Time Lapse

Day 3

Sitting in front of the Royal Palace, I try to recall the feelings of yesterday to write something down. It's funny how the cultural distance between two experiences impacts your impression of the time lapsed between the two experiences.

The ballet was a mixed experience. The Opera House is a great building with sharp angles and querky geometry vaguely reminiscent of the Sydney Opera House. The ballet named 'Back to the Future' was in three parts. The first two seemed inaccessible to a ballet layman as I drifted into a nap (deciding that this was actually a better use of my time). All was not lost, however, as part three (the main event) explored a range of Physics concepts of time - helped significantly by the narration! The concepts seemed disconnected (although in the same vein of time), but in general focused on the depressing nature of time running away from us.

A nice picture was painted: time is a lake, getting deeper and deeper, and we are pondskaters flitting around in the present to drop down into the past when we die. The water metaphor was also used to describe time as a dimension.

On the outside, one can also climb onto the roof of the Opera House, which is pretty surreal and magical. It would have been nice to stay up there longer but it was blitz cold.

The morning was past with a visit to the Nobel Peace Centre and Viegesland Park. The exhibition at NBC was Targets, and showed different nations' depictions of the enemy. There was also a great audio recording of an interview with an ex-Israeli sniper, who interestingly described killing an unarmed person as embarrassing. It must be one hell of a rollercoaster ride being in the army as a killer.

Viegesland Park was a nice park, and the sculptures interesting. They capture different emotions very effectively, but all of them seemed to be unhappy emotions. The theme of the day was actually quite stern. The different elements drove me to infer that happiness is more temporary than unhappiness. Something drives happiness, but unhappiness is the low entropy state that needs displacing. I guess the exact opposite of this is the key to happy living!

Despite the underlying theme, or maybe because of it, Day 3 was another feast of new and diverse experiences! Lovely.

For the love of God

Day 2

I do enjoy a day of exploration. This morning I bussed over to Bodgey, which is museum central of the museum capital of the world. Time to get my culture fix.

I started off with the Fram museum. The Fram was one of the most important polar exploration vessels, built to deal with and take advantage of polar ice drift. The museum had a huge amount of information on the past, present and future of polar exploration putting giving me a new perspective on the geography of the world. Robinson Crewsoe made me want to explore the world by boat, and this enthusiasm was rekindled with the heroic(ish) stories of voyages to the North pole. The museum really had a lot of different elements, from the Fram ship itself to a bizarre simulation of a ship being crushed under pressure from the ice! Brrrr...

The Kon-Tiki museum was also very interesting and had a different angle to exploration by sea. This simple raft had the purpose of understanding the original flows of people to Polynesia. However, I could not find a connection to Norway... So I won't go on about that one.

The afternoon took a different track. Another enjoyable public transport experience - the metro this time - going up and up to Holmenkellem. This is the site of Norway's famous ski jump - renowned for a great view of Oslo. We did drop a degree or two, and it did feel like even more of a ski town! Venturing out of Oslo centre certainly was worth it for the impressive structure of the ski jump. A lift to the top yielded no views of the city because of the mist, but (oh boy) imagining I was about to do a jump at the winter Olympics, staring down the ski slope was very intimidating! The skiing videos on big screen in the auditorium were unbelievable. On the way back I caught sight of a Buddhist statue and the eternal flame of peace. Seemed completely random, but made the experience in Holmenkellen feel even grander.

Another session, another experience. Back to my favourite Aker Brygge to the Astrup Fearnley Musee. I was warned that it was interesting / weird. In this regard, it certainly did not disappoint! The Good Morning America exhibition was cool, but fairly standard provocative contemporary art. The other exhibition was Damien Hirst's, which focused on different portrayals of death. None of them positive! How's your eternal peace flame? The finale of the exhibition was a real skull covered in diamonds, and the message boiled down to "you can't polish a turd" (but maybe a bit more sinister!).

--> Oslo, good range, good range.

Os High

Day 1

It feels like a long time since I visited a European city. The feelings are lying, but at least they are honest.

The cold, crisp air when stepping off the plane was a refreshing change from the smacks of heat we all usually look forward to. This immediately gave the place a ski town vibe. As well as the sensation of air on face, it's funny how small things like pavement styles give a city a distinctive feel.

Knocked out nicely on the coach from Rygge to Oslo, but what I did see were combinations of Christmas trees greens and autumnal oranges making for quite a moving picture. Naise.

Oslo town seems to be full of stereotypical culture with a vast number of museums, art galleries, scuptures and historic landmarks. I think I spent 2/3 of my waking hours today deciding which museums to hit in the next few days! I am looking forward to nailing my combination of adventures while also just chilling and vibing off the city.

Spent the evening in Aker Brygge, the harbour aka "New Oslo". Really cool area with fancy restaurants and bars with outdoor heated seating areas along the waterfront. Randomly ended up at this Asian restaurant (called Asia) where I had a beauty of a dish known as raw pad thai.

Tomorrow is the culture day!