Thank You Valle

I made it back all right. And I finally got a reliable Internet connection and some time to write these last entries. The last week in Oslo was hectic. Closing down the apartment, cleaning. Packing. To top it off I wasn’t sure about the flight home and if that was a go. It turned out that there was some confusion last year when I booked the return flight. It all worked out. I flew home on Sunday the 5^th instead of Saturday the 4^th. The extra day cost me a hundred dollars at the hotel. But it was all right. I stayed in the Anker Hotel for those four days. I took some last walks around the city. I went back to Bøler to see if I could get into the community center, but it was closed. I visited the Architecture Museum for the last time. And walked around downtown. Then I woke up at 4am on Sunday morning and took a train to the airport. And an airplane to London. Where I waited four five hours in the international terminal at Heathrow airport before boarding the nine hour flight home. All in all the travel was pretty painless.

My buddy Matt picked me up at the airport and him and his wife and child were kind enough to put me up in their spare bedroom until I found my own place. Which I’ve done. I am now living in Ballard. A Scandinavian ghetto of Seattle. I will be starting another blog about my life here. So watch for that. I’ll post the title and link here in the future if anyone is interested.

Here are a few of the best things about Oslo:

Best cheap food: I ate a lot of Polse med Bacon. Hot dogs with bacon wrapped around them. They were cheap and tasty.

Best adventure: All the driving in the summer was awesome. The Fjords are beautiful and fun to race around.

Best Fehn building: I liked them all. I learned loads from visiting them, studying how they go together and such. But the best one had to be The Nordic Pavilion in Venice. This had a lot to do with the fact that it was the first building of Fehn’s that I was introduced to as well as the beautiful simplicity of the building. I think if I’d have been able to go into the new Architecture Museum it would have had the same feel, the same presence.

Best vernacular building: I would say the Viking settlement in Avendals. It was the pinnacle of the long house and the beginning of the long tradition of the stue and tun and I really liked the Viking temple.

Best Folk Museum: The Oslo museum was the most extensive. It was rich in variety and I visited it often.

Best Norwegian City: Stavanger. I really enjoyed my time in Stavanger. It was a quaint little town with a lot of charm.

Best self prepared food: I ate a lot of chicken fried with vegetables. But the meal I enjoyed the most was always breakfast. Scrambled cheese eggs, wasa bread, cheese, some cold salami and an apple or orange.

Best neighborhood: I really liked living in Grunlokka. It was lively and diverse. There were some other nice neighborhoods. Majorstun around the Veigland Sculpture garden was nice.

Best encounter: I enjoyed meeting the people at Hausmania, the anarchist squatters.

Over all the trip was a complete success. I finished a draft of the thesis. I saw a lot of great architecture and had a really good time. I am thankful to the Valle Scholarship program for making the trip a possibility. I am grateful to my committee, Peter Cohan and Kathryn Merlino for their support and ideas leading up to the trip. I would encourage anyone with the opportunity travel in this part of the world to do so. The design mentality in this part of the world is amazing. And despite the economics, which I’ve talked a bit about in these pages, it was all worth it.

Cheers.