Aussie Visitors: Staycation 2023

For a week in September/October every year I've got a week off work - fall break it's called - because working in education in Norway comes with mad perks. 

When Clare, Australian former colleague of mine who made her debut here a half decade ago in Barcelona, said she was coming to Europe sometime this fall I knew exactly when to tell her to come.

Then imagine my surprise when another friend, Kim, fellow Aussie snorkeler but actually Canadian, who was supposed to be nearby in Finland for work in June, said her work trip was postponed and she would be coming to visit the very same week!

And then - I am not making this up but it truly is hard to believe - Laura and BJ who we met in Brisbane, but have lived in many exotic destinations since leaving us years ago, announced they would also like to make a stop in Norway en route to the USA from their home in Hong Kong.

Quick maths: four adult (two singles and one couple) plus one toddler, just 3 months older than Freya, are descending upon us in the very same week!  All from our lives in Australia.  The exact week I have off work!  The lucky country indeed.

One lifestyle downgrade we made when coming to Norway from Australia was smaller house size, so there's no way we could fit all five of those bodies on top of the current four bodies we have in our house, so we had to figure out a Plan B, at least for the two nights when all of these visitors overlapped.

Oslo it is!

We live way out in suburbia, hardly a bucket list item for travelers, so we booked city center apartments in Oslo that would allow us to showcase the highlights of our fine capital city in 48 hours or less.

We started our stay with a traditional Norwegian meal.

Did you know that there are daily flights from Norway to Tokyo containing only salmon?  I have no sources to back this up, but our salmon is so good the Japanese import it by the planeload.

Akerselva

We started our day with a stroll down this urban river, which beautifully showcased the fall leaves of the season.  Here we had our one and only wildlife encounter in Oslo, where we came upon...a rat.

Look just to the left of the knee beside the pram - the fabled Norwegian rodent.  I wish we had video of this encounter as it was absolute pandemonium with 2 three-year-olds going mental while six adults scream-laughed.  It was a great start to our day out in the big city (population 634,000 - Norway's biggest)!

The Tiger

Outside Oslo central train station ("Oslo S") there is a big bronze statue of a tiger, which might be the most popular photography spot in all of Oslo.  The kids had great fun climbing on his tail for a while while we waited for the clouds to part so we could get a sunny view of the Oslo fjord atop Oslo's finest piece of real estate:

Oslo Opera House

This is 100% me talking out of my ass, but the Oslo Opera House is the second best opera house on the planet, after Sydney, which is clearly unbeatable.

It doesn't look like too awful much from a distance, but the beauty is that you can walk on 90% of the roof so it's a very up close and personal experience.

It makes this ornate piece of public real estate feel very accessible to the every-man.  If that isn't Norway I don't know what is.

With three kids in tow we were in no position to have a peaceful sit down lunch like civilized adults, so we did what the locals do and ate hot dogs from a convenience store.

It is truly a cultural and culinary experience not to be missed in Norway.  Don't pity our visitors, the hot dogs are actually very high quality and delicious!  Norway's original fast food.  

Parliament

We walked the entire length of the approximate one kilometer down Karl Johans gate, the main shopping street of Oslo, which leads from Oslo S to:

Royal Palace

Yes, Norway has a king and queen and no, they're not half as interesting as the British ones while simultaneously being twice as trashy.  But we've got a pretty palace overlooking the city to show for it!  Unfortunately we didn't see the changing of the guards, but it's a minor goal to see it once in my Norwegian life.

A funny thing about roaming in a pack of Australian citizens: you do not get far before somebody is demanding a stop for a coffee.  Not just any coffee, though. A "good coffee", mind you.

Australia has not exported the information that they have the best coffee in the world, though they have [falsely] exported the information that every animal on the continent is dangerous and scary.  It's bizarre!  Their best kept secret.  

And they are picky about their precious cuppa, and you don't live there for nearly a decade without becoming picky about it, too.  Their (our) standards are very high, and I'm happy to report that Oslo coffee shops passed the snobby Aussie test.  Bravo, Oslo!  You are worthy of being classified as a livable place based on that fact alone.

Vigeland Sculpture Park

Located in the posh suburb of Frogner, Vigeland "nudie" Park is so nicknamed because it is a park filled with sculptures of nudes.  Lots of T&A hanging out for all the world to see here, that you can fondle all you want!

Entertaining story time: Clare, who has lived many years in Germany, mistook my nickname of "nudie park" to mean that it was an actual nudist park containing naked living humans.  She was pleasantly surprised to learn that the nudes are, in fact, statues!  Let me tell you those Germans never cease to entertain me!

The most famous sculptures here, by my estimation, are The Monolith, what I like to call the orgie tower:

And Sinnataggen, a.k.a. The Angry Boy.

This statue is a lot cuter before you have kids, trust.  Tantrums by brats are not art!

After our whirlwind day of touring in Oslo the group went in different directions, with the single ladies heading to different places on the west coast by train.  We would reunite but it really was a game of musical visitors.  

I think our trip back home from Oslo (a whopping 38 minutes) was Freya's first time on a train!  She was amused.

Laura, BJ and "lille boy" (little boy), as Freya initially called their son Brady, came with us to our humble abode, where Martin fed them a spread of native delicacies.  Literally.

There was whale, reindeer and moose meat on the menu.  And chanterelle mushrooms, which are a local Norwegian autumn delicacy and so freaking good.  We ate and drank and came dangerously close to soiling ourselves laughing, not unlike our pre-kids Ireland road trip together half a decade ago.

We spent our day together in Old Fredrikstad, about a half hour away, which is a fortified town, meaning that if you try to invade it you will get a cannon ball to the face.

The streets are made of cobblestones, which makes this place not exactly ideal for pram pushers such as myself.  There's a (free!) ferry that goes across the fjord to get there and it's our go-to place for visitors when they're here.  It's so scenic and a guaranteed stop for our international visitors.

Then Laura and BJ were off to a wedding in North Carolina, and the revolving door of visitors continued with Kim, or as Freya called her, Jim.  I took Jim to Alby Gaard, a fjord-side farm and art gallery on the island of Jeloy in our town.

Like with the previous visitors we mainly just hung out, talked about life, and laughed ourselves silly.  It had been nearly 2.5 years since we'd last been together, when we left Australia. 

Saying goodbye to Kim was the hardest farewell back then, and that was no different with this batch of visitors.  Months later Freya still asks about Jim, which is only fitting because without Jim and her hand-me-downs Freya would have been naked, sleeping on the floor and drinking milk out of a dog bowl from birth to age 1 year.

Finally it was time for Clare to come back from the west coast for her stay at our place until - oh shit - she reported that she tested positive for Covid-19, so she would stay in Oslo instead of coming to stay with us!  But that wasn't going to stop me from seeing her before she moved on to her next Euro-fabulous destination, socially distanced of course.

Spoiler alert: I still got The Rona from her, despite our half-assed attempts at social distancing, but it was 100% worth it.  We had a lovely, fun day in Oslo loitering over delicious Australian coffee and then loitering at what might be the greatest public library on earth.

Deichman 

This is very ironic and possibly ignorant to say, but I think what makes this such an amazing library is a noticeable lack of books (LOL).  It really is more of a hang out/meeting place for the public, with infinite innovative places for studying, meeting or, the theme of our day, loitering.  There is even a whole floor for kids to run around, complete with pram parking.  

So cool!  It really is a sight to behold, and a fantastic use of public funds, and after this visit (my first) I recommend all visitors to Oslo check it out.

I really can't put into words how glad I am that these friends went out of their way to come visit us.  I really do enjoy sharing my new [old] country with people, and it was soooooo good to catch up with these beloved friends after a few years apart.

Having all these visitors really does help heal the pain of leaving (or being pushed out of) our amazing Australian lives.

 

Germany & Denmark Roadtrip

With a baby brewing in my belly, yet somehow not thwarted by our recent Gothenburg trip, we felt the clock ticking on our ability (and willingness) to start traveling again.  Having a baby on a prison island in the middle of Covid and a gigantic international move of 2 adults, a house full of stuff, a baby and dog really put the kaibosh on our travel mojo. 

Travel sure looks different these days (more playgrounds, less beer halls) but we can't stay within driving distance forever if we wish to live our best European lives.  Not yet ready for an airplane trip, setting sail on a ferry was our mode of transport of choice.

Destination: My favorite country to travel to and the place I have returned to the most (5x) in my nearly two decades of traveling, Germany!

Not visible in image: the train is actually late

I can't explain it - Martin does not share my enthusiasm - but I love it so much!

This trip looked much (much) different from my previous ones.  But as usual, visiting Das German Friends was a top priority.

Said friends have also accumulated plenty of baggage in the form of crotch fruit over recent years.  The next generation of our Edinburgh gang is gaining in size and strength.  Our stops along the way:

Kittlitz, Germany

An hour east of Hamburg is a literal village called Kittlitz where our friends Moritz and Thesi moved to from Berlin.  Being in this stage of life people no longer require the fun of city dwelling and move away seeking greener pastures and a more rustic way of life.

We hadn't seen these friends since just before the pandemic when we all converged in Bulgaria for a wedding.  They also visited us in Brisbane in November 2018 where we went to Byron Bay and I asked myself for the 10th time: Why am I here and why is this place so popular?  I don't get the appeal!

Also joining us were Jan and Mariya who threw the aforementioned Bulgarian wedding.  They never made it as far as Australia but we did meet up with them in Hong Kong during our first New Years Eve in Australia (2012, dangerously close to a decade ago).  

Kittlitz is right on the border of what used to be East Germany (see also: history) and we were assured that the architecture on that side was dank and depressing.  We never did experience the brutalist architecture, however, as we were too busy getting lost in the woods.  I'm unsure if this was in East or West Germany.

With 4.5 kids between three couples the days were tame and the nights were early, but we had a ton of fun laughing, catching up and for the 5 out of 6 adults who were not pregnant and not me, having a few brews.

Neu Wulmstorf, Germany

Located conveniently nearby less than an hour to the west of Hamburg was our only non-Edinburgh German friends, Stefan and Sascha.  We met them on our month-long journey in Asia just prior to starting grad school in Edinburgh, and last visited them at their magnificent Hamburg penthouse apartment when we returned to Europe in 2015.  

But in the bustling city they live no more.  As a gay couple you might assume, incorrectly, that they had not fallen victim to/been blessed by parenthood as we have, but with that assumption you would be very, very wrong.  In fact they turbocharged their parenthood and assembled three kids in less than a year!  

It's a wild story, and I'm not even sure I fully understand the exact details, but it's something they wanted for a long time and they are A+ dads and the delightful real life version of Modern Family.  More kids to entertain my kids in the future to keep them out of our hair so the adults can drink?  Babies for everyone!

We took 2.5 of the combined 4.5 kids to Wildpark Schwarze Berge, which probably is not a stop we would have made in a pre-child life.  But the absolute beauty of Germany is that even this child-focused zoo the snackbar sells beer along with their currywurst!

  

This is why I keep returning to Germany.  Just when you think it takes itself too seriously (true) you realize that it is a completely clown shoes Candy Land (also true). 

The best part of the "wildpark" were the many docile, free roaming, big fat pigs.

After a few days of catching up, letting the kids run wild, eating homemade spaetzle and basking in their magnificent, palatial yard it was time to head north.  But not home to Norway yet!

Tønder, Denmark

This isn't exactly on the standard Danish tourist trail, but it wasn't too far out of our way and Martin spent three years of his life here in his early teen years.  In this very house!

It was fun to see places from his childhood, like the place where he fell off his bike and busted his two front teeth that have fallen out and caused dental problems multiple times throughout our relationship (for example, aforementioned NYE trip to Hong Kong).

Technically we stayed in the nearby village of Møgeltønder, which sees more tourists - and royals - as there is a royal residence there.

Rømø Island

The Danish equivalent of the better known German island next door, Sylt, Rømø was a holiday destination of Martin's youth.  We had to make a detour to check it out because you can freaking drive your car on the beach!

Coming from Australia, where only the hardest core 4WD vehicle would even attempt beach driving, I was terrified to take our fairly new BMW out onto "sand".  In fact I insisted we try walking first, not realizing that the beach is at least a mile wide and walking with a toddler is downright foolish and/or impossible.

But during that failed walk attempt I realized the sand is virtually as hard as concrete.  No way will you bury your car in sand and need to be towed out.  How is this sand?!

It was a nice detour to stretch our legs on the way to our next destination.

Givskud Zoo

This zoo is a drive thru, which I don't think is something I've ever seen in my life.  It is a really awesome concept for the lazy and toddler toting, like myself.

You can get out and walk through 90% of the zoo, except for the lion enclosure.  It was really convenient because the place is huge, and parking lots are ample, so you could drive your way to different sections of the zoo but still get out and see animals the old fashioned way.

Martin remembers going here as a kid.  It's not far from Legoland, which is like Disney World Light as far as time, money and aggravation are concerned and Freya is in no stage of life where that is yet advisable.  So the likelihood of us coming back on a future trip is high.

Vejle Deer Park

Instead of staying right next to the rural zoo and paying zoo hotel prices we stayed about a half hour away in the town of Vejle.  Just outside of town they had my favorite stop of the trip, a park filled with super tame deer that you could just sit and chill with.

Or, with a toddler, chase and spook them so they run away from you.  Still cool.  It was free and I don't think I've ever seen anything like this, either.  This area of Denmark is a good place for animal lovers, clearly. 

Arentsminde 

Our last stop of the journey was a random town in the north of Denmark, not far from the ferry terminal that would take us home.  A distant relative of Martin's, Edel, lives here (I believe his mother's cousin's wife).  She was at our wedding in Florida half a decade ago, so we didn't want to be in the vicinity without making a house call. 

She's got a huge green thumb so we spent most of the evening harvesting various vegetables and playing petanque, which seems pretty identical to lawn bowls (or bocce).  It was nice to finally have someone to talk to again that was outside of our little nuclear family, even if it was in Norwegian, which is like climbing a mental mountain.

This made me realize something.  I forgot - or perhaps never fully learned - how to travel just us.  Living abroad for 15 years means there's always somebody to visit (or travel with) so every trip/vacation/holiday we take is guaranteed to include others.  The majority of this trip was no different!

It's hard to say where our travel lives will take us with Baby #2 due to arrive before the end of summer.  Maybe we'll want to spend more time with just the 4 of us, but that would come at the expense of visiting the friends and family we've accumulated around the world.  As much as I love my little nuclear fam that's an unattractive prospect to me.

Or maybe we will realize that going anywhere with two kids is not worth the effort, and stick to North Dakota family visits only for the foreseeable future.  Time will tell but one thing is for certain: we need to be better about taking photos of just the three of us!

Gothenburg, Sweden

In a pre-pandemic world this dog and pony show of a blog was used as my travel diary for our various exotic travels.  A year of continental imprisonment followed by two upcoming decades of parental imprisonment put a swift end to such extravagance!

But living in Europe now means we can travel to foreign destinations relatively easily, in theory.  After readjusting to life in Norway for nine whole months I was more than ready to stretch my legs a bit and go somewhere.  Anywhere (outside of Norway)!  But with a nearly 2 year old in tow I didn't dare go somewhere too difficult to travel to or navigate.  Preferably driving distance.  Gothenburg, Sweden is about our only option then, 3 hours away by car.

Another reason for this weekend trip is that I wanted to test the waters of traveling for leisure with a kid.  Is it enjoyable?  Is it worth it?  Is it a form of self-flagellation that should be avoided at all costs?  There's only one way to find out!

We had actually been to Gothenburg before, in May 2008, fourteen years prior.  That's nearly 1.5 decades!  

We were so young and so free back then!  And lacking many wonderful life experiences, I will note.  Sadly most of our photos from that trip didn't survive due to a faulty hard drive and early 00'ss us not being smart with backups.

Older and wiser now, we back our shit up and have so much more baggage with 22-month-old Mona Freya in tow.  

This was her first real travel trip, despite already flying many, many miles in her short life.  Those trips were always to move, visit people or escape imprisonment so this was the first time we went anywhere as a family of 3 with the sole purpose of being a tourist.

Our first stop was the Stora Saluhallen: 

Known as the Market Hall in English, this ornate building houses a variety of retail and dine-in food outlets that aren't particularly pram friendly so we didn't make ourselves too comfortable.  However I did take away an amazing bahn mi (Vietnamese baguette) and enjoyed it later while soaking in this bad boy:

I think the crowning achievement of my education on traveling with kids on this trip is the brilliance of eating sandwiches in the bathtub.  Hey, lights go out early in a hotel room shared with a toddler, and Norway is bizarrely devoid of my one true love - bathtubs - so this is a win-win solution.

With a 7 p.m. bedtime to accommodate we didn't have too much leisure time on Friday after an early dinner.  Back in 2008 we would have found a local watering hole to enjoy myriad adult beverages until the wee hours, but on this trip we had to wrap it up much earlier.

The best we could do is a wander around town for a bit, batting cigarette butts out of Freya's hand before she could put them in her mouth.  Ahh, children.  It's a miracle any of them survive to adulthood.

The next day we started out with my absolute favorite thing about traveling in Scandinavia, the deluxe hotel buffet breakfast.  I have been loving on this cultural juggernaut for well over a decade now on this very blog, and it was a freaking delight to get back in the saddle of this massive and abundant tasty spread. 

After our morning feed we wandered around for a bit and found a playground to burn off some pre-nap energy.  God kids are exhausting!

Luckily it was located in a picturesque park, so there was more to see than just swing sets and monkey bars.

We then made our way to the seaside to see some nautical sights, including this gigantic 100+ year old boat that's moored to the dock, that I didn't realize until this very minute is a "botel" - a boat hotel:

That is really freaking cool!  It's really close to the Gothenburg opera house, which prides itself on being "modern":

But compared to Sydney and Oslo I think it's quite boring and underwhelming.  However I'm sure the waterfront views from inside, which I did not see, kick it up a few notches.

Our biggest tourist activity for the day, which we had also done 14 years prior, was a canal boat tour.

And O.M.G. did it suck ass.

Not that there was anything wrong with the boat or the tour; both were perfectly lovely.  We were just inexperienced tourist parents who shot our own selves in the foot.  When we saw this:

Our dumb asses thought, "Great, let's go back to the hotel and lay her down there and get a solid 2 hour nap out of her before the boat trip."  FOOLS!  

We could have left her just where she was and achieved our goal of a good nap, with the added bonus of us basking in sunshine and drinking beer like our travels of yesteryear.  What we got was a toddler who couldn't be transferred to bed and slept for about 15 minutes (a fraction of what is necessary) before taking her exhausted ass out on a slow moving boat into open water.  FOOLS!

She was an absolute mess and we were 100% those parents that you simultaneously loathe and pity out in public dealing with a demonic hell child spawn of Satan.  It was awful, and we were all super miserable.  Don't let the smiles before departure fool you!

Lesson learned: if they need to sleep and fall asleep in a pram leave them there!  I'm sure the tour was great for people on the boat that departed every other time that day but ours.

Another gamble we took, which paid off better but still wasn't a 100% success, was going out to eat at a decent restaurant.

Ethiopian food!  Something we'd had a few times in Brisbane before but it had been a long time.  

The place was a lot more popular and trendy than we had anticipated, so cramming a toddler into a small corner table was not our finest work.  But it wasn't a gigantic failure like the boat trip, and thankfully they had child-placating fries on the menu!  I think the key to dining out success is to be in and out by 5:30 p.m. to avoid contact with any human beings that aren't economically forced to be there and be nice to you.

On the way home we walked through the empty and hilariously named:

I personally cannot believe the name Adolf survives in any format.  He was a king of Sweden in the 1600s, so to be fair this dude is totally innocent.

As we were walking through the square, enjoying terrorizing the local pigeon population, I realized that Freya had a dirty nappy.  A really dirty, stank nappy.  We could have rushed back to the hotel to take care of it but she was having such a good time running around that I decided to do the deed right then and there, giving 'ol Gustaf Adolf quite a show.

We had a big day Sunday planned, and after another exquisite Scandinavian buffet breakfast we promptly left Gothenburg city center for the 'burbs:

Wild times ahead: we went grocery shopping!  What impresses my Norwegian eyes is that it is open every single day for 17 straight hours!  Beyond impressive compared to [my corner of] Norway, where almost nothing is open on Sundays, especially at the crack of dawn.

Food (and booze) in Sweden is significantly cheaper than Norway.  There is a hugely popular shopping center just across the border, 40 minutes from home, that we frequent.  However it is targeted to Norwegians so compared to most Swedish grocery stores it is still overpriced.  No Swede would ever shop there, but millions of Norwegians do!  

My brilliant plan was to hit up a real Swedish grocery store, far from the border, and enjoy even more savings.  I even brought coolers for this planned shopping extravaganza!  50% grocery savings nearly paid for this whole trip (exaggeration, but the savings are legit)!

After our grocery haul, about halfway back home we went to Nordens Ark, a large open air zoo.

This being open air you don't get too close to most animals, especially the coolest ones (leopards, tigers and lynx...or is it lynxes?)  Most photos aren't particularly blog-worthy, either.  But there's tons of space and this being a zoo kids can run amok and nobody will side eye you.  I realize the importance of this feature now!

There was a big group of women and kids there also, who I realized (from their Russian-sounding language and pins they were wearing) were refugees from Ukraine.  Ouch, my heart!  They had been forcefully removed from their homeland for 3 months at that point, barely a fourth of a year.  A humbling moment for me to realize that I have nothing - absolutely nothing - to complain about.  I think my motto in life is, "much to be grateful for".

 

And that's a wrap!  Our very first, purely for pleasure leisure travel as parents.  

Did we survive?  Yes.  Did we learn a few things the hard way?  Did we ever.  Was it particularly relaxing?  Not really.  Are we scared off from ever attempting this again?  Surprisingly and crazily, no we are not!