Dull and Dreary December Part 2: A trip to Oslo

I have decided to dedicate a whole entry to my December trip to Oslo as it was full of anecdotes and strange situations. It won't be a very succinct report of my visit but for my sake at least, I want a written account of that weekend, so why not make it into a blog post! In July I booked the tickets and in a late night act of extraordinary luck, I stumbled onto one of Ryanair's sales on which I found Paris - Oslo return tickets for a grant total of 10euros. Taking this as an omen, I booked up, reserved my concert tickets and pocketed the idea somewhere towards the back of my brain for a couple of months. I can't say when I definitely decided to go, but it wasn't more than 2 or 3 days before the departure!! In the end it seemed that nobody would be able to accompany me on my trip and at first this seemed like a major hurdle, honestly who travels to some far flung nordic city for a weekend by themselves?? A madwoman with a thirst for adventure and amusement perhaps! Whilst a1 were just about the single most important entity in my life aged 13, as a sensible and mature 22 year old justification was certainly needed in my mind to go to such lengths. As a budding future journalist, in recent months my attention and thoughts have wandered into the pop music journalism sector. Excellent, so I would use the weekend solely as a research and networking excursion to further my impending high flying career. Sorted. Yes, European news journalism would be the sensible option, but if I can't chase a more exciting option when I'm still young then when will I? (This whole no future regrets thing is going a bit far, I'll be throwing myself out of a plane before I know it)! In the weeks leading up to the concerts I helped as much as I could with some online shameless plugging on music forums, youtube etc... whilst simultaneously doing some small scale PR for another band over here in Paris. For a while I felt like I'd fallen into another role. Through this I was "virtually" (through facebook and MSN) introduced firstly to Christian Dyresen who was basically in charge of the whole show and became my online norwegian teacher for the month leading up to the trip! I've never not been learning a language so clearly I decided that it would be a good idea to fill this gap in my life by learning this bizarre and difficult language!! Meanwhile, as I was taking on this new language, my flatmate Misha had just started learning Korean and several slightly odd evenings were spent sitting in my room each muttering away and repeating phrases in our respective target languages! Secondly, I was introduced to Marita who was working on the PR, but more on her later!!

So the day of departure dawned and I felt surprisingly nervous, the reoccuring thought of the day being "What the hell am I doing?!" Charlotte and Helena did their best to reassure me I was perfectly sane to be going, at work the morning of the flight. An amusing text message from my dad informed me that Obama himself was also in Oslo that day, so I was to be in good company! Alas the realisation that Mr O would be using neither the same airport nor hotel as me came as a disappointment if not a total surprise!! Despite the seemingly short 1hour 45minute flight from "Paris" to "Oslo" the complete journey was decidedly longer. Of course when Ryanair say Paris to Oslo they mean nothing of the sort, so an hour bus ride out of Paris you might find yourself getting close to the airport, then on the norwegian side, ordinarily it's a two hour journey from Torp airport to Oslo city centre. Unless of course you are arriving on the day of the president's visit, in which case the main roads are closed and as a result the coach driver has no option but to tackle the snowy, steep and narrow alternative routes!!! There was one point when I started to panic mildly when I noticed we seemed to be eschewing all directions to Oslo and instead following signs to Stockholm, but lo and behold eventually the coach pulled into Oslo Bus Station. When my first attempts of norwegian communication were met with utter confusion (a devastating personal failure) I had to admit defeat and ask for directions to the hotel in english. "Get a taxi" was easy enough to understand. Thank God for small mercies the journey was only three minutes long or I fear I would be in debt for the rest of my life. Clearly the warnings of Norway's cost were not exaggerated. After checking in I wasn't really ready to hit the sack despite the fairly late hour so I thought I might get in a spot of people meeting (OK networking- my favourite word!) before the night was out. I was looking for the 'a1' room, yes every hotel should come equipped with one, when I spotted three familiar faces in front of me. Only a poster, but a good start nonetheless! With great excitement and trepidation I crept though the a1 adorned door to be greeted with an empty room, which I later discovered to be the usual meeting place for the Norwegian Rotary Club. You really couldn't make this kind of story up, honestly as if things weren't peculiar enough as they were! By this point I started writing a kind of stream of consciousness in my notebook which makes for fairly amusing reading in hindsight, one of my favourite lines reads: "I'm freezing, starving, exhausted and alone in a hotel in Norway. If I didn't have such a good sense of humour I might take this badly".

Waking up Friday morning in Norway I realised it hadn't been a dream, so with great enthusiasm and joy (!) I tucked into my first Scandinavian breakfast - a slightly odd buffet of fish, cucumber, peppers, oranges, brown cheese (which for the record is delicious) and the more conventional cereal/toast combination. Thankfully, when I went downstairs to reception I recognised Marita, at last a friendly face even if we had never before met. After a chat and armed with top tips, I hit Oslo city centre for a day of furious tourism, however my fast pace was unnecessary as I'd overestimated the size of the city and found that I had 'done' all the main sites by lunchtime. I usually like to indulge in a spot of people watching when in new places, but the December temperature in Oslo doesn't make such an activity a particularly welcoming idea. So I walked all along the water front, and it was actually very pleasant. After a hot shower and change of clothes back at the hotel, I met up with Line, another norwegian friend and together we went to meet Mumi, an a1 fan who had travelled all the way from Japan for the concerts!!! After a bite of dinner where we were, apparently, sitting next to a contestant from norwegian X Factor we headed over to the beautiful Christiania Theatre ahead of the concert. Keen to give a helping hand, I earned my keep by selling programmes to unsuspecting fans on arrival at the theatre with Marita and Line and had lots of fun doing so. A lady organising the backstage "meet and greet" approached Mumi to confirm she would be going to meet the boys after the concert, and then turned to me and said "You too?!" so obviously I nodded. When Cecilie later asked "Natalie, why on earth were you on the meet and greet list?!" I had no clear answer. The concert was a fabulous melange of melodic trips down memory lane and a showcase of some of the guys' solo and new material. Obviously the "meet and greet" afterwards was good fun, I felt momentarily guilty being there as it was supposed to be for fans that had done something special/specific but who am I to question these things?! Admittedly Mark also looked slightly confused by my appearance and as he tried to make Ben remember me from London it was great to know that ah yes after all I was memorable: for fairly stupidly breaking a cash machine and drinking gin and tonic!! We can't all be glamorous and cool headed in life. It was of course the first time I had met Christian since that long-ago morning in Woolworths, Watford with Alex!! (2001 I believe?!) but once again, I failed spectacularly with what I had thought would be a highly impressive demonstration of my recently acquired linguistic flare (quite evidently I have none whatsoever when it comes to norwegian!) In what seemed liked the correct protocol for backstage boyband meets, I thrust my programme under their noses and demanded something creative. Obviously Ben rose to the challenge and I now have a masterpiece of art in the form of a heavily annotated photo of Mark complete with beard, earring and best of all a forehead tattoo declaring "I love Ben". Classic.

The after party was in a bar not far away (obviously, it's Oslo. Nothing is very far away). Amusingly all the cocktails had been given a1 song titles as names, and I allowed myself a cheeky "Take you Home" as the "Like a Rose" had complicated norwegian words in the ingredients! There was a great atmosphere with lots of people mixing and talking. There were three noticeably large crowds moving around the room, each with a band member at the centre! After a while the guys had to leave to go to "a nobel peace prize party with Will Smith". Unbelievably I didn't once pull out my line of "Will Smith and I are practically best friends" after my film premiere encouter in Rome (if you haven't already heard this story - firstly congratulations, you are lucky to have escaped, it's one of my favourites, and secondly: don't ask.) The crowd disbanded fairly rapidly after the departure of Mark, Ben and Christian and I was ready to leave with Marita and Line when Cecilie (PA, photographer, general glue of the whole a1 entity!) made the mistake of telling me to stay for one more. Initially, in my defence, it wasn't clear that it would be just me, Cecilie and the drummer i.e I would be completely crashing their date. The blame is, however, entirely on Cecilie and I hold no responsibility for my gooseberry status. Despite this, we had a hilarious time and even, surreally, stumbled across a Santa Claus on the way home who appeared to be fairly aimlessly hanging out in the park. We stopped for a photo with him and I trotted on back to the hotel smiling and laughing, reflecting on my oddest of days.

On Saturday, my final day I was extremely tempted to fabricate a freak snowstorm conviniently postponing my return by 24hours thus allowing me to stay for the Saturday night concert and more shenanigans. The pursestrings, however, had a different idea and forced me to leave as planned that afternoon. Not relishing the idea of spending another day alone in the city, it was lucky for me that Marita was at the hotel in the morning and we consequently spent the rest of the day together in town, drinking coffee, chatting and laughing a lot!! If nothing else, I made a new friend from my trip as Marita is lovely! I absolutley love making friends from all over the world and hope that I can continue doing so with any equally ridiculous future trips abroad. As a leaving gift (not really, but perfectly timed, just before I had to leave) A1 performed a short concert in the middle of town for charity and the mob that ensued totally shocked me! Clearly they are extremely well known and liked in Norway and I really wasn't prepared for the level of craziness that followed them down the street!!

I had a truly brilliant time in Oslo, even if the trip was surrounded with an air of surreal randomness. After months of deliberating, to go or not to go, it ended up being a fairly spontaneous adventure and one that I almost didn't take for fear of being a lone traveller. That would've been a stupid decision and I'm so glad that I went. The main reason for it's success was the group of people that made it so fun, most notably Marita, Cecilie and of course the boys! And it's given me food for thought about potentially pursuing work in a vaguely similar sector. The only true disaster: my spectacular linguistic failure, on that note: Takk Takk og God Natt (or something!)