Am I Corn or Kale?

Gothenburg was a silly yet logical entry to our itinerary. The largest non-capital Scandinavian city, it sits halfway between Copenhagen/Malmo area and Oslo. Gothenburg is home to a lively music and nightlife scene, and would’ve been an awesome stop if that had been our focus. The city is also home to Sweden’s most popular tourist destination: the massive Liseberg amusement park, which serves to keep visitors within its gates and away from disrupting everyday life in the other districts. Apart from that, Gothenburg decidedly lacks obvious touristy sights and thus struck me as a very livable city, unlike others we have visited throughout our trip.

Of course, intergenerational clubs are yet to be invented (even if we were in the right shape to go out, we didn‘t know anyone in the city who could show us any good spots) and I was in the minority favoring a trip to Liseberg; consequently our Gothenburg leg was much more low-key, but not without its charms.

Nancy took us out on a nice fish dinner and we tried a few varieties of cured herring, all of which were very tasty and not disappointing, despite the portions being about five times smaller than I would have liked. The next morning we wandered around the centre and had some perfectly smoked salmon at the Fish Market.

Things got weirder when we stumbled upon Swedish Army troops hanging out at the city’s main strip, the Avenyn. An army band played cob-webbed marching tunes and soldiers showed off machine guns and bazookas to curious passersby.

Across the street in a different park a stage was set up for a high school band playing “Grease” and Kelly Clarkson covers. They were not exactly The Knife or In Flames, but seemed tighter than similarly aged groups in the U.S. We finished our day tour by paying a visit to a castrated Poseidon statue, returning to our hostel on time to make dinner and watch the Eurovision finale.

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I’m not going to delve too deep into Eurovision (last blog served that purpose); let’s just say that most of the songs were predictably atrocious — by my personal standards, less than 20% of the 25 tunes were tolerable, and I only truly liked a couple of them. The best, by far, was the duet from Romania that included a transparent two-person piano, lots of fire, and an operatic vocal solo in the midst of a badass pop song with a killer chorus. Naturally, they did not win — the crown went to a 19-year-old German girl who sounded like Bjork doing a Lou Bega song. In terms of sheer performance though, nobody could touch the Moravian act with a saxophone-humping dude who looked like he could be in a Final Fight videogame. Huge yes.

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Oslo was one of the greatest surprises of our entire trip. During our pre-trip research we encountered multiple travel sources that labeled it a lesser European capital, but our experience was the absolute opposite. Of course, we had the benefit of a host who helped us fall in love with the city.

It was a great joy to stay with Vidar; he welcomed us into his flat and served us a traditional Norwegian breakfast every morning, including the oddly sweet brown cheese. I was even persuaded to eat a pickle with my bread and liver pâté, though I can’t say that was a highlight.  He taught us a great deal about Norwegian society and oftentimes made us rather jealous and less willing to go back to the U.S.

We only spent three nights and two full days in Oslo, but thanks to Vidar’s tips and guidance we were able to see a lot. We saw the futuristic Opera House (where the Eurovision Song Contest took place), walking streets, old and new bourgeois districts, the harbor… While Oslo doesn’t have the façade of classic European capitals, its multiple personalities and architectural styles — old European block buildings, modern apartments, traditional Norwegian wooden houses — give it fascinating character.

Thanks to Vidar, we had the opportunity of seeing Oslo from a local’s perspective (though he is originally from the West coast); he took us on a walk along the river and through the botanical garden and different neighborhoods, including the 19th-century industrial district and Oslo’s “anarchist” area (similar to Christiania in Copenhagen, which we didn’t get to visit).

Later that day, he took us to an outdoor café so we could soak in the city over extremely expensive drinks ($10 for a machine-made coffee and a bottle of apple cider. We forgot to mention that Oslo is arguably the most expensive city in the world, and that without Vidar we would have been toast). In a curious twist of fate, while we sat there one of the hosts of the Eurovision contest walked by looking a lot less uppity and sharp than on TV.

An amazing feature of Oslo is that 2/3 of the city limits consist of parkland. Better yet, the residents really put them to good use: on sunny days Norwegians flock in mass to local parks, sprawl over the grass to barbeque on disposable grill boxes, socialize, tan. Women make full use of societal liberties and wonder around wearing their bras (which, let’s face it, are essentially the same thing as bikini tops as long as there is no swimming involved).

Summer daylight is getting rather extreme. Vidar said the Norwegians enjoy “blonde summer nights” — even though the sun technically sets, its light looms in the horizon and keeps it from getting fully dark. Naturally, the downside of the latitude are the long, 18-hour winter nights, which is probably why black metal was created here. In any case, the picture below was taken after midnight and I find that pretty incredible:

We were also blown away by the cultural side of Oslo. We found out there were plenty of worthwhile museums — in one day we visited more than a handful (only one of which was an art museum). We checked out the Norwegian Folkmuseum, which was mostly outdoors and consisted of traditional houses, churches, and other buildings from all over the country (no idea how they moved it all to the current site). We were surprised to find out that green roofs have been used for centuries all over the country, although at the museum they did not have goats roaming on top.

Next we hit not one but three ship-centered museums: we saw 11th-century Viking burial ships, the polar ship “Fram” (used for explorations to both poles, no ship has sailed further North or South), and the amazing Kon-Tiki. The Kon-Tiki museum was probably our favorite — the absurdity of this particular feat (sailing 5000 miles across the Pacific Ocean on a papyrus raft is totally insane) was mindblowing, and we learned that the same explorer also crossed the Atlantic with a similar vessel and was a pioneer researcher on Easter Island.

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We also visited the Nobel Peace Center and the National Gallery, the latter mostly so we could see the Munch room — after not making it to the Louvre (or Paris at all, for that matter) or Florence’s Uffizi, we had a quick and pleasant art experience in Oslo and saw Munch’s world famous “Scream” and “Madonna” paintings. That said, we saved the best for last (an easy thing to do when the days are so long) and put the cherry on top of our Oslo cake by strolling through the notorious Vigeland statue park, a massive complex (almost 30 years to design and finish the park and its 200-or-so statues) that was really the only thing I knew about Oslo prior to getting there. We were a bit tired by the time we made it there and were happy to find out that the statues are rather conglomerated, making it a stunning, almost overwhelming experience. Vidar told us Oslo-ites use the park as sort of a temple, visiting it on different times of the year — even though Oslo has relatively mild winters, I’m sure this place looks crazy when covered with snow.

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The next morning we got up extra early to embark on what is arguably the pivotal travel day of our trip: the so-called “Norway in a Nutshell” journey…

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