Maybe because I wasn’t so charmed at the city at all?
As Dutchman put it with sarcasm, Oslo is a “uitgegroiede dorp”, which means a big or developed village. The city is relatively small per metropolitan standards but quite compact. It’s just about Amsterdam Centrum only except that the city center of Amsterdam has a different appeal. Eerily crammed with dark crooked houses and lined with romantic medieval canals whilst holding up this down to earth alternative jive, carefree yet mysterious. Of course plus 250,000 more people. Amsterdam will always be my favorite city.
Karl Johans Gate and the Norwegian Parliament (also on the same street) is always lively in the evening. Lots of bars and cafes in this area.
Scenes in Karl Johans Gate, the Grand Hotel and cafes along the street.
A pretty building along Karl Johans Gate and the National Theater nearby.
This is the University of Oslo. There was a fair going on when we were there. Next foto is an interesting looking fountain.
What stands out with Oslo though, and I guess all throughout Norway, is the exorbitant prices. The most expensive city in the world, I reckon. Everything is twice the price of most European cities. A croissant is about NOK25 (€3), a sandwich NOK50-70 (€6-8), a cup of coffee NOK40 (€5), a beer NOK60-80 (€7-8), a glass of wine NOK80 (€10), starters at restaurants range from NOK110-210 (€13-25), main course at NOK250-350 (€30-41). If you dine and wine, no bells and whistles, nothing like a Michelin star restaurant but just a decent 3-course meal with coffee for 2 after, you easily cough up €200!
So, yeah, after a few days in the city you tend to calculate everything you spend, lol.
Having drinks at the 3 Brothers cafe restaurant in Karl Johans Gate.
Looks like the Norwegians take the stop sign seriously. A colleague told me he thinks its for the colour blind people. There was a woman on stilts who was pestering everyone she meets on the streets!
The Royal Palace in Oslo overlooking Karl Johans Gate. Oslo was called Christiania in the old days.
The Royal Palace and the Royal Palace guard. That's me on the grounds of the palace.
It’s hard to explain the ambience of Oslo but it is very “degelijk”, something about it with the “very proper” feel that margins alongside what is boring, a word that I hate to call it with because Oslo is quite pretty and in the evening, the city kids become highly intoxicated with alcohol and go prancing about in the discotheques. That's not boring at all right but I simply do not understand, with the high cost of living, these kids are loosely spending their money on booze.
On Saturday, I only fell asleep after 3AM when the bar and discotheque across our hotel closed for the night. The music was deafening; it was insane. The walls of the hotel room throbbed and the floors felt like the basement was going to give way and swallow up the bed I am lying in. Girls outside were screaming uncontrollably and I hear glass breaking. I jumped out of bed and peaked outside the window ready to witness some CSI action but instead I see incoherent blonde kids traipsing slip shoddily on the streets.
I was telling this story to friends and they were like, “Why weren’t the two of you partying across the street instead of sleeping in early like elderly people?”
Uh-huh. I succumbed. We are definitely elderly people.
This is the Oslo City hall which I think is an ugly building. The flowers in the park in front of the building were pretty though. The next foto is the square leading to Aker Brygge (will post another entry about this soon).
Of course, there were trolls in Norway! A very handy way to move around Oslo is by bike. You can rent them in the tourist shops for about €10 per person for 24 hours which is about the same price for a local but for a year of use!
Oh, and what is it with young Norwegian girls and glossy skin tone stockings? They come in groups in Karl Johan’s Gate clad in the same super mini skirt attire and glossy skin tone stockings in high slinky heels. Ah, the come back of the Spice Girls Nordic v. Maybe it’s the fashion trend in Oslo, glossy skin tone stockings, even if its almost freezing out there.
There also seemed to be a sub culture of older women and beer + cigarettes. Women in pairs and in groups come together for beers in the evening and they always seem to be smoking the whole time. There is definitely a high price tag to smoking in Norway. A cigarette pack costs €10-€12, obviously bloated with tax, but heck no, this does not intimidate the real smokers. Like France and the United Kingdom, countries where women smoke like chimneys, Norway is a good runner up.
What about the men? The boys? Um, they are quite good looking but they look a bit gay to me. The older ones tend to grow beards like Kenny Rogers.
Oslo Central Station and the big tiger guarding it.
Modern glass buildings in Oslo near the Central Station. Next foto is a mural painting on the walls of Oslo Central Station, really nice.
The buildings in Oslo city center are partly Art Nouveau (jugendstil) inspired, athough these buildings on the fotos above might not be the best representation.
More fotos of Oslo here: Oslo, Norway
As for museums, there were quite a number of them, many with free entrance (Thank you! The Dutch can learn from this but as we all know the Dutch will always try to earn money from anything. What more if it breathes?) but some were located in the outskirts of the city. I managed to see a few in between, leaving the Dutchman at the hotel one time to work on his laptop while I went to the National Museum nearby. I can’t leave Oslo without seeing “The Scream” of Edvard Munch.
When I finally saw the painting, I felt sad. Not because the painting channeled those poignant emotions to me but because I didn’t feel anything. I stared at “The Scream” and did not feel anything. Strange, maybe I was expecting too much.
On the other hand, there was another painting of Edvard Munch that caught me, so forceful that I stood there mesmerized. I was so drawn to it. It was a huge, almost life size canvas of a sick child in bed with an older woman sitting beside her. The whole painting was dark and evoked of gloom—the title, “The Sick Child”. I can feel the utter grief of the characters, the desperation, the lost future and the ultimate message that life is so fragile, so fleeting. It was so sad. I felt like there was a lump on my throat. Edvard Munch spoke to me.
I did not feel bad leaving the museum after. I may have come for something else but I gained from finding another. Nothing was laid to waste.
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