Short trip to OSLO

Oslo? Mmmm where is that? Is that somewhere around Solo, Indonesia? Big NO!! :D

Well, Solo eits Oslo is the capital city of Norway. Yap, the famous region for seeing Aurora Borealis and great nature scenery. But, please note, Oslo is not the right one. If you want to see the great Aurora, you have to go to the north part of Norway. Actually, I am not going to write about Aurora in this post. What this post about is just my experience for visiting Oslo within short time, a very short one. So, there are a lot of subjectivities in this post which is affected by the limited time to explore more about this city. So, let just start the review.

Oslo Central Station

We arrived in Oslo around 11 am. Mmm no, I guess it was so close to 12 in the afternoon. And that was during winter period in early of January. So, the daylight was very short, sun would getting down at 3 pm which mean we did not have a lot of time to explore the city. And please underline, we went there on Sunday, and we just realized after we arrived that most of stores were close on Sunday! It is important for us, tourists who actually will spend several times of their visit for window shopping. We just had no where to go then. But, we still tried for enjoying Oslo though. Bringing a one day pass ticket which cost for about 90 NOK, we started our "trip" by visiting Vigeland Park.

One day ticket

One of the statue at Vigeland Park

Vigeland Park is a huge park which filled by a lot of statues, well unique nude statues. Each statue have their own captured activities, but I just did not get the meaning. And visiting the park during winter period was a big mistake for us. Well, we just did not have other option. What we saw there, was just a bleak landscape with nude sculptures which totally not fun. We went up to the highest point of the park, then we saw a good view from the top. It was nice, but the thought of how great the park will be during summer time kept passing by. And our feet were freezing but we had no where to warm up them.

After being cold outside, we started to think for going into warmer place. But, hey it was Sunday, and it was Oslo, the king of expensive city. So, coffee shop was not a good choice for us at that time. At first, we planned to visit Norwegian Folk Museum, an open air museum where we can see the traditional culture. But, realizing the cold weather, and no sun light, we just burnt up the idea. Finally, we ended up to enjoy the sun set from Akershus Fortress. Luckily, there was an indoor museum where we could see the history of the fortress. But hey, we are not a type of tourist who curious about the history of a certain place. We just someone who enjoy taking picture and scenery from tourist spot. So, entering the museum was only an excuse for us to be warmer. And the other advantages was for going to the toilet for free. Fyi, most of toilets in Europe were not free, so we have to pay for about 0,5 to 1 Euro which is varies depending on the city or country.

Enjoying sunset

When we left the museum, the sky was already dark, so we decided for just wandering around so the one day pass ticket would not going wasted. We took underground train and just followed until the end of the route. And when we alighted on the last stop, we just found out that we were at the middle of no where. Only found a tiny store which sell such Asian goods and the surrounding was really quite with only few lighting. So, we decided to just take the train for going back to the central station. Hope to find other safe place and something to see. In here, one of our friend missed to alight at the transit station. So we had to wait for him to go back by taking the opposite route at the next stop. This is the first funny thing happened during our whole trip.

Train to the airport

At the central station, we headed to burger king for dinner and took the train to the airport. At the train, during the ticket checking, we got a little problem. As we bought a student ticket, we had to show up such student identity card. But the officer did not want to accept ISIC. Meanwhile, we just brought ISIC at that time. Then we tried to ask whether they accept such LoA. Yaaapp, the acceptance letter from the university proofing that we are an admitted student. Surprisingly, he nodded and asked us to show that LoA. Problem solved!

To be note, we took NSB train for going from Oslo to Rygge Airport. And we had to alight at certain stop (I forgot the name of the station) which is not the airport. From that station, we took the shuttle for free (as it included in the ticket) to the airport. The airport was small as it just only the low cost airport, not the main one. And it is open for 24 hours, so travelers can sleep there just like we and other travelers did at that time. And it was only one store opened and it closed at 1 am perhaps and will open again at 5 am.

Spending the night at the airport

The one and only store at the airport

So, that was all my story during my quick visit to Oslo. We took flight to Berlin by using Ryan Air. And that was also our first time for using Ryan Air. As it is low cost airlines with very cheap ticket price, so the service as expected. What you pay is what you will get.

NB: I admit that this post is seemed like not good as I already bored with this subject and really want to finish this post as soon as possible. Fyi, this post have already been on my draft folder for more than 6 months.