I've been too busy--and there are too many pictures--to do this all in one swell foop like I normally do, so I'll be posting the trip pictures and comments in short installments. So here's the first one:

Saturday, Oct. 9 - Travel Woes
Our first day in Norway was something of a loss. Even though our flight landed at a reasonable hour, our luggage wasn't on it! We were stuck in clothes we'd not only slept in, but which were hopelessly too light for the abrupt change of season. Aaron, who was still getting over the flu I'd given him the week prior, was in shorts!

So we bought tickets for the flytog (airport train -- fly (flee) = plane, and tog (tock) = train, so it was literally a plane-train--kind of like the flying puller-thing) and headed into town. Luckily, our hotel was only a few blocks from the train station, so once I picked up a map, we braved the chill and walked.

The Comfort Hotell Boersparken was not very comfortable. The staff was very nice, but the beds were hard and lumpy, and the room was always chilly, no matter what we did with the radiator. The room was furnished with what one might generously call Scandanavian simplicity--or, if one were feeling ungenerous (as I was after 5 days there), one might call bare emptiness. There was no bathtub, no dresser, a tiny wardrobe with no shelves, no bathroom vanity (I hauled in the end table to put my toiletries on), and the "double" bed was merely two single beds pushed together! Don't married couples snuggle in Noway? (Given the lack of adequate heating in that room, it was practically necessary.)

Anyway, by the time our luggage showed up, we were too jetlagged to even consider going outside for dinner, so we were very happy to discover that our hotel had a light evening buffet--sandwich stuff, cold salads, etc.

Sunday, Oct. 10 - Historical Museum
Aaron was still not feeling well, so I left him to convalesce in the hotel, watching Norwegian and British TV. Outside, it was warmer than the day before, and sunny, but still not what you'd call really warm.
I had bought a 3-day city pass, so I decided to save my feet and take the underground. When I got off the train at the National Theater stop, it was dead silent. I was in the university district, and on a Sunday morning I suppose everyone was either at church or still in bed. Certainly nothing was open for business, but luckily the Museum of Cultural Heritage was.

I somehow ended up seeing the main exhibit, Vikings from the Ice Age to Medieval Christianity, backwards. By the time I figured it out, I was halfway through the Iron Age and figured I wasn't going to turn around. The museum itself was set up very well, with a lot of commentary (and cards with it all translated into 6 langauges!), and rooms decorated to look like the environment the items would naturally be in. For example, the Viking ship display (reproductions--I saw the real thing later) had backdrops painted to look like the ocean and stormy skies. A collection of nautical objects was in a glass case set in the floor, to imitate the sea bottom.

The museum was interesting, but this was mostly a language lesson for me. By the time I was done, I had quadrupled my Norwegian vocabulary. Considering I'd started with 5 phrases, this isn't saying too much--especially when you consider that most of my new words were things like "middle ages" and "iron age." (Turned out knowing "iron" came in handy later, when I had to figure out that "Jernbanetorget" meant "train station.")

Click here for pictures!