Oslo

Hejhej :)

Sorry for not writing for such a long time...quite a few things happened, but lets start from the beginning.
Last Sunday (30th September) Jonathan, his girlfriend, Elisabeth and I made a "Pancake breakfast" - we met in the morning and made Pancakes - at least 40. We ate them with whipped cream, vanilla sauce, jam and - the most delicious things of all - Nutella. (we all agree that nothing's better than Nutella on a warm Pancake...yummy). In the evening Claudia, Elisabeth, Lena and I made some Pizza and watched a movie...so that was last weekend. ;)
During the week nothing too spectacular happened...I went to the hairdresser and paid a fortune for a new haircut - Swedish style. Nevertheless, I look like Manuel, the Austrian guy desperately trying to get a new style.

This weekend we (Claudia, Elisabeth, Mathieu and I) went to Oslo, Norway. We stayed there for two days (Saturday, Sunday) and it wasn't enough time to see all the sights of Oslo. My first impression when I came to Oslo was "well, quite nice, but not too extraordinary and not too beautiful" but as soon as I saw some more parts of Oslo I changed my mind. Oslo definitely has a lot of things to offer but - to quote my beloved Lonely Planet Travel Guide - "it [Oslo] doesn't make a big fuss about it".

Beside historical buildings (Parliament, Theatre...Palace) it has a lot of interesting museums. For example the Vikingship museum (if you're interested in vikings) or - my personal favourite - the national Gallery. Like in London, the entrance is free and it has quite a good collection of nice art. I guess Munch's "The Scream" is the most famous one, but in my opinion, it's not the most interesting picture in the gallery. I really liked some of the Norwegian artists, like Tidemand, J.C Dahl or Fearnley...I could go on for hours, but I think it'll bore you... Speaking of artists - like Barcelona, Oslo has its own Park for one of Norway's most famous artist Gustav Vigeland. You might not have heard of him before but I guess most people know his sculptures. The Park was really fascinating and beautiful, I kind of liked it more than the Park Güell in Barcelona (although this is also a very nice Park and - in fact - quite different than the Vigeland Park).

Oslo is also quite famous for its ski jump, the Holmenkollen (honestly, I've never heard of it before...but apparently it is famous because everyone else is crazy about it). It's a nice place and you have a great view over Oslo from top of it. It reminded me of Innsbruck's Bergisel and the whole atmosphere there was like in St. Anton or any other Ski resort.
So, before I bore you to death with all my babbling about Oslo's museums and sights, I better stop - I uploaded some pictures - click here. Have fun watching them and probably let me know what you think of them (Feedback is always good ;) ).

So, that's it for today. On Thursday my best friend from Austria comes visiting me - I'm really looking forward to that and I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun (and of course, I'll take some pictures of it ;) ).
Tjena!
Manuel