A Mattress! A Mattress! My Kingdom for a Mattress!

Err yes, I realise the fact that I couldn't find a monosyllabic synonym for mattress means that the above quote is no longer in iambic pentametre but pray forgive :p

Anyway for the past few days I stayed with Mary and Darren who are on exchange in Oslo. Oh and I got to sleep on a really comfy mattress - hence the title of this post; apparently Mairs and Darren had poked all the mattresses on offer to make sure I got the comfy-est one :p)

I should inform that my last post on this blog was actually much delayed - for the last 5 days or so I have actually been in Norway rather than Sweden but have been rather slack with updating my blog. There is a reason for this - I have been hanging with Mairs and Darren. See the crux of the matter is that when you're travelling alone, you return home (wherever that may be) at the end of the day and there's not really anyone you can chat to so I tend to just do all the administrative stuff. However when you're hanging out with friends you laugh and talk and things like blog updating just tends to fall by the wayside.

Although I want to add that this in no way reflects on how boring/good Norway is - Norway is an AMAZING country.

Oslo is not as dreamy and romantic as Stockholm but it has a lot of attractions on offer - the National Gallery which has famous paintings like Munch's 'The Scream' and 'Madonna' (neither of which I saw because the Munch room in the National Gallery was under renovation - grrrr!!! Damn wintertime renovations!!! For the same reason I missed out on seeing Rodin's 'The Thinker' in Finland) as well as really well preserved Viking boats and the like. Vikings are a big part of culture in Scandinavia - it's cool, yah. :p The Nobel Peace centre is there as well. It's a very moving experience; not to mention THE most technologically advanced monument/museum/attraction I've been to so far. They have this hall with all the photos of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates on display on the screens and when you move in front of them the screens change and give you information about their achievements.

Oh and the three of us also went up to Bergen for the weekend. I took a tour around the Norwegian fjords (the tour is called Norway in a Nutshell) which was just so incredible. I took a train from Bergen to Voss, then a bus from Voss to Gudvagen, a boat through the fjord to Flam, then the famous Flam to Myrdal railway (which is incredibly steep and an absolute feat of turn of the century engineering because it goes through 20 tunnels of which 18 were dug without machine aid) and then another train from Myrdal back to Bergen.

The scenery was just so beautiful - the person who invented the word 'breathtaking' must have seen these fjords because that's exactly what they were. These steep hills that frame crystal clear waters were crowned with clouds and just shrouded in snow. There were also all these tremendous waterfalls that had actually frozen over and then been covered with snow. The most curious thing is that the icicles were not clear but a gorgeous shade of Tiffany's blue. Every moment from every angle looked like something from either paradise or a tourist brochure... wow... you have to see it for yourself...

Oh yea, I should add that I tried to go cross-country skiing in Oslo... hmm... how can I describe this experience... Imagine something you have failed at really badly - then multiply that failure by about 100 times, I think you now have an idea of how badly I failed at cross country skiing. I don't think the word 'hopeless' truly encapsulates how truly bad I was at this particular activity. But I blame Mary's non-waxed skiis, yes I do... :p

Anyway now I am in London - will update on that soon! :p