African Safari Travel, Luxury African Safaris, Luxury Family Travel

 

Shirley, a PR consultant who has had a lifelong affair with travel, has no less than three homes – Canada, Germany and South Africa – and she travels constantly between them because she’s now married to a conductor who travels with the orchestra.

Oslo's organised!
20 January 2010

Nobel peace prize centre Opera House Viking ship Konsert Hall National Theatre Vigeland Park

Organised comes top of mind when one thinks of Oslo – the numbered tickets at jewellery and sports shops so you get helped in order, even if you have a simple query like … do you have? Or the flytoget trains (no, not fly to get somewhere but airport-to-central railway station (toget) high speed trains). Or the city bikes that residents can rent for three hours at a time for 80 NOK (14 USD/ R104 ZAR). Tourists will pay the same for one day but since the city is relatively flat and a taxi ride can cost nearly double for one short trip, it’s a serious option. Unless it rains. Of course you can just walk around the town and you’ll see most of what you need to see … and if you are using efficient public transport buy tickets before you board the bus – it’s 30 per cent more once on board. Cheaper still are day tickets or four tickets at a time, available at machines and at many shops. Enchanting is another word that comes to mind … and that’s not only because of Viking lore and trolls. Oslo is beautiful, poised along a fjord, containable, has good though expensive transport, a thoroughly modern royal family, a striking history from Viking marauders to 19th century Polar heroes, playwright Ibsen, composer Grieg and painter Edvard Munch at the very least, and everyone speaks English. This means you don’t have to learn the extra three letters in the alphabet -å æ and ø -, the way to say them and when a t, d, g or other letters are enunciated, or not. With time, learning the language would be fun, and superficially with a little knowledge of a Germanic language you can read many of the signs. Let’s start with royalty. The current family came from Denmark in the early 1900s (King Haakon, formerly Prince Carl) and England (Queen Maud, daughter of King Edward V11) with their toddler son Alexander Edward Christian Frederick, who became King Olav V in 1957. His son, today’s king, Harald, is the only Norwegian-born monarch of recent times, and Harald and his siblings all married commoners. Perhaps this is what makes the family so accessible? Or may have given them an identity crisis as they country was passed from Denmark to Sweden? Even the name Oslo is old and new – in between it was Christiania (17th century) and Kristiania (19th century) and Oslo again (20th century). There could be a number of other reasons for their modernity. The crown princess had a history of single motherhood and partying before she married, which sort of makes her one of ‘us’; they live in a palace almost in the centre of town set in a park open to everyone and no-one gawks. There doesn’t seem to be an inner private courtyard and the gardens at the back are barely concealed from passers-by so, unless they escape to their Arctic hideway or some other summer home, they probably buy a disposable portable “grill box” (charcoal in a thick tinfoil base with a grid) and braai their sausages along with the rest of Oslo in the Vigeland Park. Or any of the many other parks in this wonderfully green city, Central to any visit must be the Vigeland Sculpture Park, home to more than 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland and crowned by the 18 m monolith which represents humanity … for some it represents a sort of unity as people progress from birth to salvation, for others it is simply man’s inhumanity to man as the figures tread one on the other to reach the top. The city has some rather quaint traditions – grass growing on rooftops to insulate may be effective but looks rather odd; the carillon in the City Hall plays Grieg sometimes. This 1950s City Hall, housing bright murals inside, is really ugly to some and certainly out of character with the medieval Akershus castle and buildings (including the Nobel Peace Centre) along the neighbouring Aker Brygge bars and shopping pier. On the other hand, it is affectionately known (to others) as ‘Brown cheese’ after a local and loved goat’s milk cheese. If this is not to your taste, there are many other traditionally gorgeous buildings – the National Theatre, the Parliament, the old city hall, the university buildings. Take a trip around the islands and a tram ride up to Frognerseteren just to see the view – and drink the hot chocolate if autumn or winter are upon you – and pass the famed Holmenkollen ski-jump now undergoing upgrading for the 2011 ski championships. Don’t skimp on the museums – with some 50 in the city along with several art galleries, you’ll find something you like and top of the list has to be the Viking ship museum, where the Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune stand proud, resurrected from a thousand-year long burial not that long ago. Board the polar ship Fram and see how Amundsen, other explorers and their dogs lived for years as they went from one pole to the other; go with Heyerdahl across the Pacific on the Kon-Tiki and see copies of what he found on Easter Island and then Ra ll or ramble around the Cultural or folk museum through Norwegian building styles and traditions. Ibsen, who eschewed Norway for Italy and Germany for much of his life, spent his last 11 years in the city where a museum has been opened in his flat, close to the palace. Munch has his own museum but it was closed when I was there due to a change in exhibitions, but the National Museum has several Munch paintings, including his Madonna and the quite violent The Scream. Fortunately, Munch painted several of these, and it was one of those stolen from the Munch Museum in 2004 that made the Stenersen museum take its Munch paintings down. The National Gallery also has a great collection including Picasso and Van Gogh. The Konserthus or concert hall is home to the exceptionally good Oslo Philharmonic where the Russian maestro Vassily Sinaisky had the 100 strong musicians eating out of his hand in the huge Strauss Ein Heldenleben we were privileged to hear. The spanking new elegant Den Norske Opera and Ballet house on the water was opened a few years ago in the oldest part of town now undergoing gentrification. Poppea was the only opera at the time and worth seeing if only to sit in the magical second theatre and marvel at the acoustic. Even if opera is not your bag, the opera house is worth walking around – maybe even ski-ing off it in winter! Food may be expensive but the quality is good; the cost of wine takes your breath away and even a beer can cost more than 10 dollars or R70 something. Restaurants were pretty full and not for nothing did the recession almost pass the country by – recently ranked the country with the highest quality of life according to the annual Human Development Index unveiled in Bangkok (in October) by the United Nations Development Program, Norway and its people are doing well and because it is a state rich in oil at the moment, growing old there could be a pleasure.

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