After spending nearly a week in the capital of Norway, I decided to visit Helsinki again where my cousin currently lives. Not to confuse anyone, but her name is also Elizabeth – just spelled with an s instead of z.
On the morning of May 21st, I finished packing my three suitcases. (Yes, I realized after I left that I brought too much. It wasn’t like I was moving there permanantly). My flight on Norwegian Airlines was going to depart at 3:00 pm and I didn’t want to be late. After packing up, I decided to head straight to the Ostbanehallen, where I had previously gotten breakfast from one of the food markets, erring on the side of affordability.
There are an assortment of markets, restaurants, and stores within the Ostbanehallen, which also leads to the subway station. Since Oslo is an international hub, the Hall features signs in Norwegian and translations in English. For an American with only some understanding of Norwegian, this made it easy. Before taking an 11:00 am or 12:00 noon express train to the airport, I bought an affordable Rå smoothie with rødbet (beets), sitron (lemon), avokado (avocado), and eple (apple). I actually didn’t know that rødbet were beets when I bought it, and neglected to search for the term in my Norwegian dictionary app on my phone. Call it what you like, I was probably just being a lazy American.
Then I just waited. (And that, I might add, is something I seem to be good at doing. More on that later).
Maybe I should have spent more time in the city. Maybe I should have done something…
This was my first real solo holiday, where I decided what I wanted to see and do, whom I met up with (or tried to), and how long I spent exploring the city. And maybe it was because of that independence that I came to the quiet realization that I might actually belong.
In Norway, that is.