Tuesday morning we took the train from Vestby to Oslo to avoid tricky parking and inner-city driving and the toll you always have to pay when you enter bigger cities in Norway – quite annoying and sometimes difficult (more on that later). Anyway, we caught up with my Norwegian/German friend Steffen at the train station and took a stroll up to the palace to watch the changing of the guard, what they were taking very serious.| See the pictures
Then we headed down to the habour where former dockyards accommodate now nice (and expensive) cafes and shopping centres. Steffen was really helpful explaining various historical backgrounds to us. Another location on our way was the fortification from where you have a nice view over the habour.
With the train we then went up to the famous landmark of Oslo, the ski jump Holmenkollen. In summer, festivals take place instead of ski jumping but it’s still a very impressing building.
On the way back we passed the famous Vigland Sculpture Park in Oslo where the artist Vigland had carved lots of interesting and sometimes ugly statues. After that cultural impression Steffen took us to one of the student centres where you can get pretty cheap food and beer (at least proportionately to the rest of Oslo) – and we had lots of (the latter), some sort of reward for the long and exhausting walk during the day.
Around midnight we headed back to Vestby and realised that we’d actually gotten sunburnt a little bit.
The next day we took the car to Oslo to find an DNT office that could inform us about hiking in Norway since we’re planning to catch up with some friends of Jörg later on the trip for some mountaineering. When this (not so simple task when driving in Oslo’s inner city) was accomplished with only blocking a few cars in a narrow street where I was forbiddenly parking while Jörg was getting the information. I even managed to fix my camera while waiting (it broke again, Georg, but now I used instant adhesive that I’m carrying with me now everywhere I go).
Then we finally left Oslo, towards Kristiansand.