Cultural autumn

Contemporary dance in a box of glass

It happens every year: after a summer with people playing around outdoors (well, except this rainy summer...), autumn comes and although people tend to withdraw to their warm houses, culture pulls them back out to refill their cultural conscience with exiting exhibitions. This year, CODA Oslo International Dance Festival pulled me out to see contemporary dance in a box of glass downtown Oslo.

Model of the Holmenkollen ski jump

One week later, Jan Walter and Giulia brought me to the architectural exhibition "Culture and risk" at DogA, and between panels with descriptions of risky architecture in the Nordic countries, a model of the new Holmenkollen ski jump appeared!

If you're in Oslo, the dance festival is off now, but the architectural exhibition is still on for another five weeks until it closes on November 17.

A summer preview

Yellow crocus

Summer is coming to Oslo, and this weekend has been a nice preview:

On Saturday I went with Hege and Thomas to a boat exhibition. Not looking for an investment (not much to invest anyway), I fell for a couple of amazing boats: first I fell in love with the red version of the classic-style Nordic Star's Sportsman (only blue exterior on the website). Then, an in my opinion most remarkably well-designed boat materialized in the Fjord 40' Open! It looks like no other Norwegian-based boat I've seen, but reminds me of exclusive, Italian vessels. A refreshingly delightful acquaintance.

Today (Sunday) started with a swim. Albeit indoors, I stumbled across an assorted set of crocuses in the Botanical Garden on my way to the pool. Afterwards, Arnljot and I had planned to drop by another trade fair named Elektrofil (Electrophile)--Arnljot to look at (or was it buy?) the new Sony Playstation 3, and I to get a closer look at Nikon D80 and D200. However, there was a long line of people waiting to enter, so instead we strolled to Aker Brygge and sat down in the sun with each our bowl of fish soup accompanied by a nice bottle of Chablis.

Yep, summer is definitely coming!

Cultural and gastronomic pleasure

Gastronomic pleasure

After the wonderful experience of snowboarding in Hemsedal a couple of weeks ago, I repeated the success last weekend.

This weekend made for a change, and on Tom's invitation today I joined him on a visit to the Astrup Fearnley museum of modern art and their exhibition of Richard Prince's paintings--maybe one of the best art exhibitions I've seen so far, with delicately humorous and somewhat controversial statements on huge canvases. Lovely!

Topping the event, we stopped by Stockflet's café for a double espresso and an exquisite piece of Valrhona chocolate. Wonderful!

Strolling Oslo on a Saturday night

Downtown Oslo has a major road that runs from the main railroad station, by the Parliament building and ends in front of the royal palace (which tourists not always notion a real palace, given its modest size...). This road is called Karl Johans gate (the Karl Johan road), and plays a major role in Oslo's nightlife.

With the forthcoming football cup final tomorrow, the street was crowded beyond recognition tonight: the bars poured music into the streets where both happy and drunk people eating kebabs made the street and surrounding areas appear as crowded as a sandy beach on a hot summer day--except tonight temperature was below zero (Celsius).

In other words, walking home from a nice evening out with dinner and drinks became a slightly interesting and amusing study of the behaviour of drunk football supporters visiting Oslo and locals, occasionally controlled by a small group of policemen.

It all made my previous sensation of being a little bit drunk vanish into thin air...

Has Paris gone Texas?

Yesterday's dinner at Paris Texas in Oslo makes me wonder if the people running the place indeed have. Whereas earlier dinners have taken place in a crowded restaurant characterised by excellent service and delicious food, yesterday was totally different.

Almost empty, the waitress lacked the joyfulness, calmness and ease of her predecessor, and although nice and tender my duck was served with red cabbage totally lacking the refinement of the bird. And although drinkable, the wine wasn't much of a recommendation for the orange sauce, which by the way barely tasted of orange.

I hope Arnljot came out better with his fillet of beef, and enjoyed this year's birthday present from me.

How big is your ecological footprint?

I stumbled across this term surfing from an article about global over-consumption. An ecological footprint is a term used by U.K. organisation Best Foot Forward to indicate an individual's consumption of natural resources. They even put together a simple calculator showing how big your ecological footprint is--given that you live in the U.K. I found the calculator inspiring, and would like to see similar ones for other countries, followed by politicians taking measures to reduce the ecological footprints of their citizens.

The headline leading me onto this track had a link to NEF (New Economics Foundation), which in turn provides links to articles in The Guardian and The Independent.

If you lived in the U.K., would you have a small or large ecological footprint?

Le Café Rustique

Having dropped off my bicycle for yet another round of repairs of the crank, I met with Trine Lise and stumbled across a nice café called La Rustique. The place goes very well with it's French name: the interior is as rustic as it suggests, the place is somewhat randomly organised, and the girl behind the counter wandered charmingly disturbed around searching for plates before she ended up improvising with napkins. However, despite all this it would be wrong of me to recommend the place, 'cause then I'd never find a free seat for myself...

No need for a swimming pool

This morning I planned to stop by the swimming pool on my way to work. But I stayed a bit too long in bed and dropped the idea--until I looked out the window and saw the street filled with water from tonight's rainfall. It then struck me that I might have to swim to work after all...

Five persons stabbed near my apartment

While I am safely located in the office, online newspapers Aftenposten, Dagbladet and VG reports that five people have been stabbed just one block away from my apartment in downtown Oslo. Apparently, the violence began as an argument in a Kurdish youth club, while the stabbing took place on the pavement outside when several persons came to a blow. The perpetrator (who according to eye witnesses was male) has not yet been caught. I hope he is...

Latenight café life

Ragna and her glass

Yesterday (as was the original name of this blog), Ragna came over for dinner, and brought her new Canon Ixus 800IS digital camera. Dinner was the most tender sirloin of pork, but the main motive for her visit was to play with her new digital camera. So we walked to a café, had some coffee, took a few pictures and walked through the concrete jungle with its tall buildings towards the seaside. However, when climbing a bridge Ragna's skirt flew up turning her into Marilyn Monroe for a second, and we decided to turn around.