Category: Europe

Lisbon

Lisbon, Portugal,
October 2025.

Yay, a new country! It’s the second time in a little over year that I’ve visited a country I’ve not been to before. Norway last year and now Portugal. New countries haven’t happened much in quite some time, so two in a short period is quite some thin, and I’ve long wanted to go to Portugal. This is the perfect time of year to visit too; summer is done and the temperature is a mere 28 degrees, significantly more than the single digit days we had in Oslo. We flew TAP Portugal direct from Oslo arriving in Lisbon late in the evening, but time enough for a glass of wine in the street bar outside of our hotel.

Lisbon is a fabulous city to walk around, though I imagine many would dispute that as it is hilly, but I like hills and I like cobbled streets and old buildings, and central Lisbon has those things in abundance. We had some vague plans for things to do here, and there certainly is a lot to do, but we spent a lot of time wandering about so barely touched the to-do list. We will just have to come back.

We were blessed with weather, depending on your position on temperature it was either just right or too hot; for me it was something between the too, and we had sun for most of our visit. Admittedly, we had one quite wet morning where walking was not so practical, but there is also great food and delicious (cheap) red wine, so all was not lost.

There was a tragic incident in Lisbon in September of this year when a cable pulling one of the many famous funicular’s that ride up and down the hills snapped causing the funicular to crash, sadly taking 17 lives. All the funiculars are closed while the investigation continues. This also impacted the famous Santa Justa Lift which opened in 1902, at least the lift is still posing for photographs.

We had four nights, two on our own and two with friends who joined us from London. The same friends we travelled with last year. This sort of explains the odd choice of a joint Norway and Lisbon holiday, I mean you can’t really get two places further apart in Europe. We’d agreed to a Lisbon city break with Deborah and John after our Berlin/Stockholm/Oslo trip last year, but then the Patti Smith concert in Oslo came up so we decided to combine the two trips.

I took a lot of photos;

Twisty, steep and cobbly streets, with slight decaying and mildly decrepit buildings. I mean, there is very little that is more perfect!

We visited LX Factory on the rainy day, catching an Uber there as Eleanor had rolled an ankle and was taking walking a little easy, which fortunately did the trick. There is plenty of street art on the buildings in this little gallery/hipster shopping area in old industrial complex. There was also an amazing book and jazz specialist record shop which I poked my nose into but avoided getting in too deap.

We also visited Carmo Archaeological Museum, which is housed in the ruins of abbey and church that was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake that levelled large parts of Lisbon. It’s fantastic!

On our final evening, we planned to take the famous number 28 tram on its loop around the outer central city, but the route was disrupted with road works and there was a massive queue, so we took the number 12 for a few stops instead. It was still a great trip. We then walked up more cobbly, steep and narrow streets to the local fish restaurant Garum; which was frankly amazing.

I can’t wait to return and explore more!

Oslo

Norway
October 2025.

This whole mad Bergen, Oslo and Lisbon trip (I mean who does Norway and Portugal in the same trip with nothing in between) came about because Eleanor and I have talked about going to a concert in a different country for quite some time. I saw Patti Smith was touring the 50th anniversary of her classic debut LP “Horses”, and playing in Oslo, and decided that now was the time.

So here we are in Oslo, arriving mid-afternoon yesterday. We’re staying in a nice downtown hotel, not far from the Munch Museum; which we visited the last time we came. The hotel is nice, but the breakfast was OMG good.

It’s cold and sunny and a good day to be walking 40 minutes up the Akerselva River from where it ends in the harbour near our hotel to Grunerlokka and the Mathallen food hall. We ate in the food hall last time we were in Oslo. It’s a bit like London’s Shoreditch 10 years ago, but all squashed into one small block; loads of graffiti and bars and cafes.

What we seemed to have missed last time was Nedre Foss. A small, but quite powerful waterfall just behind the back of the food hall. It was a lovely bonus to a nice riverside walk.

It was late morning when we left the hotel and we had intended on lunching though had arrived far too early to eat, especially after a large breakfast in the hotel. The walk was shorter than I had planned and though we carried on past the waterfall it seemed that being hungry again would be quite a way off.

The river is a similar size to central London’s Regents Canal, though fast running and seemingly cleaner. There are more trees and grass on the riverbank than the canal, but it was equally popular with walkers and runners.

That night we went to the Patti Smith concert that brought us here in the first place. The concert was great, though too packed for my liking, Patti was in fine voice and the band was fantastic. I’ve not seen her perform before.

The following day we spent some time in the National Museum of Oslo, which we also thoroughly enjoyed, though it’s very modern art gallery rather than national museum. The building itself is a fine piece of modern art, and it had a version of Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’, without the crowds of the Munch Museum. 

Yesterday we late-lunched in this fabulous vegan café in one of the inner city residential areas.  The food was very nice and we ended up talking to the owner about life in Oslo, he’d lived in the UK in the past so had some interesting perspectives, in a good way. One thing he said stuck with me ‘Norway is a trust based country’, admittedly we were mainly talking about tax, but the concept was on display in the basement of the museum. The cloakroom was just out in the open and there are dozens of coats just hanging there unguarded. I like it.

Oslo is a nice city to wander about, though very crowded on a sunny late autumn day. I found a bit of local brutalist architecture. It’s not the most exciting piece I will admit, but this holiday is not about brutalist buildings!

Soon enough it was time to head out to Oslo airport for a late afternoon flight to Lisbon. As we did last time, we enjoyed Oslo.

The Bergen to Oslo train

Norway,
October 2025.
We’d read about this train journey numerous times over the past couple of years, and it’s supposedly one of the most scenic train journeys in Europe, or the world, depending on the reach of whoever published the article. It would be wrong of me to disagree; it was indeed very scenic. Sublimely so in fact.

My only quibble is that we should have done Oslo to Bergen rather than Bergen to Oslo. Future articles should specifically note that this would be the most dramatic way to do the trip, if scenic drama is your thing, which it very much is for me, but seemingly not for most of our carriage mates.
It’s seven hours from Bergen on Norway’s west coast to Oslo on the east and the train crosses the mountainous spine of this very empty country. Just before we left London, I’d foolishly conducted some online ‘research’ into the journey, mainly via Reddit threads, and among the positive comments there were many less flattering; primarily about the lack of a food car, uncomfortable seats and no phone charging points and the lateness, my God, the lateness, so many complaints. I’d not shared these with Eleanor as I didn’t want her to think that I’d made a mistake booking this. Seven hours is a long time if the conditions are sub-optimal (my new favourite word at work). I’m glad I didn’t as these were all none of those things were true.
The train left Bergen station on time at 8:08, surprisingly as the inbound journey was late, it was also full which I didn’t expect as it’s off season and it’s easier and cheaper to fly that sort of distance. I guess there are still plenty of tourists about; not that you would have known as pretty much everyone else in our carriage of about 30 spent most the journey sleeping, playing games on their phones, reading books, and my personal favourite; knitting. Admittedly the knitters were obviously from Bergen and have probably done this journey a few times. Still, I would have looked out the window; which I did, for most of the journey.

We were blessed with a nice day, it was cold but sunny when we left Bergen, via a long tunnel which was a bit deflating as I expected amazing views. I didn’t have to wait too long before we were winding our way up through the lower reaches of fjord-side mountains, we passed through so many short tunnels it was hard to take pictures of the glorious, rugged country out of the train window. Autumn was such a good choice for this journey, the trees were turning red and gold and the mountain tops had a fine dusting of snow, we really did have it all to see.

90 minus(ish) after leaving Bergen the train was slowly passing through the treeline, past frosty farms, fast flowing streams and massive rocky mist draped bluffs with water pouring off the top. It was all very Norwegian. This was what I was here to see.

Soon enough we were in ski-field country, barren other than scattered ski lodges, and a convenient train station (next time), the mountains were spectacular, and I don’t really have the words to describe the mountain top lakes…

It was almost an anti-climax as we descended down the spine into central southern Norway. We passed numerous stunning lakes, all surrounded by autumn trees, it was just so beautiful, and it was like this for hours, only changing to ‘just’ lovely countryside as we approached the towns that fringe Oslo.

We arrived on time; all the keyboard naysayers were proven wrong.


It was a stunning journey, the drama is all at the start, not that the second half was a let-down at all, but WHEN we do this again; stopping in the mountains for a night on the way, I would want to do it in reverse. Oslo to Bergen and save the best bits to the end. Delayed gratification and all that.

Bergen, Norway

Bergen, Norway
October 2025.

This was our first visit to Bergen, and hopefully it will not be our last. There are so many places on my ‘must visit’ list it seems such a shame to add repeats, but we loved the one full day we spent in Bergen and I’m keen to repeat the train journey that comes next, though in reverse, so we end rather than start in this nice little city.

We arrived late last night, and even though our journey from plane door to the terminal exit was a remarkable ten minutes; made even more impressive as neither of us have EU passports, it was still midnight when we arrived in the central city hotel we’d booked.

Bergen is a small, narrow city, surrounded by large hills on three sides and a fjord on the fourth. It was sunny when we there, which made it all rather beautiful, especially with the autumnal trees on the hills. The old town’s old buildings make it all very ‘cute’. If a city could ever be cute then Bergen is it.

We started our day late and mostly missed the hotel breakfast, which ended remarkably early, don’t stay in business hotels if you want a lie in was the learned lesson. After a rushed half breakfast we went for a mostly aimless walk around the town, making sure we took in the famous port-side Bryggen and its lovely 18th century wooden buildings; old port buildings and homes, now shops and galleries and, as we discovered, at least one very good coffee shop.

After coffee we caught the funicular up the hill to Floyen, we bought a one-way ticket with a plan to walk back down again, one of the best decisions we made on the holiday; and we made some good decisions. The view from the top, over the city and out into the fjord was pretty spectacular. There are also goats and these were very popular with the tourists, I will say that this included me.

However, the walk back down the meandering footpath was stunning; the trees and the light and the wild range of green, it was a lot to take in, and it was beautiful and if the 3km walk had been twice as long it still would been too short. I took a lot of photos, only some captured just how lovely the walk was.

We were snackish by the time we got down the hill and meandered through some steep and narrow cobbled streets, past the old wooden housesat the edge of town. This would have been the highlight if not for the forest walk. I love steep cobbled streets.

Obligatory David Bowie street art

After walking past a few uninspiring looking, extremely touristy, eating establishments I took to the internet and found a small café/bar – Jest, not too far from where we were standing and feeling peckish. Jest was fab. We had a nice lunch, the vibe was friendly, the music was just up our 80s indie alley, and the cocktails we had were superb. Lunch time cocktails are a good thing.

After lunch we walked around the city for another hour, telling ourselves we must come back.

Bergen is great!

Berlin wandering

Berlin – Friday 03 – Tuesday 08 October 2024

We liked the hotel we stayed in back in June, and equally important, we also liked its location on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz so agreed that as familiarity is a good thing we should stay there again. Knowing where we going allowed a swift trip from the airport, through checking in to the hotel and getting out for a mid-afternoon walk around the neighbourhood.

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We are staying in the Mitte district, which is sort of east/north east of the centre, a bit like where we live in London. There is a bit of everything nearby; shops, bars and a variety of cafes and restaurants; there is also the Babylon Cinema with its lovely neon sign. We’ve been watching Babylon Berlin on the telly and will have to go back and finish it soon.

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On Saturday morning, we caught an S-Bahn (Stadtschnellbahn or city rapid railway), train to the Olympic Stadium; home of the 1936 Olympics, and over the railway line from the Courbusierhaus block from my last post. Disappointingly, the stadium grounds were fenced off and we couldn’t get in, though I think you can visit on an organised tour if you’re inclined to. We had a full day ahead so carried on.

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As well as being a historic Olympic stadium, and the one where African American athlete Jesse Owens managed the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to the Nazis by winning four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics and showing the world that their Aryan superiority message was baseless, the stadium is the home ground for the Herta Berlin football club. There were stickers on every lamppost between the station and the stadium advertising the fact.

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I could be 180 degrees wrong but my reading of the current situation in Germany is that the country is politically on the edge. With Angela Merkel retired, replaced with the less dynamic Olaf Scholz, the influence of Germany in Europe is on the wane and the right wing are on the march, particularly in the east of the country, where Berlin sits. In recent months the AfB, the new right wing party, has made serious political gains, winning seats and entire states. Berlin, again feels like a small liberal island in a much less liberal world. While Berlin appears to me as a tourist to not be shy in acknowledging the horrors in its past I get the feeling if we travelled not too far from the city borders we would see a much different country.

From the Olympic Stadium we jumped back on a train and continued our journey to the western suburb of Spandau. We were interested in coming here for the massive Ikea as it is an old town, with cobbled streets and a huge old fort on the side of a lake. It sounded pretty idyllic for a sunny Saturday lunch and very much the sort of thing we like to do. The theory was sound, the reality less so.

To be fair the streets were cobbled and there was a big old fort. The cobbled streets were big and wide, not the narrow cobbles I like, and it was a bit run down and a bit depressed and not in that ‘nice’ way some areas can pull off.  I’m guessing it’s one of the places that doesn’t get a lot of tourists or investment and the young people aren’t hanging round hip cafes, mainly because there aren’t any. I’m not one to cast aspersions  (OK, I am) but it felt like one of those places where the AfB would get a unhealthily large number of votes.

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We didn’t stop for lunch but carried on to the fort, which unhelpfully had a juggling and acrobatic festival and it was looking like it was of full of family groups and people dressed in cosplay outfits. I’d hoped to walk around outside the outer wall, but the way was fenced off so we left and caught the train to Zoo Station, in the city centre. 

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We wandered around a bit more, ate, and visited the famous KadeWe department store and took their amazing criss-crossing escalators up to the 7th floor where we found a champagne bar and decided it would be rude to not have a glass. It was very nice.

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We followed this with a visit to the magnificent spire which is all that is left of the 19 century Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, heavily damaged during the devastating allied bombing of Berlin in the dying months of the Second World War. The ceiling was magnificent, as was the blue glass interior of the modernist church built after the war.

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We wanted to visit some of the city’s markets and had put Sunday aside to try and get to three of them, we also discovered a Saturday night market on the rooftop of the Gesundbrunnen Centre, a shopping mall a couple of train stops away from the hotel. We didn’t buy anything but it was fun, very busy with mostly young Berliners and tourists, there was a bar and a DJ, a nice atmosphere and a not unspectacular, but rather apocalyptic sunset. A marker laid down for the Sunday’s adventures.

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We visited three markets, two were a few minutes apart and a thirty minute walk from the hotel; as I said previously there is a lot happening around us. I enjoyed the first and second markets, both had a lot of interesting stuff, vintage, junk, a few records and some decent clothes. Like the night market they both had a nice feel to them and weren’t too crowded and we also didn’t buy anything.

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The third was a train ride away and was definitely more of a flea market, it was busy and I got a bit bored as there was nothing really that interested me. And yes it is all about me. It was a great morning out, doing something different in a different city is what travelling is all about for me.

The first two markets were in the old ‘East’ and close to the Berlin Wall memorial spot just off Bernauer Strasse which we visited in June, right by the station we used to get to the third market. The Wall still evokes quite strong feelings in me, it went up a year before I was born and I saw it in 1987, two years before it came down. It has a presence in my life which I can’t fully articulate. Looking at the less glamorous of photos from the 60s, both here in Berlin as well as in London and elsewhere, things really were in a bad way for so many people, especially in cities.

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Here is a photo from when I was here in 1987, looking over from the west. I’m not sure where this photo was taken, but that strip of land still exists in may parts of Berlin, maybe with a pre-Wall road returned.

Oct 1987 The Wall and East Berlin

On Monday we went to a new photography gallery and walked around a really interesting exhibition of photos of hip-hop artists, primarily US based, but there was a section on contemporary German hip-hop of which I knew nothing about. It was challenging looking at photos of inner-city New York and how terrible conditions were in the 70s and 80s, things didn’t look a lot better than the bombed out ruins of 1960s Berlin. We have treated and continue, in some places, to treat our less well off urban areas so poorly. I suspect given recent news, and more of that at the end, that this won’t change much.

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The gallery is in a very cool building, covered in layers of graffiti; apparently, it used to be full of small bars and venues, and I would loved to have visited and perhaps gone to a gig there. The bar made a very nice espresso martini pick me up as well, and the modernist loo was superb!

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It was our last day in this most favourite of cities so wandered the streets a bit more, stopping for a monstrous and delicious kebab and large bottle of beer at a street vendor before burping our way back to the hotel and preparing ourselves mentally for going home in the morning.

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All too soon the holiday was over and the ‘facing reality’ blues hit as we sat in Berlin airport over a pre-flight relaxer, aka a gin and tonic, and for me; Berlin’s supposed favourite food, curry wurst.

Back to reality and work tomorrow. We’re going to have to come back again and next time we will stay somewhere different and experience a different area. I loved the area we stayed in, but familiarity can breed contempt and I would hate to tarnish the good memories we’ve had in this city so far.

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I’ll end this post with news that hadn’t come out three days ago when I started writing, that the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called a snap election for early in 2025. With the terrible news yesterday that the US elected the orange racist, misogynist, homo/trans-phobe as president a drift to the populist right in Germany (and the rest of the world) seems almost inevitable. The world is in a much worse place than it was when I started writing and I’m glad there is red wine.

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A bit of Berlin concrete

Berlin 03 – 08 October 2024

As longer-term followers will have observed, in the last few years, particularly during and post-Covid, the blog took a massive swerve from photographs of landscapes and trees to photographs of cityscapes. I’m not sure if that change of focus was a reaction to the pandemic or how it affected me and my view of the world. I don’t think I’ve become more insular; and this isn’t the sort of place for any kind of diagnosis, self or otherwise. However, it’s still true; trees and nature walking have largely disappeared from my feed and architecture and urban walking has replaced it; especially the more ‘brutal’ type of modernist building that I’ve sort of fallen in love with. So, maybe after saying all that it’s possible I have become more insular and my world view has reduced at the same time as expanding. I must stop the self-diagnosis. I’m fine.

As our last visit to Berlin was with friends and it had a packed schedule there was no opportunity for me to disappear for a few hours and look at some raw concrete, or beton brut as the French would have it. When we planned this trip I factored in a visit to a classic Le Corbusier building on the way to Spandau on the Saturday, as well as a few hours of solo travel to see a couple of other ‘brutalist’ buildings. There will be more on the Spandau visit in the next post; but spoiler alert – it wasn’t worth it…

Unité d’Habitation of Berlin aka Corbusierhaus

Completed in 1957 it was the third building in Le Corbusier’s Habitation ‘series’. The first and best known block is in Marseilles, France. The phrase ‘beton brut’ has been attributed to Le Corb, and it has morphed in its English translation to Brutalism. It describes buildings largely made of unfinished concrete, rather than the harsh, ‘brutal’, often militaristic design generally think of when people think of brutalism. Some buildings obviously conform to that harshness, but the Corbusierhaus does not, it is just a 50s concrete apartment block outside the city centre with some very colourful panelling. It is lovely and is a tourist attraction in its own right. The only quibble I had was half the front was covered over by scaffold and cloth; oh well. If I come back it will be mid-winter when all those interfering trees are shorn of their leaves.

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Bierpinsel

We had put Monday morning aside as ‘do our own thing’ time as I wanted to get out and look at buildings and while Eleanor tolerates this with a smile it seemed unfair to schelp about looking for buildings on holiday. Inconveniently the best ones are out of town and in no way where they close to each other. There was a small wrinkle in my original plan as one of the train lines was closed for engineering works. I made some rapid plan changes and set off to visit the ‘Café Exil’ record cover; The Steglitz Tower Restaurant, AKA the Bierpinsel (Beer Brush). And wow, what a building it is! It is as mad and as glorious as I hoped it would be. Sadly it’s been closed since 2007, but achieved listed status in 2017 and more recent owners have plans to renovate the building. I certainly hope they do. It is properly fantastic and I would love to see it back in garish Café Exil red. I had a go at emulating the record cover, with limited success. I loved it…

Cafe exil Cover

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Wilhelmstrasse 150

With my plans now changed, I caught another couple of trains to WilhelmStrasse 150. A nice looking apartment block with some magnificent curving concrete painted a fetching pink. This has not been on any record cover that has passed my way.

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Band of the Covenant Buildings

With less time in the day due to some poor public transport choices (read this as me missing stations as I was reading my book on the train) and then misunderstanding some messaging about closed lines on the Berlin transport network I headed back towards Alexanderplatz and our hotel to meet up with Eleanor for some afternoon roaming. We had a loose plan that involved walking to a record shop, a photography gallery and whatever else took our fancy, as long as it ended up in a cocktail bar come late afternoon. It was our last day in the city and there is still so much to see, just around the inner north east were we are staying.

When we visited Berlin in June one of the places I was keen to visit was the concrete ‘circle building’ I’d seen photos of on Instagram. I’d spotted it from the train heading west towards the fantastic Teufelsberg on the woody outskirts of the city so had a pretty good idea where it was located. It was only when we ventured into the city centre, near to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag Building, that I nailed down its exact location; right behind the ‘no entry’ tape blocking off a bit of the city sacrificed to the pending European Championship football competition. Oh well, it was something to save for next time; i.e. this time.

And this time there were no restrictive lines of tape or armed coppers making sure no one crossed those lines of tape. In fact, for a series of government buildings there was very little visible security. As a New Zealander and a Brit I still find armed police unnerving, and I work in Whitehall where all the police carry guns, not seeing them here in this almost sterile, yet serene location, was verging on a relief.

I think this small block of buildings on either side of the River Spree is utterly beautiful and not because of the concrete, the design is just so fresh and free and walking around looking at them genuinely made me happy. I think the complex is called ‘Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus’ and it is made up of an art gallery and the government library, among other probably less public parts of the German government. Construction was mostly completed in 2003 so these are not the post-war concrete rebuilds you see in other cities.

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The ‘gun thing’, and yeah I will put it out there. I fucking hate guns, and everything they represent and really don’t understand this fascination so many have with them. I understand the US is just obsessed with arming everyone, seemingly to keep those who make weapons and all the bollocks that goes with that in the lifestyle they have become accustomed to, but why do the rest of us have to support that? Why do we have to see guns on our streets?

This was brought into stark relief on the opposite side of the river to the buildings above. There are four white memorial crosses wired to a low fence in remembrance of four, mostly young people, who were shot and killed by East German guards as they tried to flee to West Germany, the youngest was 18 and she was shot in 1984. Like the memorial plaques outside of the houses were Jews lived pre World War Two which I mentioned in the previous post, I didn’t take photos of these poignant reminders of humanities capability to be utterly evil.

I can’t possibly imagine what it was like for the Jewish and Roma people, the LGBTQ, disabled and other communities before and during WW2 and for those East Germans who wanted to go west to be so savagely betrayed, persecuted and murdered by their own countrymen. How fucked up was that? And the saddest thing of all is that for many around the world that hasn’t changed.

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!

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’…