Norway: Day 4: Oslo, then to Flåm (Flam)

I took a huge number of pictures and movies this day. They're more detailed than this entry, and also provide the atmosphere--the color if you will--that this entry lacks.

After breakfast, I took a fast metro to Vigeland Park, a park designed by and filled with sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. (Oslo is so compact, even places I think of as far from the city center are only a ten minute metro ride away.) The whole park is stunning, and it reminded me of Gaudi's similarly-impressive Parc Guell I saw in Barcelona. Clearly, Vigeland made it his life's work. (Indeed, I think the reason he's not well-known outside of Norway is is because Oslo recognized his talents and gave him a lifetime appointment, hence obviating the need for him to market himself to the rest of the world.) It was a beautiful day to see and photograph the sculptures, not cloudy like the previous day. Everything looks better against a blue sky. I took a ton of pictures, and you may imagine from the sheer number that I took pictures of everything, but really I skipped photographing the vast majority of pieces.

After exploring the park to my satisfaction, I took the metro across town to the Munch Museum (Munch-museet). If your impression of Munch's paintings is that they're depressing or disturbing, you're generally right. Although he painted a few other pieces, most are depressing, with titles such as The Drowned Boy, The Hearse, The Operation, and The Death, and that's just one room room of the museum. As for disturbing, take, for example, the painting that includes sperm, skeletons, and embryos. In addition to paintings (of which many were portraits), it appears Munch did lithography and prints too. The museum took me an hour,and I went very slowly with an audio guide. I realized, by the way, why I don't seem to like audio guides in Oslo: the narrator speaks too slowly. I also realized that I'm mostly indifferent to Munch's work.

I returned to downtown Oslo to eat at Kaffistova, the same Norwegian cafeteria where I ate two days prior. I grabbed a light lunch because I knew I'd be having dinner at a reasonable time.

From lunch, I walked to the Akershus Fortress & Castle, and paid to enter the castle portion. It's not that exciting unless you like period furniture and tapestries. I took the audio tour because it was free and found it good quality for a change: vaguely interesting and read at a reasonable speed. By far the best part was the supplementary ghost stories (based on legends/real events). I only wish I'd planned my time better so I could've listened to all of them. Instead, I had to return to my hotel to meet Di Yin.

Once I met Di Yin, we returned to the fortress, walked around its grounds, then headed to the train station and managed to (yes, I was scared) catch our train. Now is as good a time as any to link to Di Yin's pictures from Oslo, which cover her week there. I wasn't with her for most of them except for a period in the middle and a longer segment near the end (which corresponds to this day's Oslo adventures).

The train we took, part of the famous Oslo-Bergen line, brought us from Oslo into the Hardangervidda, Norway's "highland plateau." We then transferred to a small train, the Flåmsbana (Flamsbana), that descended along a river to a tiny town, Flåm (Flam), at the edge of a fjord (Aurlandsfjord, a branch of the Sognefjord). When I say descend, I mean it: we lost nearly a kilometer in altitude over the course of a twenty kilometer journey. Much of the altitude was lost while in one of the rail line's twenty tunnels, many corkscrew-shaped within mountains. On the way down, the train stopped by a platform next to a waterfall so we could get out and photograph it.

The five-hour journey was pretty spectacular, especially the last segment, and not as monotonous as one might think: the landscape varied as we changed altitude. Early in the trip, we discovered that the children's playroom in the train had picture windows, and we hung out there sightseeing instead of staying in our seats. Once in Flam, we walked to our hotel, a building on the dock, and found its location no less impressive than the sights we saw from the train.

I took pictures (linked above) from our journey; Di Yin took many more. The link goes to the first picture she took from the journey. A picture of me in front of a breakfast/dinner table (picture #95) ends the set for the day. The remaining pictures are from the next day's activities; I'll link to them in the following post.