This is the second article in The Arctic Adventure series. Please check out the 1st one here, if you haven’t already. 🙂

The date was December 31, 2016. Bharathi and I started to Oslo from Mumbai. It was a Swiss Air flight with a short layover in Zurich. The flight was comfortable, with enough leg room, delicious food and warm service. Though Bharathi managed to sleep for a few hours, I was too excited to sleep. I still couldn’t believe that I was going on my ‘dream trip’ to Norway. It was around 6AM when we landed at Zurich. The airport was beautiful. Probably, the decorations were done for Christmas/New Year.

Going through Passport Control was smooth, it was over in a few minutes and we were admitted into the Schengen area. After roaming around the airport for some time and buying a 500ml bottle of water for 5 Euros (seriously!), we boarded our flight to Oslo. During the flight, a flight attendant asked Bharathi, “May I offer you a quiche?”, and for a second we thought he was offering her a kiss. 😛 Thankfully, she immediately realized that it was some food item and we enjoyed a couple of nice quiches. Soon, we landed at Oslo and the temperature was around 4 degree Celsius (probably the highest we experienced during the trip). Then, we had to wait for an eternity to collect our check-in bags. The city is around 50kms away from the airport and taking a train was the cheapest/fastest way. There is a train station right next to the airport and we took the cheapest train (NSB), which was 92 Norwegian Krones (NOK), one way.

We reached the Oslo Central Station in 22 minutes. The NSB train was punctual, fast, clean and comfortable. We were mesmerized by the city, right from the moment we stepped out of the train station. Bharathi was so excited that she started taking a video and forgot about her gloves. She realized that she lost it only after an hour! Till date, she has no idea where she left them 😛 (Check out the video here. WordPress doesn’t allow video content with my plan)

After taking more customary pictures, we started to our AirBnB apartment. There was a direct bus from the station. And FYI, public transportation is very expensive in Norway and food too is very expensive in Norway, and oh, hotel rentals too are very expensive in Norway. So, EVERYTHING IS EXPENSIVE. Be prepared to burn a big hole in your wallet if you dream about visiting Scandinavia. Oslo offers Oslo passes with which you can travel for free in all modes of public transport (trains/trams/ferries/buses). We got 48 hour Oslo passes for all of us. These passes also get you a discount in a few restaurants and free entries into museums.

By the time, we reached our apartment and dropped our bags, the rest of the gang was on the way to the central station from the airport. We went back to the station to pick them up. And we went grocery shopping too, to save money. 😛

Suitcases courtesy of Hari & Rukmani

Again, we went back to our apartment. We had a lot of catching up to do, pulling each others legs and time just flew by. Since it was New Year’s Eve, we decided to go out for the night to see how New Year is celebrated in Norway. We made reservations at Cafe Amsterdam. But, being smart, we had one round of dinner at the apartment. Yes, cost cutting measures right from day 1. And guess what we had for dinner! MAGGI NOODLES!! Yes, we’d got a 6-pack and we finished it in one sitting.

We took a bus from St. Hanshaugen to Nordahl Bruns Gate and walked to Cafe Amsterdam. The cafe was small and nice, the ambiance too was good. It was around 9:30 PM and the party was just getting started. The DJ was playing peppy music, people were dancing all around us. We were still catching up, talking about random incidents from college and Hari took out his DSLR and started taking pictures (P.S.: He got a separate back pack for his camera and he’d brought 4 lenses! Hari ‘Camera Man’ Kumar _/\_).

PC: Hari, obviously.

As the night progressed, the cafe started overflowing and music was getting louder. We loved the atmosphere. Promptly at 12, we wished each other a happy New Year and we realized there was fireworks outside. We went outside immediately, but we were surrounded by buildings and we missed them. Then, we called it a night and started walking towards the bus stop. Temperature was well below zero degree Celsius. But, it didn’t matter. I don’t know if it was because of the city or because of the company, we just loved walking around the city. And we did walk a LOT over the next two days.

Scene near the bus stop. People were going crazyyy. The entire city was on the road at 12.

We reached back safely. The bed at the apartment was very comfy and all of us had a good sleep. It was a good first day. But, it only got better. 😉

This was our home for 3 days in Oslo. The place was beautiful, in a good location, and we had a wonderful host!

Stay tuned for beautiful pictures and interesting stories from Oslo! And thanks for reading 🙂