Day 1. Oslo

​Greetings humans! Our first day! Today’s Tail comes to you from a wonderful room in a purple house at the top of a very steep hill which my humans so kindly carried me up in the blistering heat. Now as I sit at the window looking over Norway’s capital city of Oslo, I shall relate to you the day’s events which brought me here.
 
I was rudely awakened at the crack of 5:30AM by my wonderfully considerate humans, the final additions were made to our (well, my humans’) luggage, and the bags were weighed using a rather questionable weighing device. We piled into the car, ready to go and then… oh, wait a minute (or five), yep Jack forgot those little red booky things humans need to travel the world (unlike me, I am free and without hindrance to travel where I please – just not Vietnam,  don’t take me back there).
Anyway, portpass found, everybody in the car again. I thought we were meant to be going by train and who’s this extra human we’ve acquired? Ah, yes, that’s Jack’s dad here to drive us to the train. So, we’re in the car, broom broom, etc. etc. Off we go, oh no, not again traffic jam this time.
Right, one detour later, we arrived at the train place. Lots of security, people with guns, ahh, a sniffer dog, who let that in? Giant bags dropped off… er… somewhere, security time, I went through an X-ray scanner, bet that was a surprise for whoever saw that – surprise my insides are made of fluff!

Now, time to board our first train. Hang on a minute, this is a very short train (from my limited experience), and why are we walking up steps to get on it?
The train sat still for a long time, moved a bit, stopped, started going very fast, started taking off. This is not a train! I repeat, this is not a train! There has been a terrible mistake this is a plane! I have been duped!

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No one told me I would be expected to journey in one of these flying death traps – it’s not touching the ground, I’m a cat, birds go in my stomach, not the other way round! Get me out of here, what were these humans thinking? This is like the plane from Vietnam, it had better not last that long (oh, I forgot, I wasn’t going to talk about Vietnam). If I wasn’t a cuddly toy, my claws would be putting in some serious overtime, digging out of this thing if I have to.
 
Oh, actually the view is quite nice, I can see some tiny houses, it must be a model village or something. There’s also a lot of trees, mountains and fjords, we’re definitely over Norway now.

Touch down at Oslo Airport. Well, that was quite fun, honestly I don’t know why some people make such a fuss out of flying.
Norway is here, we have arrived in Oslo, well, technically the airport near Oslo. Hallo! That’s Norwegian, y’know. With baggage reclaimed we escaped Gardermoen Lufthavn (airport) and got onto a train. This looks much more like a train, it’s long and on tracks and… yes… it hasn’t taken off. I have now been on a train.
Oslo Central Station (or Sentralstasjon if you prefer) is where we got off, now we’re actually in Oslo. There’s lots of trees and construction work and these things called trams that are basically half bus-half train and have a bendy bit in the middle – very interesting.
The station is right near the water, a little too close if you ask me, there was a huge cargo ship loading up – we watched this and many other urban delights from a bench outside the station where we had lunch and took the opportunity for a photoshoot – I looked stunning as always.
 
After that, we made our way out of the city and up the previously mentioned very, very steep and long, tiring hill to our room. On the way we stopped for a rest (and more photos) in a little woods – I needed a break from all that resting in the bag while my humans carried me up the hill.
Here, we took the opportunity to learn some Norwegian as my humans had rather neglected to learn a single word before they came here. We learnt the basics; hallo (hello), adjø (goodbye), vær sär sill (please) and takk (thanks) as well as the ever useful luftputebåt min er full av äl (my hovercraft is full of eels) – you never know when you might need it.

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Language lesson over, we finished the climb up the very, very big hill and found our room which is on the top floor of a big purple house where our host for the next few days lives with two cats and assorted other humans.
The views from this room are fantastic with a choice of two – West or North ish. From the west, there is a superb view back down the road and we can see all the way to the ocean, well a fjord, but there’s a big boat in it. From the north window, we can see back to Oslo and beyond. The roads are well lined with trees, the houses and spatterings of tower blocks are all post-1880s and clad in a whole range of colours. From both windows the view ends with pine-coated mountains and as we are basically on our own mountain, Oslo sits snuggly into a valley. ​​

The North view. Jack says that's a birch tree

The West view. Can you see the boat?

I could go on about the view all day, but I won’t. Let’s talk about some human things – it was very hot and sunny and my humans visited a supermarket (called Rema 1000) to trade green paper for food with which to make dinner. There’s a Buddha statue in the room whom I may make friends with.
 
Tune in again tomorrow for exciting stories as we go to places and eat food and walk a lot!
Until next time folks,
Chesh.