oslo diaries

9th june, 2007

so ive been in norway for almost a week now..and its,,,lets say,`not bad´! im seeing places, which i very seldom do...and the places are nice...beautiful valleys and parks...its nice! it took a 16 hour journey to come here from dhaka. by the time i reached oslo i was too damn tired to look around..to make things worse, the office started just from the next day. yah..i didnt get any chance to recover from my terrible jetlag. well, i think ive left that behind me now, i mean the jetlag, and the homesickness too. but i still hate waking up at 7 and rushing to the office. wish it was just a tour instead of a training for work. :(

the only noteworthy thing i saw here so far is the frogner park..its a huge park...with a lot of sculptures. and a vast amount of land, green fields, slopes, fountains and all that. very peaceful...makes you want to lie down and relax. may be i'll go there again before i leave. the place where we are staying (temporarily, because the company couldnt manage any room for 21 days in a row..so we are staying at this place for 7 days, then going to some youth hostel for the next week, then again come back to this hotel for the last 7 days!!) is very close to slottsparken which is the royal palace..theres a park there also..but as i live beside it..i just ignored it..may be i'll explore it just before i leave, that is, if i get the time! in fact, we have to pass through it everyday on the way to the office, may be thats why i keep delaying the visit.

saw the pirates at the 'collosseum' which they say is the largest cinema in northern europe. its kool to see from the outside...but the lounge inside has so little space, its always crammed with people. but the theater is large, if only the movie was good, it couldve been a wonderful experience.

for the welcome dinner we went to a place called holmenkollen which is near the skijump. the skijump looked good, may be i'll try to do a little 'jumping' from there sometime. the restaurant was good, we sat in a terrace type of place from where you can see the whole city of oslo and beyond. the fjords looked lovely from up there..it looked like some faraway land, you could very well imagine the lights from the islands were some monsters eyes or something like that.

god its so boring writing this way...the reason why i started to write this entry is to keep a track of my wanderings here in norway..never thought it'd get so boring... i better stop here.



10th june, 2007

watched an japanese anime in the morning,,,well, not exactly morning, but where the sun sets at 12 am, you can very well call 2 pm 'morning', cant you? the anime was called naussicaa. the first time i heard the name i thought it had something to do with nausal activities.. :S ..actually its about a princess who is called naussicaa, she's saving everyone throughout the movie - humans, insects and even trees..and in the end she saves the whole world! well, it was a japanese anime after all!

after the movie i went out and spent the rest of day wandering through the streets. the summer festival started yesterday though i got to see it today. its full of life, yes, life! it was good to move through all that bustle and hustle..people buying and selling, eating and drinking, everyone was so lively! it almost felt like i was in london. the only difference is the price i guess. no wonder norway is called one of the most expensive cities in the world. just the other day i saw a pair of slippers which cost 250 krones, which, back home, will cost around 11 krones or so. its ridiculous, the prices of things here.

went to a castle in the afternoon, which was around 8 o'clock. i love castles. those stone gray walls, trenches, canons kind of hypnotises me all the time. this castle is called the akershus castle, i didnt have the chance to enter it because by the time ive finished watching the outside it was closing time, but the outside is pretty good too. the castle is overlooking the fjord, you have a wonderful view of the dock and the sea from there. there were so many wild flowers in bloom, for sometime i think i lost myself rolling among them. im sure if i lived here i'd have gone there whenenver i felt down or wanted to be alone. the lovers use it for spending a cosy time, who knows, may be i'd have done the same too!

on my way back i bought my dinner from a deli, the dinner was a yucky thing called vindaloo, i was so tired and hungry i ate all of that. im longing for a nice decent meal, these european/indian dishes dont suit me at all.

tomorrow we change the hotel. we are being moved to a shitty youth hostel. we girls are better off than the boys, there's only one room for the five of them, while we girls get one for three. well, something is better than nothing i guess.