Land of the Vikings, Fjords, Eurovision nil poins and A-ha

Smiling and Screaming
see all photos »

Day 1 - Tuesday 18th August 2009 - Oslo, Norway

I started off my travels with a luxury Ryanair flight from Liverpool to Oslo (Torp) Airport. The airport was in the middle of a forest and I am convinced think that Torp in Norwegian must mean 'miles away from' because it was almost a two hour bus journey to Oslo. It was a nice ride with lots of nice fields of hay with lots of nice red houses. Nice.

I found the main street of Oslo - Karl Johan's Gate - it was lined with pretty buildings and lots of those fellas that are dressed up, stand on boxes and stay still for ages. I would loosely call these characters, 'street entertainers'.

By Royal Appointment
see all photos »

I carried on with hitting the tourist sites - Slottet (The Royal Palace) and Radhuset (The City Hall). I got the impression that the Norweigans like their fountains as they were alot of them knocking about.

I then headed off the Akershus Fortress and Castle - there was not much to see in the place but there were some decent views of the harbour. I then ended up in some military type quarter where they had tank replicas on the street (well I think they were replicas).

One of my guides said that I should check out the remains of a 12th century church.The ruins were only a couple of stones high but more interesting there were loads of teenagers in the place (over 30 of them) who were playing a rather strangedrinking game. Three people would run about 10 metres, turn around a few times or so to get dizzy and then try and run back to where they came from before finally trying to down their beer. The kids were surrounded by loads of off licence carrier bags of beer (and this was a Tuesday evening so who says that Britain has a teenage drink problem - we have nothing on these Viking kids).

Viking Drinking Games in the Park
see all photos »

Day 2 - Oslo - Wednesday 19th August 2009

At breakfast, I got talking to the waiter who told me that he was the Iranian No 3 at snooker and he was looking to go to a snooker academy in London in the next few weeks. I told him that I wasn't convinced as to whether London had a snooker academy.Hopefully, his snooker is better than his english or he won't last two minutes on the mean snooker streets of London.

Started off the day with a short walk to the Munch Musset (Munch Museum) for a look at the famous The Scream. Whilst the other pictures in the museum, which was basically a gallery, were a little impressive, I fully expected the rest of the peoplethere to be hanging around The Scream. However, most people simply gave it a quick look so I felt a tad embarrassed to ask someone to take my picture by the side of it. I am now more embarrassed that I smiled in the picture rather than putting on a ridicuous screaming face.

It's a boat, it's long and was used by vikings ....a viking longboat
see all photos »

And then off to catch a short ferry to the Bygdoy peninsula where all the viking museums are located. I did not have the time (or the inclination to part with lots of cash) so I only went to the Vikingskipshuset which had the remains of three Viking long ships. Pretty impressive stuff and rather cool.

After a short ferry cross the Oslofjorden (Gerry and his pacemakers would neverhave had chart success if they'd been born in Oslo), I was back in the main part of Oslo. I just had the time spare to take a tram to Vigelandsparkland (Vigeland Sculpture Park). I did not read the signs about Vigeland who designed the park but Igot the feeling the dude liked his naked statures as they were everywhere - lining bridges, holding up foundations and surrounding monoliths (made up of naked people). Men, women, children and babies - Vigeland does not discriminate when it comes to putting his naked statures in normal, strange or downright weird positions.

Operatastic - Oslo's cool Opera House
see all photos »

And that was the end of my Norwegian leg as I caught the overnight ferry to Copenhagen.

And the results of the Adrian McGurk jury - Norveige ....sept poin.