Oslo

My first day in Oslo had been an eventful, joy-jammed bonanza of fun.  I ran around like a crazy person with an enormous smile plastered on my face, and excitement oozing out my eyeballs.  Absolutely no one, at all, thought I might need a nap, and there were definitely zero people who wondered if I had wandered out of an insane asylum.  After getting some sleep however, I proceeded through the rest of Oslo like a much more normal person, and a relatively sane tourist.  Although who can say what a sane tourist looks like.  Read on for my reviews of Bygdøy, the Akershus Fortress, and eating in Oslo. Bygdøy My second day in Oslo I decided to go to Oslo’s museum peninsula in Bygdøy.  I went by public bus, which took about an hour, and had a fabulous time the entire way.  I watched people get on and off the bus, wondering what their day was all about, what kind of work they did, if they were Norwegian or not, and, most importantly, if they were 15 or 35.  As you might know if you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts, I spent a lot of time in, on, and thinking about public transit in Norway.  Luckily for me, there were many attractive Norwegian men also riding public transit, so it was a win-win situation.  I got where I was going, and saw beautiful people everywhere.  I don’t normally people watch, but it’s so hard not to when everyone is gorgeous.  But I digress from the travel-aspects of this travel blog.  In Bygdøy, I stopped first at the Frammuseet, which is about this great big ship, called the Fram, that sailed around every frigid ocean you can imagine.  The actual boat is contained in the museum, with the walls of the museum encircling the boat.  The Fram made many polar expeditions, including to both the south and north poles.  Several Norwegian men captained the vessel on a multitude of trips, with different crews and different destinations.  The ship itself is quite impressive.  Travelers beware though, there was a lot of grizzly information about the animals they took with them, harsh winter weather conditions, bad decision-making by humans in charge, and running out of food.  I think you get where I’m going with this.  If you take your children, be prepared for a bunch of death questions, or just don’t let them read all the information posted on the walls of the museum.  On a more upbeat note, you can go on the ship and go through all the decks below.  That was kind of fun and only mildly spooky.  Maybe a little more spooky than just mildly spooky, but that could have just been the jetlag and all the animal death I had just read about.  Good times. After the Frammuseet, I went to another museum about a ship called the “Kon-Tiki.”  Everyone knows the Kon-Tiki!  I learned about it in grade school.  How amazing to finally see the ship in person.  I would have loved going to this museum when I was a little girl.  Seeing the ship and reading all the information brought back fond memories of childhood.  As some of you may have guessed, or already know, a Norwegian man had the idea to build and sail the Kon-Tiki across the Pacific Ocean.  He did this despite his own lack of knowledge about sailing, with a very small crew, against all odds, and a lot of negative feedback he got from everyone who had ever been on a boat.  What a guy.  These Norwegians, they are super seafaring, and they have the ship museums to prove it.  The Kon-Tiki is definitely worth visiting and I think much more family-friendly than the Frammuseet.  Moving on to the next museum in Bygdøy.  I went to yet another museum about ships and boats called the Norsk Maritimt Museum.  New boats, old boats, paintings of boats.  Lots of that.  Even some Viking ships.  Well, actually it was a log that the Vikings had used as a small canoe.  The archaeologists are pretty sure about it being a Viking canoe, so I’m going out on the limb with them on that one (get it?).  If you get the timing right, I think there is a Viking longship workshop where you can try your hand at some woodworking.  This is more for children than adults.  However, there is a lot of historical information about the Vikings and their longships that might interest a more mature crowd.  How the longships were built, the biggest ship finds by archaeologists, and what kind of ships the Vikings used for different purposes.  Warships, for example, were not built in the same manner as cargo ships, but both could have been brought on the same seafaring journey.  As I mentioned in the introduction to this blog, I’m obsessed with Vikings and I think about ALL of this stuff way too much.  Imagine my utter chagrin when I found out that the Viking Museum is closed until 2026, so I couldn’t see it while I was in Oslo.  Although the Viking Museum was closed, I did make it to the Norsk Folkemuseum, which was absolutely spectacular.  They have several indoor exhibits that give you a sense of life in Norway through the ages.  It was very informative, but kind of warm.  No coat lockers.  I went through most of the indoor exhibits before I had to run down the stairs and out the door into the freezing cold.  Most of the Norsk Folkemuseum is outside, which was a relief for me after nearly dying of heat stroke inside.  You could probably spend two hours at the Folkemuseum.  I spent a solid hour and a half there, and I think I did a pretty thorough job of making it around the outside exhibits.  The outdoor exhibits reconstruct various buildings from different times and places throughout Norway.  It was a good progression through time, and the buildings themselves

After a very full, vortex-filled morning in Oslo getting lost on public transit on my way to my hostel, clambering up and down icy hills, leaving my hostel, all while worming my way into the heart of Norwegian public transit, it’s finally time to get to my first sightseeing destination: the Oslo Opera House.  Of course, I almost got lost walking there too.  Ruter, the public transit app in Oslo, doesn’t give good directions for routes from random point A to random point B.  Ruter is best for station-to-station routes.  I learned this the hard way while trying to walk from random point A to random point B, on my way to the Oslo Opera House.  #Ruterfail. After said #Ruterfail, I tried Google Maps.  Unfortunately, the location function on Google Maps doesn’t work very well in Norway.  Especially when you’re trying to use the “which way am I facing” feature—the little blue triangle that beams out from the “you are here” blue dot on google maps (for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, I also have no idea what I’m talking about.  The best I can do is to direct you to your nearest 23-year-old).  Triangle features aside, I would suggest you grab a physical map instead, and locate the street names the old-fashioned way.  See below for instructions on how to use an actual map.  Step one:  Look with your eyes at the street names around you, then figure out which one (or two, if you’re standing at a cross street) you are closest to IRL (that means “in real life” for those of you that didn’t use AIM in high school).  Then, pull out your physical map and locate that street name, or the cross street, you are closest to IRL.  Great, okay now we have our “random point A.”   Step two:  After locating yourself on your map, find your destination on the map and then pinpoint the street name, or names, closest to your destination.  This is your “random, not so random, point B.” Step three:  Figuring out what direction you should walk IRL to get from point A to point B.  This can be tricky folks, especially for those of you not used to the cardinal directions “north” and “south.”  We won’t get into east and west at this point, that’s an advanced class.  Okay, first things first.  Figure out what street names are to the left of your point A and to the right of your point A.  Find those streets on your map.  Then, looking at your map, determine which of these secondary street names is closer to your point B.  Go that way. Step four:  Continue walking in the direction of point B.  While walking, periodically look up to see if the street you are crossing is any closer to the street where your point B is located.  Repeat said process until you arrive at your destination.  Yea, it felt weird for me too at first, but you get used to it after a few minutes.  Try not to relapse into using your phone, it won’t help. Back to my story.  After manually determining where the Opera House was located, I did manage to get there without too much bumbling.  I think I only turned around and crossed the same street two or three times.  The Opera House was cute.  I just did a drive by.  It was beautiful and walking around the Opera House gives you a great view of the harbor.  Norway has a lot of arresting harbors.  Oslo’s is no exception.  Take your head out your phone and look at it. This is me in front of the Opera House.  I look pretty happy.  I felt absurdly exuberant, given how many hours I had been awake and how many times I had gotten lost.  But when I’m happy I’m like my own energizer bunny.  Like, I have a lot of energy.  More energy than a normal person who hasn’t slept in over 24 hours should have.  And it’s not just, I can do all this stuff, energy.  It’s happy, let’s meet a bajillion people and then go dancing, kind of energy.  Maybe a little less “let’s go dancing” energy in this photo, but elated for sure.  Next on the sightseeing list, the Munch Museum.  Before we get to that, let me give you Emily’s advice on museums in Norway.  Always put your coat in the lockers at any museum that offers them, otherwise you might die of heat stroke.  The Munch Museum was no exception, and was also a little hard to navigate.  Let me explain. First, you can only buy a ticket on your phone.  Great.  So if you have an international phone that doesn’t get internet, try asking someone who works there how you’re supposed to buy a ticket.  Then, you have to figure out how to actually get into the museum part of the Museum, the part where you see the stuff you came to see.  You can only do this when you’re already inside the Museum.  You can’t do it when you’re outside the Museum.  So go inside.  And then try and figure out if you can buy a ticket.  This feels a little redundant.  I’ll just speed things along here and give you the answers to this part of the test.  The entrance to the part of the Munch Museum that you want to see is on the first floor, to your left as you walk in the entrance.  It’s behind all the glass walls.  You need the barcode on your electronic ticket to scan your way past.  I had to ask someone where the museum part of the Museum was, and then how to get in to that part of the Museum.  Like, how do I get past these glass walls?  I literally had no idea what was going on.  I made so many new friends.  Such lovely people, Norwegians. There are 13 floors at the Munch

Ahh, my first morning in Oslo, and I’ve already gotten lost on public transit for hours and climbed up icy hills to find my hostel, where I got stuck in a time warp for another three hours.  But then I ate lunch and time went back to its usual pace.  Probably a positive thing. Now, I’m finally on my way out of the hostel.  It’s been a really long morning.  Or night.  Or both.  I’m taking the tram back down to Oslo City Center, a welcome respite from the T-Bane line 5 where I had gotten lost for hours that morning.  Why not get some sunlight on the tram?  And the lady at the front desk of my hostel recommended I take the tram, so why not.  She also explained that I should take the path back down the steep hill I came up, but then keep following the path around the outside of the park, not through the park (or across soccer fields in the park, for that matter).  Leaving my hostel, I’m very glad not to be trying to cut through anything, and I know where I’m going this time.  As far as the park is concerned.  After that I’m not precisely sure what I’m doing or where I’m going.  Somewhere.  That much I know.  First things first.  I have to go back down this icy hill.  My angry oversized luggage is stuck back at the hostel where it can’t kill me, so at least I don’t have to worry about its violent temperament this time around. Going down the icy hill proved to be a little more unsettling than going up the hill, but my Sorel winter snow boots for women (read my review here) did not disappoint.  I made it down the hill without incident, only to realize I had not quite understood exactly where the nearest tram stop was.  I knew it was down the hill somewhere, so when I ran into some above ground tracks, I assumed they were tram tracks and I followed them around the park (not through the park, I think we’ve covered our park prepositions for today).  Luckily, I assumed correctly, and the tram tracks led to a tram stop.  Funny how that works, isn’t it?  Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, given my utter confusion with the directionality of Norwegian transit, finding the tram stop was only the beginning of “Emily’s Tram Time,” a subsection of the volume called, “Emily Takes Public Transit in Oslo,” part of which you’ve already read, but all of which is only a piece of the greater anthology, “Emily’s Dastardly Disastrous Adventures on Norwegian Public Transit.”  We’ll get there.  But for now, back to Emily’s Tram Time.  Let’s set the scene. <<Emily is at the tram stop, studying yet even more digital screen displays about tram lines and arrival times.  Her eyes are narrowed; she’s trying to figure out wtf is going on in her life.  Forget the tram.  Annnnd action!>> The lady at the front desk of the hostel had tried to prep me for Emily’s Tram Time.  She specifically told me to take either tram #11 or #12 to “Jernbanetorgetafix” (all I can think about when I see this name is “Jernbanetor-GetaFix.”  Anyone a fan of Asterix and Obelix?  His name is Get-a-Fix.  Get it?), which is not true, she told me to go to “Jernbanetorget,” but who’s going to remember that mouthful on their first day in Norway?    Regardless, I couldn’t figure out which direction I was supposed to take the tram in to get to Jernbanetorget.  Luckily, the tram wasn’t coming for at least another eight minutes, so I crossed the tram tracks back and forth about three times before settling on the right direction (it turned out).  The first tram that pulls up is not #11 or #12.  Ruter, the Oslo public transit app, is telling me that this tram will take me back to Oslo City Center, but it wasn’t one of the trams the lady at my hostel told me to take.  By now I’m a little tired of trying to understand what Ruter is telling me.  It’s time to get up close and personal with the new man in my life—the tram driver.  One of the nice things about being a solo female tourist is that most people want to help you.  The tram driver was no exception.  The tram pulls up to the stop.  There are two doors on the tram.  I can tell, very clearly, that you are not supposed to enter the tram by the door next to the driver at the front.  It was extremely obvious because that door didn’t open.  I needed to know though, before I got on the tram, does this tram go to Asterix and Obelix town??  I made some indication to the driver that I needed to talk to him.  He opened the door next to him and looks at me expectantly.  I say, “Hi, I’m waiting for the #11 or the #12, which tram is this?”  I knew that tram wasn’t the #11 or the #12, but for some reason knowing what the fuck tram he was driving was more important than knowing if the tram went to Oslo City Center.  He says, “This is #17, but where are you trying to go?” “Jernban . . . Jern . . .” “Oh you mean, Jernbanetorget?  I go there too, you don’t have to wait for the #11 or the #12.”  “Oh that’s perfect, thank you so much,” and I start to turn toward the middle door of the tram that’s still open.  He calls out to me, “No, you can just get on here,” and he motions to the door next to him.  “Oh, thank you so much.”  I give him an enormous smile, I’m so grateful.  I’ve already gotten lost three times today, so I am ready for some help.  He just saved my day and whatever was left of my mind.  People helping people

After running around on Oslo public transit all morning, getting lost at least three times, climbing through parks with dastardly turns, and sliding down icy hills, I finally walked into my hostel, HI Oslo Haraldsheim around 10:30 am.

Emily encounters life-altering questions on her walk from the train station to her hostel.  “No, no you did not, Emily.  You just had to decide whether to turn right, left, or go straight.” “It was so much more than that, I.d.” “Sigh.  Continue.” By this point after landing in Oslo, I’ve spent my entire morning trying to get to my hostel while simultaneously getting lost on public transit riding the T-bane line 5 train.  This is the last leg of my journey.  For the final test, I must walk from the train station to my hostel.  Jetlag be damned! “Okay, from the T-bane stop at Sinsen it looks like it’s a seven minute walk to my hostel, HI Oslo Haraldsheim.  I just need to walk there.  Can’t be that complicated, it looks pretty straightforward on the Ruter map,” I think to myself as I start walking through the underpass at the train station towards the exit.  When I get to the other side of the underpass I find myself under a highway bridge.  There’s highway to my left.  There’s more highway to my right.  “This is a lot of highway,” my mind mutters as I look around.   “I thought I had to walk around some kind of park to get to my hostel.  Oh, is that a park over there to my right, on the other side of the highway?  Okay, I’ll go that way, towards the park I think I see.”  This is already requiring a little more brain power than I anticipated.  If you thought things were bad before (check out my last Oslo blog post), just wait for the rest of my walk from the train station to the hostel.  I think I blew out more of my brain cells trying to decide if I should walk through or around this park than I had trying to figure out the entire T-bane system.  I cross the highway to my right and I make it to the edge of the park.  Here’s where I start to get really confused.  I know my hostel is somewhere on the other side of the park, but it looks like I can cut left through the park on a path that leads up an immediate hill (I don’t know, the hill had urgency issues), cut right through the park on a path that leads through a soccer field and that might lead to another hill (this hill wasn’t in a rush), or just go around the outside of the park that also takes me to a hill—possibly the same hill as the second path to the right (why are there so many f****** hills!?).  I can’t tell which way is further, or which one actually leads to my hostel.  I’m totally exhausted.  I decide to cut through the park.  Okay, around the park is out.  But now I have to choose—is it left or right?  Do I take the path to the left, or do I take this other path to the right?  This has become a crucial life decision and I’m standing there, in the middle of Oslo, in front of some park, trying to decide my immediate fate. “You’re exaggerating, Emily.” “No, I.d., I’m serious, it was agonizing!” “Yea, for you, but no one else.” Internal dialogue expertly dismissed due to the lack of thought-processing capabilities, I decided to take the path on the left that lead to the more immediate hill.  I start dragging myself, and my check-on size luggage, into the park and towards the hill.  It’s kind of icy – icier than I thought.  What is even at the top of this hill?  Little houses?  Are they hostel houses?  Does my hostel have more than one building!?  I’m not sure I made the right decision anymore.  I start to look around, perhaps somewhat wildly, perhaps not, who can say?  I was the only one there.  Except for this woman, who starts to cut through the park behind me.  I turn around and go back to her to ask her wtf I’m doing.  As if she should know the answer to this question. “Hi, I’m trying to get to my hostel, do you know how I get there from here?”  She responds, “um, well, not that way you were going, there is too much ice.  You should go the other way, over there.”  “Okay, so should I go around the park or can I cut through?”  “I think you can cut through the park that way, on the path to the right.”  “Okay, should I go around the soccer field, or that other way through the soccer field?”  Now I realize there are more right or left options.  Great.  I look at this woman intently, hoping she has the answers to life about right and left.  It must have been all over my face because this poor woman was not at all sure what to say.  Of course, it didn’t help that I wasn’t really sure what I was asking.  Questions and answers aside, she didn’t.  Have the answer that is. “Um, I think either one is okay?”  It’s understandable.  I wouldn’t know how to make someone else’s right or left decisions for them either. I’m out of bandwidth for processing confused thoughts, so I just start walking directly to my hostel towards the soccer field.  I don’t care if it’s over, under, around or through the soccer field.  Just let’s get there already.  Somehow, I ended up going directly through the soccer field.  Right or left becomes irrelevant.  Thankfully for confused people everywhere who have issues with their right and their left, it works!  But the most direct route isn’t always the best route, as my trip has so far proven.  The soccer field was even icier than the hill to the left had been, and I was struggling to stay on my feet.  “It’s okay, I’m still excited to be here,” I think, “and I’m really almost there now!”  I make it across the

Howard and I make it to Oslo Central Station, which is located at the Jernbanetorget stop in Oslo city center.  If you’re running around public transit in Oslo, this is a good name to remember (forget pronouncing it though – “j” is pronounced as a “y” in Norwegian).  Howard shows me around Oslo Central Station.  “I’m sure you’ll be back here and it will be good for you to know what it looks like and where you’re going.”  I’m so impressed, and grateful, that Howard is taking the time to show and explain all this.  I’m not sure I’m going to remember any of it, but it was incredibly nice of him.  Howard steers me toward the T-bane.  He starts talking about which T-bane line I’m going to take and that I have to pay attention not only to the final destination, but also what route the T-bane is taking to get there.  He says I’m taking T-bane, line 5 to “Vestli” (the final stop on line 5) “via” Tøyen.  Okay, right, I’ve got the T-bane line 5 part down.  What was that “via” part again, Howard?   Either way, my train is coming in one minute so I need to hurry.  He’s going a different direction.  Howard gives me his number “in case you get lost or there is a kidnapping situation.”  Duly noted, Howard.  Howard and I say our goodbyes, and I give him an enormous hug.  I’m not sure if that was too American of me, but he seemed okay with it.  “Thank you so much, Howard!  It was really nice meeting you!”  I hop down the stairs to the platform to catch the line 5.  No train yet.  I see Howard on the other side of the platform.  We wave goodbye one last time as my train pulls alongside the platform.  Being a New Yorker (and remembering at the last second that the final destination of the train is the difference between going in the right direction and the wrong one), I take another look at the train to make sure it is, in fact, the line 5 going to Vestli.  I see the word “Vestli,” so I get on.  The train starts pulling out of the station.  I relax for a second.  This is the part where that whole “via” thing Howard was trying to explain to me becomes really, really important.  After I get on the train, I locate a physical map of the entire T-bane system posted on the wall of the train car.  I figure out that the line 5 train is the green line on the system map.  I know I got on the train at Jernbanetorget, and the stop I’m getting off at is called Sinsen.  It takes me a minute, but I locate Jernbanetorget on the map and I see the next stop should be Grønland, followed by Tøyen.  Now I’m realizing that some of the line 5 stops are on a circle line, including mine, which is on the other side of the circle.  Then I see that at Carl Berners plass there are TWO directions the train could take.  The line 5 train could keep going around the circle and to my stop, Sinsen, or it could split off and go in another direction, away from my stop.  “Maybe that’s the “via” part Howard was talking about.”  But the alarm bells haven’t gone off in my head yet.  I’m watching the digital screen at the end of the train car, which displays all kinds of information, including the next stop coming up.  I compare the upcoming stops on the digital screen with the T-bane map.  The digital screen says the next stop is “Grønland.”  Great, that matches the direction I’m supposed to be going in.  We get to Tøyen.  One more stop down.  Next is Carl Berners plass.  I’m starting to get a little nervous now.  I have no idea what this train is going to do until it pulls out of Carl Berners plass, and I realize my morning could get a whole lot longer.  The train pulls into Carl Berners plass.  My concerns are realized.  The digital screen says the next stop is “Hasle,” and the train is veering out and away from my stop.  Somewhere outside the circle.  Oh boy.  I’m about to have an adventure. “Okay, I can do this,” I think to myself.  “I’ll just get off at the next stop and catch the train going back to Carl Berners plass.  I’ll plug Hasle in for Jernbanetorget as my new point of origin on the Ruter app and I’ll figure it out.”  Yea, right, if only there weren’t so many public transit options in Oslo.  I change out Jernbanetorget for Hasle in the Ruter app.  Now, Ruter says I have to take a bus to a tram and then walk another seven minutes to my hostel.  That’s not what Ruter said before, at all.  “Where’s the line 5 route on the T-bane?  No.  I’m not doing the bus to a tram thing, it’s too complicated.  I’m going to stick with the T-bane.  How could I even find a bus stop anyway?”  Lack of sleep can do crazy things to a person’s mind.  Now on to my next problem when I got off the train at Hasle.  This station is outside, there’s only one other track for me to choose from, and the station is decidedly lacking in information.  I start wondering, “Are there any other T-bane lines running through this T-bane station?  Are all the trains coming through Hasle line 5 trains?  Do they all go back the way I came?  Do some of the trains coming through Hasle go somewhere else?”  My mind tells me it’s fresh out of answers, but I can keep asking the same questions over and over again if I think it will help.  It doesn’t.  I start walking to the other side of the T-bane platform, hoping that the next train going in the opposite direction

If you didn’t read about my flight to Oslo, let me give you the main takeaway: don’t wear snowpants in Norway unless you’re skiing, and never wear a ski suit in Norway unless you’re running amok in the streets of Tromsø with me.

My flight to Oslo was one of the best flights I’ve ever had—for many reasons.  For starters, the quality of the airline (I flew Scandinavian Airlines—love them) and the company I encountered were both superb.  Additionally, my Tuesday evening flight was practically empty.  There might have been a grand total of ten people in the first section of economy.  I had an entire middle row all to myself.  As luck would have it, a young man, also flying by himself and alone in his row, was seated just across the aisle from me.  I was fussing with the televisions in the back of the seats in front of me, and I could not get mine to turn on, no matter what I did.  I noticed the young man next to me was also fussing with the TVs in front of him, trying to get them to turn on and off.  Nothing.  I looked over at him. “Any luck?”  “Nope, not at all.” What started out as relatively standard plane-fare chit chat became one of the best inflight conversations I’ve ever had.  Certainly one of the longest, rivaled only in substance and duration by the conversation I had on the flight back from Oslo with another Norwegian man.  And people say Norwegians are reserved.  (Don’t get excited, they are reserved—there were extenuating circumstances for both).  I quickly found out that my new friend, Howard,[1] a Norwegian from Oslo, had just finished a six-week stint in North Carolina visiting his fiancée.  He wasn’t going to see her again for at least another four months until their wedding in Norway.  I was devastated for him.  He neatly declared, “Well, I can distract myself talking to you, or I can be sad about missing her.  I’m going to distract myself.”  How utterly Norwegian of him.  I am so glad Howard chose the distraction option because the advice he gave me about Norway cannot be found online (Howard, you should probably write a book).  He gave me every single piece of information he could dig out of his brain about Oslo, Norway, Norwegians and Norwegian culture.  However, the single most important tip Howard gave me was probably regarding the Norwegian winter wardrobe—snowpants.  Prior to leaving for Norway, I did a lot of research on cold weather clothing.  I had to buy an entire winter wardrobe for Norway (because I threw all my clothes out after my ex-husband left me), so I spent a significant amount of time reading through winter packing guides.  Several of them recommended bringing snowpants, so I purchased a lovely pair of Arctix women’s insulated charcoal grey snowpants (read my review here).  At the time, I was under the impression it was completely normal to casually walk around in snowpants.  I mean, if it’s 11°F (-11.6°C) you might think snowpants would be appropriate.  It made logical sense to me, but then I also decided to bring snowpants and a ski suit, because why not bring one oversized, outdoor, athletic piece of clothing when you can bring two?    The Norwegian winter wardrobe had been one of my biggest concerns.  Beyond just staying warm, I needed to know what people actually wore.  Do you bring three pairs of pants with you to work?  Do you just wear all three at once?  How many shirts should you wear at the same time?  Do you wear a sweater over your wool base layer or do you put on another shirt first over your wool base layer and then add the sweater?  And what about footwear?  Did I need to buy spikes for my snow boots?  Can I even bring those on the plane?  Where would I buy spikes in Norway if I didn’t bring them with me?  Is there ice everywhere in Norway, or is that only a thing in more rural areas?  What are the sidewalks like in Oslo?  How do people walk around?  Are there special boots I haven’t heard of yet?  What happens if my feet freeze?  What if my face freezes??  And even if you figure out how to stay warm, how does one look cute wearing 15 different base layers while sliding down icy hills over and over again? “It’s called function over fashion, Emily.  Get over it.” “Okay fine I.d., less clothes for me to bring.” “Leave the heels too!” “Really?  The heels?” “What, you’re going to wear them with your snowpants while you’re falling down hills?” “Alright, alright.  No need to get snippy about it.” There’s a huge grey area between snowpants and heels, however, and I still had a lot of angst about my winter wardrobe.  Luckily, I had a chance to ask Howard exactly what Norwegians wear during the winter.  “So, Howard, how do you wear a wool base layer under your jeans?  I don’t think my wool bottoms will fit underneath my skinny jeans.  Do you wear a size up in jeans during winter time?”  “No, you just wear them under your jeans.  What do you mean your wool pants won’t fit underneath your skinny jeans?”  “I don’t know how I’m supposed to explain that Howard, have you ever seen a pair of skinny jeans?  Okay, what about leggings, can you just wear leggings instead?”  “What are leggings?” “What do you mean ‘what are leggings’?  You’re joking, right?” As you can imagine, I’m starting to wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.  What kind of jeans do Norwegians wear?  Do they not know what leggings are in Norway?  This leads me to possibly my biggest concern—how does one go about wearing snowpants?  I asked Howard, “Okay, so what do you wear under your snowpants?  Do you wear jeans or a wool base layer, or both?”  Howard looks at me, with a straight face, and says, “No, we wear jeans.  We don’t wear snowpants.  Except if you’re in kindergarten.  Then maybe you wear snowpants.” I’m somewhere between horrified and mortified.  Probably horrified.  Furthermore, he says, you don’t wear ski suits for cross country skiing, that’s when you