Sunday afternoon at Grefsenkollen

And this is the second article about my quite exciting Sunday! So after our stroll through Grünerløkka and a quick lunch break near BI, we went to meet with some more exchange students and go on a "tiny hike" to Grefsenkollen.

Grefsenkollen is another one of the hills in the Oslo area. One of the Norwegians from my buddy group recommended going there, because the view was supposed to be really nice. According to him, it would be a "nice walk" of only 25 minutes if we got off the bus somewhere on the way between Nydalen and Grefsenkollen (yeah, the final destination of the bus was actually the top of the hill, but that would have been a bit boring, I felt). Well, that estimation might have been correct for locals knowing their way around and keeping a steady pace - not for us though. :D

So we got off the bus at Akebakken bus stop and started walking uphill. As already mentioned in the previous article, it was a nice day with lots of sunshine, so it was - except of the mostly missing sidewalk and the slightly too high number of cars passing by - quite nice:

Additionally, the view on the way up was already beautiful, giving us an idea of what it would look like from the top:

That's the Holmenkollen ski ramp in the background!

The view on the other side of the road was also quite interesting:

At some point, we walked a bit off road. Basically in the snow:

We decided to go back to the official path (the street) soon after the group photo - which turned out to be not as easy as assumed:

However, we made it back to civilization, got rid of most of the snow on/in our clothes and even made it to the top of Grefsenkollen eventually. To be precise: just in time for sunset, which had been the original plan. And since there had been a clear sky all day, the sunset was great!

Warning: I'm gonna post a lot of photos now.

I think I basically captured all phases of the sunset. :D And here are the photos to prove that we were actually there and did not just steal a bunch of photos from Google:

That's 9 different nationalities combined, by the way. ;)

The majority of us did not really feel like walking all the way down again, so we spent a bit of time inside the café/bar on top of the hill. We accidentally ended up in the premises of a chess tournament, but nobody told us to leave or play chess, so we just stayed there until it was time for our bus.

There was just one problem: the bus did not come. Our group as well as some other people were standing around where the bus was supposed to leave for at least 15 minutes until it dawned on us that the bus wouldn't come. And to make it even better, this would have been the last bus! One of the locals told us to walk downhill for about 20 minutes until we reached a bus stop where another bus line was running. Well, and that was what we did...

(End of the story: we reached the bus stop just in time to catch a bus back to Nydalen/BI and made it all back home safely. Just in case somebody was about to have a heart attack. :P)

Last but not least: the obligatory Google Maps map!

utkikkspunkt = viewpoint

(The green thingy on the left is Ullevaal Stadion.)