Apologies to the Norwegian Tourist Board

I leave for Berlin again today. The train schedule is such that I cannot get out of Norway before Friday unless I leave today. Anyhow the majority of what follows was written yesterday but I could not get to post it until now.

My first morning in Oslo and there were no stunning sights after all. The whole area was muffled in fog. As I set out once more for the city, dirtyy laundry on my back, I could barely see twenty feet ahead of me. All around me was the sound of rain, though there was no rain, just moisture dripping from the leaves. It was quiet. Very quiet. The from the heart of the forest came a screaming and a maniacal laughter. Only kids out on a ramble, but to me it sounded like Lord of the Flies meets the Blair Witch. I walked on until a flash of red through the trees caught my attention. Down below the road, among the trees, was parked a red car. It stood beneath a lamppost straight out of Narnai. As it happened it was on the land of a nearby house; why shouldn't they have a lamppost on their property? On I walked. The figure of a woman, a very tall woman, appeared before me. Suddenly she began to run, turning off the road unexpectedly. It was the station and as I arrived the train pulled out. They run like clockwork here and she had checked her timetable. I hadn't.

After all my comments about the ticket machines, there was a guy fixing it when I walked up. I sat down. Suddenly loud music sounded! Well, why shouldn't he put on a cd? A robin landed on a fence and unsurprisingly began moving his head to the beat. There I was on a foggy mountainside with a Techno technician and a robin on E. The day was already a lot better. It's all about your frame of mind, you see....

What's that written on the signpost? It can't be! "Transylvannia"? Well, no actually, "Tyrvannstarnet", or "The TV Tower". Given the right (or wrong) frame of mind anything can appear sinister.

The train needless to say was deserted, but then my stop is just after the terminus so few would be on at that point. The driver, a woman, was definitely more upbeat and even intelligible. Rolling down to Oslo town, I saw a group of film students shooting on a station platform. A woman even got on with a baby (they make them here too). A tall old man in a baseball cap and trenchcoat got on next and started talking to said baby, while another old man with his minder moaned by the window. I take back all I said; this is all far healthier than in Sweden. In Sweden one old man on the T-bahn was a novelty; where were the others in a country with a high life expectancy? Now as I looked around the train, it was fuller and the mix appropriately varied. Indeed with the leaves falling outside and the low clouds, it could almost be Dublin, if we had a proper public transport system.

I got my laundry done. Two Japanese women with four washloads made sure I didn't get it completely dry, but I won't go into that. I wandered around a little then, saw the Changing of the Guard at the Palace. I still fail to see how in this day and age and country can maintain a monarchy. I had a long spiel prepared on this topic, but I have no wish to offend my British readers, so I will keep that gem to myself. Suffice to say they should be put in a council home on a state pension.

The Changing of thew Guard was absurdly enjoyable. They were dressed in the usual ridiculous uniforms with green ribbons etc., going through the motions with choreographed stupidity, all the while carrying bayonet tipped kalashnikovs! I nearly got speared at one point.

On to the Munch Museum, he of "The Scream" fame. Small, but impressive. The same (excellent) paintings were replicated again and again until it almost seemed like a Warhol exhibition. I did notice a lot of similarities with the Willumsen I had seen in Paris. Both put a lot of effort into paintings on bathers, for instance, and in one huge canvas, Munch uses the same shaped sunburst Willumsen had used repeatedly. Which came first? I don't know.

The museum closed early (4.00), so I went to get my tickets. Unfortunately the train service out of Norway is very haphazard which meant in order to get to Berlin for Friday (to meet my friend Phil), I would have to leave on Wednesday on a 17 hour trek to arrive in Berlin on Thursday morning. Nasty, but sorted. Or so I thought.

Then there was the daily food hunt. I nearly walked into a flaming brazier outside one restaurant, and as I patted out my singed eyebrows I noticed "The Rubber Chicken" on the other side of the road. Well, with a place called that the hunt was over. The food was okay (I prefer baps to Italian squares on my burger), but when a group of twenty girls came in, I stayed for another beer, and another. Good beer too this time, Frydenlund. Nothing wrong with the Norwegian women either.

When I got back to the hotel I thought I'd go for a swim and a sauna, I'd just check my Berlin accommodation first. Tripadvisor nothing. Lastminute.com nothing. Hostelworld, nothing! No hotels! Apparently there are around three different events coinciding and everywhere is fully booked. I didn't get to have my swim. This morning I got a bed in a hostel. Believe it or not, this will be my first hostel yet, and I feel I should have tried them a lot sooner. We shall see.

By the way, I was looking in an estate agency window and saw a cool house, huge, going for 1,500,000 kroner, which is by my reckoning just under 180,000 euro. I might move here yet. It's on Grev Dracula Allee. Frame of mind, folks, frame of mind.