A short glimpse of Oslo

So I continued my way on the southern part of Norway - much to see in Oslo anyway.

The famous viking ships

A must was the Vikingskiphus, there you can see the famous Oseborg ship, the best conserved vikingship in the world. Not really a strong viking ship it was only used for feasts and ceremonies and then buried as a grave for a viking queen. The good thing about it is, that it contained many grave-gifts of the everyday life of the vikings, many of them still there and not of gold - thus the grave-robbers didn't take those away, all discovered ships were ravaged by necro-thieves, may they rot in hell!
Then there is the Gokstad ship, this one was in heavy use, it's less decorated and of a more solid construction than the Oseborg "beauty".
Last not least there are parts of the Tune and Borre ship, but here only slight remains, planks mostly.
The atmosphere is quite nice in there, the halls were built just to expose the ships, unfortunately some busses (!) of Japanese rushed in and so I rushed out...

The Folk Museum

Round the corner is the Norwegian Folk Museum, in a very nice old building, same thing again, folklore and farmers requisites, all kinds of specialities from the various regions of Norway, of course also an open-air museum - but this time one couldn't wander around easily like in Maihaugen, no - the museum and the park closed BOTH at 3 pm (!!) so I left that aside. A very intelligent time-plan, most tourists only come to Oslo, so especially these museums should be open longer.

As I'm in the nagging mood right now - let me mention another strange detail about opening-hours: In most areas the shops close at 4 or 5 pm (!) I read this before but couldn't believe - but it's true! In Lillehammer everything was dead and gone after 5 o'clock! Something impossible in our countries, when do offices close then, I mean these people have to buy food as well...... And what do they do in those long evenings??? Normally one says that the southern peoples don't work long enough.....

The female person at the entrance was a bone...she wouldn't speak english with some Saxons from Germany (but spoke perfectly english to me minutes before that), even though they tried hard to do their best.
The museum-shop was great to the contrary and so was the girl working in there - very skilled, helpful and so I bought a whole lot of things, a great catalogue about a co-exhibition "Tyskland og Skandinavia" (Germany and Scandinavia) that took place in Berlin, Oslo and Stockholm, very interresting items in there...as well as a Yule-lystopperiet with five arms, a special candle with five lights that are braided to one final candlestick.

The museum district in Oslo (Bygdø) is on an island so to say, you drive a while, there are only park-landscapes with golf-courses and riding-tracks, old nice houses, like in Kent, must be expensive to live there, on the other side of the island is the special yacht-club, a sign on the door says that the King is a member there, too....

Back on the streets of Oslo I just drove around wherever the road lead me, there was a whole bustle going on, incredibly many pedestrians - and they just walked into your car, no matter if you had precedence or not - they were just there.... (impossible in London or even Vienna, they'd be dead in a minute..) but I took it easy, I just rolled around there more or less... I wanted to find the Youngstorget, a nice little marketplace near the castle. The BE, a norwegian building technology office, installed one of the many webcameras there - and I had to be on it of course....

Later on I wanted to visit the impressive townhall of Oslo - a rough building in the monumental style of the 30ies, the whole area there is built like that - one doesn't know whether it's interesting or disgusting (we have this kind of modern architecture in Vienna as well).......It's meant to be a distinctive sign for the arriving ships from the fjord, and that's just what I wanted to see actually, but the ferry-port is further away and if the weather is not cooperative nothing is to be seen....
The townhall is right by the water and so I had a little walk around the old ports of Oslo, Beautiful windjammers, still in action for soldier's education and old fishtrawlers that are restaurants or galeries nowadays. Unfortunately the further leading district around the fortress is a forbidden police-area (the best place in town....) so no civilian people beyond that point...

A nice place to live, if.....

The areas near the water seem to be very nice, if one has money it might be a comfortable place to live, you can do all sorts of outdoor-sports (riding, golf, sailing - sth. I like a lot, even the skiing resorts aren't far) and Oslo is famous for being the greenest town in Europe, it's also of a reasonable size and the green is easy to attain (whereas in Vienna you drive a while to see a tree....).
On the other hand Oslo seems to be full of drugs (the guys at the customs were right....), most youngsters seem depressed or under a certain pressure - or even on heavy drugs already, no easy laughing faces like on the countryside of Norway. And depending on the area there are too many Blacks or Arabs hanging around, they appeare in masses and are mostly checking on drugs - like they do all over Europe, also in Vienna. I think Norway made huge mistakes with their imigration policy. But that comes from a communist gouvernement (I mean Stoltenberg IS a communists functionary, he even cooperated with the KGB, nevertheless he's still in his position as a minister-president....).
The above mentioned impression is increasing by the fact that Oslo is parted into two sides - the nobel western part (Vestkanten with Fagerborg and Frogner Oslo) were the very rich people live, villas all over the area, enormous gardens, high life and on the other side of the river Akerselv you see the opposite (Østkanten), mostly students, old people and - after the 70ies - immigrants moved there, they can't afford but those cheap flats that look like concrete buildings in communist-town suburbia of Ukraine.

The wind from the sea made me hungry and so I looked for another "fast-food" place where I could have those chef-pølser, great sausages with cheese inside and bacon wrapped around - just delicious if you're hungry (and can't afford a meal of tripple the price you pay at home).
Normally I'm vegetarian, but being on the road in Norway I had to take it easy - sometimes I lived on apples - norske eppler - just absolutely delicious small red apples, never had any better in my live - they must grow by the Sognefjord in 'Italian fjordland', but now and then you want something hot and heavy...
So I found a nice place further from the townhall - strangely enough there were many alcoholics there besides the usual clean people, and as I drove around the corner later on I knew why: I was right there again - by the "Pizza" place and the McDonalds from my very first night in Norway (heff.....) must really be a rude area.....

Of course I had to see the famous Johannsgate - the main road that leads to the castle. On the pics of the webcams it looks very mondanous, but in reality - well, not so much, but it's a nice area and if it's lighted by the oldfashioned lamps it has it's special flair.

Gloomy backyards

Strange is the town-planning concept of Oslo - right behind the Johannsgate I ended up in some gloomy backyards of unfriendly huge office-buildings (?!?!) with freeways leading off and away (right by the castle....not very inviting.....)

The changing history of Oslo

Maybe that's because Oslo has a complicated history, once the eldest capitol in Scandinavia (around 1000) it became more and more a Clerical capitol , but the Kings reigned in Bergen - when Norway was strong still, Bergen was the capitol, grown from historical matters it was a natural capitol, near to England and Scotland and member of the Hanseatic merchants. When the Danes started to exploit Norway (around 1300 and getting worst after 1397, when the norwegian King had given up the wasted country that was ruined by the Black Death in 1349) they obviously needed to humiliate this formerly strong people in many ways, one of them was placing their own capitol - and it needed to be near Denmark - so the danish King took Oslo back again and intentionally weakened it's position in Europe, in 1624 it had a population left of 2000 inhabitants, when a fire destroyed it all.
The danish King named the reconstructed little town after himself (was surely a nice guy that one...) Christiania. One can easily see the squared construction of the centre nowadays, so the quarters around the castle didn't grow naturally like elsewhere .

Some more baiting against the Danes....

The Danes tried to dry Norway out where ever possible (first they erased the norwegian Nobels and took all resources from the country, or - if ever necessary - handed norwegian territories, mostly islands, among these the Orkneys and Shetlands (now Scotland) to their victorious enemies. Later on, when Enlightment was common in Europe, they even disenabled education for the norwegian people and prevented medical help against the larger diseases of the period (!) - not enough - taxes were pushed up to astronomical heights and thus the economy (and Oslo, sorry, Christiania) was unable to develope together with the other economical centres in Europe (this all means that the Danes kept the Norwegians numb and stupid like slaves, almost like animals...)

Luckily the Napoleonic War in Europe involved Sweden and Denkmark, who - after their allied, the French, lost against Sweden (he he), had to hand Norway over (it's sad remains after all....) to Sweden, that was in 1814. That very year the Norwegians founded their own constitution and parliament at Eidsvoll which was not accepted by Sweden, they could keep the constitution but had to break up the parliament. I don't want to bore anyone with history - only one more thing - strangely enough the Norwegians elected the danish prince (!!) as their King in 1905 - one would rather imagine a certain hatred against the Danes?!?! Some people just love the hand that beats them......

Sorry for this long excursion from the subject, but there are some things I can't understand in this country.....and then I'm the 100 % kind of person - if I visit a country I want to know more about it, this enables me to understand the stories the old stones of the ruins tell, the feeling is much deeper then.....on with the trip now.

Hitchcock at Frogner palaces

After having escaped from this moloch of freeways who kept leading me to all kinds of far away towns I ended up in the before mentioned nobel Frogner Oslo - heff, what palaces and parks! Wouldn't object such a nice housy....the atmosphere was great - of course it was dark, rain and wind coming up, the street was of paving-stones and the huge dark houses were often behind even huger fir-trees, so all had this Hitchcock/Munsters ambiance, I love rainy paving-stones and huge firs waving their branches at night, some people on bicycles nearly fell of the bikes as they saw us cruising there (ha ha, that car fits perfectly into the dark, rainy Hitchcock ambiance....).

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Helleristninger, finally!

My next goal was the east side of the Oslo fjord, the Oldtidsveien sounded promising ('old times path'); hard to find near Sarpsborg, it would be better to walk along there - on a short sector of about 10 km you find helleristninger (stone-images, those funny red mannekkens) and gravehills every 10 meters, and they mostly lead off the road for a while, so just the place for pre-historical interested.

When I walked around there the weather was very humid and warm, so all was covered with fog, I had to climb around on the rocks into little forrests, just great - even felt like some guys from the old ages coming out of the thicket......the humid odeurs of the woods were unforgettable.
The area there is full of ancient relics, it was the earliest populated in Norway (the deep fjord attracted them all) and the climate may be comfortable, too - it looked a bit like Somerset there, soft grasslands and cows.

Soldiers all over....

Then there was Fredrikstad, originally an old town on an island, now they use the island just for the military purpose - so you cross a bridge and enter the garrison town, just old, nice looking military buildings there (stables, gun and canon magazines, public houses) and soldiers soldiers soldiers (something I Iike....), they looked at me in a strange way (ha ha, what else could they do) but my idea of having them all on a pic with the hearse was too late, I was already on the bridge, passing the unattractive new part of Fredrikstad.
The whole area there is only 10 km from Sweden, so I had to be careful not to pass the border by accident (and then have the whole check-up again when comming back...).

Even better than the Corvette

At Moss I took the ferry across the Oslo fjord to Horten. On that ferry there were two guys with the red Corvette (see the pic), very selfish and occupied with their "jewel". When all people on the ferry stood around my hearse, obviously appreciating it a lot, they became jealous and a little angry (how stupid, but also sad - one of them was very tall and had red-blond hair to the hips - just great....).

The ride by the shore...

As I wanted to get to Kristiansand I hurried up and didn't stop at Tønsberg (viking graves and relics) and didn't search for the Høyord stave kirke, which is very impressive inside, but I was sure it would be closed anyway, so why waste time. Who knows what the road will be like? And I was wise doing that - the E 18 was quite a hard one, narrow and curved again, just like before... I hoped to see the sea-side a bit (haven't seen any wild breakers yet, something I need to see) but the road was behind the actual coast, hills and mountain areas with waterfalls and all kinds of phenomenons, unbelieveable - even down here it's crazy, everything felt like Trolls coming out there right away... I was sad to miss some special spots, such as the great webcam in Risør, lovely Lillesand or simply a place called Korset (....don't think naughty...) but I had to take care of the time. After an exhausting ride I stayed overnight near Grimstad, just to get into Kristiansand the next day.