A Journal of our Travels

We were living in Chicago until we decided it was time to branch out. See our entries below to find out where we are now...

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Oslo, Norway – 06/22 – 06/23

(Michelle) We found a really cheap Ryan Air flight from Frankfurt to Oslo, so we took the opportunity to meet up with Rachel and Andy in Oslo. We got in after midnight on Friday night, but Rachel waited up for me (Teej went to bed). This is the first time since I went camping in the Yukon Territory that I got to experience the midnight sun (side note, for people who might potentially go camping with Beth Henry in the future, even if it is fully light out, do NOT wake her at 4am and ask if it is time for breakfast). It got mildly dark between 1am and 3am, but it was pretty much light out for the rest of the day. Andy got in Saturday morning and since Rachel had already seen a lot of the sights during the week (she had been in town for work), she acted as an excellent tour guide for the three of us.

Brand new to Oslo, I think the Nobel Peace Museum is well worth the time if you are in the area. I liked how they had a whole floor dedicated to most recent winner with cool pictures and the background on why that person was the winner. For 2006 it was Dr. Yunus, the guy who started Grameen Bank. He started lending small amounts of money 30 years ago to people in Bangladesh who would not qualify for a loan at a normal bank because they were very poor and had no collateral. The people borrowing the money are put in something like support groups with other borrowers where they can work together to pay back their loans. You may ask yourself, how do these banks make any money? The answer is simple… volume. OK, it is not “Citiwide Change Bank” (SNL), but I was surmising that the answer is volume, but also as these people come out of poverty, they start actually saving money at Grameen Bank. Either way, success is definitely marked by an extremely low default rate and millions of people who have come out of poverty because of these loans (the majority are women).

They also had an extremely modern “electronic garden” dedicated to all the winners. You touched each screen and it would tell you about a different winner from each year.

We had dinner at a cool restaurant (Tullins) that was recommended to us by Helga, a girl from Oslo that we met in Madrid. We got the last table available all night… Lucky!

The weather was not very agreeable for most of the weekend – rainy and cold – so we had to curb a lot of the planned walking trips. We did get to walk around long enough to find another statue for TJ to sit on. This time it was FDR.

(TJ) Just so all of you know FDR is the Santa Claus of all the dead presidents. You sit on top of his polio stricken legs and he will grant any wish you want. In the case of Oslo, I was wishing that
1.) It stop raining
2.) To have the prices in Oslo come back to reality
3.) That the Norwegians wake up to that fact that it is not 1987 with their big hair/mullets, stretch pants and long sweaters with belts on the outside. Honestly you have the highest per capita income and this is what you are wearing?

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