Norway: Nor Busking, Nor Festival

Norway, November 2012

After Copenhagen, I headed North to Oslo, the penultimate city on my trip.  I planned to busk, and brought my gear out one day, but it didn't work out and my faulty trolley drove me nuts.  You see, as the doors closed on the train that would take me away from Copenhagen and my heart broke (sorry, a bit extreme), my trolley did as well.  The bar that supports the weight on the ground snapped, so there was no way to prop it up.  I could lean it backwards against something and hook the handle for support, but if I went the other direction it would just get out of control and roll and injure both my feet and anyone in a close proximity.  As you can imagine, dragging it around for a day was quite unpleasant, and I didn't even busk.  Before I left the country I had a serious gorilla glue, using it and duct tape to attempt to attach some scrap wood to the trolley to make it stand up.  It actually did last until I got home, although I had to un-tape bits to collapse it into the airplane overhead compartment. 

Like Berlin, Oslo would have been better busked in a side neighborhood, although there isn't a particularly large number of people there to start with.  As it is, every inch of the pedestrian shopping street, Karl Johans gate, had a busker: a gypsy-type with an accordion.  Maybe you'd see the odd saxophone or violin, but the vast majority had squeezeboxes.  One such accordion player was accompanied by a very theatrical woman playing the tambourine and grinning broadly.  I liked them.  But I literally could not get a spot anywhere there.  I tried again later in the afternoon, but it was still full, and mostly with the same people.  Phew, putting in full weekdays in the cold!

I ended up not busking at all, but luckily my Danish Krona-turned-Norwegian Krona lasted me just long enough to stretch my no-ATM goal. 

There's one more thing I'll mention in the Norway section: the fictional Bergen Accordion Festival!  My homecoming, on the eve of Thanksgiving, was done in such a way to surprise my parents.  My brother and I plotted the perfect plan for months, but I needed a good reason to "miss Thanksgiving."  What we thought of was a career opportunity that was too good to turn down.  And so I told my parents that my accordion idol, Jetty (exists) and I had met at the Fringe in Edinburgh (true), that she had heard me play (false), and that she invited me to play at this First Annual Bergen Accordion Festival (false, does not exist).  I knew I had to express feelings about the impending show in my detailed emails home, so I planned the repertoire Jetty and I would do, and further announced that I had been added to the children's program as well.  My parents understood that this was worth missing the holiday, and spread the news of the festival to various family friends.  My mother returned feedback from various people with experience in Bergen, exclaiming that it was a fairy-tale town and that I was going to love it.  Muahahaha.  I am disappointed to not have seen Bergen (that's another story), but I am pleased that the surprise went over well.  Maybe now I will start a Bergen Accordion Festival!