It’s our trip! Part 2

September 29, 2021

It’s Wednesday evening! We woke up pretty early this morning to start our day of museums. But before we get there, let’s rewind to last night. Alright so we’ve arrived at the brick building. We quickly learn that we are at a concert in an old mausoleum. What kind of concert would they hold in an old mausoleum you may ask? Spiritual music. This means chimes, gongs, guitar, vocals, didjeredo (Obviously did not spell that right), wind chimes, and some silence mixed in there too. I will add a picture, but we were asked to lay down, hence the mats, and use the blanket to keep warm. We laid in a circle around the middle of the chilly mausoleum as the two person band (A man and a woman) began to play in the middle of the room. It was beautiful, haunting music. Some people fell asleep, some people fidgeted the whole time, and others snored loudly. I didn’t fall asleep, but it sure was beautiful and made everyone quite sleepy.

After an hour and a half of that, the musicians walked out to signal that the concert was over. We got up, rolled the pads and blankets, and went back outside. We retraced our steps back to the van, hopped in, and made our way to the youth hostel where we would be staying for the next two nights. The idea of a hostel is really interesting, and I don’t think the US really does that. It’s just a cheap, safe place for people to stay when they are traveling. They usually provide breakfast, and you can do your own laundry. The rooms are super tiny, and the beds fold up to the wall to make more space. We had some tacos, made our beds, and promptly went to bed. Or at least I did. I was exhausted after a full day. We woke up to a yummy breakfast.

My breakfast

Breakfast buffet of sorts

They had so much to choose from. I am used to bread, meat, cheese, and juice right now. We went to the Viking museum, which will be closing for 5 years on Friday. So everything in the gift shop was a solid 80% off. We all bought way more than we should have. It was an interesting museum, but most of the smaller stuff was packed away due to the closing. They have 3 sort of intact Vikings ships there. I will put some pictures up. It was pretty interesting to learn where Viking originated, where they traveled too, and how they traveled. Their boats are huge and beautiful. The 3 we saw were burial ships. So that means wealthy people were buried in them after they were done sailing the seas. They are able to be preserved in the clay that they use to create burial mounds. Pretty cool stuff.

They showed a little movie projected on the ceiling of the museum.

Viking ship!

My lovely friends

After that, we walked to the Kon-Tiki museum. Now. This is a long story. The story of Kon-Tiki I mean. So I’m going to kindly ask you to google it yourself, as I am sick of talking about it haha. Our class read the book version and watched the documentary on it last week. But in its basics, there was once a Norwegian man who wanted to prove that the people from Tahiti could have been originally from Peru. At that time, it was believed that that was not possible because the people from Peru did not build boats. BUT, they did build rafts. Out of balsar wood. So this Norwegian man assembled a crew, got some funding, and build a raft. He then floated that raft from Peru to Tahiti. Fun stuff. There’s a lot more to the story, and the Norwegian are very proud of it. So good read about it. Pretty interesting stuff actually. Alrighty. My fingers are getting sore from typing so let’s wrap up the evening. After that, we walked to a restaurant. But this restaurant is special. It has live opera. 😂. Weird. I know. But it was really cool! We had pizza, live opera, and then everyone got really sleepy. Now we are on our way back to the hostel! We are all ready for bed. Tomorrow, our class trip ends. But my trip is just beginning. It is not autumn break! A couple of my friends and I are staying here in Oslo until next Sunday. I am not going to be updating the blog during that time unless something really interesting happens. So see you all in a week! Thanks for reading by the way, seeing that people view these and leave comments makes me really happy. Okay, bye!

Just kidding! Here are some more photos!

Me in the center of Oslo.

I lied about going straight to Kon-Tiki. We actually made a quick stop at a nearby folk museum. It was a big open air museum in which many old Norwegian buildings had been relocated. Really cool!