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.