Thursday, 29 July

Not much doing today. Weather in Oslo is very wet today, which puts me off my incessant habitual walking. Went to a Narvessen store this morning (a sort of combined newsagent and snack food store, which are all over the place) in an attempt to buy a pen, but they did not sell them!!! So then I went to a supermarket, but they did not sell them either. I do not know what kind of shops sell pens in Norway, maybe they are considered obsolete.

Went for a tram ride with the expectation of ending up at the Norwegian Industrial History Museum, supposedly at the terminus, but it was nowhere to be seen, and far too wet to go searching, so I came back.

In the evening I went to the Norwegian Railway Club's headquarters, which they occupy at Bryn railway station, about 3km from Oslo. Looked through a large number of back numbers of their magazine, and bought some with 3ft 6in gauge material. Then had to get back to Oslo - this was about 7:30. Unfortunately after the 7:14 train there is only one train an hour so had to wait huddled under the small station veranda until 8:14 for a four minute train trip. The annoying thing was that there was an alternative - the T-ban - which is a separate metropolitan train service. I could see the T-ban trains not far away up the side of a hill. There must have been at least ten in the time I was waiting, but the location of the T-ban station was not at all obvious, and the incessant rain discouraged looking.

In any case the train eventually arrived, I got back to my hotel by about 8:25 then went next door to an inexpensive (by Norwegian standards) Italian restaurant for a rather nice pizza.