Oslo
My Nordic Journey Started Here…
24 years ago I studied abroad in Oslo, and this is where a lived. Sogn Studentby is student housing uphill from Ullevaal Stadium and about a 30-minute walk or 15-minute bus ride from the University of Oslo. My room was the one on the far right on the second story with the window slightly open. It was a flat that had a kitchen, bathroom, and shower. Each of use had our own room. There were 3 Norwegians and 1 American who lived there the whole semester, and one Norwegain roommate gave me his extra TV for my room. I could hear cheering on Saturdays from soccer matches down the hill.
This place is somewhere I always come back to and gaze at from the outside like a creeper while I contemplate who I was becoming and what I was experiencing so fast while I lived in this city. And of course, relishing how good it feels to be back in Oslo.
As a college student in one of the most expensive cities in the world, I didn’t have money to burn at the bars, so I’d explore. These were some of my places in Oslo. I’d take the Sognsvann metro line in the evening after studying down to the National Theatre, walk to to the harbor square by the City Hall and Aker Brygge and over to Akershus.
Since my time studying there, Oslo has grown. When I visited in 2018, cranes were everywhere in this part of town where the new opera house, city library, and Munch Museum are. What used to be an industrial zone by the harbor has been rebuilt and locals call it the “Barcode” because a line of skyscrapers look like a barcode. Although new, modern, and with some questionable design decisions, there are still places to enjoy and pause, like the opera house, which was designed to resemble a glacier sliding into the sea, and the roof is open to pedestrians 24 hours a day.
I rented a cottage out in the fjord which required a ferry ride into town. I can’t describe how at home I felt out there before meeting up with the "official” part of my trip and one of our stops included a visit to an indoor ski resort (an interesting concept in a nation that loves the outdoors).