Dear house,
Hope all's well. I'm in a barn in the middle of nowhere with a mad scot and a canuck.
Later, Dan

- Dan's cheesy message to his flatmates

The Norwegians among us were singing Norsk drinking songs when the most brilliant revelation came to me: it was a Friday night in Oslo. We were ten kilometers from the city, it was dark outside, and we were in a subway train. What a fantastic photo.

So I grabbed the CoolPix and jumped out of this train that had been sitting at the end of the line for some ten minutes. The lighting for my shot was all-important, as this was the first natural darkness I'd seen since my Dad and I walked the dog back in Canada on May 29th. As I fiddled with the flash settings, I looked up to see the doors on the subway train begin to shut.

It immediately struck me that all of my luggage was still on board the train. No problem, I thought, Amy will take it to Ås with her tonight. After all, Ås is only a thirty-kilometer train ride from the other side of the city.

Then I remembered what Amy had told me: that if we didn't catch this subway, we were going to miss the last train to Ås. It next occurred to me that Amy's address was on board the train. And her phone number. And the cellphone number of Truls, one of IAESTE's reception officers in Oslo. Not to mention the rest of my luggage, my passport, and the plane ticket that was to help me back to Tromsø on Sunday night. Oh, and the rest of my friends.

I ran toward the train and pried on the doors to no avail. At this point, the trainees inside looked on in stunned confusion, and all I could do was pound on the train in desperation as it pulled away. God knows what I thought I was accomplishing, but from all reports it looked fanstatic from the inside.

And so, alone on the platform, I took this picture of the end of Oslo subway line number 5 at 00:12 on a Saturday morning. There I stood with nothing but a couple of hundred Norwegian Kroner and my Coolpix.

And one other person: An elderly - and apparantly homeless - lady sat in the darkness on a bench at the end of the platform. After several minutes of complete and utter confusion, I sat down beside her and thought I'd give it my best shot.

''Excuse me,'' I asked, ''do you speak English?'' She nodded her head affirmatively.

''Was that the last train to leave here?'' She nodded her head again.

''Do you have any idea how I might get home?'' The nodding continued.

''Do you understand English, by any chance?'' Nod.

''So I'm really screwed then, right?'' Yup.

I thanked her as best I could and got up, but as I began to walk away she motioned towards the track. Sure enough, one more train was approaching to take stragglers into Oslo's Central Station.

I spent the better part of ten minutes talking with the train's driver. He was kind enough to get on the radio and find out that the previous train had already reached the other side of Oslo, and no luggage was left on board. I thought that perhaps Amy and company would come back for me, but the best thing I could do was take this last train into the city.

There was no sign of any of the gang at the Central Station. With the help of a kind Russian woman (who must have seen the panic in the whites of my eyes) we assessed my situation and came up with a plan: I needed to check my e-mail. Amy had e-mailed me her phone number, so it was - in theory - still sitting on a computer in Canada that I could access if I could get a live telnet connection.

I accosted the kind ladies at the train station (who were in the process of closing up shop) and asked them if they might happen to know where I could access the Internet in Oslo. One of them began to suggest that the computer in front of her might be wired, but before she had a chance to finish speaking I had already spun the monitor around and was in the process of borrowing her keyboard. Sure enough, they were connected, and I pulled Amy's home number and Truls' cellphone number off of a computer in Kingston, Ontario. The other lady at the desk used the phone number to work some magic, and suddenly I had Amy's address and the name of the girl she was staying with in Ås. Quality.

The kind Russian woman whose name is eluding me pointed me towards a bus station from which I could catch a 3:30AM bus to Ås. (If she reads this, I sincerely hope she'll send me e-mail!) That left me with almost three hours to stroll down Carl Johan's Gate, a pedestrian-only road through the center of Oslo that reminded me of a Norwegian version of Ottawa's Market Street.

At 4:15AM, I stepped off the bus on Ås and was immediately photographed before being presented with beer and Cheesy Poofs.

Also crashing at Amy's place that evening was Dan, a friend from England who was doing field work for London-based ComputerShare Systems in Oslo. He'd just completed a business posting in Cyprus and was to be in Oslo for a couple of weeks. Dan's understanding of expense accounts made me wonder if the business world might have been a better option than academia. Here's a picture with Dan and Amy that morning in Ås in front of what appears to be a barn, but is in fact student housing.

Dan had the brilliant idea on Saturday morning that he was going to mail a piece of cheese back to his flatmates in England. He taped two thin pieces of paper to either side of the cheese: on one, he wrote the above message; on the other, he wrote his home address and attached a stamp. Lord knows if it will ever get there, but what a fantastic idea.

Karl Johan's Gate looked a lot different by daylight the next day. There were crowds of people unlike anything I've seen in Tromsø.

Both Dan and I were stunned by how many beautiful Norwegian women were to be found in the market, and I apologise for the lack of photos here. I am convinced that this country is over quota when it comes to gorgeous women.

Here, Amy and (another) Robert climb up on a lion statue in the middle of Oslo.

There are quite a few beautiful statues and fountains in the downtown area.

On the whole, though, I'd have to describe Oslo simply as a big city. There isn't an architectural theme that ties the city together, and the view from the waterfront isn't particularly thrilling. It's not that I disliked the city, it was just that there wasn't anything in particular that struck me about it. I am grateful to be back in Tromsø again.

On Saturday and Sunday, Oslo's harbour hosted a boating Grand Prix. There were speedboats everywhere, and big crowds of people watched from the docks.

There were some fun activities planned in conjunction with Oslo weekend. Before hitting the town on Saturday night, we sat down for a big pizza dinner with the IAESTE and AIESEC trainees. This table hosted a bit of an Offensive Foreigners reunion. That evening, AIESEC had planned a bit of a pub crawl for us. We started at Tor's Hammer and hit five different places before settling down at Stravinsky, a fantastic disco with mahogany decor and the added flair of Star Wars kit models behind the bar. The music and ambience were fantastic, although Amy mentioned something about short, bald men with BMWs.

Amy, Dan and I toured the city on Sunday before I caught my 9:30PM flight home. At the Oslo Folkemuseum, which is pictured above, we saw exhibits about everything from 18th-Century Norwegian farm life to the Sami people. The evolution of Norwegian dentistry and the garden of a Norwegian apothecary were also covered.

As Amy copied down Dan's rules for the English (drinking) game Yellow Jersey and we rushed to quaff our pints of brew before the ferry left for downtown Oslo, I was reminded of the words I read at the 18th-Century farming exhibit:

''Tread carefully, be circumspect, time is fraught with danger and death comes soon. Guard your youth well and waste it not in drunkenness.''

- Even Torkildsen Lande (1758-1833), farmer and a father of the constitution, on a large ale bowl given at a wedding ceremony.