Sunday in Oslo


Sunday, May 3. After breakfast, we went to the dock (beside the Nobel Peace Prize Center) and boarded a ferry for a ten minute ride across the fjord to a museum housed in an A-frame building, The Fram Museum. The literal centerpiece of the museum is a wooden, four-masted ship built around 1890 by Mr. Fridtjof Nanson, a man of many accomplishments. He was the first to cross Greenland on skis. He worked to relieve Russian hunger, persecution of Armenians, border disputes between Turkey and Greece. He was Norway’s first ambassador to the U.K. in London. He negotiated POW releases. And he built a uniquely designed ship, The Fram, with a double-hull so it could enter the waters of Antarctica and as the water froze into ice against it’s sides, instead of crushing the ship, the ship would rise upward, lodge itself into the upper reaches of the ice and be able to float with ice as the ice itself floated with the strong currents. He had hoped he could, in that manner, float to the North Pole. He got close, but did not succeed. The ship was later used, in 1911, by Roald Amundsen in his successful mission to be the first to reach the South Pole, where he planted the Norwegian flag. When The Fram was retired it was brought into the harbor, pulled up onto dry land and the museum, in which we were standing, was constructed around the ship. In 1922, for all his accomplishments, Fridtjof Nanson, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Afterward, while Sam and Wes did people-watching on the harbor, I visited the Nobel Peace Institute. Really, I only visited it’s bookshop, but I swooned with appreciation, gratitude, pride and relief-that-they-existed over the photos and words of past winners: Mandela, Tutu, Mother Teresa, Theodore Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc. (One semi-creepy, sort-of-out-of-place, intended-to-be-humorous item they offered for sale was a Monopoly-like board game called: The War on Terror.)

We had a casual lunch in a pastry shop with hot bowls of tasty caffe latte with a sandwich, split three ways, and buttery, fresh, warm pastry followed by a visit to the National Museum to see the iconic painting, The Scream, by Edvard Munch. Last year, in NYC we went to see a Gustav Klimt painting that had just been put on exhibit. That particular painting is what you think of when you think of Klimt. In print the painting is gorgeous. In person, the painting is stunning. The surface is rich, seductive, opulent, luxurious like opening a treasure chest and seeing glittering precious gems. So I wanted to see if seeing in person, Munch’s, The Scream, was a richer experience than seeing it in print. My opinion: I did not think it was. However, The Scream, was stolen about five years ago, cut from it’s frame, I think. So, it warranted a visit to honor it’s return. Otherwise, the museum has a terrific collection of 19th-Century paintings by Norwegian and Swedish painters that beautifully document the life and times of Scandinavians and also the particular beauty of the fjords.

After the Museum, we wandered in the nearby city square anchored on one end by the Royal Palace, on the other by the Parliament building. Just off the perimeter is the odd-looking City Hall (where Nobel Prizes ceremonies are held) and the Nobel Peace Institute. In the center of the plaza is the National Theater. On this day, the plaza was the terminus of a marathon and were there in time to see and applaud and shout, “woo-hooo” to the runners at the finish line.

From there we walked 3/4’s of a mile to visit the newly built, just opened, Oslo Opera House, designed by french architect, Jean Nouvel. At first glance the building seems unfortunately situated: bordered on one side by an un-grand train station and a noisy freeway and on the other side by the water. But on second glance you notice the white rectangular stone slabs of the building rising out of the water as if it is forming a shore or a beach. The white stone slabs continue their gradual, gentle, incremental rise right over the glass atrium of the lobby and eventually over the rooftop of the main auditorium. All of the stone surface is intended to be inhabited by, walked on by the public. And on this day it was wildly popular. It was a white, stone, split-level, iceburg, public plaza rising from the water crawling with snoopy, excited, curious, smiling people all over it like ants on a picnic table. And underneath it all is an opera house of about 800 seats with three balconies about four rows deep. With a fantastic curtain over the stage that seems like shiny, gracefully-crumpled aluminum foil. It warrants a return visit to hear performances.

At last, dinner time. We arrived to an almost empty restaurant with chandeliers, mirrored walls, belle-epoque art-nouveau decor , and a violin and piano duo playing in the overhead gallery. We sat at a perfectly situated table, centered in a window, overlooking trees with new springtime leaves framing the late-19th-Century National Theater. We had gravlax, aquavit, moules et pomme frites, seafood soup, salmon, spanish tortilla, cotes d’rhone. We were stuffed. We walked to the hotel. It was 9:00 and still bright cheery daylight.

And now, once more, it is bedtime. The alarm is set for 5:30 a.m. The train leaves for Stockholm at 7:20 a.m. And we will grab a quick breakfast from 6:30 to 6:40 a.m. Good night!

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Saturday En Route to Oslo

Saturday, May 2, 2009, 1:00 p.m. We, (Wes, Sam and I), are three hours into a seven hour train journey to Oslo. For the past 90 minutes we have been in snow-covered, iced-over, greenish-blue-watered, rather bleak, high-mountain territory (high altitude here=4,000 feet).

Most of our fellow train travelers are dressed in ski clothes and carrying large back-packs, cross-country skis, poles, etc. They are traveling to lodges located at train stations situated at the edges of frozen lakes and snowy peaks.

We have just eaten lunch: cheese sandwiches on seeded rolls (like yesterday), potato chips (paprika flavor), hazel nuts, dried apricots, green grapes, all taken from this morning's hotel breakfast table (Sam and Kathy were aghast at our thievery). We ate breakfast with Kathy before going our separate ways at 9:00 a.m.: Kathy to the airport to travel to Peru (Lima, Cuzco, Machu Pichu); Wes, Sam and I left for the train depot for this train ride to Oslo. We will arrive at 5:00 p.m.

Currently, Sam is napping, Wes is reading and I am bla-bla-bla-ing.

The scenery, the natural beauty is breathtaking.

See you in Oslo.

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Marlow’s Trip Report for Friday

Friday, May 1, 2009, 9:00 a.m. We have been on a boat for an hour proceeding north and slightly west from Bergen. I think the boat may be a catamaran. When it picks up speed the front end lifts considerably. There are about 80 passengers. We are on the upper of two levels. It has an outdoor deck. We are heading to. visit the longest fjord in the world. The trip there is taking us through wide channels and narrow passageways where we go very slowly.

Last night, we had dinner at To Kokers (Two Cooks). It is on the second floor of one of the antique, wooden, pitched-roof UNESCO buildings. The clientele is locals not tourists. The ambience is rustic and warm. The walls are rough-hewn timbers painted pastel colors. The old floorboards are worn and slightly uneven. Dinner was excellent: jerusalem artichoke soup, herb-coated sauteed angler fish medallions with dollops of various side dishes (pureed this, roasted that) and blackberries with vanilla ice cream again with dollops of this and that (chocolate dipped gooseberry, blackberry mousse, fresh pineapple wedge).

10:00 a.m. After two hours of boating to the north we are turning east to go into the Sognefjorden for the next two hours. The scenery has gotten more dramatic the farther north we have gone and there is increasingly more snow on the increasingly taller mountains. At times, it looks like we are cruising through the Canadian Rockies.

10:45 a.m. We were just now out on the deck toward the front of the boat. The on-coming wind is so strong you can lean forward into it at a 45-degree angle without falling down. The scenery continues to get more dramatic: steeper cliffs, taller waterfalls, icier snow caps. And tiny picturesque communities. They sit on relatively small patches of green, cleared of trees, the trees probably used to construct the buildings. Eight, nine or ten structures. A spired church. A cemetery. Small scale. Painted Dijon mustard, butter yellow, ochre, brick red, cinnabar. Whoever the occupants are of these remote clusters, they have excellent asthetics. Their camera-ready villages are like something from a fairy-tale.

Noon. After four hours, we are turning south to enter the final hour of travel. In this narrow channel is the most spectacular scenery: green, moss-covered cliffs, multiple cascading waterfalls, silhouettes of fog shrouded mountain peaks receding into distant valleys, seals sunning on the narrow shore and wind so strong it could almost blow you off the deck, but when the boat stopped, as it did a few times, and we stood in the sun it was a perfect climate: warm, sunshine and blue skies, gently breezy. Our next destination is Flåm. There, we will wait for 90 minutes.

2:30 p.m. We are now in Flåm. Sitting in our first of two trains today. Waiting to begin the uphill journey to Myrdhal. We will zig-zag up the mountain and climb about 900 meters (2700 feet).

4:00 p.m. Okay, we have arrived in Myrdhal. In appearance it seems like we are at 14,000 feet elevation. It is craggy stone peaks, heavy laden with snow, the sun reflecting so brightly you cannot open your eyes. But the altitude is only 3000 feet.

We are now sitting aboard our train back to Bergen. It will take two hours. The scenery remains blindingly bright.

Today for lunch we ate things we snitched from the hotel breakfast table this morning: swiss cheese on seeded multi-grain bread, green grapes and Walker's shortbread biscuits from Scotland.

5:00 p.m. Tonight after we arrive in Bergen we will have dinner with Sam and Kathy. This afternoon, they returned from a two-week-ish cruise in the Arctic circle. We can't wait to hear their stories. It is because they are ending their cruise here that we decided to begin our trip in Bergen.

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