Horne's Swedish Exchange: Oslo Cruise

Hey everyone,

So the past two weeks have been pretty busy as I was studying for my Swedish engineering course exam which I wrote Friday morning. It was a bit trickier than expected but I think I passed it - it certainly didn't hurt that I had 5hrs to write it (SO much more relaxed than at UW)...

So to reward myself for my 'hard' work it was only fitting that I take off on a booze cruise to Oslo 1.5hrs after finishing my exam.

A group of eight of us, mostly medicine students, caught a bus to Copenhagen at 2:30pm where we boarded the party boat. It was pretty large, with 11 stories in all and contained a number of pools, restaurants, cafes, bars, one nightclub and a duty-free store. Four of us, Julie (France), Charlotte (France), Ricardo (Spain) and I shared a compartment on the boat - the compartments were similar to the ones on the trainride to Kiruna but with more space. After eating dinner the group of us went to one of the bars and drank the alcohol that we had brought with us before heading to the ship's nightclub.

Saturday morning we reached Oslo and departed the ship at 10:00am. We made our way over to Karl Johans Gate, the main street in Oslo with an assortment of bars and cafes. At the western end of the street was the Royal Palace where we were in time to see the changing of the guard (which, by the way, was hilarious to watch).

From there we headed east to Vigelandsparken, a park dedicated to the works of the sculptor Gustav Vigeland (1869-1943). The park is supposed to depict the human condition with hundreds of sculptures of men, women and children engaged in typically human activities such as laughing, running and fighting. The sculptures are all made of bronze, granite or cast iron. The two centrepieces of the park are the fountain consisting of a number of men carrying a large bowl on their shoulders and a large stone pole ("The Monolith") with sculpted forms of humans spread across its surface (see pictures below). The area at the base of this pole is also quite high above the city and provides a great panoramic view of Oslo and the distant mountains.

Lastly, we made our way to Oslo's art museum where the famous painting 'The Scream' by Norway's Edvard Munch is displayed. Unfortunately the painting was not being shown at the time as it had only recently been recovered in 2006 after it was stolen by a couple of armed robbers in August 2004 [actually Munch painted a number of versions of The Scream, the most famous of which was stolen in 1994 then recovered three months later - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5303200.stm]. However, the museum had a couple Picassos and Monets on display which were interesting (I guess) to see firsthand...

At about 4:30pm we headed back onto the ship then watched the sunset as we left Oslo. However, soon afterwards the ship started to rock and most people on the boat became sick so most of Saturday night was spent laying in bed.

Our boat arrived back to Copenhagen around 9:00am Sunday morning (I think it's a 16hr trip from Oslo to Copenhagen) where we caught our bus back to Lund.