Sledding in Oslo

Wow I think I'd better update this blog since it's featured on Travbuddy today! :-)
This February I went to Oslo for a couple of days to visit some Norwegian friends of mine. As a matter of fact I can advise everyone to find some Norwegian friends because Norway is an insanely expensive country, so it's nice if you have a place to stay.
I had been in Norway before, but since I only had a weekend this time, I decided to stay in the capital Oslo. A cheap flight was quickly booked and before I knew it I was there. (Leuven, where I live is only 15 minutes from Brussels Airport, so travel is fast)
I didn't do many of the normal tourist sights (such as the royal palace, or the nobel peace center) because I had seen them before. Instead I spent most time just enjoying walking through the snow and talking with my friends. Even in the center of oslo, on streets that are often used, the snow was still piling up, which apparantly is rare, even for Oslo. On saturday, we decided to go sledding through the snow. The Oslo metro is underground in the city center, but emerges above ground on the outskirts of the city, and finally goes into the mountains around the city. We took the metro/train to a place which is called Kortketrekkeren, a place very popular for sledding down the mountain. (The name means "corkscrew and had me laughing out loud because it's so similar to our word for it: Kurkentrekker :)
The sledding was AMAZING, it was so much fun, we used those old fashioned wooden sleds instead of the modern ones most others were using, and they actually go pretty fast! You can steer by shifting your weight, or, if you need to avoid 8-year olds, by putting your hand in the snow and braking on one side, the same way you can steer a small boat. You could literally keep sledding for 20 minutes without getting off your sled once, it just kept going down hill, and at the end you arrived back at a train stop and could simply take the train back to the top of the mountain.
I spent pretty much my entire saturday doing this, instead of seeing anything in Oslo, but I have no regrets :-)
In the evening I went to a party at some student house, and  next day we walked around the Vigeland sculpture park, which was very pretty in the snow, as you can see on the pictures. And then it was already time to fly back to Belgium, sadly, but it was a great weekend and the whole thing had cost me less than 100 euros (flight included) anyway. I love these short weekend city trips :-)