Oslo, Hovedøya - and rantings about children birthday parties

Sunday a week ago was a perfect Sunday ... as perfect as it could be. Sunny, the sun was heating so even if it was a very cold night, the day got relatively warm, it was beautiful. Can you believe this place on the photo below is a mere 2.5 km away from the Oslo Central Station? That train station is probably the most central place of all the Kingdom of Norway! And yet, just some 2.5 km away one can find perfect peace and quietness. This place, under those conditions, was just totally idyllic. Now I took only those two pictures, but they are representative for the place as such - there are no roads to be seen, no cars, and at this time of the year few people and other boats as well. (There is actually someone fishing on the picture, though they only occupy some few pixels). It's easy to get here by public transport, there are ferries going frequently, all year around, and all one needs for taking it is an ordinary bus ticket for Oslo. Probably there is even no ticket control, I suppose it's technically possible to get here even if one cannot afford the bus ticket.

Now over to the ranting part. This perfect Sunday could have been a perfect day for going skiing with my children, or boating. As I've told earlier, Sundays are the only day of the week when I'm able to do outdoor activities in the daytime with my children. Unfortunately my boy was invited to a birthday party in the middle of the day - they were going to be indoors in an activity center.

I suppose the typical parents think ... "well, it's only one day a year, and it's best to celebrate it in the weekend". Now, consider that we have three children, and that there are like twenty or more children in each class, and that it's quite normal to invite the whole class for the birthday - or at least half the class (currently there are rules in place for protecting lonely children - if the birthday invitations are distributed at the school or kindergarden premises, one has to invite everyone in the group, or at least all the boys/girls). For us this means a significant amount of weekends are "destroyed" due to birthdays. Also, even if parents don't have to stay at the premises during the birthday, they still have to deliver and pick up, which can be quite time-consuming, particularly if one doesn't have or doesn't want to use a car.

Hence, whenever I'm involved in the organizing of parties for our children, unless we're having an outdoor party, we do try to avoid "in the middle of the day in a weekend". We usually keep it on the birthday. Now the last birthday actually fell on a Sunday - so we had the party starting at 15:00 - it is still a bit disruptive if the alternative plan was to do a sailing trip or a long skiing trip, but it is fully possible to have an early short skiing trip and then catch up with the birthday party. Also, if we have it anywhere else than at home, I do try to organize common transport. "Birthday party at XXX at 15:00" ... "we'll be taking a metro from YYY at 14:27". This way other parents who are short in time can just drop their kid off at the local metro station, and they're free for several hours. Somehow I seem to be almost the only one thinking this is a good idea, because very few invitees have utilized this opportunity.

Enough ranting - my middle son had a very enjoyable birthday party experience, my youngest daughter was visiting grannies together with my wife, the eldest son of mine is firmly rejecting the idea to get out of the house anyway, he is busy creating music, and I had a quite nice day as well (I got some time to drink coffee and talk with fellow parents ... that was nice as well). Though, only time for a short visit to this island, to be honest the reason for my visit was that I needed to pee. The day before I was picking up the dhingy from Aker Brygge, but the chain was totally frozen in place so I had to leave it behind. My mission for the day was to pick up the chain and lock the dhingy.

All photos available on IPFS QmYqLgsKCoPnQzretKPcP826Me5SUMBRLioJ5PXvLhVQWN. License: CC BY-SA 4.0