HELVETE

LYDIA HAD NEVER lived out of home before. Well, she had gone to a boarding school her whole life (her parents were Doctors) but she’d never lived in a sharehouse and this one was on the other side of the world.

When I arrived there, in London, where she’d always wanted to go, one of her housemates walked in with a new laptop in a box.

“These guys sold me a laptop on the street!” he said.

Then he opened the box and potatoes fell out of it. I’ve got to get out of here and see something, I thought. So I booked the next flight to Norway, with Rian Air.

I’d been in the pub the night before with Webster, my friend, and his mate Tony. Tony said he wanted to come to Norway. “Sure." I said, and told him the details. He booked it right there and then on his phone and we were off the next morning.

*

WHEN THE PLANE finally landed, everybody clapped and cheered. It was a hairy ride I gotta say; but it was cheap.

Tony and I stood at a train station and waited. It was freezing cold. Everything was frozen, ponds, lakes; the whole lot. While I looked out the window of the train there was white everywhere and a clear blue sky. Little red house dotted the landscape and I thought to myself "this is just like children’s book, or fairy tale, or whatever." I’d never read any of those as a kid, except for my favourite book called ARE YOU MY MOTHER?

So anyways, I guy named Björn greeted us at the station and announced “VELCOME TO VINTERLAND!” Tony had taken care of all the ABNB bookings and we were staying in a room at Björn’s unit in Oslo. Björn was some kinda banker, I don’t know. His bathroom was nice; it had a heated floor, which I'd never experienced before. The water on the floor just dried up and disappeared soon after you'd finished showering in there.

“Expensive in Olso yah?” he said once. But when I went to the store that night to buy food all the prices added up to basically the same prices in Australia; although, numbers have never been my strongest point. On the way out of the store I looked at a tap on the street and the water that would have been streaming out of it was completely frozen and disappeared into snow on the sidewalk. "Was it still running when it all froze over here?" I wondered "why didn’t someone turn it of?" Then I thought "maybe it was rain, or something." I didn’t understand snow, I’d never seen it before, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to see Norway.

*

THE OTHER REASON was that I wanted to see an old record store in Oslo once named Helvete. It wasn’t there anymore. In fact nothing much was left there but a closed down café. I tried to get Tony to take a photo but he just raised his hand a clicked a button in my general direction and walked off.

“Let’s go get something to eat” I said.

“I’m a vegan” said Tony

“So let’s get us some vegan food” I replied.

“I want sushi”

“Ok”

Tony looked around, freezing.

“Isn’t sushi fish?” I asked.

“No, the rice and avocado rolls, I like those; they’re vegan”

“Ok man” I said.

We walked through Oslo and I saw a great big statue in the town. I took a photo and a large blonde haired bearded man ran up to me and said “you give me that camera! You take a photo of me!!! TOURIST!!! WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE!!! GIVE ME YOUR CAMERA!!!”

I gave him the camera. He studied it and only saw a picture of the statue. He shoved it back into my chest with a thud and walked off. "Wow, a REAL LIFE VIKING" I thought.

*

SO YEAH, TONY didn’t want to do much. I kept ordering Lekkerste Warme Chocolademelk from everywhere. Tony kept writing about Wolves on his Blog, but it all looked like regurgitated song lyrics to me. He was a musician so I figured it made sense and figured he was simply trying to stay sane, like the rest of us, on his own adventures.

I tried to bite into a piece of frozen bread I’d brought with me to see some statues. I couldn’t pry the pieces apart. There were strange statues of men in all sorts of positions and contortions, and statues of babies too. There were frozen ponds and everything around there, frozen trees, frozen people; everything was stuck in time.

As I sat down I was wondering what the hell was going on, and a snow flake floated down onto my overcoat. I was wearing four layers underneath it, I’d never been so cold in all my life up to that point.

I looked at my watch 12:34 it read. It was frozen too "whelp I guess it’ll tell the correct time only twice every twenty- four hours now" I thought, and then I noticed the snow flake and held it right up to my eyes. It was exactly like on the Christmas cards, except in Australia, Christmas time is always HOT AS HELL.

I studied it more and Tony looked off into the distance. I really wasn’t paying much attention to him, maybe he didn’t like that; or maybe he just felt lonely in crowds. I dunno. Is two a crowd?

The snowflake was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Honestly. I knew it at the time, and felt it in my bones and mind; this is the shape of life. Or Poseidon. Or something. Five little perfect lines that met in the middle, just like on the Christmas cards.

I studied it, and studied it, and studied it. Then I got up.

“Let’s ride the metro up to the top of the hill”

“Ok” said Tony.

*

ANYWAYS, TONY DIDN’T really respond to much. We rode the Metro. It was made by PORCHE which surprised me. "Italians making things for Vikings huh? The trade still continues." I pondered.

I saw the most beautiful person I have ever seen in my life on that run down old Metro. They stood up out of their seat wearing a tophat with goggles on them. Tall and slender and all Victorian era looking. I wondered what the person was up to and assumed they were just trying to keep sane like all the rest of us. "Everyone in life is insane" I thought "The real insanity is trying, hard as you might, to hide it." I respected the tophat person for not buckling and hiding in plain sight.

All the stops up to the top of the hill had signs carved out of ice. "Such and such station" was carved into every one. "What do they do for signs in the summertime?" I didn’t spend too much time on it.

At the top of the hill we were greeted and told to toboggan down the hill. “It’ll lead you straight back down to the Metro and you can do it again" a kind old lady told us.

“Let’s go snowboarding too!” I said to Tony.

“No.” he replied.

It was ok, I didn’t have the money for it anyway. We rode those toboggans all the way down the hill. It was wonderful. My eyes were full of snow and I was freezing but I didn’t care. At one point I looked off over to my right and saw a person off in the distance on skis crouched down on what looked to me like a huge piece of tiny toy car track. The man sped down and leapt off the end and up into the sky – he just kept going and going and before I could catch the summit of his rainbow trajectory there was more snow in my eyes and I was headed for some green trees that all looked like Christmas to me.

*

Tony bought me a vegan burrito when we got back to London. It was dark at 1:00pm. "He ain’t no bad guy" I thought when I explained I couldn’t pay him back “don’t worry about it” he said with a smile. "No wonder Webster likes him" I thought "nice dude, very generous".