Slo go to Oslo

A week ago we took a mini-vacation on the overnight ferry to Oslo. We left on a Friday evening, stayed Saturday in a hotel in Oslo, then returned to Copenhagen on Monday morning. It was a relaxing, civilized way to travel, much more enjoyable than flying if one can afford the time. While in Oslo we took in the Norwegian Folk Museum (maybe the last in a series of open-air museums), the Viking Ship Museum, the Munch Museum, and the Stenersen Museum. We also visited Vigeland Sculpture Park and strolled along Karl Johanns Gate. The last hours were spent at the Åkershus fortress.

The ferry to Oslo comes complete with several restaurants, bars, clubs, and a movie theater. We ate too much at the buffet breakfast and dinner. I found the quality of the dinner better on the outbound trip than on the return. Between meals and sleeping we enjoyed sitting on the deck and watching the coastline scroll past, at least until the wind picked up. At one point it was slinging plastic chairs across the deck and people headed for cover. Everyone told us it was a smooth ride, but we went through some weather. It was nothing serious, but enough to bring waves from the west once we got into the open water north of Sjælland which set the boat rocking. This made sleeping a bit challenging at times. On the return trip we had the additional sensations of the rocking boat layered over the special effects of Spiderman 3. The travel sickness bags stationed at the stairs indicated that the rough ride had been anticipated. Fortunately we didn't need them.

After dropping off our bag at the hotel, our first stop was at the Norwegian Folk Museum. We took the bus from the city center out to the peninsula where many of the museums are located. At the museum we saw many preserved homes and farm buildings which indicated that Norway was far more rustic compared with other parts of Scandinavia based on what we saw in the other open air museums (Skansen, Den Gamle By, Kulturen). One treat was the stave church which was occupied by a Spanish tour group when we went in. It was reaching back a ways to recall enough Spanish to understand the tour guide. I managed as much as: La Ultima Cera = The Last Supper. The reenactors were baking lefsa, chopping wood (pictured) and demonstrating Norwegian Folk Dances. Another fun stop was to visit a preserved Oslo apartment built in the early 1900's. It gave us some insight to our own building in Copenhagen which is now fully whitewashed, but originally was more colorful. Another photo shows Alexa outside a one-room schoolhouse.

At our visit to Vigeland Sculpture Park I was a bit distracted by a short Italian man who I was certain was Yogi Berra. I managed to get a few photos of him and on further review discovered his smaller nose and ears distinguish him from the famous Yankee catcher. The sculpture park was a bit over the top. It's good that the artist was able to have an outlet for his creativity. At some point it seemed like an interesting idea gone too far, but the park setting captures the work nicely. Had it been in a museum, it would have seemed very repetitive to walk into room after room of naked bronze people in various poses. In all, the statues raise questions about the struggles of humanity on many scales, personal to societal.

The Viking Ship Museum held two well-preserved Viking ships and the lower part of a third. I learned that the dramatic dragon heads at the prow and stern were used in ceremonial vessals and not warships. On warships, captains would mount staves with their personal insignia to identify themselves. As ships may be used by different captains, they could just swap out their personal emblems then head off into the sunset to wreak havoc.

The Munch Museum records the life work of a disturbed artist. Unlike many disturbed artists, Edvard Munch lived to the ripe old age of 81 and captured many self portraits tracing the journey. Security at the museum was very tight, coming on the heels of the recent theft of The Scream, Munch's most famous work.

Moving ahead to this weekend. Finally beautiful weather in Denmark - on a weekend no less! Yesterday we visited a friend from work and enjoyed the bike ride up through the "Whiskey Belt." In the span of two hours we walked to the beach, enjoyed tea and cookies in his garden overlooking a field and the Danish countryside, and soaked up the sun. One outcome of this visit was that Alexa was able to meet another of my co-workers. A second outcome is a borrowed book "Arabia Felix" on the Danish expedition to Arabia 1761-1767 written by Thorkild Hansen. So far it's a good read, interesting insight into life and politics at the time and a reminder of how much we take travel for granted. The book describes the troubles the expedition faced merely getting to the North Sea from Copenhagen. Granted, they left in January, but after travelling 2800 miles (out and back several times, returning to the calmer waters near Helsingør) they were still only 30 miles closer to the Mediterranean Sea. After a very enjoyable visit, we and our bikes hopped the train back to Copenhagen.

Out and about

In the last week or so we took two excursions, one to Møns Klint and another up the coast on our bikes. In between I took a quick trip to Oslo for work.

Møns Klint is Denmark's version of the white cliffs of Dover. We drove about two hours south to the island of Møn and spent a couple of hours strolling along the top of the cliffs and looking out on the water. It was a blustery day, but no rain. We didn't go down to the beach at the base of the cliffs because the stairs were closed due to the risk of landslides common in winter and spring. We'd like to return in the summer to camp overnight and spend more time exploring. On this trip we filled the tank for the third time since arriving in Denmark. One amusing thing is the behavior of the new digital camera which has a palette that strongly favors purple. I recall this happening on the first "roll" from the old camera (same make) before going away, hopefully it won't last too long.

I next went to Oslo for a 2-day training course in the middle of the week. I had some time on a Tuesday afternoon to stroll around Oslo and enjoy the beautiful weather. I saw Vigelund Park and the Akerhus fortress on the waterfront. Before the start of the course I had a brief Danish conversation with the guy next to me who introduced himself in Danish, so I thought I'd reply in Danish. The teacher and several other participants were Norwegian, so it was interesting to hear the Danish/Norwegian conversations. Norwegian words are very similar to Danish but the pronunciation is closer to Swedish.

Last weekend we took the train north with our bikes and rode north from Klampenborg to just south of Vedbæk. There was an excellent cycle path that ran along the railroad right-of-way. The weather was perfect and we stopped for ice cream on the way back. It was about 25 km in all (I like kilometers, because it sounds like we went farther than we really did....).