Last Saturday some friends invited us to drive to Sweden. Basically we were making a cross border excursion to go to some mall that had a huge grocery store. Groceries and meat in particular are much, much cheaper in Sweden than in Norway.
Cruising the A6
To get to Sweden you head south on a highway called the A6. Nothing too special, just a 4 lane divided highway. The country heading south is mostly flat farmland. This time of year the fields are snow covered and smoke pours out of every chimney. The journey to Sweden was about a 150 kilometers and took an hour and a half. Crossing over into Sweden was actually really cool. There weren't any welcome to Sweden signs or border crossings, just a big bridge over a fjord looking down on a scenic village.
Here is some nice videography of the bridge and fjord we crossed over.
Nordby Shopping Center
This place was essentially a border mall. Personally I didn't get a chance to explore, but it seemed like a nice place.
I ended up with the kids in Djungelland for 3 hours as Janet went off to do some shopping with her friend. The kids had a blast and I for the most part enjoyed myself. While the kids played, I chased Lucy and talked to the other dad.
They definitely don't have the same rules as the US and it was more fun that way. Ball pools are a thing of the past in the US and the design of the slides is more extreme than I think they would allow in the US.
In the end we didn't really buy much since we had just gotten our order of food from Ramstein the day before. It was just a fun outing and nice to get out of Oslo and into another foreign country for the heck of it.
