The night before we flew to Berlin I went to a gallery opening for a friend’s exhibition of brutalist photos and ended up staying longer and drinking a lot more beer than I expected when I left home after my day’s work. Stupidly, I went straight to bed when I got home and subsequently had a terrible sleep. As I lay in bed I thought of a great opening paragraph for this first holiday post, but of course I remembered none of it as I started typing this on my phone on the flight across the channel, then over what I think is Belgium and across former West and East Germany to Berlin.
I’ve decided to break with twelve and a half years of posting habit and not write daily posts for the ten days we are away; travelling by train from Berlin to Stockholm to Gothenburg and finally, to Oslo. Visiting three countries and completely traversing a fourth, Denmark, while we ‘slept’ on the overnight train. I will see how it all works out over the next few days. I’ve a log of photos to review and my laptop is barely coping with the much larger image sizes from the XT2 camera; which I’m very much enjoying using. It’s slow progress.
I was both excited and pensive about this trip. Excited for all the obvious reasons, but pensive as we travelled with friends and before we left home I’d know idea how this would work. We’ve holidayed with friends on numerous occasions in the past, though this was the first time we’ve ‘travelled’ with anyone. There is a different dynamic with moving around places to that spent in a single city or town where there is room for some ‘me’ time, and I like my me time.
The trip started rather frantically, Eleanor and I had decided to use public transport, as we always do, to get to London City Airport for the flight to Berlin. In between checking that all services were running and us arriving at Leytonstone Station 10 minutes later, the entire Central Line had shut down due to signal failure. Luckily we are who we are and had left home with loads of time to spare so we decided to get the bus to Stratford where we would change to the DLR (Docklands Light Railway), as we would if we had caught the Central Line. Once on the bus and slowly under way due to heavy traffic I discovered I had left my phone at home! I jumped off at the next stop and managed to get a taxi to take me home and then on the station. Eleanor remained on the bus, sticking to the original plan and in the end I beat her to the airport. I’m happy to say we got there with plenty of time before boarding and it was the only hitch in the holiday.
Now we are back in London I can say that the holiday was a great success, there were no issues with travelling with others and the trip was mostly a complete joy and I would happily go back to Berlin, Stockholm and Oslo to see more.
This post is a quick summary of the ten days away and buys me some time to edit down a load of photos and write up my notes.
Berlin
Needless to say I totally loved Berlin (I know I love every place I visit, but this was beyond all those other loves!) We saw a lot, but barely scraped the surface of things to see and experience. A lot of the time was spent in the old ‘East’ where our lovely hotel was based and we barely had to time to visit the old ‘West’.
Berlin is a me sort of town, it has a rich and recent history, particularly the period from the rise of fascism, through the Second World War, the cold war, the tearing down of the Wall and then unification. It also has a fantastic music history and is a liberal and relaxed city. I really felt at home there and can’t wait to go back; especially to do some brutalist building photography .
We took an ‘underground history’ tour, which looked at some of the ingenious methods East Germans took to escape to the West. Photography was only allowed in a couple of places which was annoying but also good as I spent more time listening to the history and stories about some of those who did, or didn’t, escape.
The Wall features a lot in the photos I took and in the history of the city.
The Stasi (East German Secret Police) Museum. The museum is in the old Stasi headquarters. As the end of the communist East German state was becoming more and more obvious the people basically stormed the building to prevent the secret police destroying the massive number of files they had on citizens. Parts of the building are now a museum.
The amazing Teufelsberg – a favourite part of the entire trip and probably worthy of its own post.
David Bowie
I had to try a curry wurst (sausage), the supposed ‘dish of Berlin’ for lunch, and I believe it is in the rules to accompany it with a cold beer. It was very nice! We also had dinner at Cookies Cream, a fantastic Michelin starred vegan restaurant and another holiday highlight.
Stockholm
We took a 16 hour sleeper train from Berlin to Stockholm in Sweden. The train left Berlin just after 9pm and arrived in Malmo, Sweden around 7am the following day, passing through Denmark over night. We crossed ‘The Bridge’ between Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmo for those familiar with Scandi-noir TV. The sleeper carriage was right at the back of the train as far as Malmo, when further carriages were added on the end. I enjoyed standing at the back looking at the world pass rapidly by.
The Swedish, and subsequently, the Norwegian countryside is quite beautiful, with lots of water and pine forests and we pass very few large towns, it is quite rugged and a bit dark. I can see why there are some many dark stories made in this part of the country.
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. Like Berlin we mainly used our feet to get around, occasionally catching local trains when we got tired or in the case of Stockholm when it poured with rain – and pour it did…
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.
We also visited the modern art museum which was interesting, and at times disturbing, especially the works of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. I won’t spoil the surprise with this piece ‘Him’ in case anyone is visiting the gallery.
Gothenburg
Gothenburg was a town I’ve wanted to visit for a while and one I made sure was on the itinerary for this trip, but sadly/annoyingly it was my least favourite place. Maybe it was because we only had 24 hours and we stayed in a hotel right on top of the station; though the hotel was good and wasn’t the problem. I’m more used to staying in the inner suburbs rather than a city centre and being in a more relaxed environment. More on that in the Gothenburg post later.
My Gothenburg highlight was Fiskbar 17 where we went for dinner. It’s a small restaurant with only a few dishes on the menu. All four of us had the same thing, the fish of the day, which was lovely, as were the cocktails we preceded dinner with and the music that was playing the background.
As we did in every place we visited we did a lot of walking and I took a few photos, but it wasn’t particularly photographic, or at least I wasn’t feeling it. I did find a nice brutalist building, though it looks like it’s being clad in something colourful, and there was a decent fort as well.
Oslo
I enjoyed the four hour train ride from Gothenburg across the border into Norway, there was some stunning scenery out of the window, though I didn’t get many opportunities to take photos as the train got quite busy the closer it got to the final destination. The forests were suitably dark, and I would be quite interested in exploring a bit of the Nordic countryside.
I really liked to Oslo, second favourite to Berlin on this trip, and like Berlin (and Stockholm I guess) we only skimmed the surface of the city. As everyone knows it’s expensive, but with the pound having a good exchange rate against the Norwegian Kroner it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Oslo felt like a young city, a bit like Berlin and most of the people we met in hospitality were very friendly, and naturally everyone spoke very good English. It had a vibe I really liked.
We took a 90 minute tour of the fjord which was interesting, though the highlight was meeting a NZ brother and sister who we spent the entire trip talking to. That was fun.
The highlight of Oslo, and possibly the whole trip was Vigeland Sculpture Park. It has merited its own post later on. Vigeland was a Norwegian sculpture who designed the 212 pieces in the park. I would say as individual works they would be OK, but as whole, they are wonderful. The facial expressions are just so wonderfully human and beautiful. My absolute favourite sculpture is the second one, with the two old people. Just stunning.
We also visited the Munch Museum, a gallery containing thousands of the works of Norway’s most well known artist – Edvard Munch. I didn’t get that close to ‘The Scream’, his most famous work, but really enjoyed the gallery.
The weather wasn’t great in Oslo, but we did get to walk a lot and on the Sunday night we walked to one of Oslo’s hip inner suburbs, Grunerlokka and ate in a large food hall. GrunerLokka is somewhere I would like to back to; there seems to be a decent music scene in Oslo as well which I would like to check out next time.
All too soon it was time to head to the airport for the flight back to London and the end of 10 busy and fun days. I didn’t want it to end.
Where is Phil now? 
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