old Castle and Fortress right in the middle of Oslo fjord. We watched the sunset from the battlements of Akershus, taking in the beauty of Norway. We also saw the Nobel Peace Center! It's so cool to be able to say that we've been there!

We went to the Oslo National Gallery and saw Edvard Munch's The Scream among many other very famous pieces. I believe that the National Gallery is the most robbed art museum in the world, and if you even breathed on a painting the wrong way an alarm went off. My friend actually TOUCHED a painting, because it was "shiny," like a fool, and the security guards came running like she was actually going to walk off with it.

Norway (particularly Oslo, and I'm guessing the other major cities like Bergen) is an extremely expensive country. It's one of the wealthiest countries in the world (who says socialism doesn't work?), and also one of the healthiest with one of the highest standards of living. They tax the hell out of you though, and don't even get me started on kroner. I nearly wept when I went to the ATM as soon as we got there and my options were anything between 500 and 2000 kroner (which is approximately 50 and 200 USD).


This is us, getting ready to leave Norway, taking our last picture in front of the Opera House


The inner view of the Viking Ship


A ship from The Viking Ship Museum


Oslo at Sunset


Sunset


Sunet over the docks


The Nobel Peace Center


In front of the Royal Palace


The Royal Palace


Vigeland statue Park


Being a creep


Angry dancing baby?


My obsession with flowers


And again

It was nice to see the country my father's father left behind. I hope I get to go back some day soon.

I may not be back here for a while (or I may be back every day, it depends on what we do). Hillary and I celebrate our one year anniversary this Friday, in Paris. We leave Thursday afternoon and return Saturday evening, then Hillary leaves back for the states on Sunday. If I drop off the face of the Earth for a week, have a great week, everyone out there!

British Museum

If there is any one place in London that would cause me to want to stay here permanently, it would be the British Museum.

I remember going to the National Gallery every day for the first few weeks we were here, like I was trying to become one with the paintings or something hah. The whole time everyone kept telling me I needed to get over to see the British Museum.

But it's "the British Museum." Sometimes I don't even know why I'm IN England. The English weren't particularly nice to my ancestors, and quite frankly they weren't very nice to anyone's ancestors. I really have no interest in learning about the history of a people who managed to rape and pillage and decimate entire populations of people on almost every single continent (and who continue to do so even to this day...). Moving on though.

Eventually I made my way to the British Museum. Let me just say, it is NOT a museum about everything British. It's basically a HUGE building filled with random collections of artifacts, sarcophigi, pieces of architecture, totem poles, tribal dress, etc. etc. from all over the world. When you first walk up to the building, you are immediately awe-struck by its sheer massiveness. It looks like an ancient Greek temple, it doesn't look at all like it belongs plopped in the middle of London.

This is the top of the entrance, I need to try to get it at a better angle, I took this picture the first time I went and I was all fumbly with excitement.



Then you get inside and you're confronted with these massive triagular windows on the ceiling. It's simply incredible, the amount of light flowing everywhere. It is HUGE, both inside and out. It's not a museum you can see in one day, so good thing it's free! This is the main area, which apparently used to be a green but is now a lot of things (anything but green though).



These are some bearded men. They look kind of like the statues with the glowy eyes from The Never Ending Story Shows you how much I paid attention whilst walking through the museum. It's a knowledge overload.



I do remember that these were taken from the Parthenon. The Greek parts of the museum are ASTONISHING (not that the rest of the museum isn't...)



And this is the Rosetta stone! Cool huh??



We went to the British Museum today for my Renaissance Art class to see the Prints and Drawings room where they have the sketches of such famous Renaissance men as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, etc. It was AMAZING to see their sketches up close, not behind glass or anything. They're very protective of the sketches, don't get me wrong, but the room is intimate, only something like 10-15 people are let in at a time, and it's a HUGE library-like room, with lots of workers bustling around cataloguing things, but it's so quite and it's like it's just you and the Renaissance. It's really very beautiful.

I do love it here, a lot. I was walking home from the museum today, alone, and I thought to myself "Self, I don't think I've ever felt quite so alone in my whole life," but it's not a bad kind of alone. It's like being totally and utterly alone on a distant planet, away from all other people and life, but it's okay because you have you and your thoughts and your imagination. I probably feel like that because the people in London are so unfriendly, they can't even be bothered to say "hello" or even to make eye contact. But it's nice, this alone-ness. I think I might just miss it when I go home.

This is my "I'm so happy to be in London" face :)



If I don't post tomorrow or Friday, have a lovely weekend world! I'm off to Norway to become one with my inner Viking. I think I'll start going by Rachel the Red hahaha