Oslo, July 25th, 1998

Staying in Oslo was a bit of a coincidence. Originally I planned to fly on to Tromsø directly, but for some reasons I could not get the flight I wanted, so I had to take one that arrived too late in the evening to get a connecting flight to Tromsø.
Fortunatly.
Oslo, like Helsinki (and most other scandinavian cities, I assume), suddenly aquires a very mediterranian flair in the summer. The short summer combined with long and warm evenings brings people out and the streets fill with street cafes, open-air pubs, jugglers and buskers. So I spent a nice evening in Oslo listening to street musicians and getting awfully melancholic.

I stayed at 'Hotell Munch' and they had these reproductions of Munch paintings hanging in the corridors, all looking expressionistic, dark and depressive. Most of the persons on the painting didn't have any eyes, just huge black or white spots and I got the strong feeling that this reminded me of something (besides Munch pictures). It took me a while to remember the early 60's E.A.Poe movies (produced by Roger Corman), which used a simular style for their paintings. After that I almost kept expecting to see Vincent Price come around the corner, looking for 'Lenore'...
My flight to Tromsø was in the afternoon, so I had half a day on saturday for sightseeing. Since the weather was nice, I went to the main attraction, the Frognerpark (or Vigeland Sculpture Park as the tourist brochure called it). It's quite impressive, with about 650 sculptures made by Gustav Vigeland, depicting the human life cycle and showing people of all ages. Not much point in describing the place in words, just look at the pictures.
I was a bit surprised that a place like this is relatively unknown. (Although I'm maybe just culturally ignorant.) The first time I heard about it was when I bought a book about Oslo when I found out that I had a one day stay there and wanted to know what to see. But the place should be at roughly as famous as the statues in front of Centre Pompidou or the Gaudí architecture in Barcelona.

I still had some time left, so I visited Aker Brygge and took a short boat trip from Rådhusplassen, but then I had to hurry on to the airport. Unfortunatly the weather had turned bad by the time I reached the airport, so I couldn't get a good picture of the neat statue in front of the airport, which I liked, but lacks contrast on the image below.

Further on to Tromsø
Back to overview