Photo: Simon van Hemert/Shutterstock

Places That Changed Us: Oslo

Oslo Norway Travel
by Nickolaus Hines Jan 1, 2025

This is part of the “Places That Changed Us” series, a compilation of 20 trips that have had a lasting impact on the Matador Network team. To see the other 19 places, click here.

My now-wife and I almost couldn’t believe it when we saw a budget airline had January flights from Atlanta to Oslo for a couple hundred dollars in 2015. I was about to start my last semester of college at Auburn university in Alabama and had a dwindling savings account from working at U-Haul. She was in her gap year before starting dental school at Columbia University in New York City. It’s safe to say our budget didn’t exactly match our desire for our first transatlantic trip just the two of us. Norway’s cheap off-season flights made it a bit more feasible — at least it did when taking into consideration our blissful ignorance of how expensive day-to-day necessities are in the country.

We didn’t know much about Oslo, or even much about the cold as two coastal California kids. We did know that we could manage the price of the flight and an affordable Airbnb for a week if I skipped the start of classes to travel on cheaper days. There was even a little money left for economical winter clothes (there’s no bad weather, only bad clothes, as Norwegians kept telling us when we arrived). By the end, we both had a new appreciation for the cold, off-season travel, and the joys of not really knowing what’s to come until the plane lands.

We walked for miles each day in the snow on the hunt for cheap or free entertainment. The search led us to sculpture parks, long winter sunsets over the water, and ski rentals on a gentle slope. We stumbled on the Frognerseteren toboggan run and rented sleds for under $10. The 10-minute run goes for just over a mile and drops 740 feet. Best of all? We could test our skills along sharp turns with few barriers for free, and then take the metro back up to the start to do it all over again.

We normally travel for the food and drinks first and foremost. It was a bit different in Oslo. We ate a lot of yogurt and the unofficial national dish of frozen pizza with glasses of Vikingfjord vodka. Our splurge was to try traditionally prepared whale and reindeer — both things we knew we wouldn’t try elsewhere, or likely ever again. We tried to go bar hopping until we learned many of the bars we wanted to go to were for people 25 and older, though the karaoke bar we settled at turned out to be the perfect fit: a bold Aerosmith duet made the locals warm up to us so much we ended up chatting and singing and drinking until the bar closed.

More than a decade later, the full impact that the trip had on me is in better focus. It kickstarted my love for off-season travel and seeing things from a more local perspective. Also for creating our own fun in a new place regardless of budget.

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