"Turist i egen by" - free sightseeing! (15.04.)

And here is the separate article about last Sunday that I announced in the "spring mood" post. I felt I should finally get that done before my next weekend visitor is arriving tomorrow. :D

On Sunday, April 15th, the city of Oslo offered an event called - you might have guessed it: "turist i egen by", which translates into "tourist in your own city". If I got it right, it's an annual event, and on this particular day of the year, citizens of Oslo can explore their own city for free. As you can probably imagine, us temporary citizens were particularly interested in the "for free" aspect. And well, as exchange students, we're basically tourists in our temporary home for a full semester. :P

So a bunch of people got a free event pass (yeah, you need a pass to participate - but it seemed like everybody got it: at the tourist information centre, they didn't ask for proof of residency or questioned why I was approaching them in English rather than Norwegian) - and most of us also made use of it in one or the other way. I'm just gonna list the stuff I did though.

Nobel Peace Center

You might remember that I was already there with my visitor from Mannheim in February - coincidentally also for free. However, this time, they offered guided tours in English language every hour. This way, we got some more background information on the Nobel Peace Prize and this year's topic, the nuclear bomb.

For example, the photographer who took the pictures for the exhibition wanted to compare the United States and North Korea. For this, she travelled to the U.S., where she was shown around centres for atomic weapons. However, North Korea didn't allow her into the country, so she had to travel along the border on the South Korean side and take photos from there. In order to not raise suspicion (which happened anyway), she was carrying a selfie stick with her, pretending to be an innocent tourist. An interesting aspect about the photo exhibition was that some pictures were taken in a way that you couldn't immediately tell if they showed North Korea or the United States. The idea was that when considering the similarities rather than the differences, it gets harder to kill each other.

The Nobel Field is still fascinating, although not new to me any more. :)

Båtservice: Bygdøy ferry

Not only the regular public transport (metro, tram, bus and ferry, of course) were free on Sunday. The boat service to the Bygdøy peninsula was also included in the pass. Conveniently, the boat departed from Aker brygge, directly outside the Nobel Peace Center. Less so, there had already been a queue when we had arrived for the tour, and it grew in the meantime. Therefore, we spent quite some time queuing for the boat.

Queuing selfie. 

Fortunately, it was a really nice warm and sunny day, so standing around outside by the water wasn't the worst thing I could have imagined. (Greetings to all the people who were writing their papers - or procrastinating like pros while pretending to be super busy. :P)

Eventually, we made it on a boat though.

We got off again at Dronningen, the first of two stops, in order to go to the Norsk Folkemuseum.

Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum)

If the name rings a bell: yes, that was the excursion with the Norwegian Culture & History class that BI paid for. However, the excursion was in February and we got into a bit of a snow storm. Now, with the great weather, the museum was much more inviting, and I only then realised how big the outside area with houses from everywhere in Norway from different centuries actually is!

The stave church looked much nicer, too!

Boat service (again)

As we got to take the boat for free and it was way fancier than taking the bus, we decided to make use of that opportunity again. :D From Dronningen, the boat was also a lot less crowded, allowing me to take some more photos.

During the boat trip, one of us saw an animal in the water which she thought was a dolphin. However, I really don't think there are dolphins in the Oslofjord, so the rest of us was rather skeptical. But yeah, the Norwegian news also reported on the sight: turned out it was something they call "spekkhogger" - which is an orca whale, I guess...?

Norsk Teknisk Museum (Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology)

Back at Aker brygge, we took the bus to Kjelsås. That's a suburb of Oslo I had never been to before. (Although I later realised that there's a lake in the area. Maridalsvannen, actually Oslo's biggest lake, immediately made it on my to do list.)

Anyway, we went there for the Norsk Teknisk Museum, a quite big museum with exhibitions on science, technology, industry and medicine.

I didn't manage to see everything - plus, the medicine part was in Norwegian only and after a day of travelling around Oslo, my brain didn't feel like the cognitive effort of reading Norwegian anymore. However, the exhibitions on the Norwegian oil as well as race/racism, in connection with the marginalisation of the Sami people, were my personal highlights.