The World Is Not So Small... Because the Same Rain Cloud Covers it All

OSLO, NORWAY -- June 21, 2006

I was so eager to leave rainy Flam behind and escape to the last place I'd enjoyed some decent sunshine, that it hadn't occurred to me I was heading into more of the same. By 6:30 AM my too-short night train had pulled into Oslo Sentrale, and my tired head was spinning as I tried to decide where to go from here. My camera batteries were both useless, thanks to my overindulgence during the Naeroyfjord cruise yesterday. And the foreboding gray skies were doing nothing for my muddled sense of adventure.

To be perfectly honest, the thought of wandering around in the rain was about the furthest most appealing thing from my mind. Looking for a solution to the camera-battery crisis, I searched all over the train station before realizing that free electricity in a country who charges $60 for pizza sounded about as ridiculous as eating spaghetti with a toothpick.

So, as my Plan B (and the only other plan I had), I trudged back to Anker Hostel where I had stayed during my first pass through Oslo less than a week ago, and asked for some charity from the attractive English guy standing behind the counter.

Ten minutes later, my camera battery was charging away quietly at the front desk, and I was curled up in the corner of a comfy couch towards the back of the reception room, timidly cutting into the Norwegian waffle with brown cheese I had ordered for breakfast. For 12 kroner (about 2 US dollars), I hadn't been expecting gourmet. But it became readily apparent that this undercooked waffle had been slapped together so quickly, the cheese hadn't even begun approaching melting point. It wasn't even sweating yet. The doughy waffles were no match for the strong, tangy, slightly sweet flavour of the mahogany-colored cheese, and I began regretting my decision to sample some "Local cuisine" before I was two bites into my breakfast.
It wasn't long before the angry clouds started crying, and I felt like crying with them. I had hoped to spend the day ferrying across to Bygdland, exploring the Viking Ships and Norwegian open-air folk museum, complete with a highly-praised stave church, which I'd seen in glossy tourist brochures. And I had been toying with the idea of splurging on a day cruise along Oslofjorden, kind of a consolation prize to myself for the disappointment that Flam had turned out to be. I had taken the Naeroyfjorden cruise yesterday and, damnit, even with the rain, it was still a beautiful sight.

But my heart had been stuck somewhere down between my ankles all day as I tried to flush the vision out of my head of mirror-smooth, sapphire-blue waters, flanked with steep mountains against a cloudless sky. It had just about killed me to leave Norway and the World Heritage fjords behind without having really been able to do them justice. Well, it wasn?t me anyway ? it was the crank, uncooperative weather that refused to do them justice. But I wasn?t about to flush even more money into Norway?s already-too-wealthy economy just for another rain-glazed fjord adventure.

So anyway. Now that the skies seemed to be plugged up with spitting, gray cottonballs, I just sat back with my brown cheese and waffles and sighed. I wished for a hot shower and warm bed, but knew I?d have to wait another day or so for either. I had a long ride to Copenhagen ahead of me, leaving on the night train from Oslo at 10 PM this evening.

~Melanie