July 2024 – Where is Phil now?

Brutalist London, part something

Saturday 29 July 2024 – London

I’m starting to lose track of how many Brutal Day Outs I’ve attended over the last couple of years; but it must be seven or eight at a guess. While some of them are semi-organised by Britta and/or Stefeno and are run as planned walks, today’s little adventure was a casual get together arranged by me via a brutalist architecture Instagram group I belong to. I wanted to take a walk around some of the brutalist or modernist buildings in central London I’ve not photographed before and it turned out seven others wanted to do so as well. Nice. I like these people and it’s always nice to hang out with people you like.

We met at St James Park Station which is conveniently and directly over the road from the Ministry of Justice building in Petty France. This building is up there as my favourite brutalist building in London. It’s a concrete monolith with some lovely, yet large scale detail and for obvious reasons it was known by some as ‘The Lubyanka’. The building was completed in 1976 and I love it.

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Obviously we can’t pop inside for a quick look around, and even if I managed to get myself invited into a meeting in one of those lovely first floor rooms, as a civil servant I know photography is not allowed on government premises. Grrr….

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Some of the lesser lights didn’t make it out of the ‘reel’ of photographs I took on the day, so sorry St Vincent’s House, my photos didn’t do you justice.

It wasn’t on my original list of things to visit, but we’re democratic and one of the group works in this University of Westminster building, so we did a walk by, tempted by being advised there was a very nice coffee shop over the road. It was very nice.

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Behind the university is the, now sadly closed, Tower Tavern, which looks much better than I managed to capture in this photo. I hope it gets to re-open soon as I would like to see inside.

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Given its prominence on the London skyline I’ve not walked to the BT/Post Office Tower before and it’s never intentionally been in a photo I’ve taken either. A situation that had to change one day, and that day was today. When it was completed in 1964 it was the tallest building in London and remained that until 1980 when the NatWest Tower surpassed it.

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In February 2024 BT sold the tower to the MCR Hotels who are going to make into some sort of luxury hotel; with hopefully a decent and public bar in the viewing platform. BT still use the tower for its communications systems so it’s still a working building.

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I was hungry and thirsty at this point so stopped for a quick lunch which meant I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would’ve liked at the St Giles Hotel as it’s quite a cool building. Opening in 1977 it is a proper Breton brut brute of a building and I will come back here for a better explore one day and hope there is a nice period bar inside for a swift drink. Peaking out behind it was our next stop, CentrePoint.

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The magnificent and recently refurbished Centrepoint Tower.

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The equally magnificent Space House in Holborn. Annoyingly there is still scaffold around the base so we couldn’t get as close as I would have liked, and nor could I take a shot straight up the side of the building, which seems to have become a recent habit.

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The final stop of a fairly exhausting five hours of walking, photographing and chatting was the Macadam Building. Built on a WW2 bombsite in 1975 as part of the Kings College campus, for its relatively small size it’s quite a statement building. Squatting there all rough and raw amongst the supposedly ‘prettier’ 19th century buildings that survived the Luftwaffe bombing. I’m going to say it isn’t a handsome building, but I’m glad it is there all the same and it would be a shame if the rumours are true and it’s to be demolished for something else.

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There were a few buildings that we passed that were just too boring to photograph, and some of my photographs were just to boring to edit and upload, but I’m very happy with what photos I took today. I’m very much enjoying the Fujifilm XT2 camera I bought earlier in the year and one day I will be able to afford to upgrade to the XT5, but that will be a way off.

I’ve been experimenting in the editing tool I use, Lightroom, with making photos look a bit like they were shot on an old film camera. I like these images, but let me know your thoughts!

Vigeland Sculpture Park

Friday 15 to Monday 18 – Oslo, Norway

This is the final post from our fantastic 10-day holiday. I enjoyed every day we were away (even Gothenburg) and still think about it constantly a month later. We’ve already booked a follow up visit to Berlin in early October and I can’t wait to go back and explore more.

The holiday was a reversed version of a similar plan cancelled due to Covid in the summer of 2020 and so was well over due. Eleanor’s sister visited Oslo around 1980 and on return shared photos and stories from a slightly bonkers park with loads of statues of naked people, and Eleanor has wanted to go there ever since. The park was the inspiration for visiting to Oslo, so it had to be number one on the list of places to visit in this lovely friendly city.

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The park certainly lived up to expectation. It is bonkers mad and utterly, fantastically beautiful. I loved it.

Vigeland Sculpture Park can be found inside the larger Frogner Park near the centre of Oslo. It contains over 200 life size sculptures from Norwegian artist Gustav Vigeland. The granite, bronze and iron sculptures were completed in 1949, and took over 40 years to carve. The works were made by a team of sculptures working to Vigeland’s vision and detailed design. Sadly, Vigeland died before his park, and vision were completed.

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The detail in the granite work is just perfect, I took a lot of photos, by my standards at least, but could easily have taken a more. If we were to come back to Oslo I would aim for a more evenly overcast day to visit Vigeland.

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There are three major works that incorporate the individual statues; the Bridge, the Fountain and the Monolith. My photos of the Fountain were a bit rubbish sadly so I’ve not included any (next time!)

The Bridge, is as advertised, a bridge and it includes a number of slightly larger than life bronzes.

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In my view the masterpiece, the 17 metre tall granite Monolith.

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Monolith was started in 1929 and carved onsite from a single piece of granite that in itself was carved from a mountainside especially for the project in 1922. It took 3 three stonemasons 14 years to create this beautiful object. Monolith was officially opened in 1943, but sadly Vigeland passed away shortly before the opening.

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Below are a number of the images I took from the Monolith, which was by no means all of the, I’ve started with my favourite piece from a collection of favourite pieces, the expressions are just so wonderful.

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The Scream

Friday 15 to Monday 18 – Oslo, Norway
Munch Museum

I very much enjoyed the three days we spent in Oslo, and could easily have spent a bit more time there. I definitely want to visit more of Norway as well, particularly some of the more rugged coastal areas. I’ve never wanted to do a cruise, the whole idea of being stuck on a large vessel with hundreds of random people just sounds horrendous; however, a Norwegian fjord cruise is something I would certainly consider. It would be an amazing way to see that globally unique section of coast.

Enough dreaming about a future that may not happen, let’s get back to today when we visited the Munch Museum.

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I didn’t know a lot about Norway’s best known artist, Edvard Munch, though, like many, many others, I’m quite familiar with his most famous painting ‘The Scream’. When we researched this trip and found there was an entire museum dedicated to his life and work, all wrapped up in a quite spectacular building, we made visiting a ‘must-do’.

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was a prolific artist, creating over 26,000 works over his life. Born in a small village his family moved to Kristiania, as Oslo was then known, when he was very young. Munch spent time in Paris and Berlin before settling back in Oslo in 1897 where he remained for the rest of his life.

There are numerous versions of The Scream; two painted, two in pastels and several lithographs. The museum had a painting, a pastel and a lithograph on display, though they only display them one at a time in a darkened room. I managed to get quite close to the lithograph, getting a nice clean photo, though I prefer this version.

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A very excited crowd started to grow as the time the painting was revealed approached; I wasn’t going to fight my way to the front, electing to take a crowd shot on my phone instead.

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The Munch – as the museum is now called, only opened in 2020 and, as I said earlier is housed in quite a spectacular building. It sits next to the equally spectacular Opera House, with its wide sloping roof which the public are allowed to walk on. It’s surprisingly quite steep in places and there were more than a few people holding onto the hand rails on the side. As it was a Sunday the Opera House was closed, as were quite a lot of the shops. Norway seems to have work-life balance as a priority.

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We stopped for coffee in the museum café, and I had to have a Scream cookie to dunk into the very nice flat white.

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We should have bought tickets before the coffee as we discovered too late that entry to the gallery is timed and we had a 45 minute wait before we could go in. Eleanor and I went for a walk outside and found this lovely modern block of flats nearby, which we both agreed we would love to live in. The ground floor flats had balconies with access to drop a canoe into the harbour as an added bonus. I can’t imagine what they cost.

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We spent a couple of hours browsing the interesting galleries, Munch certainly lived an interesting and occasionally wild life as well as making some good art. I particularly liked this quite disturbing piece, and annoyingly I failed to get its name. A lot of his work was quite disturbing in its way, with the stylised face from The Scream prevalent.

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He also painted a number of huge works including ‘The Reseachers’.

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My favourite part was an interactive room depicting life in the Munch household in the early 20th century. The room had this very cool electronic screen easel, which in my view, made for a great photo.

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Disappointingly the roof bar was closed on a Sunday so we didn’t get to go to the very top of the building, but the view from floor below was still very good. It is a spectacular building both in and out and if you get to Oslo I recommend a visit.

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Oslo, Norway

Friday 15 to Monday 18 – Oslo, Norway

Lakes and steep but low rocky bluffs, stony ground, more lakes, and rivers; I mustn’t forget the rivers. It’s obvious that we’re not passing through England; the trees are different, even the silver birch and pine don’t look the same, the forests seem denser and darker; and you know you’re in Scandinavia when you see those ‘classic’ red wooden buildings.

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It’s cloudy outside the train window and staring into the seemingly never ending forests you get this disturbing feeling deep down that there is something ancient and probably malevolent lurking deep inside those trees. It somewhere you could easily get lost in and are perhaps never seen again…

Does difference always allow dark thoughts to surface? Maybe I’ve watched too many of those Scandi-noir tv series.

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We’re on the train from Gothenburg in Sweden to our final destination on this holiday, Oslo in Norway. It’s a fairly slow train, with stops every 30 minutes or so and as we draw close to Oslo the carriages fill up to almost London morning commute level, though everyone seems much nicer than those I share a 7:30am tube with. I’m glad I’d pre-booked seats, which was more difficult than it should’ve been, and I can now confess to being slightly nervous that the train I booked us on didn’t actually exist until we saw it arrive at the platform. Internet scams for fake transport lines are not uncommon and surprisingly there are few cross-border trains in Europe.

I’ve not previously been to Norway so this is country number 64, and the first time since India in 2016 that I’m visiting somewhere new. Oslo was where we going to start the holiday we had planned prior to Covid arriving in 2020, so I’ve been looking forward this for a while and I’m really happy to finally visit. It is my kind of city; arty and interesting, with good food and the people we met were all really nice. I took too many photos to do one post, so this will be a three parter, with the other two covering Vigeland Park and the Munch Museum, and both were magnificent.

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We did a lot of walking over the three days, particularly between the hotel and the waterfront by the Munch Museum and Opera House. The central station was just back from Opera House and we took a tram from there to our hotel. We used a few trams in Oslo and it’s a nice way to get around.

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We took a 90 minute tour of the fjord which was largely disappointing, I was hoping we were going to go right out of the city into the fjord proper, but the quite large tour boat just puttered around the islands close to the city. It was scenic enough, but the highlight was meeting a couple of other Kiwis and spending the entire journey talk to them and not paying attention to where we were going.

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We also took a ferry to the closest island – Hovedoya, for a walk around and I found a nice ruined abbey; surprisingly these are ruins from a 12 century abbey founded by catholic monks from England.

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The island is five minutes from downtown Oslo, had a couple of nice, small, beaches – and the water was surprisingly warm, and some good green space. There were a couple of small groups of young people enjoying themselves and it looked and felt like such a nice spot near a busy old city.

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It’s a reasonably attractive city, there is a good mix of old and new buildings, a couple of 70s brutalist buildings, though nothing overly interesting that I saw on our walks.

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The Museum metro station entrance not far from our hotel was very cool with this amazing ‘Acoustic Sculpture’ ceiling which had the most fantastic echo. If you stand in the middle the echo was huge, walking outside of the circle meant there was no echo at all. It was very cool and not something you would expect to find in a metro station.

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We ate well, there is a lot of vegetarian and vegan places to eat which suited and I’m keen to go back to the Grunerlokka area when we go back, which I’m sure we will. It’s the Oslo version of London’s Shoreditch, admittedly smaller, with bars and eating places, graffiti and a suspicious looking non-swan in the river. It looked like a decent spot for an evening out.

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We also stumbled on one of Oslo’s heavy metal bars so popped in for a gin, beer is so expensive, for a look around. It was way too early in the day for the place to be rocking; though they were pumping out the Hanoi Rocks at a decent volume while we were there.

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Oslo is a cool city, we enjoyed our time and it’s another place to add to the ‘must go back to list’…

Gothenburg

Thursday 14 June 2024 – Gothenburg, Sweden

The three hour ride from Stockholm to Gothenburg was nice enough, the train was complete luxury compared to the shabby and dirty intercity trains we mostly have in the UK. It was full and I didn’t have a window seat so didn’t get to take any photos out of the window as we travelled from one side of Sweden to the other, though I more than make up for that when we continue to Oslo the next day.

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Gothenburg has been on the list of ‘Places I want to visit before I die’ for quite some time. Ok, I made up the list name just then, but I do have a list of places I want to visit before I die and Gothenburg is on it. I’m not sure why Gothenburg was on the list. Maybe because it has ‘Goth’ in its name and I liked a lot of gothic rock in the 1980s, but probably because it seems like a nice city and it’s popular with tourists.

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It wasn’t on the list because of an interesting historical event or an amazing building I just had to see, it doesn’t have an immediate ‘gotcha’ like a lot of other places do. There was nothing I specifically wanted to see or do, and now I’ve been I know why; there isn’t really anything to see or do; unless you like shopping. It’s one of those rare places that I have no desire to go back to and I found it dull as dish water. As I wrote in my notebook; it’s a bit like Sydney, a nice place but visually boring.

To be fair to Gothenburg it wasn’t its fault. The hotel we stayed in was on top of the station, it was a fine hotel, but I like staying just outside the centre in inner city residential areas; somewhere near a nice bar or café and people.

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Between the station and the city centre was a large square with bus and tram stops and criss-crossed tram lines; it was raining when we went out and it was a confusing place to get over; trams and busses and cars and bikes seemingly coming from all different directions. I disliked it and not knowing exactly where we were going made it all too complex and frustrating. Admittedly I was tired and probably hungry.

The other big negative for me was half the city seemed to be under some serious construction, with many roads and paths closed, which at times made trying to follow directions challenging.

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I like a bit of history so we wandered over to Skansen Kronen, a 17^th century fortification on a small hill with decent views over the small city centre.

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We stopped for lunch in the nearby Haga area and had a walk around the cobbled residential streets; in hindsight this would be the area to stay in. It was the least busy area we visited and was quaint in it’s own way. There were none of the narrow cobbled alley ways that we found in the old town of Stockholm.

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We last minute booked a table at Fiskbar 17, a small fish restaurant with only four or five things on the menu. It was my absolute highlight of Gothenburg; the food was stunning, the cocktails delicious and the vibe was perfect.

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It was a fine evening, though made more interesting on the walk back to the hotel after some fairly intense rain. it was hard to believe it was almost 11pm when we left. This far north the sun sets quite late.

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We had a couple of hours the following day before the train to Oslo so we all set off to do our own thing. Mine was to try and find something interesting to photograph. There wasn’t much to be honest.

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I did find ‘The Lipstick’ building which is part brutalist. Lilla Bonmen as its officially known, was opened in 1989 and was easily the most interesting modern building that I saw in Gothenburg, especially that bizarre thing on the roof. After walking around the outside and taking a couple of photos it was time to head back to the hotel and then onto Oslo in Norway, a country I’ve not visited.

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Sorry Gothenburg!

Stockholm

Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 June 2024 – Stockholm, Sweden

I like trains. I like the freedom they bring, the expectation and anticipation that something is going to happen, but not quite yet. This is the journey and not the destination and life should be suspended while the journey works its magic. The rhythm of the wheels on the tracks, the rattle and clangs of the carriage mirror the sounds from the headphones stuck in my ears. A new found love for the motorik beat of 1970s krautrock mixed with the noise of the train turns every train ride into a different soundscape. It’s a time to disconnect and just be.

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Tuesday really started late on Monday when we boarded the 21:10 sleeper train from Berlin to Stockholm. The four of us had a six person couchette room. Thankfully no one turned up to take the other two bunks, it was very tight and required patient negotiating to move around. We crossed the German border into Denmark around 2:30am and then left Denmark for Sweden at 7:30, arriving in Malmo with enough time to nip into the station to get a decent coffee from one of the cafes before breakfast on the train once we were on the way again.

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Between Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmo in Sweden we travel on ‘The Bridge’. For those less familiar with Scandi-noir television, this is the magnificent Øresund Bridge, a road and rail bridge that contains the border between the two countries and was the scene of a gruesome murder in the Tv series. We didn’t have to show our passport at any time between arriving in Berlin and leaving Oslo at the end of the trip.

Our sleeper carriage was, up until Malmo, right at the end of the train, affording a great view out of the large windows at the back. Annoyingly, in Malmo a second engine was added to our train and the view was gone.

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Luckily there was plenty to see out of the side windows, Sweden is a beautiful country. There are a lot of trees and a lot of lakes.

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We arrived in Stockholm mid-afternoon and took a local train to our hotel in Hornstull on one of the many islands that make up the city.

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Like Berlin we mainly used our feet to get around, occasionally catching local trains when we got tired or when it poured with rain – and pour it did…

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I particularly enjoyed Gamla Stan, the old town, and visited it twice, both times in the rain. Rain on cobbles down a narrow alley is one of my favourite things to photograph and one of the many things that Europe has to offer that New Zealand doesn’t. Is that a good reason to live over here? I think so.

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We also visited the modern art museum which was interesting, and at times disturbing, especially the works of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.

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I won’t spoil the surprise with this piece ‘Him’ in case anyone is visiting the gallery; but if you read this and do visit Stockholm and like your art modern and mildly disturbing then museum is a must!

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I liked Stockholm and would like to come back and explore a bit more, there is a lot to see that we didn’t have time to check out and it’s cheaper than I expected. I didn’t feel an affinity for it like I did with Berlin but I enjoyed it immensely and the people were friendly and they have that lovely smokey, streaky bacon cooked to a crisp that the English don’t do. Yes, it’s probably carcinogenic but man, it’s delicious!

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