Sarah Yates
Bachelor of Engineering (Medical)
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim (S2, 2018)
I had great intentions about publishing this as soon as I arrived in my now home city of Trondheim. I honestly which I could say it was because I’ve been, you know, working really hard and applying myself at uni. Sadly the last two months of near constant climbing and hiking and cabin trips may have distracted me from actually writing anything! Such a shame. 😂
I’m not sure I really understood just how far Norway is until I spent nearly 30 hours trying to get there. International plane travel is an excellent opportunity to overthink how many times it is socially acceptable to try and get out of your seat in one trip. Once an hour? Every five hours? What’s the go here? I’m still confused.
I had the opportunity to use my really good***** Norwegian within about 5 minutes of touching down in Oslo, as I needed to find the flytoget (airport train!) and the only helpful stranger I spoke to was probably the only non-English speaking resident of the whole city. With an embarrassing amount of sign language and a bizarre hybrid of English and Norwegian, this nice old man did eventually point me and my 30kg hiking bag in the right direction.
*****really not that good
I was lucky enough to be able to stay with a Norwegian family for my stay in Oslo, and I was completely adopted within about 5 minutes of meeting them. People do not exaggerate about Norwegians’ love of the outdoors – it is quite literally a national obsession. I woke up on my first morning to a map of Oslo’s forest Nordmarka, which was all of a 5 minute train ride away.
The Norwegian outdoors is not the Australian outdoors – in Norway, you can plan an entire walk based on which cabins sell the best hot chocolate. Brilliant. I spent the entire day wandering (kind of aimlessly) around this gorgeous place, between Sognsvann (a big lake close to Oslo) and Ullevålseter (one of the many, many DNT wooden cabins strewed around Norway). While the hot chocolate in Norway is legit FANTASTIC, I’ve got to warn you, “coffee” in this country is more like drinking straight up filtered dirt in a cup. But you can get unlimited refills! Which is just as well, because otherwise you’d be paying $6.50 for a cup of liquid sadness. Thanks, Norway. (Two months in this country and I’m disgusted to say I almost enjoy their coffee now.)
I also spent quite a lot of time exploring Oslo, which has got to be hands down one of the most gorgeous towns I have ever seen. The strangest thing is just how green everything is – really, really weird after Australia in the middle of a long drought. If you go to Oslo, it’s really worth going to Frognerparken, which is a big sculpture park in the middle of the town. Some of the sculptures are a bit ~weird~ (namely the massive pillar of naked bodies) but hey, it’s pretty cool.
You can also go and see for real viking ships at the Viking Ship Museum, which – I’m not going to lie to you – is pretty damn cool. About a 15 minute walk from here is the Norsk Folkemuseum, which has everything replica Norwegian villages to live folk dancing performances.
On my last night in Oslo, my host family made me the most Norwegian of all desserts – waffles and brunost! Brunost, or “brown cheese”, is this really intense caramel cheese that Norwegians will eat literally all the time (including in the middle of lectures – I’ve even seen people crack out a cheese slicer mid-class). It’s a weird mix between being incredibly delicious and incredibly sickening and I’m honestly sure how I feel about it. The next morning I said goodbye to my host family and took the train along the Dovre Railway (!!) all the way up to Trondheim, where I’ve literally been having the time of my life.
Give me another two months and I’ll update you on that as well. 🤣
