Category: Blog

Berlin

Berlin, Friday 03 to Tuesday 08 October 2024

Needless to say, but I will anyway, that I’m really excited by being back in Berlin, even if it’s significantly cooler and a bit damper than when we were here in June. I loved the short few June days we spent here and returned home with quite a list of other things to see and do, and a plan to come back again. I suspect that I’ll have a new list when we go home again on Tuesday.

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Last time we visited I’d been sound tracking the days before with the ‘Cafe Exil’ album, a compilation of tunes that the compilers imagined David Bowie and Iggy Pop listened to when they lived in Berlin in the mid-1970s. I bought the LP when I returned to London and it’s still regularly on the turntable. Little of the music on that record is music I would’ve listened to in the past, but am much more willing to try new sounds now.

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Before this trip I’ve been listening to a couple of dance music compilations from a Berlin based label and will see how that goes while we’re here. I can’t see us going to a club mind, even if Berlin is one of Europe’s clubbing centres. There will more on ‘Café Exil’ in a coming post.

As I commented in June, 20th Century history looms large over the city. While the cold war and the Wall are the most prevalent; especially in the parts of the city we visited, the Second World War and the events leading up to those terrible six years are not written out of the city’s history either. This was particularly notable in the small brass plates on the footpath outside of houses where Jewish families lived before being brutally removed before and during the war. Over 60,000 Jews were deported from Berlin, many of those to the death camps the Nazi regime created in the east.

This is a city of dark and light, and as middle class, middle aged tourists, we really only get to experience light, and this was particularly so this weekend as it is Festival of Lights weekend; not that we knew this when we were planning the trip. We visited three different outdoor ‘venues’ over the weekend, a different one each night. It was hugely popular, with loads of families out enjoying the light shows, and unlike the UK, the security was all very low key and each location was a very pleasurable experience, the highlight being Brandenburg Gate. I was surprised, pleasantly so, at how many of the light shows included works by street artists I was familiar with; like Thierry Noir on the side of the Cathedral and Otto Schade at Potsdamer Platz.

Museum Island

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Potsdamer Platz

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Brandenburg Gate

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We did a lot of walking over the four days, averaging about 17kms a day, just meandering around with some sort of vague sense of purpose. Berlin is a very walkable city, though it has a very good public transport system which we made good use of as well. Some of the U-Bahn (underground) stations are visual treats, and I planned to take photos of them as we travelled, though really only managed to properly photograph one of them; Schloss Strasse, where the tiles were so colourful. 

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I snapped a couple of images at others, though most of the stations and platforms were very busy; and I’m a bit shy when it comes to public space photography. Something I still find hard to believe after doing this for 20 years.

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That is enough for today,  over the next few posts I will share more from those very enjoyable four days. And yes, I’m thinking about the next visit!

Temple(s) of Love – brutalist Leeds

Saturday 14 September 2024 – Leeds

This was my first Brutal Day Out group trip outside of London and I‘d been looking forward to it for weeks. The group has made a few visits to other cities and towns but I’ve always been busy with other things and not been able to attend. With group members from across the UK it’s important to share the cost of transport and not be so London focused, plus there’s a lot to see outside of the capital and it’s a good reason to visit places I would otherwise have no need to go to.

Also… I’ve wanted to visit Leeds and this was a very good reason to do so. It’s the spiritual home of 80s ‘goth’. The mid to late 80s saw Leeds deliver some fantastic goth bands like The Rose of Avalanche, March Violets, Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry and the kings of the genre – The Sisters of Mercy.

Heartland is an early (and favourite) song from Sisters of Mercy, the B side of the magnificent ‘Temple of Love’ 12 inch single and it popped up on my playlist as the train passed through England’s (semi) rural heartland. I gratefully accepted this as a sign that it was going to be a good day. The weather was certainly playing its part.

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Ten of us met outside Leeds station, five made it up from London, returning the favour to those who frequently travel down from Yorkshire. I’d met most of the group before and it was, as always, good to catch up with this likeable bunch.

Our first stop was Bank House, this and the next building I photographed are brutalist in design, but both had been clad in something other than lovely grey concrete, textured or not, so didn’t particularly wow me. I do like things raw.

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The Ex-Yorkshire Bank Building, vacant and soon to be demolished so more student flats can be built. It’s an Ok building, I hate the glossy cladding, but like the design and the lovely harsh angles. It’s a shame it has to be knocked down for more flats. I mean, the centre of Leeds is hardly attractive, with a weird hodge-podge of building styles from the last three of four centuries. Design planning doesn’t seem to have been a priority for the council, not that there is any unusual in that.

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I love a good car park and Woodhouse Lane on second look is very much a good one. It was all a bit ‘meh’ from the main road, but once round the side and discovering the ramp down from the upper parking decks it was much more exciting. 

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I (we) loved the overhanging beams that appeared to have no purpose other than being in some way decorative. One of the group, Kasia, snapped a great picture of me taking the photo below. I seemed to have spent a lot of the day getting in the way of others photos. I guess it was my turn.

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Kasia, has been to India and Berlin and gave me some interesting tips on brutalist and modernist buildings; she is extremely well travelled and I had a little travel envy. I also spoke to Britta about Berlin and she had some good ideas too. They both knew the LP Café Exil, which I listened to a lot leading up to and when we were in Berlin in July. The bonkers brutalist building on the sleeve still stands in Berlin and is on my list of places to visit when we return in a couple of weeks, something I’m looking forward to immensely. A second trip to India is planned for April 2025 and I’m well into thinking about that trip already, in fact it dominates the late night non-sleeping hours at the moment.

The School of Engineering building and a couple of brutalist day outers

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I stupidly didn’t note the name of this completely mad, but interesting stairwell to a rather bland student accommodation block. We had no idea what the top bit is for.

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Then we were onto the main campus of the University of Leeds and a couple of very cool buildings, starting with the huge and imposing Worsley Building.

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I love this reflection from the roadside turning mirror, also capturing a couple of fellow concrete geeks.

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Britta, who was the main organiser and guide for this walk, had clearly saved the best to last, and man was it good. At first glance the Roger Stevens Building looks like it’s more modern than its 60s construction, maybe it’s the paint, maybe it’s the ‘piping’ up the side, either or it looks so futuristic, but under that paint it’s just lovely 60s solid concrete.

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I was a little unexcited when it first came into view, and I wandered away from the group to have a look round the side and found the long and wide staircase, with these fantastic curved cut-outs, one side allowing light to pass across the stairs and through the windows on the other, I loved them. They were the architectural highlight of the day.

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The rest of the building is equally interesting. I’m a huge fan of elevated walkways, and they’re one of the reasons I love London’s Barbican. Designing places specifically for humans rather than vehicles was such a key component of mid-century future design thinking in my view, countering the argument that these concrete monoliths were sterile and void of humanity. Anyway, this is a lovely building and together with Worsley make for a very interesting part of the university campus.

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The walk drew to a close with that most dramatic of buildings so some of us went off for a couple of pints before heading back to the station and, for me, the return to London. It was a good day.

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The Avebury Stones

Sunday 21 July 2024 – Avebury

I’ve a loose interest in standing stones and the other ancient sites that are scattered all over the UK. The standing stones are easier to be fascinated in than say, Iron Age forts, as there is actually something to see, and in the case of Avebury, and unlike Stonehenge, something you can touch as well.

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As I mentioned in the Stonehenge post I love it that even with all our modern smarts we don’t fully understand what the stones were for and why they are where they are. Just this week it was revealed that the huge alter stone in Stonehenge actually came from 500 miles away in the north east of Scotland (I will walk 500 miles etc, etc) rather than from the far closer, but still a long way, Welsh coast, as had been previously thought.

These stones have been here for 5000 years, why then are they still so mysterious? It’s that mystery that attracts me and many thousands of others to these places. When facts are missing, myths fill the gaps, and where myths exists there is room for all sorts of weird, wonderful and often magical stories. I mean, I even posted a piece of weird fiction I wrote back in June 2021 – The Barrow. While this is not set around standing stones it is set close to here, and barrows are very much a feature of this landscape. Sadly, due to the unsupportive nature of the map I was using in the rental car I didn’t make it to any of the barrows.

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Unlike Stonehenge, Avebury is free to access, though the official car park is not cheap and is definitely aimed at people like me who haven’t done a huge amount of research. There are other places to park not too far away if you know where to go.

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Firstly I should describe what a henge is, as it has nothing to do with stones. A henge is a circular or oval enclosure made of earth banks and ditches. A henge encloses a sacred space and they date back to the Neolithic period; from 4000 – 5000 years ago.

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Avebury is the largest known henge in Britain, and it cuts through the small and gentile village of the same name. I liked it. I liked it because though it’s a sacred site and one of international importance, and a key component of the local economy, there are sheep wandering around the stones. The area is treated with reverence and respect, but also practically and likely as it would have been thousands of years ago.

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As you can see from this short film made by Derek Jarman in 1971 as he walked towards the circles a large number of the stones were still lying where they had fallen over the hundreds of years since they were first erected. A programme to re-erect the stones began in 1931 when the land was bought by Alexander Keiler, the heir to the Keiler marmalade fortune.

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It is quite a special place to visit.

Glastonbury town

Saturday 20 July 2024 – Glastonbury

Glastonbury is a weird town, and yes it is a town, not just some middleclass version of a music festival. It’s an old town, a very old town, with ties back to King Arthur and the weird and magical time he lived in, and then even back further than that. It is very pre-Christian and pagan and attracts a lot of interest from local and overseas visitors who want to walk this ancient and spiritual land, and then buy the book, a t-shirt, some beads and maybe a cup.

With this in mind driving into the town is a bit disconcerting as there a lot of 60s and 70s housing estates. It’s a weird town but very typical of these large rural towns with no train connection to anywhere else. It feels isolated in so many ways. I’m not sure I liked it, though I didn’t dislike it. Not all the town was that modern, there are some very old parts and some lovely and not so lovely buildings.

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It’s very hippy and woo-woo and other than a small CO-OP supermarket all the other shops around the high street sell ‘hippy shit’ or do soul readings or some such thing. You can tell I’m a cynic, but each to their own. I’m learning to be a better person. There was an old Stik street-art work that hadn’t been vandalised which was cool.

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I’m here Wrong Speed Fest, for a small music festival of bands associated with the Wrong Speed Records label, it’s taking place in the back room of the King Arthur pub, which turned out to be a five minute walk from where I’m staying on Friday and Saturday night. I may post some photos from the gig, I certainly took enough. I’ve shared a bunch on my Instagram if you are interested.

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The show didn’t start until 1:00 pm on Saturday so I used the time to visit the highlights of the town; namely the world-famous Tor and an abbey ruin. I was up early but had to wait until 9:00 to get breakfast, though the chips were some of the best I’ve ever had and were well worth the wait.

The Tor (a high craggy hill) is about a kilometre from town and from the direction I approached it, pretty much straight up. It was quite warm and humid under the cloud but significantly cooler than yesterday, thankfully. That was brutal.

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It’s said that deep beneath Glastonbury Tor lies a cave that is the entrance into the fairy realm, I’m not 100% sure I believe that, but I’m sure some who come here do. Today I was more interested in what was on top of the hill. The 14th century tower is all the remains of the Church of St Michael which collapsed in an earthquake. The tower has a grisly past with the last abbot of Glastonbury Abbey being hung, drawn and quartered here in 1539 when Thomas Cromwell, under the orders of King Henry VIII, suppressed and destroyed all the monasteries and abbeys in England.

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The view over Somerset was lovely.

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It’s a popular spot and there were a lot of people walking up as I walked back down a much easier path.

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I’m a sucker for a ruined abbey, or a ruined anything to be fair, and Glastonbury has a very good ruined abbey; thanks to that suppression of the monasteries back in 1539.

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The abbey was founded in the 8th century and enlarged in the 10th. It was destroyed by a major fire in 1184, but subsequently rebuilt and by the 14th century was one of the richest and most powerful monasteries in England.

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Renovations after the great fire of 1184 to a grave being discovered that local people said was that of the famous King Arthur and his wife Queen Guinevere. No-one dispelled the rumour and though it has never been proven it’s a good story and one that improved the popularity of the abbey from then until now. It was getting quite busy as I left, as was the whole of Glastonbury town.

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I loved the abbey and spent a good hour wandering around and touching the old stones. Every ancient site I visit I’m in awe of the craftsmanship and skill of the people who designed and built these magnificent buildings with the most rudimentary of tools and technology.

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I’m glad I came to Glastonbury, I’ve been wanting to visit for a while, but I’m not sure if I want to come back. I didn’t find it an especially welcoming place, though as I said above I’m cynical of all the spiritual stuff that has taken over the town, so maybe my body language made people not welcoming, anyway the gig was friendly and welcoming which was the main thing and overall I had a good time.

Stonehenge

Friday 19 July 2024 – Stonehenge

Other than the odd trip to my flat before I rented it in April 2023 (Thanks to Tory Prime Minister Liz Truss fucking up the UK economy and therefore my mortgage repayments) this is the first time I’ve been away for a solo weekend since Covid. I think. If only I had blog I could look back on.

I’m on my way to Glastonbury for a music festival, but not ‘Glasto’ if you know what I mean, I couldn’t imagine anything worse. I’m here for Wrong Speed Record Fest; a small local record label that releases records by some of the noisy psychedelic rock bands that I like. I’m fairly certain I will do a post of band photos, but will see how they work out. I’ve not used the Fuji camera at a gig before.

I’ve hired a car for this trip so have taken the opportunity to stop at Stonehenge on the way. I’ve driven past it a few a times but have never stopped, though I’ve been meaning too. Entry is not cheap, but it’s one of those places you almost HAVE to see at some stage in your life.

It’s brutally hot, when I arrived at Stonehenge the temperature gauge on the almost new car I’m driving tells me it is 34 degrees. The hottest day of the year so far and I’m not really prepared for it.

It’s a good test though. I’m planning on spending a few days in India early next year on the way back to New Zealand to see family and friends. I’ve kind of forgotten how to travel, be on my own and enjoy the moment. I’m too used to being around Eleanor all the time and I really need to break that habit before I spend 10-14 days in India by myself. I don’t want to mope my way around.

Today was also a good test of walking a couple of kilometres in brutal heat, under a strong sun with almost no shade to see a world renowned ancient ruin. Something I plan to do a lot of India and exactly what I did when I travelled all those years ago. The walk to Stonehenge from the entry gate was just like many of those  I did in SE Asia, though it’s far less humid than those walks were.

The car park was almost full and there were quite a few tour buses as well, I had visions of there being thousands of people around the site, but it wasn’t really like that. Once through the gate, I’d wisely pre-booked so avoided the big day ticket queue, you can either walk or catch a free bus to the stones, which are about a kilometre away. Like many others I chose to walk rather queue for the limited number of spaces on the buses. It was a pretty dull, though very hot, walk alongside the private road the buses use. It does spread the visitors out though, which I guess is the intent.

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Visitors are separated from the stones by a few yards and a small knee high rope, this prevents people from touching and damaging the stones as well as affording everyone a decent view. It worked well; but… one idiot jumped the fence and went running towards the stones. She was stopped by a security guard and a yelling match ensued, apparently God had told her it was her right to be able to touch the stones. The security staff were unbelievers and they were still at it when I left  the site 30 minutes later.

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The stones are impressive; they have been standing for potentially 5000 years and we really don’t know exactly what they were for or symbolised. I really like that there is still some mystery to these ancient places. Mysteries leave space for myth and legend and weird stories to bloom. It is my view that these are as important as anything else in recording and understanding our history. Not everything needs to be certain.

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Once I’d circuited the stones I walked back to the café via a path through the fields and under a small grove of trees. I’d seen a small number of people using this path on the way in and it was much nicer than walking on the baking tarmac.

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Back at the café I bought myself a cold drink and took a seat in the shade to cool down before heading back on the road for the hour long drive to my final destination, Glastonbury.

It’s absolutely worth visiting Stonehenge, as I said at the start it’s a ‘must see’ if you’re visiting southern England.

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 17th 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!