Visiting Relatives and Touring Oslo

          It is time for another update; this may seem a little long-winded, but remember this is for a journal of my trip for myself first. On Sunday morning we walked down to the train station to go to Sandefjord to meet and visit with my dad’s second cousin Angen (Hofseth) and her husband Torleiv Svinterud. (Angen’s grandmother Lovise was Chris Holmgren’s sister.) Because of construction on the tracks, we had to board a bus to take us about 45 minutes down the way, and then we boarded the actual train to complete the journey. The bus was great (with free wifi) and the train was excellent. Norway has some great public transportation systems in place. We arrived in Sandefjord without even knowing what Angen looked like; we had only emailed back and forth a few times before we left for Norway. She picked us out of the small crowd that got off the train and we recognized her when we saw her “know” us.



View looking out over Sandefjord

          As with meeting a new person, things were a little awkward, but it was not nearly as bad as I feared. Angen was a great hostess and had our day planned out for us. Angen took us to a fairly new to the public estate of an old whaling business man. The man’s estate was turned into a park, art display area, walking trails through the woods, and a restaurant in part of the house (which was huge). It also had a beautiful view of the town of Sandefjord and of course the fjord of its namesake. After walking around a little and seeing some of the artwork, she drove us through town and showed us where her daughter had a flower shop and a few other “important” areas of the town. (Her two children and their families were on holiday down in England, so we were not able to meet them.)

Angen and Torleiv

          We then went to her house where we met her husband Torleiv. I think he was a little, I don’t know, put off in a way; not really wanting company? I think they lead a pretty “quiet” life and we were a bit of an intrusion. I had been in contact with Angen because she wrote a family history book on the Holmgrens, and genealogy is not something Torleiv is interested in. (Angen is very involved in genealogy, but it has never interested Torleiv.) But once he saw that we were just “normal” people (no comments here!), we got along great. We were able to talk about everything from cars to taxes. Later in the day, when Angen brought out some of her genealogy information, Torleiv just sat by and added a little, but just kept in the background for most of the hour or so we talked about it.

          When we first got there we visited for a while about their lives and they showed us their house. Torleiv was a teacher and Angen was a librarian. They are both quite active and Torleiv bicycles often. Their house has a beautiful view of the fjord from their back porch. They have lived in their house for 37 years, and in that time the area has really grown. When they first moved there only a few houses existed. Now there are houses all over the place. Even with the new houses, their view is still pretty impressive. The hillside that it is one is basically one huge rock. The rock consumes much of the backyard, and their foundation is poured with the rock protruding into it. The house is quite large as it contains a separate apartment that Torleiv’s mother lived in while she was alive.



David at the end of the peninsula

          After visiting for a while, we had lunch. As many of you know, I do not like fish; unless it is deep fried in batter and served with French fries. On top of that, I do not really care for too many soups. For lunch Angen made a fish soup with salmon and shrimp. You can only imagine my delight when I saw her bring it out. Not only that, but they had already served it into bowls for us, so I couldn’t even take “just a little.” I was a big boy, though. I did not eat the shrimp, but I was able to eat the rest of the soup and just leave the few shrimp in the bottom of the bowl. (I felt quite ill on the train ride home. I think it probably had more to do with the lack of sleep than the fish, but I had to quit thinking about what I ate and try to nap to get past it!) When my mom got up to use the restroom after they took our bowls when we were done, Angen said, “We aren’t done yet!” My stomach, which I didn’t think was possible, fell to my toes. Then, to my relief, it wasn’t another course of food, it was dessert! She brought out strawberries, cream, and powder sugar. Much better J

Part of the view from Angen and Torleiv's back porch (Notice the rock?)

          After we ate we looked at the family history books that Angen wrote about her family, and we looked at my book that I brought along with me.  After we looked at them for a time, and talked about our family’s history, we went for a walk. Down at the end of their road was the fjord; they live on a peninsula that sticks out into the fjord. We went down to the tip of the peninsula (which has a campground) and enjoyed the view from down at the water’s edge. It was quite busy as the campground was full of trailers of people who stay there for the entire summer. According to Torleiv, these campers have a culture all of their own. They bring in their travel trailers and connect (very impressive) porch shelters to them. I guess if you are going to live there for multiple months, it would be a good idea to have these. After we walked back to the house we visited for the rest of the time we had. Angen then drove us back to the train station and saw us off. Angen and Torleiv were incredible hosts and I couldn’t be happier that we made contact with each other before our trip and that it worked out that we were able to meet!

          We got back to Oslo around 8-8:30 and went back to the hotel to drop off our backpacks and relax for a couple minutes. We then went out and walked around a bit and went to the Hard Rock Café for dinner. (David and I have tried to make it to a Hard Rock Café in every city we have been to that has one.) We ended up eating close to 10:00pm, but it was still so light out you wouldn’t think anything of it. The streets were still full of people and all of the outdoor seating areas for the other restaurants were full. It would be/is hard to get used to it looking like our 7-8:00 when it is really going on 11:00. (I am anxious to see what it is light up until in Hammerfest. I know we missed the midnight sun, but it will still be light out for most of the night.) It is also odd feeling to see it so light out at 3-3:30 in the morning. But it is odd to be up at that time regardless! My sleep is still off, even for me. I didn’t get to sleep until 11:30 and was up again by 4:00. (At least this evening I was able to take a nap for an hour.)

          Once again we had a great breakfast at the hotel. We are trying to stuff ourselves with our “free” breakfast so we can eat less during the day because of the cost. We purchased the Oslo Pass that gives us free/cheap entrance to many museums, free public transportation, and discounts to multiple stores and restaurants. We went to the Nasjonalmuseet for Kunst (National  Museum of Art) where they are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edvard Munch. He is the artist famous for his painting “The Scream.” Cameras were not allowed in the museum, even our bags had to get locked in lockers, so we do not have any pictures to show. (I really wanted to take some pictures, but I didn’t want to test out their security and find out what happens to foreigners who don’t follow their rules.) There were many great paintings, and many that were “different,” but I really loved being able to see the original “The Scream” painting; it was a pretty neat experience. We toured around the museum for an hour or so, looking at some of the other artists’ works in the normal area of the museum, before walking up to the Royal Palace to see about getting in on their tour.

One of the Viking ships in the museum

The balsa wood raft used to cross the Pacific Ocean in 1947

          The tours were sold out, but we were told how to try and get tickets for the next day’s tours. We then walked down to the wharf to take the passenger ferry boat across part of the fjord to the peninsula of Bygdøy. We got off and walked up the hill to the Viking Museum. We spent some time there looking at the old Viking vessels that were discovered, uncovered, and restored. They were quite impressive to see right up close; real Viking ships! Proud Norwegian moment…. After this museum we walked to the Kon Tiki museum. (A lot farther than we thought it would be!) The Kon Tiki museum shows the expedition of Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 when he crossed the Pacific Ocean in a balsa wood raft. It would take too long to explain the history of the expedition, but suffice it to say, it was a really neat exhibition of the raft and other artifacts.

Our ferry back to Oslo wharf

          Because it was such a long walk, and because it was free, we took the bus to our next destination: Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum). (Museum pictures are placed at the end of this blog.) I read about this place and used pictures from there in my genealogy book. They have many, many old buildings that they have transported from around Norway and set up in a very large outdoor museum. It was great to see so many different types of housing from so far back in Norway’s history. They also have an old Stave church. We were able to go inside (although it was quite dark) and look around at the old art carvings in the altar area. We spent an hour and a half to two hours touring around part of the museum, but because we were so tired we did not even go through it in its entirety. But we did stop off at the gift shop for a bit to look around and my mom did by a thing or two. We then walked back to the wharf and took the passenger ferry back to the main Oslo wharf. We all walked back to our hotel from the wharf and promptly took naps. That felt great! Of course, now I won’t be able to fall asleep tonight, and the cycle continues! Oh well, I am on vacation, right?

          My parents woke up and wandered around town and ate a quick dinner, and David and I got up later and went out to find dinner. We were quite hungry as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was 10:00! David and I walked down to try out one of Norway’s fast food restaurants: Max Hamburgers. It was quite good and we thought it was pretty cool to spend $19.00 at a fast food restaurant for a normal combo meal. But to be honest, this was not McDonalds. The burger was as thick as any you would make at home and comparable to more of a Five Guys type of burger. We laughed to ourselves that we were out here eating dinner at 10:00 at night with it completely light out. We then walked down to the train station to pick up our tickets for Wednesday morning when we take the Norway in a Nutshell train/boat tour to Bergen. The weather has been great here in Oslo, but the forecasts for Bergen and later in our trip is not looking the greatest. Hopefully it will clear up and stop raining, but time will tell. We then walked back to our hotel and I decided I better write an update before I forget everything that we did (of course I may have to amend/edit this when I realize something I missed).

 

     Until next time……

 

  

(The picture formatting ability in this blog is a bit to be desired. I have given up and am just putting some pictures here at the end of the post.)

 

 



A neat setting of old houses.



A couple different houses at the museum



They put on a dancing exhibition to music



Another picture of the dancing



Inside one of the houses



Lefse making demonstration



Two girls in traditional outfits at the Stave church



The Stave church