May 24 & 25: Leaving Moss & a day spent walking through Oslo
In its advertising material, Moss is
referred to as “the pearl of the fjord”, and I’m inclined to believe it. The island is beautiful and green and
surrounded by ocean. The train from Moss to Oslo takes less than an hour and
travels through lush pine forests and small villages dotted with bright red and
yellow houses. The train is very clean
and feels more like an airplane than the trains in Melbourne. So far, Norway looks not dissimilar to
Scotland, but has a distinctly different feel.
There’s magic here, but it’s a very different kind.
We slept in a little, and sat in the garden
outside the annex to polish off the homemade breads and jams that Heidi had
prepared. It was brisk outside, and the
sky was flat with colour – a single shade of pale grey. A large bird was perched in the tree above
us, keeping an eye on us as we ate.
We had just finished packing our bags when
Stig came down to let us know we should leave for the train, and he drove us
down, giving us suggestions for fjords to visit on the Hurtigruten (and
teaching us the proper pronunciation of Hurtigruten). It wasn’t long before we arrived in Oslo,
caught a tantalizing glimpse, but had to head to Majorstuen, which is where
were staying.
Our apartment in Majorstuen
When people say that Norway is expensive,
what they mean to say is, things are
exorbitantly expensive in Norway. A
short trip to the grocery store had us, faces fallen, looking at a tube of
dried spaghetti for something like $4AUD.
We didn’t even let ourselves look at sweets, but quickly hurried back
home.
There was a lot of planning left to do of
our jaunt in the fjords (by a lot, I mean that we had done absolutely no
planning), so we set up with the computer and the Lonely Planet guide to find
some inspiration. My note to fellow
travellers is this: Don’t think you’re being smart and avoiding the tourists by
coming to Norway in June instead of high summer. Just come in high summer. This is especially pertinent if you don’t
have a car and/or want to do anything outdoorsy. We toyed with the notion of hiring a car for
a few days, but quickly found this blew our budget out of the water. The hikes we wanted to do slipped away, as
the tourist buses only ran there in the peak season, and it would take days out
of our schedule to do the necessary bus trips.
We had to re-evaluate.
We were still tired when we woke the next
morning (we had been up considering our options for far too long), but we made
breakfast and head into Oslo town. We
took a slow, meandering walk that led us past palaces and gardens and
parks. Oslo have got the right idea when
it comes to public sculpture and waterfalls and flowers. There’s generally an air of city magic as you
walk through the parks. We got all the
way down to the Botanical Gardens, but it was Monday, so the Natural History Museums
were closed. We sat and had a packed
lunch surrounded by happy children and families, as it was a public holiday.
Sipping our soup in an herb garden, I plucked fresh mint and basil and thyme from the ground and ate them all up, hoping it was safe to do so. We were heading back toward home when we stopped by a Middle Eastern grocery store with (almost) Australian-priced fruit and vegetables, so we popped in there to pick up bulk bananas, potatoes, tomatoes and cauliflower for the few days ahead of us. Walking home the long way, we went past lots of Norwegian street art and through even more parks to home.
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