What started as a joke on social media last year now seems poised to become a reality: Oslo officials have approved a proposal to roll out a 300-meter-long water slide in the city’s Sagene district, if only for one day this summer.

“We just got it confirmed from the city, the police and fire departments,” Erik Holm, who took the initiative for the water slide, told newspaper Aftenposten on Friday. “We think it’s crazy that this will actually happen.”

Holm was the one who set up a Facebook group last July and spent NOK 40 (around USD 6 at the time) to promote it to specific groups. Much to his surprise, his original joke of building a giant waterslide from the Royal Palace right down to the city’s main boulevard Karl Johans Gate caught on. Within three days, nearly 60,000 people had claimed they would take part in the project.

There was only one problem: Holm really didn’t have an actual waterslide project underway. The public interest soon created one, though, and the project “snowballed,” he says, to the point where the city has approved it but not from the palace down to Karl Johans Gate. Instead, the organizers have agreed on setting up a plastic water slide down Treschows Gate, along the eastern bank of the Aker River that runs through Oslo at Sagene.

Event bureau Eventart has offered to purchase the slide and set it up, with the rest of its financing to come from ticket sales. Now they can only hope for good weather that will encourage folks to buy a ticket for the chance to experience the water slide for one day only, on July 11. Holm, though, isn’t worried if it rains: “Folks will be getting wet anyway.”

newsinenglish.no staff