Norway - Day 1, Oslo

The central station in Oslo is a very huge place. The railway station is a combination of two buildings. One, the old railway station which today, is a mall. It has high cielings and cieling fans (we got excited when we saw them). Two, the new railway station which is a high tunnel like structure. If you look at it from outside the building as a modernistic feel compared to the rest of the buildings around it. In the square outside the railway station is a huge bronze tiger, looking ferociously at the passers by.

We started walking the streets of Oslo and I must say it is a beautiful city. We walked past some lovely buildings. We walked past a horde of fountains with many statues around , A little further we saw the storting, which is the norwegian parliament. It is a magnificient building with a lot of parks around it. Lovely rose bushes(??) surrounded the building. The storting is a magnificient structure and we ended up spending quite some time posing for photographs around the place.
The we walked around town checking out the map arguing over which way to go and which place to see. We got the oslo university and the royal palace mixed up. But then we've seen both and now we know which is which. :)

The garden(?) surrounding the royal palace is very beautiful. and the best picture taken there was ratna jumping high in the air. It took three cameras to capture the moment but then the photograph is lovely. Speaking of photographs all three girls wore really bright colors that day, I was in red, Ratna in orange and Maithra in blue, the effect was wonderful. We have some lovely pictures.

It started drizzling after a while and we still had to see the aker castle. I don't know if it was because of the number of tourists around or if oslo is more like Hyderabad, but people really dont care about traffic signals there. They just WALK. Coming from Helsinki, we were a little too concsious of the traffic signals :). There are a lot of people who look like Indians in oslo. Dunno which country they come from.

Next we went to the aker castle, It was a sprawling place and reminded us of soumenlinna island in Finland. We sat down in the grass for sometime and it was really rejuvenating. Ratna wanted to jump off a high wall but Mohan did not allow her to :P

We decided to skip visiting the city hall , but since it was an important place(This is where the nobel peace prize is given), we walked past it and took a couple of snaps. By that time we were totally tired and hungry and set about looking for a place where we could find veggie food. I must mention about Ratna's stamina here. She was on a fast (no food no water) for more than 24 hours and you should really see her energy to believe. So we ate something at burger king, me parvez and maithra (KFC fans) tried a crisp chicken burger but it was nowhere close to the zinger (why doesn't somebody open KFC in the nordic countries ?) . Maithra also posed for some photographs with some stone chickens (she loves chicken :P)
There were statues of short little ugly guys dunno what they are called(trolls). but they reminded me of myself. so I posed for a pic with one :)
We returned back to the railway station to collect tickets for the fjord trip and then we realised there was an indian restaurant in the station whose menu fit perfectly in our budget. We decided to have our lunch here when we return to oslo. And that was where Mohans obsession with chana masala started.

While outside the station a funny incident happened. Ratna was taking a picture of all of us when a really drunk/stoned guy snatched the camera from her hand and said I'll take the snap you go stand in the group. She coolly gave him the cam and joined us. All of us were worried that he would runaway with the cam. We were telling her in hindi to take the cam immediately after he takes the snap. He took another snap and then another equally dazed friend of his came over and started taking a look at the pic. They were really drunk and were asking us where we came from. When we said India they became even more happy and started going on and on about how India is a lovely country and how the food is good and the capital is 'mumbai' (Maithra corrected them but they were too drunk to notice) . They were poor harmless guys but we were all so worried about the cam that we could not really enjoy the conversation. (except for ratna who's cam it was. She was pretty cool about the whole thing)

We then boarded the train to Bergen. The coaches were beautiful. there were two seats on either side of the aisle. Every one was provided with a blanket, eye patch, ear plugs and a pillow. The journey was supposed to be beautiful so we had no plans of sleeping. We just talked around for a while. And then we simply nodded off.
I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night and the train was passing through some beautiful mountains , I stared at it for sometime and then nodded off again. And that was how I (in fact, all of us) spent the rest of the journey. We would nod off, wake up to find something really beautiful, try to stay awake and fall asleep again. The train passed through snow capped mountains and wide expanses of snow. It was a wonderful sight and left me wondering if I was dreaming at times. Ratna captured a lovely snap at about three in the morning. It was almost mid summer which meant there was no sunset. So we were able to enjoy most of the views without worrying about the dark.
There were two girls sitting beside us who were giggling non stop. And all of us were wondering why? And one of us was snoring. And there was a 4 day debate on who it was.
And after six hours , we had reached our destination. BERGEN, the city of rain.

Norway - Day 1, Beginning the journey

No better way to start the blog than my trip to 'The land of the midnight sun'. Norway is known for the fjords and the first one I saw left me speechless. Officially the Kingdom of Norway, it is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty.

Friday, 19th June 2009 was declared a holiday for midsummer's eve. For us that meant a loooong weekend. So we (Me, Ratna, Maithra, Parvez, Amit and Mohan) decided to take off on a trip to Norway.

We Started from Helsinki on Thursday 18th June. By metro from Ruohalahti to Hakaniemi and Airport shuttle from there. That journey itself should have been an indication of how tired we would get in the whole trip. The bus was jam packed and we had to stand all the way to the airport. There are very pretty houses in vantaa and pretty landscapes too. On the way we suddenly realised that the flight was at 4:10 and not 4:30 and we were already late. Thankfully we reached the airport on time and managed to check in. During the security check a corkscrew was unearthed from my bag (I dint know it was there) I gave it to the security guy as a token of love :P .

The journey from Helsinki to Oslo was a little more than an hour and the time difference was also an hour. We already started discussing our next trip(Italy) during the flight.We were served cheeseburgers as a snack which ratna could not eat as she was fasting(more on this later). We landed in Oslo at 4:10 pm :)and took off to the city centre in a bus (140 NOKs :O ). We got to see some beautiful sights on the way. It was drizzling slightly and the grass around looked lush green. We got down at the Oslo city bus stop to collect our tickets to bergen and the round trip to flam from bergen.

Hello

In the past one year I have seen so many places that I never thought I would. And when I look back at some of the pictures, I go 'Wait a minute. Was I really there??' I worry at times that I would forget the journeys and the locales. Another thought was that it would really be nice for people who cannot visit these places.

So, 'travel with me.. ' and let us see the world..