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I was supposed to be flying home from Oslo tomorrow morning but an ash cloud from a volcanic eruption in Iceland has shut down much of the European airspace, including all of Norway and the UK. Officials have suggested that the at least here in Norway that the shutdown may last for multiple days.
This is the most severe disruption to European air travel since, well, ever. Even 9/11 was just a blip over here compared to this.
Update: And I'm out! Anywho, anyone want to suggest some interesting sites to see in and around Oslo? KoM?
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Hum. If you were in Bergen, maybe; Oslo is not a city, it's a glorified collection of minor villages with delusions of grandeur. I would usually suggest that you take the train over to Bergen and see the fjords, but apparently the trains are having difficulty too. Run by civil servants.
Anyway. Jest aside, I'm not so familiar with Oslo, and it'll be very expensive, especially since you presumably had not budgeted for a Norwegian layover. The standard sites would be Vigelandsparken, Karl Johan (shopping street, palace at one end (not vastly impressive from the outside as royal residences go; I'm not sure if they do tours) and Storting at the other (much the same)), and the Oseberg ship. The last is the most interesting, in my opinion; also, if I recall correctly, that museum is close to the Kon-Tiki museum and you can easily hit both in one day. If it were winter I'd recommend you go cross-country skiing. As it is, you might try going for a hike or a bike ride, and enjoy the scenery human and otherwise; Americans, I find, are often rather surprised by the amount of outdoor activity in Norway, so if amateur anthropology interests you at all, that might be amusing. Apart from that I fear I can't be much more helpful than a tourist website.
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The Hockey league in Norway is pretty good. I'm not sure what time o year they play though. Valerenga are a good team who play in Oslo.
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1) Do NOT go pub crawling unless you are independently wealthy.
2) Start job hunting. The most recent previous major eruption of Eyjafjallajokull began in the middle of December 1821 and lasted through the beginning of August1822.
3) Take Eurorail to Spain, then book a flight home from there.
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: 1) Do NOT go pub crawling unless you are independently wealthy and desire not to be.
There, fixed that for you.
But hey, those alcohol taxes support the welfare state, so if you feel a strong need to demonstrate liberal comradeship and subsidise the starving orphans and widows who lost their husbands in oil-industry accidents and now have but their memories and the insult of a fat pension to warm them on cold winter days, buy some liquor.
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I had a friend who was planning to fly up to Denmark this weekend. She had her last trip canceled when she had to work for the embassy during Barack and Hilary's visit last week. She now considers this trip to Denmark cursed. What excuses for not seeing an old friend? Well, first the President was visiting, then a VOLCANO EXPLODED, so I couldn't make it...
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: 1) Do NOT go pub crawling unless you are independently wealthy and desire not to be.
There, fixed that for you.
But hey, those alcohol taxes support the welfare state, so if you feel a strong need to demonstrate liberal comradeship and subsidise the starving orphans and widows who lost their husbands in oil-industry accidents and now have but their memories and the insult of a fat pension to warm them on cold winter days, buy some liquor.
I'm not sure what to make of the bulk of that, but what is the alcohol tax percentage? I would think Norway (home of vikings and all) would let the mead flow freely in the streets.
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Well yes, we did. The effects were, to put it mildly, nasty, there being effectively nothing to do but drink in a lot of places. (Back in the 1910s, this was.) So very heavy alcohol taxes were slapped on as a means of reducing its usage; a bit like Prohibition but not as binary. Also, sales of liquor is a state monopoly. I'm not sure exactly what percentage the taxes are, but half a liter of beer will run you 5-10 dollars minimum, depending on where you are.
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I took a ferry across the harbor and hit the Oseberg ship, the Folkemuseum, the Kon-Tiki museum, and the Fram (a 100+-year-old polar exploration ship). The Fram was the high point, but everything was enjoyable.
Tomorrow I'm thinking about getting one of the many rent-a-bikes they have around town and heading down to the Vigeland sculpture park, but that may not happen if the ash starts to fall as some sources are now predicting. Apparently it's not healthy to breath in microscopic particles of glass and stone.
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The ash cloud hit us today, but the effects were not very pronounced. Grey hazy skies, no flights out of CR for another day or so, I was told, but nothing like mountains of ash covering the countryside.
The biggest effect has been that international train traffic has gone nuts, with everybody jumping on trains all over Europe. Luckily I have nowhere to go.
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Ah yes, I'd forgotten about Fram. Perhaps they mentioned it at the museum, but if not, the word means 'Forward', and the naming of the ship is likely a reference to one of the most famous battle cries from saga history, that of St Olav at Svolder: "Fram, fram, kristmenn, krossmenn, kongsmenn!" Or in English, "Forward! Forward, Christ-men, Cross-men, King's men!"
They lost the battle. Nothing like a romantic Lost Cause to make you famous. Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:I hope this unexpected layover ends up being a fun part of your trip!
So far, so good.
My back-up plan if I can't be outdoors tomorrow - Guitar Hero/Rock Band at the office.
As a side question - what constitutes authentic Norwegian food? The best I can determine, it's just "fish". Whatever it is, it doesn't seem possible to find it in Oslo - they've got Italian, French, Cajun, Tex-Mex, Pizza, Horrible American Fast Food, and even a Hard Rock and TGI Fridays, but nothing that's identifiable as "Norwegian".
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There is no such thing as authetically *good* northern European food, in my opinion. You don't find "typical English cuisine" to be a popular advertisement in London, for example. Northern diets are just historically not so rich in the kinds of things the touristic food business sells nowadays. I've found most northern European food to be pretty grim.
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Yeah, sorry, there ain't no such animal, basically. There's a saying in Norway meaning "he is fairly well-off or rich"; it goes "He has enough money to put salt in his porridge". Norwegians ate unsalted fish, unsalted porridge, and unsalted potatoes for half a millennium, and naturally when we got rich we got as far away from all that as physically possible. There's a reason Norway is the world's largest per-cap consumer of pizza.
That said, there are a few dishes sufficiently uniquely horrible that we keep them around for tourists. You can probably find dried fish somewhere; it's sold in little plastic bags as a snack, like potato chips. It's quite good if you get the good stuff. Lutefisk is famous, of course, and probably you can find a restaurant that will serve it; same for smalahovve, although that's more a west-coast thing. If you don't feel up to that, you could look for 'raspeballer', sort of meatballs. 'Finnbiff' is reindeer meat, usually sliced thin and served in gravy; it's pretty good. I have no idea where to find any of this in Oslo, though. Finally, Norwegian candy is very good; try a big Narvesen (the colourful 'N' logo). You want the pick-your-own-bag stuff; try some of everything.
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Oh, I forgot: You could see if there's anywhere that'll serve 'rømmegrøt', sour-cream porridge. It's quite good. Also, anywhere that serves that is likely to have other Norwegian-ish foods on the menu. I must admit, though, I'd have no idea where to look for that even in Bergen, and it's likely expensive.
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Oh, and if you're at all into cheese, you should try some brown cheese - any grocery store will have it. The Fløtemysost variety is sweeter, which I prefer; the darker Gudbrandsdalost and Gjetost varieties are sharper, if that's your thing. Buy some 'rundstykker' (sort of bite-sized fresh bread) and a bit of butter and make lunch; the cheese will keep, so pack it up for your trip home.
And duh, you should see if you can find anywhere to serve you lefse.
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I think I had the brown cheese at my hotel - is it sort of the consistency of peanut butter?
If it was spreadable, it was likely prim, which is the same basic stuff but processed a bit differently.
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No, it was a normal cheese, but it tended to stick to the roof of your mouth like peanut butter. It was also about the same color as peanut butter.
The Powers That Be have said to just sit tight until Monday at which point they are going to try to coordinate an exit for us. Today we went up to see the new ski jump and hike some of the ski trails. It was a pleasant break from the city.
Lunch was at McDonalds.
I think I'm going to run to the office for some free sodas (normally $3+ for a .5L bottle around here) and then hopefully somewhere interesting for dinner.
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quote:No, it was a normal cheese, but it tended to stick to the roof of your mouth like peanut butter.
Not a comparison that would have occurred to me, but yes, it's stickier than most cheeses. So you can liekly cross that one off your list. Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:KLM, part of Franco-Dutch Air France-KLM, said it flew at the regular altitude of 10 kilometers (6 miles) and up to the 13 km maximum. Germany's Lufthansa said it flew 10 planes to Frankfurt from Munich at altitudes of up to 8 km. "We have found nothing unusual, neither during the flight, nor during the first inspection on the ground," KLM chief executive Peter Hartman, who took part in his airline's test, said in a statement."If the technical examination confirms this image, we are ready tomorrow to fly back our seven planes from Duesseldorf to Amsterdam. We then hope to get permission as soon as possible to partially restart our operations."
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About half the participants for my Conference that ended Friday came from Europe and are now stranded either here or in New York.
Those stranded here were thinking an extended holiday in the Caribbean was pretty sweet until they found out they could be stuck here for weeks.
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Today I walked down to Vigeland Sculpture Park, also known amongst my coworkers as "the naked statue park". That was about 6 miles of pleasant walking through parts of the city I hadn't seen before and the statues were pretty cool.
Most of my Mormon coworkers went to church. They said the service was in Norwegian but it was also translated in real-time into English and you could listen to the translation on headphones.
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Locals are taking great advantage of the situation- the city is dead today because all the tourists aren't here for the weekend. However, I wish there were a better cause for such a situation.
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: Oslo is definitely not dead because it's too hard for the tourists to leave.
Mmm... in Prague "touristy" stuff has been pretty slow, even if people are stuck here, they apparently aren't interested in going out. And quite a few people have caught trains and buses home if they live in other parts of Europe.
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Ok, I'm heading into the belly of the beast. Flights from Oslo to Reykjavík are going to happen tomorrow and I'm booked. From there it won't be hard to get to the US.
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I'm in Reykjavík now. Heading to the states tomorrow afternoon. I could see the volcano from the window of the plane on the way in.
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The ash plume has been heading southeast toward Britain, then spreading across the rest of northern Europe. Reykjavik is northwest of Eyjafjallajokull, and thus far well clear of the plume.
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: The ash plume has been heading southeast toward Britain, then spreading across the rest of northern Europe. Reykjavik is northwest of Eyjafjallajokull, and thus far well clear of the plume.
Yes, but how do you get from Europe the Reykjavik without flying through the plum?
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