"- A pity not to have heard the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird who sings above the broken gasoline pump in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque: three towers, five silver crosses."
--Elizabeth Bishop, https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/questions-of-travel/
**I know this passage is a repeat, but I really like it :)
Today, I went on an island hopping tour. It was very small—just me and a young, super attractive couple from California. I was kind of annoyed at the beginning of the tour because the tour guide seemed to be focusing all of his energy on telling the couple things, and I could barely hear some things he was saying. However, after he found out I was an opera singer, he seemed to like me more. After that, I was able to hear most of the tour.
After a short walk through the city, we took (extremely prompt) ferries around to the different islands. The ferries would arrive, and as soon as we’d step on, they would shoot off. They didn’t wait for anyone and often left early—which becomes a theme here in Oslo.
The three islands we visited on our tour were: Gressholmen “the grass mound,” Lindøya “Island of Linden,” and Hovedøya. As you can probably guess, “øya” means “island.” “Ø” is a Norwegian letter that kind of sounds like the French shwa. The closest English sound to it I think would be the “e” part of the word “the,” but a little more closed. Norwegians seem to love this sound—it shows up everywhere.
GRESSHOLMEN
The first island, Gressholmen, was pretty boring. It was exactly what it sounded like—a bunch of grass. We walked across it for like 15 minutes and then left. The one cool thing on the island was an enormous above-ground ants’ nest. Our guide talked about how if you find the lowest part of the ants’ nest, and you follow it, you will find water. This island was small enough, however, that if you walked 20 meters in any direction, you would find water.
Just kidding--there was another cool thing: there used to be 40,000 bunnies on this island, so it was called bunny-island. Tragically, they were all killed.
LINDØYA
The second island, Lindøya, was pretty cool. Our guide told us about how Monks came in 1130 during the Viking period and owned this island—some of them still live here. The island is full of Linden trees planted by the Monks who used these trees to form pages of the Bible. Because of this, many old Bibles in Europe are made out of Linden trees. On this island, you could see a red symbol (pictured above) painted on to many different rocks. Our tour guide said that for years he had been telling tour groups that this symbol was the Catholic Emblem of Norway, but that just yesterday, he had led a tour group from Kuwait, and a girl had revealed a tattoo on her arm with the same symbol. She had explained that in the Muslim faith, the same symbol meant that a woman was “one of four sisters.”
HOVEDØYA
The final island, Hovedøya, also had a lot of religious significance. It also had a lot of military significance during World War II, I think, but I can’t really remember. We went to an art museum on the island, where I asked the couple if I could take a picture of them for my blog (shown above). As we were leaving the island, we saw a bunch of college kids drinking beer in a unicorn floaty boat, about to cross the sea in it. I was very jealous. My mom would say it was a “pegasus” since it had wings, but I like the word “unicorn” better.
OSLO OPERA HOUSE
After the 4-hour island hopping/hiking tour, I was exhausted, but I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to visit the famous opera house. The Oslo Opera House won first in Europe and second in the world for architecture. I walked around the outside and onto the roof (pictured above). I tried to sneak into the theater without buying a ticket, but sadly failed. There were little benches outside the theater in the lobby which were so unbelievably comfortable that I fell asleep on one of them for one and a half hours.
Some fun facts about OSLO:
The guy who played the voice of Scooby Doo was buried in Oslo
During WWII, Oslo surrendered almost immediately because its entire air force was bombed leaving only one working plane.
The light houses in Oslo are passed down through families—they’ve stayed in the same families for centuries. They are all green, blue, red, or yellow. They are still lit at night even though they serve little purpose, but one time, a guy forgot to light his, and a boat crashed into it.
Oslo was established by a King named Harald Hardrada in 1040-48
Oslo was burnt down at one point because it was all made of wood, so it was rebuilt out of only stone.