poundster.com

Day 3: After passing through immigration in Oslo in record time, we descended to the baggage collection hall to find ourselves caught in a seething mass of inbound Norwegians moving as one towards the airport duty free store. “When in Oslo, do as the Oswegians do,” we thought, so we picked up what we thought must be our limit. Meeting us outside, Tim was pretty pleased that we had. Norwegian alcohol taxes are among the highest in the world, and so we’d picked ourselves up one of the few genuine bargains in this superexpensive country. That’s Tim with Kate, holding our tax-free bounty.

Unfortunately, the baggage collection hall did not contain one thing - our baggage. We were going to have to wait until 10pm that night before British Airways finally had it delivered to our hostel.

The first impression that we had after we were spat out from the Oslo Central train station was that, after two days in airport hotels, airports and airplanes, we’d finally arrived, and everything looked so… Norwegian. A cute town square surrounded by stout 19th-century buildings and people passing by on bicycles. After Mumbai, it exuded order and prosperity.

Oslo was also surprisingly multicultural city with people of every character and colour - according to the tourist brochure about 22% out of a city of 538,000 people were immigrants.

The front page of the local tabloid “Dagbladet” (The Daily Sheet) was also revealing of the scandinavian character. The lead story featured the unseemly sight of a local politician climbing out of a swimming pool, butt naked, apparently at somebody’s 50th birthday celebration. According to Tim this photo had been taken weeks ago however the paper had been looking for any opportunity to splash it (again) on the front page - this time in connection with a political contributions row.

Our tourist trip for the day was a boat ride to the Oslo viking ship museum, purpose built to contain 3 viking ships that had been recovered from burial mounds around Norway. We were touched by the explanation in English that “Raping and pillaging were not the only reasons for the Vikings visiting other countries.” We were sure that was of great comfort to the local folks they met in their travels.

From Veggie Friendly: Vegeta Vertshus