2009 September | Kyle Hepp

September 30, 2009

I can’t even get over how old these boats are and how well preserved they’ve stayed. The Viking culture is rich in Scandinavia and Oslo has the three largest of any Viking boats still intact housed in their museum.

The Vikings were extremely advanced people. You wouldn’t believe the tools, clothes, houses that they had. I mean, you’re learning about these people that lived thousands of years ago and the descriptions read things like, “and they ate blueberries and cream as an evening snack.” Ok, the museum just said that they ate blueberries and made their own cream. But STILL. You can imagine them eating that as an evening snack, can’t you?

Anyway, throughout the museum, I still very much got a sense of the how sinister the culture could be.

Love the architecture in this museum too.

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September 29, 2009

Our hotel was “far” away from the city according to trip advisor. The definition of far, is apparently 20 minutes by subway. Are you kidding me?!? In Santiago if someone lives 20 minutes away from you by subway, you call them your next door neighbor

Anyway, the added bonus of our far away hotel was that it was up the foothills a little bit outside the city and the view overlooking Oslo was stunning.

This is the Nobel center. If you can’t read that, it says, “From King to Obama.” I find it interesting that Europeans are very well informed on U.S.American politics and a lot of them even know quite a bit about our history, while we, in general, are extremely ignorant of theirs.

Seba’s in there somewhere.

This was our hotel, lit up at night. No, it wasn’t as fancy as it looks. But, it was the cheapest one we could find in Norway where the Trip Advisor weren’t horrendous — we read a few for hostels with comments like, “The room smelled like feces. Literal feces,” and “Someone peed in my bed. MY BED IS NOT A URINAL!!!” So we decided to forego hosteling it and get the most budget hotel we could find. In Norway, where everything is perfect (except the hostels and people shooting up in the middle of the street in the middle of the day), a budget hotel is this. Amazing. Rooms were nothing fancy but the beds were oh so comfortable, it was clean, and the breakfast was in. sane.

Below is an example of not a budget hotel.

This art exhibit talked to you — in Norwegian, of course, so we couldn’t understand any of it. But we read enough to understand that it was some kind of art for the deaf. Pretty cool.

I know this picture is blurry, but I love it anyway.

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September 28, 2009

If you’re ever traveling in Oslo, Norway, you have GOT to go see this beautiful building. It’s the opera house. I love the modern contrast against the rest of the historic city.

Can you spot the Chilean in this photo?

You can enter the building free of charge, and there’s a tour you can pay for, which takes you behind the stage area, which we didn’t do. Really, all I cared about was the photography. Somebody, please hire me for a photo shoot at this place!!!!!