Oslo: the day after

We were already awake when the ship's standard 8am wake-up announcement was made.  It was followed immediately by the announcement that the security at the port of Oslo was back to the usual level and we would indeed be docking as scheduled.  Phew.  We'd been surprised that boarding the boat had required showing only our e-ticket and our passports, but no airport-like security check of passengers or bags; it will be interesting to know how quickly that approach changes.  As it turned out, we did not get passport stamps for entering Norway, which is not a member of the EU.

We disembarked and walked the 1.2 km (as the crow flies) to our lodging.  It seemed like a ghost town.  We saw very few people, though we spotted some military folks at intersections and what appeared to be white caution tape (we later saw that it said "politi" the Norwegian word for police and had some red in it along with the white background).  The man who checked us in at the hotel recognized our names as he'd been the one to respond to yesterday's e-mail.  When we commented on his long hours (7pm and 10am) he noted that he'd had some time off but was working extra so fewer people needed to travel in to work.

We got settled and then took the ferry across the water to be typical tourists.  One sight, the Maritime Museum, was closed but everything we wanted to see was open.  For the record, we did find a couple of caches, though we adopted a "no caching if there might be military people nearby" approach so we haven't looked for anything anywhere near downtown.  By the time we returned a few hours later, some things had changed -- public transit was now permitted in some places, and there were more people around.  That said, the square where the ferry boats are seemed ghost-town-like; if memory serves, when I visited Oslo 14 years ago with my sister that area seemed to be teeming with activity.  Throughout the downtown area, even for the number of people, it was very quiet.  Not quite eerie, but quiet nonetheless. Between the events of the day and the spotty weather -- it's gone from cloudy to heavy rain within a few minutes, and we've seen that happen at least 2 or 3 times -- we decided to do something we rarely do on vacation: return to our hotel mid-afternoon.  That gave us a chance to find BBC on tv which we watched for quite awhile since the local stations were broadcasting only in Norwegian.  

Eventually we had dinner, and chose to eat next door to our houtel.  We had the fortune to get the window seat.  This gave us a lovely view of several cars being thoroughly searched before being allowed to proceed on a mostly-closed street.  We also saw a photographer get into a taxi.  After dinner we decided to grab the camera and take a bit of a walk.  The streets are neither empty nor crowded, though presumably much emptier than they would usually be on a Saturday evening.  And the people who were out weren't talking very loud -- not quite funeral soft, but speaking felt almost intrusive.  Each intersection that's not 100% open to usual traffic has at least 2 military people, likely army military police though we don't know for sure.  Each person is carrying a machine guns that I think everyone hopes they won't have to use. 

It is a historically fascinating time to be here.  The people in charge have done an impressively thorough job of clean-up (the building we've seen on the news with all of the debris now looks clear, or at least looked that way from the barricade half a block away), they've got the suspect in custody, they've got military staffing every corner of barricaded areas, and many less visible actions. It actually feels pretty safe.  Sure it's been strange, not anything either of us would like to repeat, and surreal....but it does feel safe, at least for now.