This is the first part of one of the biggest and coolest trips I have done so far! I decided to break this trip up into three posts just so it is a little easier to separate each city I visited. It was all a part of a big trip set up by ESN. ESN is the Erasmus Student Network. It is a big organization for international students around the world and is present at many European Universities. They host a ton of trips all over and Sea Battle is one of the biggest trips they organize in Northern Europe. It is a cruise from Stockholm, Sweden, to Riga, Latvia, and back. Over 2000 students were on the cruise!

Everyone going on the trip had to figure out their own way to Stockholm so I decided to take a little longer route and visit Oslo first. I didn’t know too many other students from Trondheim going on the cruise so I ended up traveling on my own. I thought it would be good practice before setting out to explore more of Europe in June. I left Trondheim at 11:00 PM March 27 (yeah, I know, I am slow with my posts…). I guess the train ride from Trondheim to Oslo is supposed to be incredibly beautiful, but I couldn’t see anything on the overnight train. When I woke up at around 6 AM I was able to see some of the suburbs near Oslo, but nothing too exciting. My train arrived at 7:00 AM at Oslo central station. The hostel I booked didn’t open until 10, so I just got some breakfast and wandered around town a bit until it opened.

This was the very first hostel I have ever been to so I didn’t really have much to compare to when I got there. It was in a kind of sketchy old building, but it seemed nice enough and they had a place to lock up my luggage so I was set. I set out to explore Oslo!

I didn’t really do any research before going to Oslo so I got some ideas of where to go by talking to people at the hostel and by just stumbling on things while wandering. Some of the highlights were the Oslo Opera House, Vigeland sculpture garden, and Akershus Fortress. Check out the pictures for a bit about each of these places. On every trip I have gone on I have been incredibly lucky with the weather. Oslo was no exception. I was wearing just a t-shirt and eating ice cream by mid afternoon, although I seemed to be the only person who thought it was that warm… While I was wandering I decided to count how many Teslas I saw. I saw at least 30 throughout the day! There were even two Tesla Roadsters! There are a ton of electric cars in Norway and they have done a great job building the infrastructure to support them. Almost every parking lot has a big line of charging stations.

While I was eating dinner I met a group of exchange students at my hostel from Sweden who were visiting Oslo. I went out to explore the town with them in the evening. When I finally got back to the hostel at 11:30 or so I wasn’t tired at all so I ended up staying up pretty late talking to my roommate who was visiting from Germany. He was on his way north to go sled dogging for a couple weeks.

The next morning I was supposed to catch a train to Stockholm at 7:30, but it got delayed for 90 minutes for some reason so I had to wait around the station for a while. Check out Part 2 for Stockholm!