Here starts my posting about our epic adventure in Europe.
My adventure starts out on my own. My dad came and hung out with me for a bit at the airport in Saskatoon before I left. I flew to Calgary and spent time at that airport. Nothing to tell here, really. The plane to Frankfurt had a few things to tell about though. First thing, I was really surprised when the first airplane meal was actually really good! Secondly, I must have been much smaller the last time I took economy class for 8 hours, because I found the seats so frustratingly small that the only way I could be comfortable was if I was sitting absolutely still. I couldn't even reach under my seat very easily.
Anyway! I landed in Frankfurt, which is a very intimidatingly large airport. It took us 20 minutes to drive to the proper gate after we touched ground. I had a brief moment of panic when a flightdesk person said she could not find my last flight to sign me in, but luckily it was found easily by the next person I went to and everything else went off without a hitch. The Frankfurt airport has English everywhere and even makes their announcements in English as well as German, so I had no trouble navigating my way around the massive airport. After meandering a bit, buying a new book, and sitting down to read for a while, Liam found me, and we chatter and did more of the same. We weren't even on the same part of the flight, though, so on the plane I just tried to get comfortable and sleep. It didn't happen, as usual, so I touched down in Oslo very tired.
After checking into our hostel and dropping off our stuff, we first we had some supper at a 'Scottish' pub, where I had some sort of pizza with reindeer (it was okay). We walked a bit around downtown Oslo. We saw the City Hall, which is a massive building with very epic statues all around, the Nobel Peace building, and some other buildings. I really like the architechture and feel of Oslo. It was fun, even at how tired I was, just to spend some time in a city that is totally different from Edmonton or Saskatoon. Speaking of tired, I was being a whiner, so I convinced Liam to going back to the hostel (this was 5pm), which I promptly fell asleep. I woke up, raring to go at 8pm, because I thought it was 8am. This was really weird, but I felt like I had already been sleeping 10+ hours, so I figured it was 8am and that we should get going. Liam told me that it was 8pm, and I found myself both disappointed and maybe also a little bit relieved that I could go back to sleep (when I realized I was not actually fully rested). So, we slept until 6am, putzed around the hostel a little bit, then went out for a walk through the Oslo castle and military grounds, where we got various pictures with tanks and cannons and battlements and such. It was pretty cool. I don't know that much about tanks, but I was pretty sure I identified a Sherman on sight.
Then we checked out of our hostel and took the train to Bergen. The train ride was uneventful but absolutely stunningly beautiful. The mountains and fjords of Norway are very pretty, and the 6 hour train ride just breezed by with me switching between reading, listening to music, eating the snacks from the train cafe, and checking out the scenery. All in all, it was a pretty great, relaxing way to travel. I hope all of our train experiences are this positive.
Once here in Bergen, Carl (a cousin of a friend of ours in Saskatoon, Ian) met us at the train station and walked us to his house, where we dropped off our stuff then went back out for food, which was a sze chuan (apparently that's two words here) place. The walk to and from this place was extremely wet! Apparently, Bergen is one of the rainiest cities in the world, so I picked up an umbrella on our way back. This was lucky, because on our way to the bar later, it was raining even harder, and I still got pretty wet even with the umbrella. I had a few drinks to forget about that fact while we met Carl's roommates and other friends. Luckily, everyone here speaks English pretty well, and we only had a few times where there was a gap in understanding, and that was mostly from me using idioms and such, or just talking like I was drunk. Carl's friends were really nice and easy to talk to, and we had a great time with them.
Apparently, when Liam went out for a smoke, he met some guys from the Norwegian military who were just tickled pink to meet a Canadian, and talk about their posts. So we hung out with those two and the couple of girls they had latched onto (who ended up being way cooler than the guys). We went to another bar and played some foosball, had some more drinks, chatted, did all that wonderful stuff. On our way out someone invited us to a nachspeil, which is apparently the Norwegian way of saying afterparty, where the host is supposed to have drinks and food, and the conversation and partying is supposed to continue. At this point, it was Liam and I, the two girls we had met, Carl, and the dude that invited us to nachspeil. The nachspeil was honestly kind of odd, as there were no more drinks to be had, and the guy who invited us was kind of odd, and I wasn't hungry for any food. We didn't stay too long before we walked the girls home and then went home ourselves. We got to bed at the ripe old hour of 4:30am.
That brings us to today! I haven't even had breakfast yet. For the next post I should have some pictures, but until then you can check out our photostream at the 'Latest' RSS feed here. I am also not quite sure how to link to our photostream, but if you go on Flickr our name is liam&colin and the account name is colin_saraka . More details on this later. I am so hungry! Time to eat.
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