Got lions and tigers, only in Kenya
After a mild hiatus (while I went to Whitby to frolic with the goths), the now really very late write up of my holiday continues. You may remember we had just boarded a train to leave Stockholm.
The train was very spacious and comfy and, as we noticed once it got a bit of speed up, inclined to tilt at corners. I obviously hadn't eaten enough breakfast herring, and was feeling a bit wilty due to lack of sustenance; I attempted to remedy this with a sandwich, but either that, or the tiltiness, or the disappointingly gluey insides of my artisan Swedish teacake left me feeling a bit queasy for a lot of the journey.
We had been promised "spectacular scenery", and I'm willing to believe it might have been there, but all you could realistically see for most of the journey was pine trees. Although we did get a pretty nice sunset as we approached Oslo. Anyway, the train sped us along very smoothly and we arrived in a whole different country's capital city just over four and a half hours later. (I grew up on an island, OK? Trains which go to a different country are really exciting.)
We walked into the city centre from the railway station, finding a small open-air gig in a park right by our hotel. We went to drop off bags - in a huge, multi-floor corporate monster of a hotel - and despite heading straight back out, the gig (which turned out to be in aid of Amnesty) was just packing up. We wombled around for a while, before settling down in a bar for a drink. It was quiet, and wood-panelled, and really could have passed for a proper pub if it weren't for the table service. I had a hard time with my drink - lovely beer, but served in a glass that looked exactly like a pint glass, but held considerably less than a pint. For some reason my brain insisted on perceiving it as a proper pint glass that was just slightly further away.
Thursday 10th
We managed a reasonably early start, and headed down into a large, airy atrium-thing to a buffet breakfast (having played the game of guess-what's-to-eat when looking down from the 8th floor). An unprecedented seven kinds of fish (not all herring) were on offer, plus a machine for wrangling your own waffles. We chatted to the people at the breakfast table next to us - the gentleman was horrified that the waffles came out of an aerosol can. I was baffled, but able to report back that that was the cooking oil spray, the waffles themselves were made from a giant bowl of batter round the corner. And I had cooked a giant waffle to prove it. We sporadically ran into this couple in various places throughout Oslo, whereon they greeted me as Waffle Lady. I've been called worse :)
Oslo has also tidied several of its museums into one place - a not-quite-island called Bygdøy, which is most easily reached by ferry. We had, of course, just missed a ferry so we strolled the (then deserted) waterfront of Akerbrygge while waiting for the next one. I had lobbied for visiting the Fram museum - centred around the polar exploration ship Fram, and covering the exploits of the polar explorers who searched for the NorthWest Passage and ultimately raced each other to the poles. There's no doubt about it, the story of those explorers is an exciting one, but (despite being all in English) the Fram museum manages to suck almost all the fun out it. Everything is presented as huge walls of text - I'm someone who likes reading labels in museums and for whom English is their first language, and even I lost the will to live. It's also very repetitive, and yet manages to skip over things you'd like to know. The actual ship, Fram, is interesting and they let you wander all over it. If you want to see it, my recommendation would be to buy one of the tickets that entitles you to multiple museums in the area, look at the boat, skip quickly round the main museum, and buy a nice book on polar exploration to read later. Avoid the museum extension (and definitely don't, as instructed by the staff, do that bit first). Then go somewhere else.
We came out feeling a bit disenchanted (we probably should have left earlier, really) and decided we'd pretty much had it with museums for the day. We talked to the friendly sparrows by the coast, bought ourselves ice creams, and set off walking. Bygdøy is, after all, not really an island so we figured we'd walk ourselves back to central Oslo via some sights. So we took in a nice country park, and a truly giant skate ramp, and ended up in Frognerpark - absolutely everywhere we went, I was astounded by the complete and total lack of litter. This was actually true in Helsinki and Stockholm, too. Even the most scrubby bit of undergrowth was lacking the expected complement of faded packaging and empty cans.
Frognerpark is a large park which contains what the guidebooks insist is absolutely not called the Vigeland Sculpture Park. Since most of them then go on to talk about the sculpture park, let's just call it that. One man, Vigeland, designed several massive artworks which sit on a stepped terrace leading up from an epic gateway. Because we are perverse, we approached it from the back, but actually I think you get even more of the wow factor doing it that way round.
The Monolith is amazing, a stepped circular plinth with statues at each level surrounding a huge monolith. The statues are people, or groups of people, and the monolith itself is (I think) 121 intertwined people. The statues are not unlike something Eric Gill might have designed, but represent a huge spectrum - adults, babies, children, the very old. Males, females, thin, fat. All naked, but none really sexualised. We were lucky that we had amazing sunny weather, but we spent a long time sitting on different bits of the steps admiring the figures. We trundled down the terrace, meeting the various other large artworks on the way, and eventually made it out of the main entrance and back through residential districts to the city centre. I'm sure my thoughts on the Vigeland sculpture installation are coloured by the amazing blue skies and sunshine, but if you can deal with a little walking and some sets of steps it's really worth visiting. There are more convenient ways of getting there, of course, but the walk from Bygdøy was really lovely.
Oslo was, by the way, running up to an election. There were a lot of stalls out advertising political parties. Fortunately, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Norwegian" was enough to stop most earnest political canvassing in its tracks.
We actually had a surprising amount of day left, although many things were veering towards "winter" hours and closing at 5 or even 4. Akershus, an old fortress, was still open although all its interior museums were closed. So we trundled around its ramparts, and realised that from the top you got an absolutely amazing view of the harbour, the sunset and (delightfully) sundogs. So we watched that for a while, and wandered a bit more, and then I realised that by dropping down a level we could have an almost-as-good view of the harbour, but with added bar. I often think my holiday activities are wildly at odds with the sort of things guide books suggest (too much walking, too much time in each museum, not enough shopping, nowhere near enough late night partying, and far too much being interested in non-touristy things) but I think even the most tetchy of guidebooks would agree that a drink overlooking a harbour at sunset is a good idea. Afterwards, we checked out the rest of Akershus' ramparts and then went to the Opera House.
Not to see an opera, you understand, we didn't even have any idea what was on. But when the Opera House was built at the beginning of this century, they decided that it would be nice if people who weren't into such niche entertainments could also enjoy it. Result? You can walk on the roof. I realise that sounds like a fairly dull activity, but the roof is a huge, slanted slab of white stone where people sit and picnic, and enjoy views of the harbour and just chill. When we made it up there the skies were darkening, but with rags of red still visible, and the roof had huge numbers of people just... hanging out. Having a drink. Chatting. Exploring the building. It was a really lovely experience, and more public buildings should think of doing things like that.
We hadn't really got a food plan, and it was getting late, so we milled around a bit in a rather hapless manner before choosing a nice-looking place that sold burgers. It was getting chilly, so we opted to sit indoors rather than out - a mistake, really, because the big space heaters on the outside terrace seemed to be doing a much better job than any indoor heating. The burgers were good, though.
Friday 11th
Having once again entrusted our bags to a hotel storage room, we headed out to Olso's National Gallery. This turned out to be my kind of art museum, in that it is interesting, but not so large that your brain overloads and you have to have a lie down (I'm looking at you, the Louvre). The pleasantly bite-size art collection was nicely parcelled out into rooms, each room illustrating a theme within a historical context and running approximately from Ancient Greece until 1950. To my (not very well artily educated) eyes it seemed very well thought out, and coherent, and an enjoyable trot round. There was very little visible security until we got to the Munch Room, where there was one of those do-not-cross wires and both The Scream and Madonna had their own glass screens. Fair enough, as The Scream does have previous on going missing. There was a somewhat undignified scrum around The Scream, as everyone tried to have their photograph taken with it (we seemed very much in the way because we'd had the crazy new idea of actually looking at it).
The ticket we'd bought for the National Gallery also worked for the Architecture Museum, which was small but nearby. There were displays, and models, and drafts, and blueprints for various built and unbuilt Danish buildings laid out in one large room. The temporary exhibition featured an artwork inspired by the (rejected) design for the Danish Pavilion and the World Expo in 1970 - a huge, breathing, white blob. No, really, it was designed to inflate and deflate as if breathing. I don't think 1970's materials were necessarily up to it, but the tribute was strangely lovely, huffing away to itself inside a bare wooden structure. The gallery was filled with sunlight and some strange paper sculptures (which I think were student work, but my Norwegian wasn't up to reading the signs); it was a really nice place to hang out in for a while.
The ticket also worked for the Museum of Contemporary Art, so we did a crazy sprint around that before we had to head off. While ChrisC was off checking in his bag (as required) I asked the man on the desk what he would recommend we see if we had only an hour. He did a creditable Gallic shrug. One hour? You can see everything. And with a little skimping of corners, we almost did. I'm not always good with contemporary art, and indeed did dismiss some of it quite quickly, but there were bits that one or other of us enjoyed, and that made us talk about them (even if only to say "WTF?"). There's the Russian artist who meticulously catalogued and kept the fluff, detritus, and other things she found under her sofa. Or a small cluster of anglepoise lamps, refitted to hold candles. Or a weird mirror, that you could only see properly if you looked at it side on. An artist who stretched out roll after roll of tape, and an another who dismantled a fridge to make a (slightly drippy) artwork of ice.
Time was pressing, even though the ticket was valid for a fourth museum, too, so we scooted down to the waterfront and through a food fair. We bought a few things, and sampled a few things, and were just going to polish off some ice cream and grab our bags when all the ice cream stalls vanished. I'm not joking - initially about every other stall seemed to be selling ice cream, but when we actually wanted one we couldn't find a single one of the little buggers. But the sashimi was nice, and so was the strange herring wrap. Yes, I do like fish.
The low-reading version is on Flickr.
The train was very spacious and comfy and, as we noticed once it got a bit of speed up, inclined to tilt at corners. I obviously hadn't eaten enough breakfast herring, and was feeling a bit wilty due to lack of sustenance; I attempted to remedy this with a sandwich, but either that, or the tiltiness, or the disappointingly gluey insides of my artisan Swedish teacake left me feeling a bit queasy for a lot of the journey.
We had been promised "spectacular scenery", and I'm willing to believe it might have been there, but all you could realistically see for most of the journey was pine trees. Although we did get a pretty nice sunset as we approached Oslo. Anyway, the train sped us along very smoothly and we arrived in a whole different country's capital city just over four and a half hours later. (I grew up on an island, OK? Trains which go to a different country are really exciting.)
We walked into the city centre from the railway station, finding a small open-air gig in a park right by our hotel. We went to drop off bags - in a huge, multi-floor corporate monster of a hotel - and despite heading straight back out, the gig (which turned out to be in aid of Amnesty) was just packing up. We wombled around for a while, before settling down in a bar for a drink. It was quiet, and wood-panelled, and really could have passed for a proper pub if it weren't for the table service. I had a hard time with my drink - lovely beer, but served in a glass that looked exactly like a pint glass, but held considerably less than a pint. For some reason my brain insisted on perceiving it as a proper pint glass that was just slightly further away.
Thursday 10th
We managed a reasonably early start, and headed down into a large, airy atrium-thing to a buffet breakfast (having played the game of guess-what's-to-eat when looking down from the 8th floor). An unprecedented seven kinds of fish (not all herring) were on offer, plus a machine for wrangling your own waffles. We chatted to the people at the breakfast table next to us - the gentleman was horrified that the waffles came out of an aerosol can. I was baffled, but able to report back that that was the cooking oil spray, the waffles themselves were made from a giant bowl of batter round the corner. And I had cooked a giant waffle to prove it. We sporadically ran into this couple in various places throughout Oslo, whereon they greeted me as Waffle Lady. I've been called worse :)
Oslo has also tidied several of its museums into one place - a not-quite-island called Bygdøy, which is most easily reached by ferry. We had, of course, just missed a ferry so we strolled the (then deserted) waterfront of Akerbrygge while waiting for the next one. I had lobbied for visiting the Fram museum - centred around the polar exploration ship Fram, and covering the exploits of the polar explorers who searched for the NorthWest Passage and ultimately raced each other to the poles. There's no doubt about it, the story of those explorers is an exciting one, but (despite being all in English) the Fram museum manages to suck almost all the fun out it. Everything is presented as huge walls of text - I'm someone who likes reading labels in museums and for whom English is their first language, and even I lost the will to live. It's also very repetitive, and yet manages to skip over things you'd like to know. The actual ship, Fram, is interesting and they let you wander all over it. If you want to see it, my recommendation would be to buy one of the tickets that entitles you to multiple museums in the area, look at the boat, skip quickly round the main museum, and buy a nice book on polar exploration to read later. Avoid the museum extension (and definitely don't, as instructed by the staff, do that bit first). Then go somewhere else.
We came out feeling a bit disenchanted (we probably should have left earlier, really) and decided we'd pretty much had it with museums for the day. We talked to the friendly sparrows by the coast, bought ourselves ice creams, and set off walking. Bygdøy is, after all, not really an island so we figured we'd walk ourselves back to central Oslo via some sights. So we took in a nice country park, and a truly giant skate ramp, and ended up in Frognerpark - absolutely everywhere we went, I was astounded by the complete and total lack of litter. This was actually true in Helsinki and Stockholm, too. Even the most scrubby bit of undergrowth was lacking the expected complement of faded packaging and empty cans.
Frognerpark is a large park which contains what the guidebooks insist is absolutely not called the Vigeland Sculpture Park. Since most of them then go on to talk about the sculpture park, let's just call it that. One man, Vigeland, designed several massive artworks which sit on a stepped terrace leading up from an epic gateway. Because we are perverse, we approached it from the back, but actually I think you get even more of the wow factor doing it that way round.
The Monolith is amazing, a stepped circular plinth with statues at each level surrounding a huge monolith. The statues are people, or groups of people, and the monolith itself is (I think) 121 intertwined people. The statues are not unlike something Eric Gill might have designed, but represent a huge spectrum - adults, babies, children, the very old. Males, females, thin, fat. All naked, but none really sexualised. We were lucky that we had amazing sunny weather, but we spent a long time sitting on different bits of the steps admiring the figures. We trundled down the terrace, meeting the various other large artworks on the way, and eventually made it out of the main entrance and back through residential districts to the city centre. I'm sure my thoughts on the Vigeland sculpture installation are coloured by the amazing blue skies and sunshine, but if you can deal with a little walking and some sets of steps it's really worth visiting. There are more convenient ways of getting there, of course, but the walk from Bygdøy was really lovely.
Oslo was, by the way, running up to an election. There were a lot of stalls out advertising political parties. Fortunately, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Norwegian" was enough to stop most earnest political canvassing in its tracks.
We actually had a surprising amount of day left, although many things were veering towards "winter" hours and closing at 5 or even 4. Akershus, an old fortress, was still open although all its interior museums were closed. So we trundled around its ramparts, and realised that from the top you got an absolutely amazing view of the harbour, the sunset and (delightfully) sundogs. So we watched that for a while, and wandered a bit more, and then I realised that by dropping down a level we could have an almost-as-good view of the harbour, but with added bar. I often think my holiday activities are wildly at odds with the sort of things guide books suggest (too much walking, too much time in each museum, not enough shopping, nowhere near enough late night partying, and far too much being interested in non-touristy things) but I think even the most tetchy of guidebooks would agree that a drink overlooking a harbour at sunset is a good idea. Afterwards, we checked out the rest of Akershus' ramparts and then went to the Opera House.
Not to see an opera, you understand, we didn't even have any idea what was on. But when the Opera House was built at the beginning of this century, they decided that it would be nice if people who weren't into such niche entertainments could also enjoy it. Result? You can walk on the roof. I realise that sounds like a fairly dull activity, but the roof is a huge, slanted slab of white stone where people sit and picnic, and enjoy views of the harbour and just chill. When we made it up there the skies were darkening, but with rags of red still visible, and the roof had huge numbers of people just... hanging out. Having a drink. Chatting. Exploring the building. It was a really lovely experience, and more public buildings should think of doing things like that.
We hadn't really got a food plan, and it was getting late, so we milled around a bit in a rather hapless manner before choosing a nice-looking place that sold burgers. It was getting chilly, so we opted to sit indoors rather than out - a mistake, really, because the big space heaters on the outside terrace seemed to be doing a much better job than any indoor heating. The burgers were good, though.
Friday 11th
Having once again entrusted our bags to a hotel storage room, we headed out to Olso's National Gallery. This turned out to be my kind of art museum, in that it is interesting, but not so large that your brain overloads and you have to have a lie down (I'm looking at you, the Louvre). The pleasantly bite-size art collection was nicely parcelled out into rooms, each room illustrating a theme within a historical context and running approximately from Ancient Greece until 1950. To my (not very well artily educated) eyes it seemed very well thought out, and coherent, and an enjoyable trot round. There was very little visible security until we got to the Munch Room, where there was one of those do-not-cross wires and both The Scream and Madonna had their own glass screens. Fair enough, as The Scream does have previous on going missing. There was a somewhat undignified scrum around The Scream, as everyone tried to have their photograph taken with it (we seemed very much in the way because we'd had the crazy new idea of actually looking at it).
The ticket we'd bought for the National Gallery also worked for the Architecture Museum, which was small but nearby. There were displays, and models, and drafts, and blueprints for various built and unbuilt Danish buildings laid out in one large room. The temporary exhibition featured an artwork inspired by the (rejected) design for the Danish Pavilion and the World Expo in 1970 - a huge, breathing, white blob. No, really, it was designed to inflate and deflate as if breathing. I don't think 1970's materials were necessarily up to it, but the tribute was strangely lovely, huffing away to itself inside a bare wooden structure. The gallery was filled with sunlight and some strange paper sculptures (which I think were student work, but my Norwegian wasn't up to reading the signs); it was a really nice place to hang out in for a while.
The ticket also worked for the Museum of Contemporary Art, so we did a crazy sprint around that before we had to head off. While ChrisC was off checking in his bag (as required) I asked the man on the desk what he would recommend we see if we had only an hour. He did a creditable Gallic shrug. One hour? You can see everything. And with a little skimping of corners, we almost did. I'm not always good with contemporary art, and indeed did dismiss some of it quite quickly, but there were bits that one or other of us enjoyed, and that made us talk about them (even if only to say "WTF?"). There's the Russian artist who meticulously catalogued and kept the fluff, detritus, and other things she found under her sofa. Or a small cluster of anglepoise lamps, refitted to hold candles. Or a weird mirror, that you could only see properly if you looked at it side on. An artist who stretched out roll after roll of tape, and an another who dismantled a fridge to make a (slightly drippy) artwork of ice.
Time was pressing, even though the ticket was valid for a fourth museum, too, so we scooted down to the waterfront and through a food fair. We bought a few things, and sampled a few things, and were just going to polish off some ice cream and grab our bags when all the ice cream stalls vanished. I'm not joking - initially about every other stall seemed to be selling ice cream, but when we actually wanted one we couldn't find a single one of the little buggers. But the sashimi was nice, and so was the strange herring wrap. Yes, I do like fish.
The low-reading version is on Flickr.