Friday, June 20, 2008

A Nerdy, Wordy Post on Oslo's City Hall

There are many beautiful things to admire in Oslo, but Rob's favorite thing by far was the city hall.  While he knows this is a decidedly nerdy, civic-minded, boyscout-y thing to admit, he just can't help himself.  And, to his credit, he was skeptical when all the city guides recommended a visit.  City hall is a boring administration building where you go to fight parking tickets and register your car.  Who visits that?  

Um, Rob.

   Oslo's city hall was planned in 1931 but delayed during the Nazi occupation during WWII (Rob also visited the Norwegian Resistance Museum, which was surprisingly more compelling and informative than the Dutch Resistance Museum- when you think WWII, do you ever think of Norway?) and wasn't completed until 1950.  In some respects, the building looks like it was built in the 1950s: it's a red bricked building with two office towers and a long rectangular hall. No big deal.  But it's really so much more than that.  The two office towers are separated by the central hall, which gives the building a grand, castle-like face.  Two long, covered halls stretch out towards the street and between them a fountain cascades from under two intertwined swans. Here's a picture from wikipedia:


Note the office towers.  The only windows on the front form a long line down the front of each building.  On each tower, the ledge forms a 't' with the windows and the statue above.  While a cross could mean many things, a religious cross being the most obvious, don't they look more like swords? Anyway, that's Rob's interpretation, backed up by the art in the halls and on the building:


The outer halls are decorated with 16 beautiful wooden friezes, by Dagfin Werenskiold.  The friezes are made of pine which has been cut and glued, glazed with linseed oil, paint, and then gilded with gold and silver.  Each frieze is about 6 ft by 8ft and weighs a ton.  They weren't messing around.  Even cooler is the subject matter.  The friezes detail Norse mythology.  That's Odin above on his eight-legged horse Sleipner.  More pictures of the friezes will be in our Flickr page.  There are four pillars in front of the doorway, each emblazoned with primitive, golden symbols that look like recreations of Viking art:



And then there's the door:


Does your city hall have a front door with a dragonslayer on it?  Didn't think so.  

Once you get inside, you see the vast main hall.  This room is the largest indoor public space in Oslo, but is most famous for being the room where they hand out the Nobel Peace Prize every year.  It's surrounded on all four sides by giant, colorful murals depicting all manner of industry and city history. 


The front of the room looks out to the fjord and the room is surrounded on two floors by long halls.  The two halls upstairs each have their own four-wall murals, one depicting the life of man and one depicting the history of Norway. The final room is a formal space used for official state meetings and in which the official portraits of the monarchy hang.  It also looks out over the fjord.  

The office towers are no doubt filled with cubicles (Viking cubicles?) but overall the building really created a real sense of civic and national pride and a genuine embrace of their ancient history.  With its powerful façade and grand hall, you could totally picture a Viking bursting through the front door, looking for the right office to register his boat.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

A Nice Place to Live, But I Wouldn't Want to Visit

Last week, Rob visited Erika in Oslo, Norway, where she's been working.  Oslo is a hip and beautiful city.  It's got a great public transportation system, wonderful restaurants and museums, and the people are genuinely friendly.  So, what's with the title of the post?  Unless you live and work and Norway and get paid accordingly, it's insanely expensive.  A beer will run you 10 bucks, which actually made Rob pine for the normally heartbreaking Euro/Dollar exchange rate.  

Once you succumb to the prices (easier to do when handling monopoly money or, even better, mindlessly using the credit card), Oslo has a lot to offer.  Rob bought a city museum pass to minimize the damage and then tried to maximize its value by hitting up almost every museum in town.  On Saturday, we took a ferry across the fjord to see several museums, including the famed Viking Ship Museum:

After the museums, we walked around the island and found a nice spot on the beach to enjoy the view:  


On Sunday, we took the train up to the famous Holmenkoller ski jump and museum that overlooks the city.  Unfortunately, it rained most of the time we were there, so we didn't get to take advantage of the view.  The museum gave an interesting history of skiing, but more importantly achieved an incredible level of verisimilitude with the exhibit on elk:

Think about it.  Someone went to college, studied biology and then probably specialized in arctic wildlife, interned at some remote lab in the tundra, finally landed a job at a museum, and then thoughtfully and artfully placed each elk dropping in the precise place it was likely to fall in real life.  Amazing.  Bravo.  (Can you tell who wrote this post?)

The ski jump is really interesting, in that it looks really imposing from below, but when you get to the top and look down, you think, "Yeah, I could do that."  Okay, probably not.  Especially when you consider how surprisingly worn out you are just from climbing the stairs.  Still, on our way down, during a brief respite from the cramping of our legs and the rain, Erika took this cool picture:


Of course, when we got back into town, the weather cleared up, but what are you going to do? All kidding aside, Oslo was a great time and we'll put up some more posts and move some photos into the Flickr account this week.  

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Erika and the Art of the Side Saddle Bike Ride

Although there are more bikes than people in Amsterdam, it does sometimes happen that you end up with more people than bikes.  This usually happens after meeting for dinner and then choosing to go out for drinks.  Some folks take the tram and some bike, so moving through the city afterward becomes a slight dilemma.  If you leave your bikes, it can be a pain in the neck to come back for them.  Walking your bike along the sidewalk is a horrible, awkward, and (snob alert!) touristy thing to do.  Overpriced cabs are for suckers.  So, depending on the level of trust you have in your friends, sometimes the best thing to do is to go two to a bike, demonstrated here by our lovely model, Erika, and our friend, Paul:

The side-saddle ride took us a long time to attempt, because it looks a little scary and a little difficult, and also Rob was afraid of the responsibility of not dumping Erika on her hind parts.  In reality, it's very easy.  The bike pedaler can barely tell there's an extra person on the bike, leading Rob to constantly ask, "Are you on?"  (Also, there is a fear that he won't realize he lost his passenger blocks ago.)  The passenger has to hop after a slight running start, but that's surprisingly easy.  The trickiest part is holding your legs up for long periods of time and, of course, the hard metal bike frame isn't the most comfortable on your rear.  (Unless, of course, you're as lucky and pampered as Erika, who happened to have a pillow to sit on in this photo.  What a princess.)
  

Other than that, as long as you are sure to keep your feet and clothes out of the spokes, you'll be okay.  You can't see where you're going, so that can be a little uneasy, but as long as the pedaler announces big bumps (which hurt), sudden turns, and all stops (you have to pop off before completely stopping or you'll both fall over), you should have a safe ride. 

Of course, if you're not up for the thrill of the side-saddle, you could always spring for this method:

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Photo of the year?

From an article on msnbc.com:


Five Minutes Before Midnight in Oslo


Erika's in Oslo this week for work and she took this picture of the sky late last night.  The sun rises at about 4:30 a.m., so, after one rude awakening, she's sure to pull the curtains tight when she turns in.