After a deeply satisfying, albeit pillowless sleep, I woke up to the pouring rain. Welcome to Oslo. Thankfully, by the time we left the hostel, the rain had stopped.
We stopped at a café and had delicious chocolate banana Muesli bars for breakfast. The café was dedicated to Sri Chinmoy, and I picked up a calling card with the following quote on it:
"Your mind has
A flood of questions.
There is but one teacher
Who can answer them.
Who is the teacher?
Your silence-loving heart."
I don't know anything about him, but I thought that was an interesting way to start my morning.
On Eirik's instructions, we started our day at the Royal Palace and took an obligatory photo with the guards. Eirik had told us to rush them to see what would happen, but I think we made the right call in opting out of that. We had a conversation with the guard apologizing for being those awkward tourists and he smiled and seemed like he was at least not annoyed with us. Eirik told us that a guard could have up to 50 000 photos taken of them during their conscription.
"How would you even deal with that job? You just stand for five hour shifts doing nothing and putting up with annoying people all day."
"I would shoot the tourists."
Somewhat ironically, our next stop was the Nobel Peace Museum. I objected to paying for peace (I don't remember what it cost to get into the museum, but it was too much) so we took photos in the souvenir shop at the exit.
This actually made me so mad. They don't tell you what the funds from these purchases go to, so as far as anyone knows they are appropriating peace for a profit. And side note: roughly speaking, the concept of economy is closely linked with war. I'm oversimplifying, but I'd recommend watching this video. The hypocrisy of this whole thing makes me so frustrated. Not to mention the European Union just won the Peace Prize. And these people. I would apologize for being all serious, but Martin Luther King, Jr said: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter," and I think that real peace matters.
We walked further down the pier and found a peace flame with a statue of Sri Chinmoy, so that was cool. The sun came out while we were there so we walked around the harbour and took some photos. (Danielle took some photos). I was confused by the number of statues of naked women. It just seems strange that they would be naked in a climate that gets so cold. I couldn't wrap my head around it.
On the opposite side of the harbour, there was a military academy/fortress. We didn't really know what it was at the time, but we found a low rooftop bathed in sunlight and decided to lie down for a while to soak it in. Us Northerners need all the vitamin D we can get! We heard back from our Oslo host while we there and told us we should meet him at the tram stop later on. The tram cost us 50 NOK, which is more than 5 euros and we only went two stops. We were so angry that we hadn't opted to walk.
We met Einar at the tram stop, and he walked us back to his apartment. He told us that he teaches pre-school. We could tell already that he was super nice. He started to make dinner for us and had us read through his guestbook of previous Couchsurfers that had visited him. They all mentioned great "surprises" and we were curious to see what would happen.
Our first surprise was a rendition of the Canadian anthem in English. We were surprised by how nice it was to hear it... we started singing along. He played it again and we sang the French version for him. We felt very patriotic.
Dinner was hot dogs on cheese buns and a bowl of chocolate after which Einar and I had a lively conversation about hockey. It turns out that Derek Engelland from the Pittsburgh Penguins (my team) is playing in Norway during the NHL lockout and that he had been in Oslo the previous night, but had gone back to another city. I was so excited. I was even more excited when he told me he had authentic jerseys and equipment. His jerseys belonged to Tessa Bonhomme, one of the female Canadian Olympians (who has an excellent name) and his gloves and helmet belonged to Erik Gudbranson, a Canadian World Junior player. We watched hockey-related Youtube videos on his Apple TV (all these Scandinavians are so technologically advanced). I promise I've never met a non-Canadian who loves Canadian as much - if not more - than a real Canadian.
We showed him this video and he was thrilled:
His style of hosting was very different from Andreas and Daniel, but it was good in a different way. We were really his guests, where we'd sort of been like temporary flatmates with the others. We felt a bit spoiled. We showered and he insisted that we sleep in his bed. It was the most comfortable bed ever.
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