Before reading: I wrote this blog already in Oslo last Thursday, the rest of my trip I'll blog about soon.

After a quiet weekend in Trondheim, with lots of snow and a cold winter hiking trip, one more working day this week.

Monday on my hiking boots, on my way to university, after that continuing in the lab on my slippers. The huge university building is very desolate, though in the lab there are still some hard working people. Despite the absence of my supervisor, I make myself familiar with some new techniques in the lab, with some help of a fellow, Turkish student. On foot going home and enjoying the sun and thick snow layer in Trondheim, the start of sunny Easter holidays.

Tuesday morning I had to leave early, the first part from Trondheim was not by train as scheduled. A part of the train track has disappeared as a result of a mud slide already three weeks ago. This mud slide happened just about 8 hours after I crossed this part the track myself when arriving in Norway (weird coincidence nr. 1).

Anyhow the 1.5 hours bus trip is very nice, real high ways you can not find in this part of Norway, so with a not too high speed we drive through the mountains forming a winter wonderland. The bus stops literally next to the train, so the changing distance to cover is only a few meters.

The train drive in the direction of Lillehammer, and after first some kilometers with more snow, the snow disappears from the landscape. In Lillehammer the snow has gone everywhere except for the Olympic ski slopes above the town. From Lillehammer we continue by bus again, here because of planned construction works. After a trip of in total 8 hours I am standing on Oslo Sentralstasjon.

In Oslo in the late afternoon a first exploration below a clear blue sky and a real spring sun (still just about 3 degrees). The first impression: many beautiful modern buildings, busy traffic, many begging people and many tourists, a real world city. Furthermore I find the first Norwegian supermarket with a broad assortment, here you can even buy risotto rice, which I did not find yet in Trondheim.

The next day I am an early bird again to explore the city in more detail. By ship I go to the peninsula of Bygd?y, when mooring the ice was cracking, but again under a clear sky. On this peninsula several museums, most of them share one thing: ships. I start chronologically with the Viking ship museum, three special ships that have been resting for about 1000 years under burial moulds.

After these ships some time to enjoy the outside air, with my Oslo Pass I also pay a short visit to the Norsk Folkemuseum (open air museum). A highlight here should be the stave church from 1200. Though this church is fully covered by scaffolding and plastic, luckily you can visit the scaffolds yourself when wearing a helmet a still see a bit of this typical wooden, Norwegian church.

After a short visit I continued my visit to a museum ship that is only about a 100 years old: Fram. This very solid ship brought a group of adventurous Norwegians around 1900 across the ice of the Artic. Some years later this ship sailed the Norwegian Amunsend to the edge of the Antartic, subsequently he made it to the South Pole with the help of some dogs and sleighs. After this solid ship I paid a visit to the museum devoted to two of the rafts, which Thor Heyerdal used to cross the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. The design of these rafts is based on ancient Egyptian and Peruvian designs, respectively.

Heyerdal wanted to demonstrate that it was possible that humanity crossed the oceans much earlier in history than assumed. After these adventures I explored the Vigeland park at the start of evening. This city park has more than 200 statues made by one artist: Gustav Vigeland. He was able to create statues of people, mainly pairs of groups of people, that are in special realistic (or less realistic) poses.

In the evening I met an Italian mathematics student from Bergen and an American who teaches for 8 months English in a school in the south of Spain in order ‘to see Europe'.
Today it was time for the remaining highlights of Oslo, first the National Gallery with the most famous paiting of Norway: ‘The Scream' by Munch. After this to the very modern opera building in the harbour, it's a kind of Sydney Opera House. But this building represents an ice berg and you can walk on the roof. I thought the inside was even more impressive.

I concluded this day in the Nobel Peace Centre. A museum about the Nobel Peace Prize, which is handed to the winner in Oslo each year. The museum is very modern, with a lot of screens. However the biggest surpricse here was that I suddenly heard ‘hello Nico'. A floorball player from Wageningen, Martine, just arrived in Oslo visiting a friend. They apparently decided to go on the same moment to the Nobel museum (weird coincidence nr. 2).

Just I discussed my day and the plans of tomorrow with my American room mate. He will go by boat on a famous fjord, I am planning to travel by bus and train again to my second and last city of this trip: Ålesund.

More about this city after the weekend. As the Norwegians are wishing me all the time this week: God Påske/Happy Easter!