Wow, what a day in Oslo! Our ship pulled in this morning around 9:45 and we made our way to our hotel which is right next to the main train station. Fortunately the guy at the reception desk was really nice and was able to get us into our room early instead of storing our luggage! We are staying at a Radison so while I expected it to be nice this was way nicer than I was expecting! Our room is really big (more like a normal American hotel room vs most of the rooms in Europe) and our bathroom floor is heated!
One of my fellow officials from the tournament, Anna, lives in Oslo. Since she was off from work today she offered to show us around and hang out for the day. That is one of the coolest things about working international hockey, I have friends all over the world willing to take time out of their busy schedules to show me their homes. I hope to be able to return the favor for some of them if/when they come to the United States! She met us at our hotel at 10:45 and we headed out. After grabbing a quick pastry we hoped on the subway and headed to the Vigeland Sculpture Park. This is a very famous park in Oslo that has tons of statues all about "the human condition." Basically this means lots of naked people and babies. Some of the statues were seriously creepy, there was one where a man was kicking a baby, another one that looked like two people in some crazy sex position. The most famous statue was the angry boy, who is modeled after Grumpy from Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs. At the top of the park was the main gates and the Monolith - a huge, 14 meter high statue made up entirely of hundreds of naked figures. According to Wikipedia it is supposed to symbolize mans desire to come closer to the spiritual and divine. I'm not going to say the first thing that came to my mind when I saw it but if you google a picture of it you'd probably think the same thing after seeing all of the naked statues!
After the park we took the metro up to the Holmenkollen Ski Center, which is home to the ski jump used in the Olympics when they were here in Oslo. We went through the museum there which shows a history of the different types of skis used in both cross country skiing and ski jumping, two very popular sports here in Norway. It was crazy that people didn't die doing this stuff on some of those old ski and binding set ups! We then took the elevator to the top of the ski jump which offered amazing views of the city of Oslo. As we were about to head down we saw them bringing something up to the top on a cable that ran just above the jump. We stayed to see what it was because it honestly looked like a body bag! Low and behold it was the final safety check for the zip line that they had running where you could basically experience what ski jumping was like! We watched someone go and immediately decided we had to try it! After we signed the waiver (which was not like an American waiver, all it said was we understood the rules) we were harnessed up and led out to the edge of the ski jump. They hook you in to the safety line then make you walk out and sit on the edge of the jump just like the ski jumpers do while they finish getting you ready to go. That was probably the scariest part because you are looking straight down this super steep ramp - I seriously can't imagine skiing down that thing! We made Kathleen go first so she wouldn't chicken out, haha! Anna went second and I went last. I was able to hold my camera in one hand and video the ride down. It was so cool! We were all really glad we did it. Anna was laughing that she didn't know they did that there and was going to have to bring some of her friends to try it.
After the ski jump adventure, we headed toward the harbor area to explore the Akershus Fortress and Castle. On the way we passed by the Nobel Peace Center, where they awarded the Nobel Peace Prize every year. Anna was telling us that when Obama came to accept the prize they shut down the entire area. The Akershus Fortress overlooks the Harbor (which kind of reminded us of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore with lots of ships, boats, restaurants and shops) and was built to protect the capital and also used as a prison. There were lots of old canons at the top which were really cool to see. The other funny thing we found as we were walking around was a statue that looked like the Lincoln Memorial. We were joking about it until we actually walked up to it and saw it was statue of Franklin D Roosevelt! Anna had no idea why there was a statue of an American president in Norway but after some research we found out it was because he gave a speech highlighting Norway's strength against the Nazis.
We then walked to the Royal Palace and saw the changing of the guards. After we saw the City Hall and Parliament buildings along with the Oslo Cathedral, all of which were beautiful. We grabbed some dinner at a local restaurant then headed back to our hotel and Anna headed home. It was an absolutely awesome day and we really felt like we were able to get a feel for the city. I seriously cannot thank Anna enough for spending the day with us and showing us her city. I hope to return the favor when she comes to the United States this summer! That is one of the best parts about IIHF officiating, you make friends all over the world! Tomorrow we are getting up early and taking the train to our next city, Stockholm. Should be a blast!
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