David Currie

As previously mentioned, I’m working in the city centre this week and with the T-bane so close, it’s less than half an hour from front door to desk. However, I arrived at the NationalTheatret station this evening to find several trains pulled up at the platform. After 15 minutes sat listening to unintelligible announcements I decided to join the 50% of poeple who had got up and left rather than the 50% who were still sat in the train. I arrived at a nearby tram stop just in time for a tram out to the Rikshospitalet which is any easy walk from home. Only the tram didn’t show up. After another five minutes wait another tram appeared, this time bound for Majorstuen which is in the right direction for home. Unfortunately it was absolutely packed with passengers squashed up against the doors. I started walking…
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499This morning we woke to blue skies over a white landscape. It’s such a shame that we don’t really have the equipment to make the most of it. Some pieces are in the shipping (for example Emma’s carrier) and others (like boots, skis and sledges we just don’t have). We decided that we couldn’t miss out completely on the snowy vistas though and took the ten minute drive up to the ski resort at Tryvann. There’s only so far you can get pushing a buggy in fresh snow though and at minus nine degrees it wasn’t somewhere to hang around too long even in the sunshine. We gave Emma a little play in the snow but without waterproof mitts or booties then there’s a limit to what she can do.
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496We were woken at about five this morning by the sound of a snowplough grating along the road outside. This I took to be an indication that the snow we’d watched falling yesterday evening had probably settled. When we eventually crawled out of bed a few hours later we could see that a good couple of inches had fallen in the night and it was still coming down.
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493We decided to start our exploration of Oslo by walking from home to Frognerparken – a trip of just under 30 minutes along quiet back roads. We then spent a while wandering amongst the sculptures in Vigeland Park and watching the ducks skating around on the frozen water. The latter is indication of how cold it was and before long we marched on quickly in to the city centre and then got the T-bane back home. Emma was fine in her nice new down suit but the rest of us are going to have to learn to dress a bit more warmly!

On Monday I was taken to view a few properties around Oslo. Christine and I then spent hours trying to decide whether we should go for the seventh floor apartment in the city centre with views over the fjord or the low-rise apartment in the suburbs within walking distance of the woods. We knew that the latter was more “our cup of tea” but the question was whether we should be taking the opportunity to experience something difference whilst we had the chance. In the end we decided to go with the great outdoors and this morning I signed a contract on a two-bedroomed apartment overlooking the T-bane station at Slemdal (so we can still be in the city centre in under 15 minutes).
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