I wouldn`t say Olso`s my favorite city on earth

You know, when you`re traveling like we are, basically backpacking across Scandinavia, there are bound to be bad moments. We`ve had so many good ones, so many things have gone right, even better than right....better than we could have expected, that something would have to go wrong. That thing would be Oslo. First of all....first of all, I`ve been to a lot of cities in my short life, and I have very rarely felt unsettled walking through their streets. Today I felt that...a lot. Even with my big, scary husband walking beside me, I felt a little nervous. Even he felt a little nervous.

Never in my life have I seen so many drugged out junkies and miscreants in one small place (and remember, I lived in the Netherlands!). We should have known. Rick says this is where the, "troubled youth" go to try to fit in...or to find others like them. That should have been a tip-off. Troubled youth is commie liberal speak for a whole city full of drunks and drug-heads. (and by the way, this is from a man who said on his blog last week that he`s always suprised to meet a nice Republican. humph! and he`s the one who talks about keeping an open mind)

Apparently the area around the station is a hotbed of activity. The city powers-that-be knows there are skads of drug deals going on (and the remnants of said deals) and decided rather than round up the offenders, they`d look the other way on soft(ish) drugs. But, they do have cameras up to keep an eye on things. Yeah, that makes me feel better. I`m probably painting a worse picture than reality, but I do have to say that never in my life have I felt like I`m receiving so many unsettling looks. I constantly feel like I`m going to be mugged. So does Chris. It`s weird. Maybe it`ll be better tomorrow. Oh wait, I know it`ll be better tomorrow...we are going to Stockholm.

That`s another sore subject. Anyone who knows me at all knows how throughly I research these trips. It`s fun for me. I missed a small little detail. The overnight train to Stockholm doesn`t run every night. Specifically not on Tuesday nights. So, we have to leave here at 3:48 tomorrow. We arrive in Stockholm at 11:00 pm. Great. At least we`ll be in Stockholm. I already emailed the Hostel and asked if they had room. It sounds like they do. That`s a plus. At least we`ll be able to sleep on the train.

We`re staying at a Hostel here in Oslo. The Anker Hostel. As I mentioned earlier, I`ve been to a number of cities, and I`ve stayed in quite a few hostels. I`d have to say, hands down, the Anker Hostel is the worst I`ve stayed in yet. Blech. Rick calls it something akin to a bomb shelter. That`s putting it nicely. Doesn`t it look nice in the picture on their home page? Looks can be deceiving. The entrance isn`t that bad, but once you go around the corner to the staircase? Egads! Dirty, dingy, and downright nasty. But, it`s only one night.

After getting to the hostel, getting checked in (and changed, it`s way warmer here...I saw a bunch of people in shorts today), visiting the Tourist Information Office (ti), talking to the ticket people about the lack of a train, getting online to check for flights to Stockholm (about $287 for both of us), and visiting the TI again, we finally got out into the city. We did Rick`s walking tour. I`m gonna have to say, Rick`s stock has gone down slightly on this trip. The tour? Not so easy to follow. We were starving, so in the middle of it, we stopped at a McDonald`s.

It was quite literally the worst Mickey D`s on earth. The food was horrible. Wretched, even. I had a cheeseburger. Seriously, their cheeseburgers rock! Mine sucked. Blech. Chris had chicken nuggets. He said they were like rubber pellets. And, they were doing some remodeling upstairs. What a mess! But, you had to go through it to get to the WC (bathroom - when I asked for a rest room, the worker girl tried to sell me ice cream!). I visited it twice, lucky me - my tummy wasn`t happy. I think all of the carbs & coke (but more often Fanta) coupled with the earlier stress sent it reeling. As we were thankfully leaving, I noticed a sign. It said that this was the first MickeyD`s opened in Oslo (or Norway for that matter) back in 1983. Yeah, the food tasted like it had been there that long.

We recommenced the walking tour and saw a bunch of stuff as the sun set. Got some great pictures of said stuff and finally abandoned the tour. We just didn`t care anymore. After the hostel, the train situation, and the junkies on quite literally every corner, we wanted something easy for dinner. And what to our wondering eyes should appear? Yep......Hard Rock Cafe. So we went in. And we had nachos. And we paid $6 for my  not-even-full glass of Coke and $10 for Chris`awesome milkshake. And we listened to Aerosmith and Red Hot Chili Peppers. And it was good.

When the bill came, it was 254 kroners. I looked at the bottom of the bill and got excited. I tought they`d converted it to American dollars (it is the Hard Rock after all, and while it was started in London, they were Americans). But, I was wrong. It was in Euros. In Euros, the price wasn`t so bad. Too bad that had to be converted. (btw, to convert divide the kroners by 6, that`s a rough estimation) Chris just looked up the official conversion. Dinner was $42, and we SHARED the nachos! And he didn`t want to go to Australia because it was too expensive!

Tomorrow will be a better day. There are actually some things I want to see here. The ski jump, the Folk Museum, the Viking Ship museum, and the sculpture park. I hope we can get it all in! I haven`t talked about Aurland and how totally awesome it was and our trip from Flåm to Oslo today and how spectacular it was. Yes! There actually was some good stuff today. It was just all before we got to Oslo. It`s off to bed for now, though. We`ve got an early start tomorrow (good thing Chris slept for 2+ hours on the train today!)