The past two weeks

The past two weeks I spent gliding on ice, smuggling necessities across borders, attending a birthday festival and flying down a mountain on a sled in the dark!

Ice skating at Frogner Stadion

Don’t be mistaken…. I wasn’t always this good. In fact, less than 10 minutes earlier Irene was struggling to pull me off of the bench

I was a little out of my element since I’m used to ice skating on the beach with palm trees around in Coronado haha http://blog.sandiego.org/2012/11/ice-skating/

By the way this ice rink was huge!

Bus trip to Sweden

This was definitely one of the more interesting experiences in my life. Last week a few of us decided that we were going to find a way across the border into Sweden to save money on some necessities. Since we weren’t buying all that much we had to find the cheapest way possible to get there so that we would still be saving money after transportation costs. We looked into many legit ways of getting there but in the end we took the adventurous (affordable) route of boarding the Atlas Reiser that would take us to the border city of Strømstad. The bus advertises that it stops at Halal shops (see picture below) and it seems as though we were the only ones on the bus that weren’t on board for that reason alone….

NEVERTHELESS, we made the most of the trip and took a walk around a lake, or fjord (not sure which) during our first stop at the Halal market. Thankfully the next stop was at a typical supermarket and we were able to pick up some necessities before heading back to Oslo. We will definitely be back for only 50kr round trip!!

Birthday Festival

One day for a birthday is just not enough! Why should it be?! The first day of the birthday festival started off with a feast Almost more food than I have ever seen together in Oslo.

The nigh culminated with a birthday flare, a birthday song (translation needed), and some champagne on the roof in subzero weather!

Sledding: Korketrekkeren at Frognesæteren

The second day of the birthday festival took us to the top of a mountain for some sledding in the dark. This was a blast! You can rent these sleds and helmets for 125kr for the day and take off down the mountain on a semi-lit track. Once you reach the end of the slope a subway takes you back up the mountain. The ride back up is 14 minutes just to give you an idea of how long the sled ride is!

The birthday girl was ready to hit the slopes!

Though her shortcut didn’t quite work out too well….

We ended the sledding night by roasting hotdogs over a campfire on the mountain and having some Norwegian chocolate (similar to a kitkat bar) that I was told goes hand in hand with any day of skiing or sledding growing up.