Norweige: Olso

From Gothenburg I was off to Norway. I decided that I definately wanted to make it far north in Norway as I could, so I’d come back to Sweden later when it was too cold to be in the far north.

I boarded a 12:45 train headed for Oslo and found myself sitting with two Canadian brothers from British Columbia; ex paper-mill engineers. Garth and Trace. We talked about all sorts of nothing and they taught me a card game which I had never seen before called Cribbage. This was probably the most fun card game I’ve ever played, if not a little hard. But in saying that, I managed to win the first two games easily, losing the third by only a small amount.

After 5 or so hours, we arrived in Oslo. Off went the Canadians and I made a phone call to my 5th couch surfing arrangement –  Bård. With in ten minutes he had shown up and we were on our way walking to his girlfriends place where I was to stay because he was also staying there. It was me, another CouchSurfer (from Solvenia),  Bård, his girlfriend Matinka (from Solvakia), and 15 other flatmates!

Now I would like to run through all the other flatmates, but I only really remember one. This guy was called Shaun-Thomas, and when I asked him what he did, his response was something along the lines of: “I do some modeling and I work in a clothing shop. I have also trained in cook, waiter and was in the military. Oh… and I’m a RAPPER!” You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought – this guy looked like a male model. He told me that he had been rapping for 10 years and had, at some stage, laid down a track with Wutang.

So he asked me if I wanted to hear a rap, and OF COURSE I DID! It was actually really good! But I was laughing throughout the whole thing, just because the situation  was so ridiculous. That night I had dinner with  Bård and Matinka and then we headed out to a club called Blå which had a free twelve-piece swing/jazz band playing. The music was amazing, the band members were really funny, and everyone was dancing like mad. Although a good time, I didn’t stay too long as I was pretty tired.

The following day I hung out with the other CouchSurfer, the Slovenian girl. We ended up taking one of the longest day’s walking that I’ve had in this entire trip. After heading to the train station to buy tickets, we made out way towards the Royal Palace.

Royal Palace

After we checked out the palace, we decided to take a look at a park which was apparantly full of statues. We walked for miles to get to this place, and all the time I was thinking, “I’ve seen so many damn statues”. But this place turned out to be pretty amazing, there were hundreds and hundreds of statues all made by the same guy – it must have taken him years to complete them all. Some were crazy, many were naked figures in strange poses, and then there was the totem-orgy pole.

A small few of many statues

Totem-Orgy

While we were at this park, I noticed something off in the distance which at first I didn’t understand. But through fancy 6x optical zoom techniques, I found that it was a ski jump! People I talked to were very surprised that we have skiing in New Zealand but do not have a ski jump!

Olso Ski Jump

We decided to try and walk to it. The 6x optical zoom was decieving because after walking for almost an hour and a half, we appeared to be no closer than we previously were. We then gave up and walked for about two hours, all the way back to Matinka’s place, where the rest of the night was relatively relaxed as we watched a few films with a few of the other flatmates.

The next day the weather was crap. I had already decided that I wanted to go down and check out the harbourside so I began to walk. The further I walked, the worse the weather got but I was determined, and soon I made it to the Oslo fort.

Oslo Fort

The harbourside the day prior looked spectacular in the sparkling sun. Today it looked so bad that I’m not even going to post a picture up here. I decided to get out of the rain so headed to the Museum of Contemporary Art. This place was  pretty cool, it was full of (obviously) contemporary Norweigian art and a few international exhibitions, one which I had seen parts of in London’s Tate Modern.

Next I visited the Astrup Fearnly Museum of Modern Art which is currently housing an extensive Andy Warhol exhibition which was absolutely crazy. I never thought that I would see some of these very famous paintings of soup cans! Then back for another night of chilling.

One last day I had, and the weather was just as miserable as it was the previous day. This wasn’t going to stop me. My first place of visitment was the newly completed Opera House.

Opera House

One last stop. The Senersen Museum of Modern Art (yes, another one). And another chilling night as the following morning I was up at 6am to catch an early train to Trondheim!

Oslo, over and out.

(I apologise for the terrible writing within this post, I’ve been walking all day after a night train on which I didn’t sleep at all)

Frank-N-Furter

From Brussels I headed to Frankfurt. This was my first taste of Germany, and to be honest, there isn’t really much there. I spent 4 nights in Frankfurt with not a whole lot to do.

I arrived in Frankfurt via a 6.5 hour bus at about 11pm at night and I then had to make my way to the place I would be staying, my second couch surfing experience, a girl called Stephi. She lived about 2km from the main station where I left the bus but with a heavy bag it wasn’t really ideal to walk this, especially this time at night. With a little bit of trouble and some help from some people who didn’t speak english, I managed to secure myself a tram ticket on the correct line and made it to Stephi’s apartment around 11:30pm. Once I had arrived, I realised that I didn’t know her last name, so I just decided to press all the buttons at the door and see what would happen. Luckily the door buzzed open and I heard my name called from up the stairs, I had arrived.

Stephi took me up to my little attic room and I promptly fell asleep, it had been a long day.

The next morning I decided to explore Frankfurt. I didn’t really find much to do, but it was indeed an interesting experience. The socio-economic mix of buildings was incredibley varied. You can find brand new skyscrapers next to smaller shops next to abandoned apartment buildings. And scattered throughout all these different places were numerous sex shops. There was no zone for them, they were everywhere, in suburbs, in town – crazy! The Germans love their sex it seems.

New Building + The Euro!

Crappy Old Building

That night I just hung out with Stephi while she introduced me to the world of the tea afficianado. We talked about all sorts of crazy things and drank numerous different types of tea which she produced from a large box stacked with flavour upon flavour. We even watched an episode of NCIS in German dub. In Germany all the shows are dubbed from English and the same voice actors are even used for the poppular actors. So Eddie Murphy has his German equivilent, as does Tom Cruise.

The following day I made the 2km hike into town to see if I could find anything interesting. I didn’t have a map so I didn’t want to stray too far, butI managed to find what remains of the older parts of Frankfurt (I guess a lot of it was bombed during WW2). I found the town hall and an open square which they called Roma. I also found an entire street full of museums which I couldn’t afford to view. There must have been at least 20 museums on this street ranging from ceramics to film to architecture. The one place which I did manage to visit was the Gallery of Modern Art which was a very cool architecturally designed building with an awesome exhibition of the works of Burnard Buffet. The walk back saw me find a number of smaller art galleries which all seemed to be closed. Nevermind, I would check them out the next day. That night again I hung out with Stephi, we drank a pot of caramel tea, and I headed off to bed prety early again.

Owl by Burnard Buffet

Roma

It was my last full day in Frankfurt and again, not a whole lot of notable events happened. I went to check out all the small galleries, but they were all closed again with the exception of one which was pretty marginal anyway. I did manage to find a cool group of buskers who played an assortment of Hang drums which was very cool. I would have bought their CD but it was a bit over my budget. I did manage to have a good chat to the drummer though and he just reinforced what I knew about the availability of the instrument, damn! That evening I took Stephi and her flatmate out to dinner at a place called Mr. Pizza as a thank you for letting me stay, and afterward headed into town to try and meet up with Willy who was now in Frankfurt. Unfortunately he was staying in a hotel about 7km out of the city centre and I had just missed the train. It was too late anyway, by the time I had walked back to Stephi’s it was 11:30. Tomorrow was another day of travelling so sleep time it was!

The Art of Fusion Buskers

A Few Bits of Art

Just a quick update on the local art front. At some stage over the last few days I decided to finish off the Tate Modern street art walk around London’s southern burrows. International artists have congregated upon the city for this exhibition, here are a few pieces which I saw and liked.

Tate Modern Street Art

Tate Modern Street Art

During my walk, I also found myself walking down a strange back-alley which housed an independent contemporary art gallery called Union. The curator was more than happy for me to take photos of the excellent array of works. Here are a few:

Excellent Marble Sculpture of a Fertile Woman

Jigsaw Puzzle!

Red Landscape

Awesome!

Tate Modern

Yesterday I went for a wander into the city. My first stop was Tate Modern – the modern art gallery.

 

Tate Modern

This place was very cool. I got to see original Picasso and Litchenstein works which was pretty exciting. There were 4 huge gallery spaces separated into different artistic periods + smaller areas for video and performance art. There was an awesome video piece on psychics and telekinesis which had a soundtrack of an intense drum build up only to end in static in sound and on screen. Errant Uncle Prasnaglava would have been more than amused. 

I am also now enthralled by the work of Cy Twombly.

Along side all the permanent works was a short running installment about street art. They had brought over a number of international street artists and had given them space to do work around the burrows behind the Tate building. I only managed to get to two of them yesterday but am going to try and do the whole tour today.

 

Tate Street Art by 3TTMAN

Not only had they filled the surrounding streets with fantastic art installments, but they had also given 6 artists an area on the front of the Tate Modern building to do work on. These were absolutely amazing and epic in proportion.

 

Art on the front of Tate Modern

After I had finished at Tate Modern, I headed over the The Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare used to perform his plays, although obviously now more modern. I think that I will go and see Timon of Athens next week perhaps. It is only 5 pounds to stand like a peasant on the ground – I feel that this will be the best way to see it. The guy at the information desk said it was the only way, after he referred to the booklet as “his book”.

Next I headed back over the Millennium  Bridge towards St Paul’s Cathedral. This building is epic, I haven’t ever seen anything like it before (I’m sure I will in the near future ‘though) and I can’t wait to actually go inside it. Here is a shot from the outside, though. ‘Tis crazy!

 

St Paul's Cathedral

Awesome! I will go back next week some time and try to get a better look around both in and out side. It is hard to get a good photo of it because it is so packed into the city and surrounded by other buildings it never really fits well in the frame.

Time to go now, Soho and Camden Markets today, and a further wander around the Tate street art installment.