The decision to fuck off to Oslo during The Void, you know, that weird vortex between Christmas and New Year which usually consists entirely of leftovers and cheese, was a spontaneous one. I was chatting to a friend who lives in Oslo and she mentioned how her upcoming trip to London would be more expensive than usual because the kroner was a lot weaker against the pound than it had been in the past. Usually you’d get 10kr for your single British pound but it was hovering around 14kr. Iiiinteresting! Please tell me more about your terrible currency!

This seemed like a good time to visit what is generally an expensive city, plus Anita offered to host us and all that remained was to select which budget airline we’d cram ourselves onto for a couple of hours to get there, which took three hours longer than expected thanks to fog, and I think the airport nachos I have a 25 year mortgage on are still sitting in my stomach four days later, but we made it in one piece albeit at some obnoxious hour in the morning.

Okay so! The two things I really wanted to do were see The Scream and go to a sauna. Tarrant’s list was mostly “don’t fucking break a limb”. As she’s still walking with a stick thanks to exploding her tibial plateau whilst falling off a segway in September we didn’t want to cram too much into our days as it takes her a little longer to get around. Our mornings were leisurely and coffee-laced, and we generally didn’t get going until around 11ish which is a stark contrast to our usual short breaks where I set alarms for 7am and end up sat outside attractions, scratching at the door, waiting for them to open, terrified I might miss something if we don’t fit as much into our day as possible. No. This trip would be a lot more chilled. I can do relaxing. I can bring it down a notch. I can accept that we won’t Do It All in the time that we have. I’m mostly trying to convince myself of this, obviously.

The National Museum / Nasjonalmuseet

Day one, and we headed to the National Museum as that houses the best known version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. There are three more versions on display at the Munch Museum but this is the one we wanted to put in our eyeholes. Also it turns out it’s not pronounced “munch” at all so I must have looked like a right twat.

We decided to head straight to the painting we wanted to see, politely queued to take our photos, then checked out the rest of the museum. There are some lovely pieces on display and I felt very cultured looking at them all and genuinely enjoying them. Talented little buggers aren’t they, some of these artists?

Then we ended up in the modern art rooms and yeah no, I’ve no idea what any of this is meant to mean. Perhaps we’re not quite as cultured as we thought we were then. There was a room just full of these big, reflective balls and clear signage in English and Norwegian inviting you to explore your narcissism (???) by gently touching the balls in the middle of the room but please don’t touch the balls around the edge.

The most relatable part of this installation was the poor security guards walking around the edge of the room asking people to please put the balls down. This happened at least three times in the two minutes we were there. We might be uncultured swines but at least we can follow written instructions.

Oslo Badstuforening Sauna

Oslo has these floating saunas on the fjord and a couple of them have ladders into the water. I’m a sucker for a local experience, it was one of the things I really wanted to do on this trip, especially as it’s winter. You wouldn’t catch me in cold water in the UK, even if our waterways weren’t filled with literal shit I just don’t see the appeal of being that bastard cold by choice. But sauna -> cold water -> sauna seems to be The Done Thing™ so the relentless tourist in me insisted. Tarrant decided to sit this one out, neither sauna nor swimming is an ideal pastime when you’re sporting the latest in NHS walking aid fashion, and Anita and I left her in the pub to apply motor impairment beverages to her facehole. Anita had said she probably wouldn’t be up for the cold water because it just sounded generally unpleasant. I mean, it really does sound horrific, I’m not going to lie, and I’d probably only dip a leg in and bottle it, but I wanted to try.

We got changed and sat in the sauna as the chunks of metal I have through various parts of my head slowly heated up. Well I didn’t think about that in advance did I?! They were mostly alright but I’ve got a large 2.4mm ball closure ring in my left lobe and that certainly absorbed enough heat for my nerve endings to notice when it touched my neck. Well shall we numb the shit out of these nerve endings then? Here we go. Here we fucking go. I started down the ladder and yes, that is very cold, thank you. According to the sign on the way in the water was 3°C but I made it in to my waist, largely because I was dying for a piss. Yep, that’s fine for now.

Anita bottled it after the first step which is absolutely fair enough. Back to the sauna to sweat some more, the camaraderie was great as various people attempted the dip and got further and further in. Eventually, after three attempts, I let go of the ladder and the fjord enveloped me over my head. Oh my fucking gosh, that is exhilarating! I mean it was bastard freezing, you could probably fashion diamonds with my nipples, but it was an incredible rush! After another ten minutes in the sauna I did it again and guys, this is addictive! Even Anita, who’d insisted she wasn’t going anywhere near the water when I first suggested this, got in up to her neck. Twice! High fives all round.

After cryogenically freezing all of your organs it’s advisable to warm up again with… well probably not a beer but that’s the route we went down. We joined Tarrant in the pub to drink some Frydenlund Pilsner which seems to be the generic go-to beverage in Oslo. £10 a pint though! Ouch. That’s more painful than submerging your entire being in 3° water. Or 148kr for 60cl in local money. You can buy it in smaller quantities but that’d be terribly un-British of us. We pretty much called it a day there, we’d had a stupidly late night the previous night and we were all pretty knackered. Stunner of a first day though. Well done, Oslo.

The Norwegian Museum of Cultural History / Norsk Folkemuseum

This is a nice way to kill a couple of hours but it was a bit of a strain on Tarrant’s leg on account of it being a big, open air museum complete with slippery trails and trip hazards rather than a stuffy building full of things. In fact the buildings are the attraction. They’ve recreated homesteads from various parts of Norway throughout the ages but the best one by far is the stave church.

Originally built in the 13th century, it was moved here in 1884 by King Oscar II of Norway and Sweden along with other buildings that represented characteristics of old Norwegian structures. I’m sure the other buildings are lovely but that church though! I believe only a third of the materials were from the original medieval building but they did well to restore the rest of it.

General Strolling

Given that Tarrant’s current top speed is “gentle stroll” we did a lot of this. There are some epic buildings in Oslo. I can absolutely see how residents would object to some of them and yes, I’m looking squarely at you, Munch Museum. I don’t hate the Munch Museum building but Anita dislikes it because it is basically absolutely fucking massive and does very much dominate the skyline. Catch it in the golden glow of a sunset though and it’s almost beautiful. I said almost.

I’m particularly attracted to the Barcode Project because let’s face it, if you’re going to build high rises you might as well make a thing of it. It’s basically a row of black and white tower blocks designed to vaguely resemble a barcode, obviously, but each building is different so you get to decide which one you’re going to obsess over the most. Or just take your photos and move on like a normal person I suppose.

The building I couldn’t stop gawping at though was the Opera House. Our first day in Oslo was shrouded in fog and when we went to the fjord to book our sauna I fell a little bit in love with how atmospheric the whole scene was. You can walk up it too, it’s legit allowed and you won’t be chased by a security guard and chastised in at least two languages. Loads of people were doing it and on our last full day we wandered up it. I’m also a bit enamoured with the glass sculpture in the fjord which, apparently, represents an iceberg or something. There are plenty of things to brandish a camera at here, it really is a great city just to exist in, despite the price of a pint.

Talking of pints, we ended up back at Royal Gastropub on the second day after we’d been for dinner. It’s a great pub with a game called shuffleboard, whereby you have to slide a puck along a track thingy and try to get it in the scoring zone whilst preventing your opponent doing the same. Everyone playing it made it look easy. Dear reader, it is not. Most of our pucks rocketed unceremoniously off the end of the board but it’s a lot of fun.

Anita definitely won which is fair enough considering this isn’t the only pub that has shuffleboard and she’s played it before, and it was the first time we’d ever laid eyes on the game. A few more visits to Oslo and a bit more practice and we’ll be gliding chunks of metal over sand and wood with engineered precision, no doubt made even more accurate the more Frydenlund you chuck down your neck as is the rule with all pub games. There’s always a direct correlation between alcohol consumption and how good one is at pub games. And dancing, actually.

I believe we will absolutely come back to Oslo, I really, really like the city, it’s such an easy place to be. The public transport system is a piece of piss to navigate and buying tickets is made easy with the Ruter app. English is so widely spoken it makes communicating a breeze. Staff in pubs, restaurants and attractions switched effortlessly to English when met with our blank stares as my brain cycled through every non-English word it knows in search of a response other than drooling. I always want to default to Spanish, despite the fact I only know about four sentences my brain is quite proud of this fact and runs with it at every available opportunity regardless of the language being spoken. It’s like, you don’t understand any of this, you should probably say Spanish things at them! But yes, Oslo, great place to be and one day, hopefully, we’ll be able to explore even more of Norway in general.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Oslo, Norway

Useful shit to know…

Currency

• Norway uses the kroner (kr) but is more or less cash-free. There are ATMs and you can absolutely withdraw and spend cash should you choose to, but not a single place didn’t take card, even for small amounts.
• The one time we withdrew cash as we like to save the notes as souvenirs we were charged 50kr at the ATM.

Getting Around

• Public transport in Oslo is a joy. Tickets can be bought via the Ruter app, you don’t even need to create an account, and they’re valid on all public transport for the zone you’ve purchased including buses, trams and trains.
• Zone 1 is huge and it’s likely all you’ll need as a standard tourist. If you’re unsure you can use the Ruter app to plan your journey and, along with telling you which bus, tram or train you need to catch, it’ll tell you which zone you’ll need a ticket for.
• A 24 hour ticket for zone 1 cost kr127 and either starts ticket down from the minute you buy it, or you can choose to have it start at a later time or date.
• A single ticket cost kr42 and lasts an hour from when you buy it or, again, you can change the date and time you want it to start.
• If your ticket expires whilst you’re travelling you are allowed to stay on board as long as you boarded before it ran out.
• You don’t need to validate your ticket, you just need to get on and be prepared to show it if/when asked by an inspector. It’s your responsibility to make sure you have the mobile data and the phone battery to do this, or they’ll consider you as travelling without a ticket and you’ll be fined accordingly.

• To get to the Norsk Folkemusem you take the number 30 bus from Jernbanetorget, platform P. It stops right outside the museum.
• To get to the National Museum you can take any number of buses or trams from Jernbanetorget, just check Google Maps to see which is next. Alternatively it’s only a 12 minute walk.
• To get to Dildo Santa it’s tram 19 from platform B of Jernbanetorget, or tram 13 from Dronningens Gate, platform T. Get off at the hospital in both cases and it’s a very short walk from there.

Airports

• We flew into Oslo Airport, Gardermoen (OSL) which is the main airport, and out of Torp Sandefjord Airport (TRF) which is a lot further away but it had direct flights back to Manchester for our dates.
• To get from OSL to the city you can take a train to Oslo S, or there’s also a bus. We arrived obnoxiously late so we took a taxi which you can book on screens at Arrivals. You tell it where you’re going, how many people and how much luggage and it gives you your options with the maximum price you’ll pay listed, and the registration and roof number of the taxi. You shouldn’t have to wait more than three minutes.

• To get to TRF we booked the Torp Ekspressen coach. It takes about an hour and 35 minutes. We booked in advance and it cost kr319 each.
• It leaves from the bus terminal. If it’s before 5.30am it’ll leave from B3, otherwise you have to check the departure boards at the terminal. Ours left from A7.
• The coaches are aligned with flight arrivals and departures. We didn’t test the theory as we flew into a different airport but I believe they don’t leave until 45 minutes after the flights actually arrive rather than 45 minutes after they’re meant to arrive.

Entrance Fees

• The National Museum was only kr100 but this is half price. Usually it’s kr200.
• The Folk Museum was kr180.
• The sauna cost kr195. You need to book in advance for this, we very nearly didn’t get a slot, it does get booked out. We booked the shared sauna but if there’s a few of you, you have the opportunity to book a private session.

Miscellaneous

• English is very, very widely and fluently spoken in Oslo. You’ll be greeted in Norwegian initially but once they know you’re foreign they’ll switch to English.
• When buying bottled or canned drinks you’ll be charged a few kroner extra for the pant, the deposit, which is refundable when you take the bottle or can for recycling. Obviously you’re unlikely to do this as a visitor. I’d probably just leave your empties on or by a bin for the homeless to collect, and in fact some rubbish bins have a space specifically for you to do this.

BUDGET for one person (based on two sharing) for days.
Accommodation: Free, we stayed with a friend.
Buses, trains: £52.06
Taxis, private vehicles: £27.50
Groceries: £9.92 (would have been more but Anita fed us a lot as well as housed us)
Eating out: £79.08
Tea, coffee, drinks: £26.56
Booze: £41.02
Entrance fees: £19.60
Activities: £13.65
Souvenirs: £23.86 (we might have gone slightly overboard on this)
Everything else: £3.16

GRAND TOTAL: £296.40
Average per person per day: £59.28
We spent a lot less than most as we stayed with Anita. Oslo isn’t a cheap city but I think it’s worth it.