Tuesday - June 21, 2011

Today was an epic day of productivity, that would make Clark Griswold weep in pride.

Up at the crack of decently-early-for-lazy-people, we headed off to the Naturhistorisk Museum of Oslo, or for you bloody English-speakers, the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum.

The entire place was beautiful, and it called out to my childhood dream of actually living in a museum (a dream destined to become highly ironic in a million years when my bones are featured prominently in the display case of the Lawgiver Bobo Memorial Branch of the National Museum of the Planet of the Apes). Two large buildings made up most of our day, one dedicated to mammals, birds, and reptiles (zoological), the other to fossils, dinos, and ancient creatures (geological).

The winning display, by a large margin, was the Doktor Proktor: Maybe Monsters, display, which featured made-up monsters you truly wished never existed. Giant-assed moon monkeys, man-sized amoebas that spew acid, brain spiders. All wonderful, all pretty gross, and very well displayed. I can't recommend them highly enough.

No wonder food prices are so high...

After that we went to Outland, a Norwegian comic book/gaming/nerd-oasis store. It was chiefly loaded with American comics, some translated comics, and loads of Disney Duckberg stories in the might-as-well-be native Norwegian. It was so surreal being so far away from home, but feeling right at home. God, the Otaku are everywhere!

Finally, some souvenir shopping, and some rest and relaxation at last. So much got done today that it can't legally be allowed to be called a vacation.

These are the things I have discovered on my sixth day:

• Norway is great for raising a family: largely thanks to the discount rates for admission.
• Nerds are oblivious all the world over.
  
• Giant floating jellyfish are the source of all the frequent blackouts in the NYC area. That that, environmentalists!