Oslo!

It’s only been a little over a week and I already feel like I’ve been in Oslo for a month. It just makes me even more excited that I have four and a half more months here!

This first week has more or less been devoted to orientation at the University of Oslo. Its been really interesting comparing it to my freshman orientation at college. Like my first week at WM, its been completely exhausting (especially with the time change) with a lot of activities and a lot of drinking every night, but this time it was actually endorsed by the school itself! We’ve been mostly around the international students, and its been so interesting to be meeting kids from literally all corners of the earth.

The biggest difference between UiO and U.S orientation lies in the way the administration organizes and leads events. They emphasize a big “do it yourself” type of orientation. They gave us a calendar with events and you can show up if you want to or not. If you do show up, then they expect you to ask the questions. You pretty much have to figure things out for yourself, which has been a lot of fun and very different from America, where everyone seems to hold your hand. I think this is really reflected in the Norwegian culture itself as well. Parents let their kids travel out by themselves, especially in the metro at all times of the day.

After being here for a week, I’m beginning to learn more about Norwegian society, even if its a bit superficial. You see a lot more fathers taking care of babies and young children, and fulfilling roles that we would regularly see women in back home. Norwegians really don’t value productivity and work as highly as we do. This can be seen in the early rush hour at about 3pm and their extreme discomfort with working on weekends. Almost everything is closed on Sunday. Norwegians are also famous for having a cold demeanor towards strangers and keeping to themselves in a public setting. They are incredible kind people, but you just have to pierce their outer shell in order to get to know them. I haven’t met too many Norwegians yet, but I’m excited to join some student organizations soon so I can meet some non-exchange students. I could talk for a while about more Norwegian social and cultural things I’ve learned, but I’ll save that for a later post when I learn a bit more!

If we haven’t been busy with orientation, we’ve been exploring the city. Oslo is one of the cleanest cities I’ve ever seen, and it has a smaller population which I really enjoy. I also really like how closely connected with the outdoors the city is, which is something Norwegians really value. A group of us took a trip up to Frognerseteren, which is a 15 minute metro ride from the center of the city (this line always has people walking around with skis, which is such a weird and fun thing to see). Frognerseteren is a giant forest that overlooks the city (its a stop right after Holmenkollen, check out the “Gallery Tab”) that has hundreds of kilometers of hiking/skiing trails open to the public (fun quick note, the entire Norwegian country is open to the public, so anyone can camp/hike anywhere they want, as long as they leave no trace. This really made me excited). As we bumbled through the forest we heard loud party music literally coming from the depths of the woods so we decided to check it out. We ended up coming into a clearing to find over 50 Norwegian law school students partying in front of a giant Red Bull Jeep outfitted to blast music. A blizzard had rolled in, so it was snowing very heavily which just added to the absurdness of what we had found. A group of them were having a competition to see who could throw this oversized brick the farthest, while others were chanting and dancing in a circle amidst the flurries of snow. It was if we walked into a drunken viking encampment. I guess if you give Norwegians a bit of alcohol they open up quite a bit.

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I’m pretty pumped that I don’t have classes on Thursday or Friday, so I plan on traveling every other weekend to somewhere new. This weekend I’m heading to Sweden to stock up on cheap alcohol and food, everything in Oslo is extremely expensive!