What's Oslo like?

I'm here to help you. I love Oslo, I was going to move there in 2000 when errr...fate (!) intervened.

1) Oslo is not the most beautiful city, far from the most beautiful Norwegian city, but it is excellently situated and very easy to get around.
2)Everyone speaks English. I spent six months learning Norwegian before I left, and if you were to try it you would find it is really quite an easy language to learn, constructed very much like English. Practice rolling your tongue.
3)It is VERY expensive but also a young city and there would be lots of potential flatmates I'm sure. Also the main university (I'm assuming this is where your girlfriend is going) is massive and it looks like the students have an awful lot of fun.

Do it! DO IT FOR ME!

xxpost: It's not an incredibly beautiful city, no architectural wonders, but then again, it's certainly not an ugly city - it's very clean and cozy, with lots of nature.

It is quite expensive - on par with London. But then again, Norwegian wages are quite high as well. I found that Norwegian was a pretty easy language to learn, as long as you can actually find people that will speak it with you. Young people for the most part speak English pretty well, and always want to try it out on you.

As far as jobs go, I was a student and I got a part-time job at American Classics, a second hand shoppe in the centre of Oslo. Stop by [Grensen 9] and ask, they may be able to use some help. For a more serious job, check some of the job sites:
http://www.monster.no/
http://www.finn.no/jobb/
http://www.jobbnor.no/

Grünerløkka is the "hip" quarter (ie. gentrified working class area now student/boho hangout). "Løkka" is full of small cafes, shops, bars, green areas etc.

Yup, it's expensive. Booze and fags are heavily taxed so many buy cheap beer or wine (the 3 litre cartons of red wine did the trick for me) from the Vinmonopolet or supermarkets and get drinking before hitting the bars to save money.

Mostly though it's good for sport and activities in the wonderful surrounding countryside: fishing, lots and lots of fishing, rafting, canoeing, mountain hiking etc. In winter it's skiing, sleighing. And fishing. My god, the fishing.

There were quite a few Norweigan girls on my course at university. We used to do this with them (yes, we were in Sheffield, but we were also students...) Foreschpiel? Is that right? I know it's pretty similar to the word for foreplay (other fun fact: the Danish word for whore is the same as a Norweigan word for girlfriend, oh the hilarity that ensued etc.)

I remember that now! I think it's "Vorspiel" which might actually be a German word, I don't know what it literally means but the Norwegians used it as the name of the pre-piss-up piss-up.

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pretty serious looking explosion in govt buldings

One guess is it's related to this:

Norway charges radical cleric for death threats

(AP) – Jul 12, 2011

OSLO, Norway (AP) — A Norwegian prosecutor has filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he's deported from the Nordic country.

The indictment, obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, centers on statements that Mullah Krekar — the founder of the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam — made to various media, including American network NBC.

Norway ordered Krekar deported in 2005 after declaring him a national security threat, but the decision was suspended amid worries he would face execution or torture in Iraq.

At a news conference in June 2010, Krekar said that if he's deported to Iraq and is killed there, Norwegian officials would meet the same fate. He singled out former asylum policy minister Erna Solberg.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gJ1T3qbtKpMPUw67TD7X5rTlwpWQ?docId=bac0246297764fc99cb097f616838f39

insane, looks like a huge explosion. windows out kilometers away from the blast. holy shit.

two dead confirmed so far.

fucking hell it really hits home when it's somewhere you were a few months ago

http://pub.tv2.no/multimedia/TV2/archive/00896/Oslosmell6_896007i.jpg

Norway was the country of the mohammed comics, no?

senseless and horrible, double figures deaths you would imagine by the scale.

mohammed cartoons were in denmark

lol, ignorance.

link to grau live blog rather than just c/ping all the info on it - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/jul/22/oslo-explosion-live-coverage

the cartoons were published in Norway too though along with most Scandinavian countries iirc

That bit about the Kurdish guy a few posts back seems to make more immediate sense more than the cartoons, still...

oh yes most likely so

and now NRK are reporting there's been shooting..!? WTF

a man dressed as a police officer apparently opened fire during a gathering for the social democratic party's youth organisation. not fucked up at all this.

hm i was updating the wrong thread it seems

what a nightmare

xpost -- The hell? Has there been weird government instability there this whole time or something?

Is Geir about to let us know what's happening fron a Norwegian perspective, and to check in that he's ok?

I'm in Norway, but not in Oslo so I don't have much to contribute, except I know a lot of people in newspapers around the bombed area. They've all checked in on my Facebook. Now the newspapers are all about this completely absurd situation of shooting on a tiny island where the labour party youth org is camping. Prime minister was scheduled to speak there tomorrow I think - clear connection to the PM/politics all around.

working at newspapers*

Looks like they're/he is after the PM who was (it's rumoured) due at the camp where the shootings happned/is happened.

fucking hell, the shooting's on an island and the kids on it are either refusing to talk for fear the shooter will find them, or trying to swim to the mainland

Sorry abcfsk! What you said...

This is a tiny island owned by the youth organisation.

Al-Q bomb plot there last year - not necessarily connected of course. Looked like those plots were aimed elsewhere.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10145737

at least five people hurt on the island. what a fucking nightmare.

4 reported killed at Utoya - but obviously not confirmed.

Multiple gunmen being reported now? Fucking hell.

Ned where are you picking that up?

one person said to be arrested at utøya now

haven't read anything about multiple shooters either

6.09pm: NRK is reporting that an unknown group called "Helpers of the Global Jihad" have posted a message that this is only the beginning of the reaction to Norwegian periodicals publishing the Muhammed cartoons, according to Andrew Boyle, a journalist in Norway.

assuming this is a "terrorist attack", it probably isn't a direct retaliation to the indictment posted upthread cuz these things usually take months to plan

Shooter has been identified as 'Nordic' apparently. Doesn't mean it's not connected to Islamic terrorism but might open up other possibilities.

gunman on utoya reported as being nordic and blond...so, not a jihad attack? or a muslim convert?

xp

Feel like maybe this should have its own thread? Like maybe a more tourist-oriented thread shouldn't be marred by tragedy. Possible to move the relevant posts to a separate thread? Mods?

yeah, i think so too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IippcraBPKA

by the time we got to oslo, the snow was gone.

sitting here in San Francisco on vacation it seems unreal about these horrible things happening at home :-/ Selfishly speaking, it seems noone I know are killed or hurt; thoughts for those who aren't that fortunate...

this is unspeakable. how can a person do something like this?

only someone totally mentally unhinged would be able to carry this sort of thing through alone. members in a group would tend to reinforce one another, but mass killing by oneself is just a nut case.

The facebook page is down, but here's a screen cap:

http://www.solidprinciples.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Anders-Behring-Breivik-FACEBOOK.pdf

He looks like a male model.

o shit, sorry for posting that low clip. highly inappropriate, given the circumstances. it was the first thing that occurred to me when I saw the word "oslo."

Feel like maybe this should have its own thread?

Yeah I was going to say, whats with the strange habit here lately of reviving innocuous nice threads to start up a slightly related but usually awful different topic? Seems a bit weird.

As long as we're allowing a brief derail from this horrible story: do many people on ILX really post whatever comes to mind when they read a thread title, without reading the conversation within at all? Seems strange to me.

Suspect dude looks like a blond david duchovny :/ Quite jarring.

Just heard on local news that 7 died in the explosion, and he killed at least 80 on the island.

Oh no waking up to this new number, shit shit shit. This is so many magnitudes bigger than anything this country has been through before I'm not sure people are able to process it.

Has there been a history of this kind of right-wing violence in Norway in recent years? Obviously not in magnitude, but in terms of rhetoric and action?

Oh no waking up to this new number, shit shit shit. This is so many magnitudes bigger than anything this country has been through before I'm not sure people are able to process it.

― abcfsk, Saturday, July 23, 2011 3:00 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah they said on CNN that the country doesn't have the capability to deal w/ this many deaths in one day

xp No, isolated cases, few and far between. A big hate crime thing in 2001 but only one kid was killed. This is more out of the blue than an international terrorist attack would be.

Just saw the latest news and figured it was time for a new thread: 2011 Oslo/Utoeya Norway attacks

Has there been a history of this kind of right-wing violence in Norway in recent years?

The neo nazis have been seen as rather pathetic bunch of losers. They did a few violent acts back in the 80s though, killed one person by dropping a bomb at a 1st May parade and later one Muslim dropped a bomb at a mosque. But these were minor occurences compared to what happened yesterday. Also, Anders Behring Brevik was apparently not a nazi, rather used to be a member of the youth party of the Progress Party, which is a sort of "legitimate" right wing party attracting between 15 and 25 per cent of the votes.

It angers me that the immediate media response was "omg islamic extremists" to this, like thats the ONLY terrorism that exists in the world now.

wow difficult to resume the tourism talk on this thread - but any recommendations on what to do in Oslo for the weekend? I've been already a couple of times a long time ago - my priority is to see the new opera house, but any tip would be most welcome! I've heard something about an incredible sculpture park, does it ring a bell?

Tomorrow's the constitution day, so if you're there for that, well, expect crowds!

The sculpture park is Vigelandsparken.
Euh, I dunno what else is worth seeing there, to be honest. The castle's not very exciting, but it's close by that park, and at any rate right at the end of the major shopping street (Karl Johan)
There's the Munch museum, of course.

For a pretty good overview of cultural arrangements, go see the underskog website. I guess you should go through google translate (link to get a better idea of what some of those arrangements are.

As I don't live there anymore, I haven't any good idea of what's going on these days. I see there's gonna be naked yoga on the beach though!

yeah I'm partly going for 17 maj - I expect crowds and good-natured patriotism - will cafe and bars be open?

Yes, but probably crowded.

thinking about going to oslo in march. madness?

It's a bit grey and ugly in march.

try the pickled herring. it will fit your mood. and if it doesn't fit your mood, it will change your mood, so that your mood will fit it.

I've been in March and I ate whale, it was great

Weird, I just got off the phone with my dad, who asked if I'd be interested in going to Norway with him (and my brother) in May. Think I'm gonna do it.

May's the best time to go

Most expensive city.

tbh it's not terribly interesting - the great thing about Norway is the nature/landscapes, not the cities.
As far as Scandi cities go, Stockholm and Copenhagen are far more worth your time (bigger as well). In Norway itself, I'd try to check out quaint little Bergen (if you can do take the Oslo-Bergen train ride which is a 7 hour summary of all that Norway has to offer)

thinking about going to oslo in march. madness?

― ||||||||, Monday, 23 February 2015 bookmarkflaglink

Going in January

I never wanted to live anywhere as much as I did after I visited Oslo once (and it was during a cold autumn). Crazy expensive, but everyone knows that. Enjoy!

The coffee and bun opportunities look tremendous.

Might even go to a sauna

Coffee and bun is good.

Had a Munch cookie at the Munch museum.

Found an excellent Trattoria last night.

Sauna later today.

The sauna + swim in the fjords is a reason to come just by itself.

You munched a Munch cookie?

Yup. The cookie was plastered with some lines in chocolate that look like the weird guy from the painting.

The painting = the scream

They've missed a trick not having The Scream Ice Cream.

Good timing. Yesterday was the snowiest day since 1998.

Yeah it has been really amazing. And funny to walk in all of that snow and muck.

Didn't realize it was unusual thought it happened every year!

Weird, I just got off the phone with my dad, who asked if I'd be interested in going to Norway with him (and my brother) in May. Think I'm gonna do it.

― Tove Lo Tove You Baby (jaymc), Monday, February 23, 2015 9:48 PM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

This was a fun trip! And one I think of fondly because it's the last time I spent that much time with my dad, who passed away a few years later. We did Oslo and Bergen, with a fjord cruise in between.

Don't miss the Vigeland sculpture park.

Coincidentally made one late afternoon visit just an hour ago. Its amazing, lots of great views of Oslo too.

Brown cheese is great. But coffee shop really like to sell it a bit.

The quality of the bread here is second to none. The sandwiches are fantastic and they really cater to veggie tastes too.

The Vigeland garden wiki mentions 'Nazi aesthetics' but its lack of connection to antiquity made me ambivalent. It gives a weird experience.

Best 'The Scream' version is in the National Museum, not the Munch museum btw

best version was iced onto the biscuit alphie already ate

For coffee I found Tim Wendelboe was fine, but the shop is trendy and in a cool neighbourhood, so if you're into coffee you might like it. There's a food hall near there (Mathallen?), with a well-known duck sandwich that was delicious...

Public transportation is very nice. We took a tram to Holmenkollen (the ski jump area). You can take an elevator to the top, with nice views of Oslo.

Was looking at Tim Wendleboe but just ran out of time. Am about to depart back home.

--

Best 'The Scream' version is in the National Museum, not the Munch museum btw

― abcfsk, Thursday, 9 January 2025 bookmarkflaglink

Sure was aware. Only had time for one museum and it had to be that one. It has three versions in Munch museun, one of which was the sketch which I really liked.

He made some bizarre bigger paintings, one of which was like the Vigeland tall column of these figures.

The paintings from 1890s to 1910s was great.