Norwegian Midnight Sunset

Several weeks of hectiness follow after the trip to Italy. I try to make the best of my newly gained freedom and make the Ryanair website my own personal travel fair. Work takes me to Northern Ireland, right at the very tip of the country in the lush countryside of Portrush, where I share tales amongst golfers rushing through the Irish Open.
Upon arrival, I have mere hours to unpack and pack, shower and leave for the airport, on an early Monday a bliss with no queues.

My friend and I score two seats on the fully booked flight and leave a warm day in Dublin behind, soaring North over Scotland and East to the North Sea for a bumpy landing in Oslo Rygge Airport.

Welcome to one of the most expensive places I have ever visited. Norway is known for its wealth, its independence from the European Union, strong currency and outstanding quality of life. For a traveler, this is both refreshing and daunting. A safe place to visit and unwind yet an exorbitant place to indulge.
Rygge Airport is like most airports Ryanair fly to: small, crowded and right in the middle of nowhere. It takes us nearly two hours to enter a long tunnel that emerges into a cluster of buildings that seem just out of an IKEA-catalog. In Oslo, the streets are squeaky clean and traffic seems to be only a thought. The blue trams prowl in synch and slender locals are seen carrying reusable shopping bags, sports equipment and bicycles.

A yellow-bricked building sits on top of a hill for the Parliament to have the best views of a city centre shaped like a shallow bowl, the Royal Palace on the opposite end graciously completing the tourist trail next to a long greenery splattered with effigies and monuments and appropriately named Sculpture Park.

Sober, manicured yet not ostentatious, the entire of Oslo looks like the most refined neighbourhoods on most cities in the planet, though budget travel usually shows a more raw side of each city, a more realistic side.
The hostel is modern and unapologetically simple. It lies on a street with heavy refugee presence, embedded in between a building of social housing and an Ethiopian food emporium. The ones that most cities do not wish to acknowledge, now speaking in a mix of Aramaic and Norwegian.

I nap for a couple of hours and feel refreshed. My friend and I grab snacks and walk to the docklands, where the last sails around the fjord are coming to moor, to the Nobel House and Museum and its quick presentation of what the award actually entails -a million dollars- and finish at the Oslo Opera House, where shapes sink and rise from the water in obtuse angles that seem to almost play with the laws of physics.

Inside the glass cube, yellow exposed wood curve upwards in an intricate staircase of white marble floors and peculiarly designed toilets.

At nearly eleven at night, I grab onto the ledge and wait for the sun set. And I wait more. And more. And at midnight, the sun does not set but only dims into a faded dusk.
A local girl grabs onto her skateboard and see me taking pictures. She explains that in summer the sun never sets and in less than two hours, it will rise again. I walk back to the hostel in midnight dusk and pray for the curtains to be thick enough.

In the morning, we take the subway North and the train rapidly emerges on the pristine suburbs of the Norwegian capital and begins its long climb towards the fjord’s rim.

‘I had wanted to see the Scandinavian woodlands ever since I was a kid. I always pictured this woodland of endless tall pine trees and small creeks, the scent of pine and eucalyptus in a land far away, a land of cold winters and mild summers, of wooden houses under fairy lights.’
And that is exactly what I find at Frognerseteren, Oslo’s urban park.

We are joined by a German backpacker and for the next five hours, we immerse ourselves in hills conifers and trails, we track interesting local faunae footprints and indulge on smoked cheese and beer at Ullevalsetter.

At Skjersjoen, one of Oslo’s main reservoirs, the landscape turns into shades of reflected blue, while at Maridalsvannet, summer skiers and us try to find shelter from the scorching summer heat.
Back in the blue tram and traveling down the hills from Kjelsas, we are joined by commuters holding onto mountain bikes and briefcases, finishing our hike in a fresh well-lit night, the night that never really happens in summer.

In the early morning, the buses to Rygge are perfectly timed with the daily departures scheduled at the middle-of-nowhere airport. The plane rushes down the only runway and soars South over the fjord for the most perfect and appropriate send off.
On arrival in Dublin, I sip on a cold beer while checking on my emails and sketching plans. Having been offered a spot in a Masters degree in Coventry, I start imagining life in the British Midlands and smile. Maybe tomorrow, maybe.

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