Arrival
Everything is expensive in Norway. The country isn't a part of the European Union and their currency is the Norwegian Kroner (NOK) with an exchange rate of about 5Kr/dollar. A small bag of candy was 50Kr ($10), a sausage 100Kr ($20), the bottle of Akevitt ja bought for our hiking trip was about 400Kr ($80), and the gloves I got as a gift for Shamara were about 600 Kr ($100). Ja said it was best to not think about the exchange rate but to just purchase what you needed. This was easy for him to say.
They use smart credit cards in Norway. These cards have a pattern of conductive patches on the face like a sim or flash card and all the restaurants we went to used readers that only required plugging the end of your card into the machine to make a charge. They add a surcharge when dealing with simple magnetic striped credit cards, and visa adds another surcharge to exchange money from Khroner to dollars. For most of my visit in Norway I let ja pay for food and gifts and reimbursed him later when I returned to the states.
The airport is 20 minutes by fast train from the center of the city and the one-way ticket I purchased to get there was $30 (with a $0.30 surcharge).
Ja had given me instructions to take the 'fast train' from the airport to 'Jernbanetorget' Or Oslo south central station. Once there, Plan A was to follow the instructions ja emailed a week before:
There is a set of escalators located fully inside the building near the train arrival point (straight inside from the fast trains; to the left of arrival of the normal trains). I'll look for you near the top of those escalators.
love, ja xoxoxo
Plan B was to try to buy a SIM card for my phone so I could call him, and Plan C, my last plan, was to try to get to the university, find the biology building, and act pathetic until someone helped me find him. Ja said it would be impossible to try to find his apartment despite it being within walking distance of the train station.
The train from the airport makes one stop before the central station and there are four(?) lines that come into the station. The train left me at South Central station at the bottom of a concrete ramp among thousands of commuters and no escalators in sight. I ended up wandering through the station for a while trying to decide which escalators he was talking about when I spotted him in the crowd of people.