noplasticshowers

Being back on the road again is so good!  And we’re not even stuck in the good old US of A.  Oslo even!  When in Olso, NPS always likes to use the Hotel Christiania Teater as the base of operations.  Heck, we even know our favorite room (620) which not only has an interesting shower but also features non-rectangular architecture.

Be forewarned, however, that the “getting into Norway” thing at this phase of the global pandemic is non-trivial.  The rules are tricky and they don’t have things set up for Americans to visit.  The problem is the EU covid passport requirement.  Since the good old US of A has its own digital records system (times 50, one for each state) there is no way to get the QR code signed by the EU authority.

What we did to prepare was download digital records from the Virginia Department of Health for vaccines (NPS is triple vaxxed) and then store them in the Common Health app on our phone.  We did the same thing with covid test results generated the day that we flew (get them done less than 24 hours before entering Norway).  Make sure you practice pulling up the records and displaying the QR code when the police ask you for it at the gate of your arriving plane!  And practice being super nice and explaining, “well, these are the records my government makes available.”

That’s right, even though we were flying in through the EU and had been admitted into Germany with our records with no issue at all, the police met the EU-origin plane in Oslo and asked all passengers for passports and vaccination/testing documents.  After ten minutes of “sweating it” in the hall, we were admitted.

Getting to the hotel from the airport is a breeze.  Just take the express train in from the airport and go one stop past the central station.  Even though we arrived a bit too early for checkin (which is a 3pm), the wait for room cleaning final check was only 10 minutes.

Waiting in the lobby to check in

The lobby is well appointed, comfortable, and quirky fun

Then it was up to 620 to shower off the metal tube and start the attempt to stay up until at least 20:00.

Here is the bathroom from 620, built next to one of the cupola rooms.  The shower is over a huge stone tub inside the shower room area.  Very not plastic, and a very nice shower indeed.

Here’s the rest of the room.

A small sitting entry way

The main living room (not at all rectangular

The very cool cupola window

Another cool window

The king size bedroom dominated by the bed and a closet.

Covid has put a small damper on the bar at the hotel, which is still good but is not as relaxing and excellent as it used to be.  We’ll hope that gets back to normal when the pandemic is over.

Breakfast is fantastic.  A beautiful room, a machine that makes fresh orange juice, excellent espresso drinks, and, well, just a great spread.  Sneaking in for breakfast would be a good move.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.  First we had to stay up.  So we started at the bar with an arbitrarily constructed not very good Negroni (how can you fuck that one up?!), and moved on to an Indian restaurant in search of spicy food.

Seeing my friend Gøran was a great pleasure.  The food at The Great India was plenty hot, the wine was good, and they made a much better Negroni.  Soon it was time to slink off to bed and crash for 10 hours straight.

The next day, after an excellent breakfast and a visit with the orange smashing machine, it was time for some work in Oslo.

Visiting @TranscendentGr in Oslo and talking #MLsec pic.twitter.com/UvLrf4TRSI

— Gary McGraw (@cigitalgem) November 17, 2021

And then it was out into Oslo with friends old and new.  We started at Torggata Botaniske, a very nice cocktail bar where they were shooting a movie scene as we arrived.

A crazy Sazarac variant with absinthe foam (a bit too sweet and not hot enough for NPS)

Sami shall on marie

We had an excellent but way too risky dinner at Habibi.  Absolutely outstanding food, but crowded and stuffy.  No venues in Oslo are requiring vaccination proof (though the double dosed vaccination rate is 87.4%).  In Oslo on the street it feels like the pandemic is over.  It is most assuredly not over.

Then it was a visit to the always outstanding Himkok.  We were once again pressed to finagle the door.  Done.

Beetroot

Our obligatory bottle of Aquavit was delivered.

All in all Hotel Christiania Teater remains a five showerhead kind of place.  Tops on the Oslo list! Can’t wait to be back when the pandemic is actually over.