Dining with Munch-Englebret Cafe

To round off our brief visit to Oslo we dined at the historical Engebret Café, Oslo’s first café, now 151 years old. The meal matched the idyllic setting of the Bankplassen square. This café has attracted Norway’s most famous actors and artists for many years.

So Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen are all very different whilst all being water focused places here in the deep north. Copenhagen seems to attract a younger set, has more bikes than the others but is not as squeaky clean. Oslo and Stockholm at this time of the year are to die for.

We are now completing week one of this trip and we are a lifetime away from downtown Australia. But courtesy of the net, Randall is still into his daily fix of ABC podcasts, Business Spectator updates and emails. What more is there to enjoy?

When the sun shines on Oslo

We split up now when Yvonne decides to explore the city whilst Randall fulfills a dream to visit the Edvard Munch (1863-1944) museum. A big fan of paintings including “The Scream”, “Separation”, “Jealousy” as well as a desire to know about the man, Randall thoroughly enjoyed over 2 hours looking over the collection and left with yet more books to carry around Europe. Yvonne meanwhile, spent an inspiring time at the Nobel Peace Centre.

Enjoying slow life on Oslo

At Gotenberg we changed back from bus to train and after lunch the ladies directed us to a couple of local antique and craft places which we found to be very quiet and not that interesting.

By the time we got to Oslo it was almost 11 pm and we had had enough for the day. Oslo felt good with just a touch of a tougher edge as we walked the short distance from the train station to our Grand Hotel. We noticed that there were a few foreigners about and the crowd seemed a bit older here than Copenhagen.

In the morning Randall took off for a jog to explore central Oslo as the city got going for the day. The harbour is every bit as good as Sydney enhanced by quite a few old wooden boats with great masts. A ferry arrived to disgorge city workers who drifted into town and their offices. To Randall Oslo feels good. No security types looking for Osama Bin Laden here. No Germanic public instructions laying down the way things are done around here. It is just a beautiful relaxed city looking forward to a sunny day.

One Finger at Louisiana Art Gallery

We are particularly interested in seeing a special exhibition on future greenhouse architecture with overall themes on potential changes to cities, climate systems and materials. Very exciting themes running through the exhibition and we especially enjoyed ideas for Paris, Beijing, Madrid, Rio de Janero and Copenhagen. It all gave us both plenty to think about and to discuss with our friends over dinner. Which by the way we also enjoyed as Yvonne found out about a local Danish deli not far from our retro home. We ate outside with other locals and retired very happy chappies.

Climate Change in Copenhagen

Day 2 of Copenhagen reveals another perfect day. An early 5.30 am rise for Randall who heads out of the city to find nearby lakes to jog beside. Not that there are many other joggers but then it is Sunday morning. He manages to run for ¾ hour without a repeat of scenery before arriving back at our retro home at the Alexander Hotel. We enjoy a great breakfast before heading off to catch a local train north along the coast to the Louisiana Modern Arts gallery.

Finding somewhere to eat with locals

And so we walked past the canal and around the corner to the national playhouse where an older crowd were relaxing in their chairs along the quay drinking mainly beer bought from a nearby bar. More like our scene so we did the right thing and joined in watching the canal tour boats going by. The new opera house was a pleasant site across the river.

From there we took a local ferry “bus” along the river to the old fortress where we walked around for a while, before deciding to have an early meal here far from the madding crowd. Our friendly Danish waiter from down town Melbourne told us a few of the joys of living in Denmark (with his girl friend of course) before we took our leave and headed home. We were up with the sparrows this morning so these two boomers were slowing down rapidly as the sky started to darken around 9 pm.

Amazingly, the next day (Sunday) we found out that friends Yvonne and George had lunch at the same place and had been served by the same waiter. Quel coincidence

Wundabar Kobenhavn with tourists

The tourists are like ants on the nest as we walked along the major pedestrian mall running off the main square. A more mixed crowd and they seem younger here as well. Maybe all the boomers are still in Stockholm!

Nevertheless we did walk to the cute canal at Nyhavn where the tour boats were turning the tourists over as quickly as they could and the group buses were hovering in nearby streets in large numbers to whisk the victims away to the next big attraction.