Where the King lives in Oslo, I spent the whole day basically alone as almost the entire rest of the group went to the Norwegian Fjords. I elected not to take the 5 1/2 hour trip to them, and the 5 1/2 hour trip back. I walked around Oslo and had a decent day.
OK, so I take unusual pictures, at the university in Oslo, I found the most beautiful bathroom for men I ever saw. Incidentally in Europe bathrooms are not toilets, those are rooms where people take baths, so whenever I asked where one was I was careful to look for a WC sign (water closet) or a toilet.
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This absolutely is the cutest little girl I ever saw, she was a street performer in Oslo. The photo cannot capture her smile and manner but I wondered if that smile was fake to lure contributions, I further wondered whether she was being used by her parents to make money. Later when her mother came to get her, when the girl was "off stage", her smile and manner were unchanged. She was what she appeared to be. Incidentally a boy about the same age, playing another instrument nearby gathered almost no contributions whereas this girl did quite well.
While walking around Oslo this band came out of nowhere and marched up to the palace.
One of the many street performers in Oslo ( the one on the tight rope), it looks like it could be Boston with a "T" stop and Burger King. It was interesting to watch how a street performer gathers a crowd from nothing to what you see here. It took about 15 minutes for him to harass enough to cause others to want to see what was going on. He asked for a small contribution, enough to but a cup of coffee (about $3 in Oslo), the most expensive city in the most expensive city in Europe.
Magnus Olsson, our bus driver, one of the highlights of the trip. He took us from Oslo to Stockholm, Sweden. On the way he stopped at a rest stop, pulled out a little table and served nice cakes, coffee and cocoa. A few of us had lunch with him later at a small village, he was extremely courteous and caring. We had two other bus drivers, the Nazi in Copenhagen and "Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb" in Helsinki.
The green in front of city hall in Stockholm
As you can see the City Hall in Stockholm suffers from a lack of maintenance. What you cannot detect is the wall is covered in gold leaf.
Looks like Haymarket in Boston, they were all yelling at me, I assume to buy something, but I do not understand Swedish. Their prices must have low because it was near closing.
Stockholm's version of street people
