Norway!

For the half term , I went to Norway, so I thought I'd do a blog about Norway, so here it is!

Norway at this time of year is very cold, although the temperature does vary a lot. When we arrived it was -11, although one day it was -19, and literally the next day was -5. On the bus we took to the station, there was a streak of water on the window, but by the end of the ride, it had frozen. Geilo, the place we stayed, is primarily a ski resort town, although as it's a valley surrounded by mountains, there is a lot of scenery to see in the summer. We had to get a three hour train ride from the capital city Oslo, to get there, and the journey is one of the worlds most beautiful train rides. We stayed in apartment that was literally next to the ski place, and the snow there was so deep a wrong step could land you waist deep in the snow. The sloping of the ground by the apartments meant that you could slide down them, which although was fun, was tiring. Although Norway is bigger than Britain, only 4.5 million people live there. To give you  better idea of how few people that is, 4.4 million people watched "Take me out" on TV, week ending 20th of February.

The sun sets really early, and barely rises, and so basically evenings start at 5pm.

Skiing

Geilo has 4 ski centers which make up one resort. You can hire skis there, and there is a cafe next to it. The ski center has a wide range of slopes, i.e. learner slopes to black slopes (the hardest type), and also a lot of cross country skiing places. On one of the ski lifts, you could see the tallest plateau is North-East Europe, where wildlife like reindeer and wolves live. As most females people wear tights under waterproof trousers while skiing, I've been told men do too! Practically everyone speaks good English in Norway, and practically everyone skis too, as it wasn't rare to see little kids race down red slopes. (second hardest slope type, I think) Some people also skied with their dogs, putting them on leads and being dragged long by them. You can also ski to the resort directly from your front door. No cars  were allowed near the resort, to preserve the whiteness of the snow. I think that resort was the biggest in Norway, but I'm not sure.

Food


I had Norwegian waffles, which are circular and had with jam and cream, but one traditional dish is reindeer, which tastes really good.

Oslo


Oslo is home to the biggest shopping center and hotel in Norway. Although in 2009, it was the worlds most expensive city. (the food especially is expensive.) In the train station we went to, there was  bread slicer in which you had to slice your own bread with in. There is a lot of art in Oslo, as walls we saw there were covered in mosaics etc.

My photos are below, although there are many because I haven't deleted any. Yet. I added captions to them on picassa, but I don't know how to do a link to my album like Flora...

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geilo
               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo