A notoriously expensive but famously beautiful country, Norway is paradise for those who are seeking wilderness, inspiration and adventure.
A notoriously expensive but famously beautiful country, Norway is paradise for those who are seeking wilderness, inspiration and adventure.
On my recent visit to Oslo, they bragged that they were no longer the world’s most expensive city. That might be the case, but Oslo is still a
ridiculously overpriced city for anyone not from Oslo. For that matter, Norway is pretty expensive on
the whole. Can you visit this beautiful
city if you’re travelling on a budget?
On Wednesday morning, we woke to more chats
with Roger, and shared some smoothies and juices with him. He’d concocted a pretty delicious juice of
apple, lemon, ginger, avocado and banana, which he called “the elixir of
youth”. He looks pretty good, so I’ll
take his word for it.
On the morning of May 26, we still hadn’t
met Roger, the man whose AirBnB we were currently staying at. When we arrived, his mother had let us in,
and he hadn’t been home at all the past two nights. We ran into him over breakfast this morning,
though, looking particularly well-styled for so early. Nicholas picked his brain for tips about
hiking and walking, and he referred us to Norway’s DNT. He was quickly off and about, though, and
left us to our banana smoothies and roasted breakfast tomatoes.
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.
Frantic packing, frantic organising and a
hurried breakfast preceded a very brisk walk to Buchanan Bus Station. Going via the post office, we sent off some
OS maps to Craig, feeling he would make better use of them than we would. I also sent him my book of Scottish folklore,
filled with pressed flowers because I worried they wouldn’t be let into
Australia.
