Dear friends and steemians, I have another great traveling experience to share with you.

It all started on a cold December morning. My telephone rang (usually it is in silence mode, but this day was special), on the other side of the line I heard Zoran, he is my [Aikido] ( link) teacher. After a small chit-chat he offered me a “business” proposal.

Do you want to go to the seminar in Norway, it will be held in January? We will stay at my sister’s place, and I will buy you a ticket, basically you will go there for free.

At my faculty, exam period is exactly in mid-January I told him that I will check it with my professors and tell him when I decide – in my mind I was screaming OMG FINALLY I WILL GO TO SCANDINAVIA! Then he reminded me, well it is only half of the deal – that is my offer to you, now you need to repay that, again my mind went all crazy simulating all the ways to repay that seminar. But the cost was very original – a promise to keep drinking coffee and rakija with him when he grows old, too old to train.

Finally, one of the good things of being in a class with less than 3 people, I easily organized exams not to interfere with this trip and seminar, and we were all ready to go!

Arriving into the darkness

We landed at the Oslo airport during the night and a lovely lady was waiting for us. We greeted her, and then we headed to Hamar, it is a small town located about 130km North of Oslo. I still felt a little bit tired from a flight, so I just set back and enjoyed all the snowy landscapes and frozen waterfalls on the side of the road. Zoran and his sister just talked in front, making jokes, I still have a feeling that we were all in one of the Jarmusch movie.

First morning – first shock!

Next day I woke up at 8 o’clock in the morning, went to the living room. Zoran was already up, watching Djoković during Australian Open match. I looked over through a window to see surrounding – it happened to be glass wall, and I saw this magnificent sunrise, I stood there for like 10 minutes just gazing. My trainer offered me a shot of whiskey, I took it with some fruit salad and joined him watching the game. After some time I stood up to strech my legs and noticed the sunrise once again... we discussed it, and then about 30 mins later it hit me its about 10am! This astonishing freaking sunrise is lasting from before 8am to 10am and still happening.

Later that day we went to a supermarket and headed to a close hill with a great view. Apart from the beautiful view, I witnessed this very funny scene, Old lady was chasing downhill on a traditional Norwegian sledge (Spark) with her long scarf waving in air behind her just like in cartoons.

Norwegian Forest museum

First thing we visited was forest museum in Elverum. Big statues of animals greeted us at the entrance. Inside the museum we could see all sorts of stuffed animals that wander the forests of Norway, evolution of skis and snowshoes, woodcutting evolution, all the things in houses that are made of wood.

While wandering around I came across this section of old Norwegian ways of preserving food, salting and air drying the fish, smoking fish, and fermenting fish in barrels – apparently fermented fish smells very bad, but protein is protein and in cold winter you usually don’t mind the smell so much. :)

In the backyard we could see this beautiful river Glomma almost completely frozen. Glomma is the longest river in Norway. Old style cottages alongside the river and botanical garden. 

We stayed outside long enough to see beautiful northern sunset (of course it lasts for few hours : )). If you are going to travel to Norway, I recommend you to visit it if you have a chance.

Next couple of days were completely dedicated to Aikido and short sightseeing and wandering around streets of Oslo. Do you remember our ride from Oslo to Hamar and frozen waterfalls? Well here is the one taken on our way to Oslo.

Zorica has dotted tires (with nails in it) on her car, so we needed to pay the tax for these tires when entering Oslo. We payed it, but later that day we also payed a ticket for not having it on the exact location in car (just below the right side of the windshield) –If you visit Norway beware of this, fees are really high.

For the first time I have seen the frozen sea! And since temperatures were fluctuating very much these days, ice crust breaks and connects again, leaving Tiles of thicker ice, connected with thin ice.

On this photo you can see how it looks like – and the building across the sea is Oslo opera house – it was designed to look like an iceberg coming out of water, also there is this iceberg shipwreck made of glass.

During the next days we had a nice sunny weather and I experienced one of the things I will always remember! The sound of disturbance of semi-melted ice tiles touching each other with every wave that comes. It is very special sound and amusing thing to see and watch

Also there is this diver who is gathering his courage for many years now. :)

Later, we went to Akershus castle and fortress, I must say that on our way to it, almost every street that we walked over was full of horse manure. From there you can see the port of Oslo.

The Vigeland park is one of the location that you must visit, if you ever happen to be in Oslo. Inside the park there are more than 200 sculptures made by Gustav Vigeland alone. 

So, first day after our Aikido seminar we decided to explore Hamar. First fun thing I notices was that few streets have names of stars and constellations; Sirius and Orion. Walking around Hamar was lonely – you could barely see anyone in the streets or near the lake Mjosa.

Only few girls took a break at work and came nearby the lake to take a photo of beautiful sunset – I don’t blame them, I did so many of them and I am going to share my favorites with you.

 

One should know that the sunset started around at 15h, maybe a bit earlier. As I already said there was no people anywhere around the city, leading a friend to say that we had seen more bears in the museum and house of candles than people in Hamar. 

Well that changed just the same night, we went for a hockey game, and the streets were full! This small town became alive, people were forming streams, nobody minded the wind that blew. 29800 people are living in Hamar, and on a game board during the game, 24 thousand people attended this game! That’s how much Hockey is important to small towns. 

 

Very cheerful atmosphere, with so many children on the stands. “Our” team won 2:1. And we had back home and I started preparing for coming back to Belgrade – one more day, everything passed so fast.

 Well we had one more day to do something and explore, since our plan to swim in mjosa failed due to the explanation “ice is not thick enough”. We decided to go for another stroll and play some football!

On this photo we have one professional footballer.

Playing football on ice and snow is very tricky and so much fun, as your moving ability as lowered and you cannot turn sharp and suddenly change directions. Bonus points for you if you guessed correctly - it is the girl! :)

After the game we went straight home where we were offered this beautiful hot drink called glogg. This was our final day, we packed that night and flew back in the morning to Belgrade. I came back home with so many new experiences and stories, and to have about 4 or 5 hours of daylight was very nice experience but I guess it becomes very frustrating when you are living in Norway.

I brought back another coffee mug to my mug collection from different parts of the worlds.

That would be all about my traveling tale this time, I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I did writing it and bringing my memories alive. I encourage you to give me your thoughts, critics and feedback and if you would like to read more posts like this one.

#traveldigest @steemitworldmap 

!steemitworldmap 60.797541 lat 11.070271 long Norway in January d3scr

Keep on rocking in the free world!