Norway & the struggle bus(es)

You need to travel while you’re in Europe, they say. It’s so easy! The flights are so cheap, the airports are straightforward and you only need a backpack.

Well, they don’t tell you too much about getting to the goddamn airport. They don’t want you to know about the struggle bus.

(DJ Khaled? Anyone? This blog post is a month late, so my cultural references can be delayed, right?)

We leave 76 and 78 Chilswell at some ungodly hour like 8 a.m. Our class usually started past 2 p.m., okay? It was early.

Our bus to London is delayed to the point we miss our Terravision bus to Stansted airport. That’s okay, though, because there’s another bus in 20 minutes that our ticket allows us to take.

Somewhere along that journey, Miranda pipes up. “Did you see that Terravision got banned from the Stansted Airport, Matt?”

Miranda doesn’t always chime in, but when she does, it’s always some radical shit. Quiet people are always like that. They’re surprising. When they have words to say, it’s going to be memorable. Remember when she just happened to have a Seahawks flag in her bag? That was fun.

This news was less fun.

“Oh yeah, I heard that too,” Ashley adds.

ASHLEY. MIRANDA. How was this information not shared before we make it to the station where we board the goddamn bus?

I was skeptical, so I looked it up, and The Guardian let me know that my two quieter peers were (as usual) quite correct.

Accompanied by Alex—who gives me confidence to get a little angry with service workers because he is larger than me and would be good at diffusing a situation should my rage-filled alter ego pop out—we go to chat with a couple of Terravision workers who make it sound like it’s completely normal for us to be taking a bus from Victoria to King’s Cross and THEN, FINALLY to Stansted.

I’m pretty sure I said something along the lines of “Well, this should be an adventure.”

We made it to Stansted with time — but not much energy or patience — to spare. We boarded our Ryanair flight without any troubles and hopped on our first flight since arriving to London 20-odd days prior.

Our flight landed in Oslo around 3 p.m. Norway time. This is the second country I’ve been to (outside the U.S. and Canada) and the first country where the primary language was not English.

I’ve struggled (both in the U.K. and in Norway) to truly understand my sense of place. The developed world largely feels the same. Oxford and London are filled with the historical and iconic sights that make it stand out as not the US, but it is not so radically different. I consistently forget I am not at home in the States, taking a weekend trip. No, we’re many miles away, closer to the locations featured in events which shaped world history — not Lake Chelan or Portland, Oregon.

Norway was particularly interesting when considering “place.” It felt like being on a slightly different version of the Puget Sound, like Seattle with Norwegian and great public transit.

I may have had a problem with place, but Breanna had a problem with space.

Norway is really fucking expensive. Pardon my French, I know there’s people over the age of thirty reading this who may not love my use of the f-word, but wait until you hear this.

I paid $20 (Yes, USD) for a burger and fries in the airport. And it was awful.

I paid $10 for a whiskey and Coke. Goddammit, I could have bought plenty of whiskey on its own for $10 in any of the duty-free airport shopping.

Speaking of alcohol. This country is absolutely ridiculous about alcohol (almost put a curse word here but considered the parental audience and went for this diction even though I’m about to complain about how I couldn’t get hard liquor). Stores that sell the good stuff (i.e. ANYTHING OTHER THAN BEER AND CIDER, which is all they can sell anywhere else) close at 5 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday.

What?! You’re telling me I can’t enjoy some Shiraz in my hostel!? What if I want my own whiskey and coke?! I’m not over it.

But don’t worry. Sometimes we spent good money on good food.

The best food experience was eating on the fjord in Norway — we sat underneath heat lamps with blankets on our lap. I drank wine at noon, which is one of my favourite pastimes.

“What’s a drop bear?”There’s a question we didn’t expect to be asking during our two-night stay in the Sentrum Hostel in downtown Oslo.

But then we met Chris and Kieran. The two stayed across the hall from the 76 Chilswell girls and moseyed their way over on Friday night when both parties were looking for something to do. The two Australians, in their late-twenties, had been best friends since the age of twelve and had since moved for work in London.

They were here for a similar reason as us — “let’s go somewhere! Flights to Oslo are cheap!” — and we had the pleasure of enjoying their company during our adventure. Chris, Kieran, Sierra, Siobhan, Alex and I had lovely conversation about religion, U.S. politics and other unexpectedly-but-thoroughly-engaging-and-nice traditionally-impolite conversation.

They also warned us to not get attacked by drop bears, which are scary-ass Koalas who drop on your back and maul you if you get in their way. See below.

Norway served for interesting cultural exchange, to say the least. Besides being tricked by some Australians (now I’m not sure we can trust anything they told us), we also got to be surrounded by a new and fairly unfamiliar language.

This proved to be pretty straightforward for getting around — “stopper” meant our bus was coming to a halt, nå meant the bus was due, and one could easily determine if their bus stop was a museum by looking for “museet” at the end of the word.

The strangest experience was visiting The Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities. We were told we would get “translators” (entry-level Android tablets with a web browser open) to experience the exhibits, which was entirely in Norwegian.

Maybe 1 in 5 of every block of text was available in English. It was frustrating to see what was probably an enormous amount of interesting, insightful information about the Holocaust and not be able to consume it. We left unsatisfied but full of questions and a new sense of empathy. Did we just experience what it was like to be a non-English speaker living in places like the U.S. or the U.K.? How can we make important experiences more accessible to people by using a multi-lingual approach?

We took a page out of the transcendentalist’s book and took to nature to sort out our thoughts. Oliver guided us down an icy path (don’t worry, Sophia and I made it out alive) to a beautiful coastal view.

I couldn’t imagine a better way to end our trip. Technically, our trip ended with delayed flights, getting lost looking for our coaches, and arriving at home with enough time for a quick nap before class.

I’m choosing to remember this as the end because it’s far more poetic.