Second Day in Oslo

Having fallen asleep so early, I woke up at about 4:45/5 AM for the first full day in Oslo. Luckily, I had bought an Internet card the day before and had not used, so I logged onto my computer and was able to mess around online for awhile. I took a shower (my bathroom is interesting: It has a wooden floor that is heated, but there is no little divider wall between the shower area and the rest of the bathroom, just a curtain) and then went down for breakfast. We had a group meeting with some short presentations and a discussion of an article that we had read, and then we headed to the University of Oslo's Blindern campus, which is the main campus. We walked around a bit, then went into the cafeteria, which is very nice. I can't really compare it to the UC at PLU, because they have two very different setups, but the food was good. I had a Tapas plate, which had shrimp, chicken, meatballs, and some chips, as well as and Ice Tea with peach, and a Kvikk Lunsj for dessert. We had a little bit of time, so I went to the bookstore and bought a book and a UiO lanyard. Then we met with Arne Torp, who is a linguist at the university. He has written, among other things, a book about the Norwegian R. A very interesting and funny man, he at one point sung a song for us that was written in Nynorsk, and he was very enthusiastic! He talked to us about language development in Norway and Finland, a very interesting discussion indeed!

We then headed back to the hotel, and then out to dinner. Most of us went to a restaurant called Schroeder's for dinner. I had the Pølse Middag, or the Hot Dog Dinner, which had hot dogs, a brown sauce, potatoes and the "mushy" peas. It was pretty good, and cheap, which is nice in Oslo. We then went searching for an Internet Cafe, which we found on the far side of the National Theater. The place was called Ved Brua, or "Near the Bridge" and was a little strange. It was a very modern place that was playing a creepy ska music. But they had free Internet, and I had a Hansa while surfing the web. Around 10:30, we decided to head back. After a bus and metro ride, we stopped at Burger King to refuel, and then ended up at the hotel around midnight. Not too bad of a night.