A Trip to the Capital - Oslo

 Hi everyone! Today I decided to venture out of my new little home and peruse the capital of Norway, the city of Oslo. Kate, the other instructor from UND, and I left by train for Oslo this morning and just kind of meandered around the city for a while. We looked at some shops, saw some sights, and went to the Nobel Peace Center. Here are some highlights from the day:

This is Karl Johans Gate. It is kind of the main walking street in this part of Oslo. There is lots of shopping, restaurants, bars, and such

Most of the buildings are very pretty. Lots of old architecture

This is the National Theatre. I would like to see a show there, but since I wouldn't know what the hell was going on, I might skip it

This is the Royal Palace. I think this is the least flashy palace ever made. Norwegians are not know for being frivolous, that's for sure

       

This is a statue of Karl Johan. The inscription on the side says roughly (acoording to google translate) "The People's Love is My Reward"

This is one of the palace guards. Surprisingly the guards are actually armed, but I am pretty sure the weapon they carry is a BB gun

This guard was nice enough to let me take a picture with him. He was very cute and gracious, and I am pretty sure he was 12 years old. I wanted to ask why they choose to guard the royal family with lightly armed toddlers, but I didn't want to seem rude

The view of the city from the palace steps

The waterfront. Kate assured me that it is much more lively and entertaining when it isn't frozen

This is the Nobel Peace Center. It is currently showing a very interesting exhibit on Mahatma Gandhi who they refer to as "the missing laureate" because while nominated on multiple occasions, he was never awarded the prize 

 

This is me listening to some information about Gandhi on what are possibly the first headphones to ever be manufactured. These things had to be at least 60 years old.

A very, very cool exhibit about the role of cartoons in public discourse surrounding the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict

In case you can't read the picture, it says, "It's easy to forget the human side of this. The cartoons help show the real face of the conflict. They help people realize that we are all in this together"

A few of the cartoons displayed

Each one of the peace laureates has a tablet that displays information about their lives and work and they are surrounded by these cool lights. It looked really pretty, but I have to be honest and tell you guys that I definitely did not read them all (or any of them actually - I might suck)

Another view of the lights and peace laureate tablets

The Grand Hotel

The buildings all lit up and pretty

This is Stortinget, the Parliament of Norway

And finally, a Tiger. I have no clue why there is a random tiger statue outside the train station, but I am just going with it

This was pretty much my day in photo-form. We also had a seriously awesome (and surprisingly affordable) meal at the cafe in the Nobel Peace center, but I don't want to become one of those people who takes pictures of the food I eat as if that is a totally normal and not ridiculous thing to do (you know who you are - knock it off!) The day was fun, relaxing, and really f-ing cold. I am now snuggled under a blanket with some hot tea, trying to warm up about 6 hours of chill. I am sure I will go back to Oslo and do some more serious city-exploring, but I think it may be wise to wait for a warmer day. That's it for now. Thanks for reading, pals of mine!