More Tales From Oslo

Ever since the snow suddenly disappeared, the weather has been stunning: whilst not always warm, the sun has been enthusiastically shining and we have had some days where we were able to take off our jumpers and just wear t-shirts!

The sun does something to Norwegians, and all of a sudden there are happy people everywhere. I find it hard to believe that only 500,000 people live in this city from the number of people I've seen in the last few days.

Thursday was our study day as usual, and after a brief trip into town and icecream with Lena, I set off on the bus to Bygdøy, one of the islands in the Oslo Fjord (and home to the wealthy citizens of Oslo). The French students had ridden ahead on their bikes and found a spot so we arrived to find the BBQ warming up and the food (sausages with Norwegian flat bread (made from potatoes), baked potatoes and Camembert) ready to cook. As we unpacked the food, we looked around: it was a lovely spot, green grass, shining sun, beautiful view of the fjord and islands. There was even a small beach that we looked down onto. Suddenly we realised we weren't just seeing meat on the BBQ- we had inadvertently settled down next to Huk nudist beach and the fine weather meant it was well-populated. But, BBQ lit and meat grilling, it was too late to move! A leisurely few hours in the sun was enjoyed by all, followed by the one crazy Australian who went for a paddle up to her knees (and got my trousers wet!).

That evening I attended a pub crawl organised by the International Student Union. Whilst it was a fun night meeting more students from around the world, it's not quite the pub crawl I remember from my earlier uni days. One glass of wine (at nearly ten dollars) and 2 pubs later, there was very little crawling done!

Luckily, I made up for it the following night with some drinks (forspiel) at my house followed by a spanish party down the road. In Norway, due to the cost of alcohol, people have drinks at home before going out for one or two drinks, then continuing with drinks at someone's place afterwards. The pre-drinks are called forspiel, which means something like pre-drinks in Norwegian, but foreplay in German, which confuses every German student when they first arrive. When we have forspiel or nachspiel (drinks afterwards), everyone brings their own drinks, it's too expensive to provide it!

Strangely (!), I felt slightly ill on Saturday when I woke up early to get to the Anzac Day Service, held at the Commonwealth War Graves in a large cemetery in Oslo. As the sun is now rising at 4 or 5am, it was held at the more respectable hour of 10am as opposed to dawn. The service was lovely: the weather was a sunny 17 degrees (but felt so much warmer), there were about 30 Aussie accents ringing through the air (very strange to hear) and they had all the traditional trappings: a bugler, wreaths, 2 minutes silence, the 'ode of remembrance' and so on. They also had a representative from the Turkish embassy who read a poem in English and Turkish. We were then all invited to the pub to drink VB afterwards!

The two other Aussie exchange students and I declined the pub invite due to the lovely weather and lack of will to pay 10 dollars or so for VB. Instead we headed to the train station, but got slightly distracted on the way by an outdoor market, complete with snags and onions done on the barbie and other delicious smells. The street was absolutely packed as everyone enjoyed the weather and the opportunity to grab a (relatively speaking) bargain.

Following our stroll at the market, we made our way back to the island we had our picnic on the day before and met at the Norwegian Folk museum, an outdoor museum exhibiting more than 100 buildings from Norwegian history, for another International Student Union event. This time, we got free entry to the museum and a tour guide for an hour who took us into various buildings such as traditional farmhouses and the stave church. I think the guide was somewhat cyanical about these items being displayed as examples of Norwegian history, as he explained that these building were chosen after the union with Denmark ended. Thus they were examples of a history untainted by Denmark that Norway could claim as their own as it sought a national identity. Thus the buildings often came from very isolated areas of Norway where the Danish influence could not pervade.

The museum also had an 80s exhibition that had just opened, where people donated their 80s memorabilia for display. I did offer to go on display myself, but no one would have me! It was interesting to see images of Norway in the 80s: for example, Chernobyl, one month before my birth, had a far greater impact here as nuclear fall out landed in peoples gardens and food growing areas.

Our enjoyable day continued with a brief stroll to the harbour where we decided to catch a ferry over the Oslo fjord back to town. These ferries are included in my regular public transport ticket and are definitely a more enjoyable way of heading back (although not so good for a slightly nauseous stomach).

The last hours of sun were spent relaxing on the Opera House roof (which you can walk all over) in the sun with Lena and her visiting German friend, followed by a BBQ with a small group of friends in the sun on the lawn at our student village. It's so perfect to sit there with some music, grilling hamburgers and marshmallows whilst nursing rum (the others) or apple juice (me) and chatting as the sun goes down. Chilled, we headed inside, and Lena and her friend drank more rum and taught me more German, the phrases getting more and more ridiculous as the bottle got emptier. So, if you ever want some German pick up lines, you know where to come.

This morning also brought a moderately early start as we set off into town to pick up a free Oslo Pass. Every year, the city of Oslo arranges a day called 'turist i egen by' or tourist in your own city. Anyone who goes to the town hall between 10:30 and 4 is given a free Oslo Pass, which is a city pass usually sold to tourists for around 50 dollars a day. The pass gives you free public transport, free entry into 35 museums in Oslo and discounts at restaurants and other attractions around town.

So, I had free entry and made the most of it, visiting the Munch museum to see another version of The Scream (the other one I saw in the National Gallery), checking out the balsa wood and reed vessels (kon-tiki, Ra, Ra 2) used to sail from South America to Barbados in the Kon-tiki museum and taking in some of Norway's maritime history at the Norsk Sjøfartsmuseum (Norwegian Maritime Museum).

The Scream has been stolen twice (once by the son of my friends' tutor!) and hence the security at the Munch museum is insane- you must leave your bag in a locker whilst in the museum, go through an xray machine, and two sets of airlock doors to get inside. On the way out there was mass confusion by some tourists who went through the first exit door of the airlock and stood inside the airlock dithering with the second exit door open, thereby preventing any one else from getting inside the first airlock door. Finally they realised what they were door and chaos was averted.

Munch's paintings are interesting and feature themes of life and death (there are many of couples in which one is alive and the other dead), jealously and anxiety and depression. But its very interesting to look at the eras and see the difference, the painting he did in the early 1900s are full of brightly coloured spring flowers and children playing!

The Kon-tiki museum displays the reed boat Ra 2 and the balsa Kon-Tiki raft used by Thor Heyerdahl to demonstrate that ancient populations in Africa and South America could have visited and influenced each other. It also has displays of caves, figures from Easter Island and a giant whale shark! Thor sounds like a cool guy, when he first got married, he and his wife moved to an island in the Pacific Ocean to live. When they arrived they refused to take aboard provisions, planning instead to live off the land and build their house from what they found there. He also did his boating missions with a completely international crew, to investigate what would happen when people from such different backgrounds were forced to live together 24 hours a day for months at a time. And I bought a postcard with a quote from him today "I'm prepared to take a risk, but not the risk of smoking".

The maritime museum was less interesting as it mainly consisted of model boats. There was, however, an interesting temporary exhibition about Vietnamese refugees escaping by boat, as Norway took in many refugees, apparently having a policy that if they were picked up they could stay and the ship who picked up refugees was reimbursed for any extra expenditures. There was also a model of the Tampa there, having been a Norwegian boat, and a lengthy explanation about the situation. Reading that, I felt like keeping my mouth shut, I didn't want to admit to being Australian!

As well as the warmer weather and the sun, the coming of spring has brought another phenomenon. I kept seeing teenagers with red or blue coloured overalls running around the city in groups. Whenever a little kid stops them, they give them a business card from their pocket. What's going on?

It's called Russ and it's a tradition for Norwegian high-school leavers. It starts properly on May 1 (which is a public holiday here) and culmunates in a massive party on 17th of May, Norwegian national day. From April 30 until May 17, the students run crazy around the city, drinking and partying every night and attempting various tasks. They wear these traditional hats with a long piece of string on them. When they complete various tasks from a 'knotlist' set by their school's Russ (students) committee they are entitled to tye knots or items onto the string. The tasks can be tame such as crawling from Burger King to McDonalds, staying up all night or placing ads in the newspaper, or completely outrageous involving having sex in trees (must be witnessed to receive the prize), doing things to their teachers etc. In Oslo, students also often buy (!) buses which they paint and outfit according to a theme, and travel from party to party. Outfitting often includes the best stereo systems, bars and other luxuries. The cost of the bus outfitting often comes to 5000-10,000 dollars PER STUDENT! This is on top of the clothes, the booze, the entry to special parties, the food and all the other costs they pay for three weeks of partying. They also print special business cards with their names, pictures and favourite quotes which they give out to family and friends. Kids in Norway collect these cards and you often see them stopping the teenagers in overalls to collect a card from them.

Did I mention also that this is before their final year exams and that they are still attending school at 8am each day? Apparently, they used to have final exams before May 17, but they were moved to later in an attempt to curb Russ celebrations. It didn't work. Unfortunately, every year some students are killed in road accidents as their ancient buses (or Russ cars) combine with fatigue and alcohol (though the legal limit is 0.02 here).

I think this is a pretty interesting cultural thing, so I found some more links if you're interested:
the first shows some pictures of the bus and the overalls and hats they wear every day of Russ:
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/bildeserier/article1027893.ece
The next takes you to a wikipedia article about the history and traditions of Russ:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ

So, schoolies seems tame in comparison.

Well, will keep you updated with any Russ pranks I come across!

Anneke