Norway Adventure – Oslo day 3

Sunday, 3 March
Steps: 12482, including 14 flights of stairs

Being Sunday and as snow and rain were forecast, we slept late and then repeated the hotel breakfast experience.
About midday, the sun started shining and we set off for Vigeland Park, Oslo’s number 1 attraction.
It is apparently the world’s largest sculpture park made by a single artist. It contains more than 200 of Gustav Vigeland’s sculptures of naked people in bronze, granite and wrought iron. The statues are excellent, but I needed to know more, their meaning, their significance, why did Vigeland do this, who paid? In true Norwegian stye, not much information is given. Given the fact they they were made between 1939 and 1949, were they designed to be a bit shocking? While they are not porn, they are very detailed and some verge on portraying violence and suffering. I found the whole park rather disturbing. David noticed all the winkys are different and that the upside down one in the circle defies gravity. I noticed all the women were not thin.

We then moved on the Oslo City museum, which was dead boring, even for David. The Norwegians need to get museum advice from the Americans. There is interesting stuff, but just so badly displayed, I can’t say I learnt anything. On the bus though, we did see an apartment building made from containers. I thought of Mariline as she once told me she wanted to build her beach house in Zavora from containers. It is not for me.

We took the tram (which is a truly impressive service) and headed off to Grünerløkka, a trendy area where there was supposed to be a Sunday market, which we never found. We did, however, see more people on the street than anywhere else in Oslo. We asked around, but nobody had heard of the market, so we figured it wasn’t going to be spectacular. We headed off to the Mathallen instead. It is an indoor food market with cafes and specialty stands. It was very crowded as it was national Cheese Doodle Day and they were giving away packets of them. They are a smaller version of our Cheese Curls. We found a bar and I tasted some Norwegian whiskey which was very good. We chatted to a young couple next to us and I felt more hopeful for the people of Oslo. Here was a bit of vibrancy at last.

We decided to eat at the little cafe/bar next to our hotel, Cafe Fiasco. It was also very busy as there was some lady rapper from USA performing at the nearby concert hall. They only serve burgers, which are well worth eating.

What I learnt: Norwegians have odd taste in art, look at the picture on the wall opposite my chair in Cafe Fiasco. But then this is hardly surprising given that their school of architecture is the one of the ugliest building ever.