moldegata 25

Thank You Valle

2007-03-21T22:02:00.001+01:00

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.

sketch

2007-02-27T17:08:00.000+01:00

Time is about up. Here are some pages from the sketchbooks I’ve done over the last nine months. I ran three sketchbooks. One for the vernacular buildings one for Fehn’s work and one for miscellaneous doodling and screwing around. Some of the pages turned out decent. Others not so good. I am pretty fickle when it comes to my ability to sketch. I have to concentrate really hard and take my time and look closely at what I’m drawing. And if I’m tired or distracted the drawings turn out crappy and I get frustrated and mean. These pages are all right.

Here is some exciting news. It turns out my travel agent canceled my return trip booking last year after I made the reservation. In addition, I have not, at this time, been able to reach them. I’m suppose to fly on Saturday and I have no place to live after if I have to stay. It’s got my gut in knots right now. I’m pretty sure it’ll work out, but it’s the waiting to find out how it’s going to play that gets me. I have to mental calming exercises.

Other then that, packing has gone all right. It took more boxes then I thought to send my books back. 6 total. But they are on their way. I’ve decided I dislike traveling with books. If it hadn’t been for the thesis work I wouldn’t have brought any. But it’s done and lesson learned.

So next week I should be back in the states. I’ll wrap this up then, let everyone know how the return journey panned out. Wish me luck, pray to your gods.

I’ll see some of you soon.

house, school, museum, post

2007-02-21T15:30:00.000+01:00

Things are wrapping up here. Winding down. Easing into transition. It’s been awesome with the snow this last month. Constantly here, constantly cold. Just what I’d been expecting since October. The boots held up well. I made the right choice in holding off getting new ones.

If you read Tun, you know I got to go checked out the Bødtker place, a house by Fehn. The Bødtker’s weren’t home, so I couldn’t get in. It was built in two stages. The garage and the main house were built in the 60’s. The addition, a square multilevel tower, was built in the 80’s. They were, however, all conceived at the same time.

I am hoping to get up to Aukrust museum one day before I leave. I don’t know if that will work out. Also I’m hoping to hear from the people in the Schreiner house. I got an email form him in response to a letter I sent, and returned an email to him about a meeting, but haven’t heard anything back. This is the most frustrating thing in all my dealings with the Norwegians. They never answer emails. Hopefully I’ll hear something before I leave and get to see that place as well. The domestic architecture was the most difficult to see of Fehn’s. But overall I think I got pretty good coverage of the work.

I was hoping to do another draft of the thesis before I left but I don’t think I have the energy for it. I’ve been doing some reading for the introduction and I have some ideas, but I think I’ll wait to talk to my advisors before pushing ahead. I think I’m in pretty good position for finishing up.

I visited this school. I had found it a while ago, back in the summer. But didn’t check it out then and kept putting off going back. Finally I did and it was completely worth it. Just good architecture.

I may have mentioned the Oslo Architecture Museum before. It’s a Fehn building here in Oslo that they are building right now. I have been visiting it every couple of weeks or so since I got here, watching it come together. It won’t be finished before I leave, unfortunately, but it has been fun to watch it come together. I was there on Sunday taking pictures. The project is a remodel of the existing turn of the century building with the addition of an exhibit space. The exhibit space made up of glass wall with glass louvers that are intriguing from a daylight standpoint. These glass walls are surrounded by freestanding concrete walls maybe 6-8 feet tall. The top of the main space pokes up above these walls and the walls slide past each other to create entrances into what I imagine will by sort of an inner courtyard. It’ll be done in may, so the kids coming over on the Scandinavia program this summer will get to see it.

I’ve shipping my books back to the states. I have a lot of books. I brought a lot and acquired more since I’ve been here. They have these boxes you can buy at the post office that are prepaid for 10 kilograms (about 25 pounds). This all seems pretty straight forward, except I don’t know what 10 kilograms of books looks like. Which makes it a little bit of a hassle. So the other day I’m in the post office, talking to a post guy about my options and cost and how to handle the fact that I don’t know what 10 kilograms of books looks like, when this guys comes stumbling into the post.

He shambles up behind me and starts yelling in Norwegian. I ignore him cause, well, I got no idea what he’s saying. But everyone else is ignoring him also. No one looks at him. None of the post people tell him to settle down or get a hold of him self. And he’s going on and on I’m talking to the post guy and the post guy is talking to me and I turn around to show the post guy something and all of a sudden there are Norwegian cops there, pulling this guy out of the place. And he looks at me and starts apologizing, in English. “Sorry guy. Hey. Sorry!” I hadn’t even known I was involved. And no one in the place ever acknowledged him. And then he was gone. It looks like I’ll have to use 4 boxes to send my books back at a total cost of 1320 Norwegian kroner.

snow and boots

2007-01-23T17:34:00.000+01:00

So, God caved to the snowmen’s demands. The city is blanketed in white and it’s awesome. Cold, in the teens, the sun was out today. Beautiful low angle glow off the snow. Far from the depressing black winter that one imagines, it is actually the most pleasant experience to be in this part of the world as the planet pulls away form the sun. And despite my earlier grumbling about the lack of snow, it has been a great season. Wet in parts. When the sun is out it’s amazing. Like sun set all day. Now that the snow has come it makes it all that much better. We got maybe 4”, which isn’t the feet I was hoping for, but it’s substantial and sticking around.

But there is this, and I’m not complaining mind you, it’s just a thing I have to deal with. Here are my boots.

I got this funny foot dragging gate. Always have. It’s not monstrous or anything, but it does wear out a shoe in no time. The outside half of the heal specifically. Like this.

6 months tops. I’ve recently taken to resoling these boots when they wear down. I like these boots. They are plain, honest footwear. I never had my shoes resoled. Ussually opting to just get new ones. But before I left for Norway 8 months ago I had these resoled for the first time and it was great. Like buying the boots again, only cheaper. And they threw in a shine on top of it.

When I came to Norway I brought these boots, a pair of running shoes for running and a pair of sandals. The sandals got lost somewhere in Italy. Not that big a deal, they were not good footwear. I lost them in Rome I think. Under the bed in the hostel. And by lost I mean I left them there. The running shoes I wear, well, running and at the gym. I don’t like wearing running shoes as casual footwear because I feel like an a-hole. Boots fit my internal picture of myself. So when I’m not in summer climes and not running to of from the gym, I’m wearing my boots. I like them. They’re amazingly comfortable. But after 6 months here I was face with prospect of getting them resoled. However, since it became necessary, I have been unable to find a place that will do that. I’m sure they resole boots here, I just can’t figure out where. I thought about getting a new pair of boots as winter was coming and I would surely need them for the snow. But I continued to put it off because snow wasn’t coming. Then it came, and this is the point. Now that it’s here the worn heal of my boot is helpless against the inherent frictionless nature of the snow and ice. I slip. A lot. I slip and slide and have fallen on my ass because of the smooth frictionless contact my heal has on the snow. Now I am stuck with a little more then a month left in country and the prospect of falling every time I go to the store for cheese and lettuce, or hobbling to the post office with my arms out for balance. I could get a new pair of boots for $200 dollars (See earlier explanations of economics as to why a pair of boots would cost $200) a sum I have never paid for a shoe nor ever intended to pay for a shoe. It look at them longingly in the windows of shoe shops. There are some nice boots here. But at that price, knowing that they will only last me 6 months before I had to lay out another 40 bucks when I already have a pair of boot I like. I just have a difficult time shelling out that kind of scratch for really. I’ve been mulling this over. In the last three weeks or so it’s snowed a couple times at night, then left the next day. But what is here now is here for a while. A week? All month? Can’t say. At any rate, yesterday I was explaining this to Liz Maly, who called we from the future using Skype and a web camera, and she suggested I just buy the boots seeing as I had a long walk ahead of me latter in the afternoon (See below) and a good pair of boots would last a good long time and I might as well have them as soon as possible rather then waiting. I agreed. And when I went for my walk I was determined to get some new boots. But it was Sunday, (I sometimes forget the days of the week) and pretty much everything is closed on Sundays. So there were no shoes to buy. I had to decide whether to continue with the walk, up and down several snow covered hills, or go home. I toughed it out. Took the walk. It was totally worth it. I didn’t fall once. So, I think I’ve decided to skip the new shoes and tough it out the rest of my time here. Just be careful is all. Easy does it and all that. And falling ain’t so bad once you get the hang of it.

The walk I took was to a Fehn building. The Okern Aldershjelm. A senior housing project. It was really difficult to get to and not just because of the snowy hills. This wasn’t the first time I’d tried to find it. It is beyond a particular crazy snarl of freeway that my map just doesn’t provide for. Anyway, I made it to the place yesterday. Unfortunately they’ve built a large new facility next to the Fehn building and the Fehn building appears to be being prepared for demolition. I got a few shots, but I couldn’t get in and it was depressing to see.

I did get some good news though. I had sent a couple letters to the residents of the houses in Oslo that were built by Fehn and I heard back form one of them. The Carl Bodtker, who agree to let me photograph the exterior of his house. I’m trying to figure out when I can do it right now. I’m stoked.

In not so encouraging news, I’ve not heard from Fehn himself yet. If you remember I wrote him a letter at the beginning of December. I figured it might be the holidays that kept him from responding. But now that it’s the end of January I figure it’s most likely not going to happen. Unfortunate, but I half expected it. I’ve been told that he is pretty old and he’s had some tough couple of years. I’m not interested in bugging the man so I’ll let it go.

I did, however, finish a draft of the thesis. Which is a tremendous relief to have a draft to work through. And I worked out a preliminary outline for the presentation. So I’m pretty much set to nail this thing up on the wall. Anyone interested in reading 220 pages of Norwegian Architectural history I have pdf’s available all you gotta do is ask.

Over all things are winding up nicely. I’m going up north, next week maybe, to visit a Fehn building. And I might do some day trips around Oslo in the next couple of weeks. And then after that I’ll be on a plane back to the states.

BEDRE LEVEVILKÅR

2007-01-06T15:26:00.000+01:00

photo lifted from this site(http://www.morgenutgaven.com/269) for dramatic purposes

In an effort to draw attention to and increase awareness of the injustice of global warming, the plight of the winter dwellers, the evilness of things like oil and air pollution, and God turning his back on those who have a basic right to winter, the snowman marched on parliament yesterday. (see story here and here and pictures here). The snowman stage their protest calling for “Better Living Conditions” in the face of Norway’s warmest winter in 60 years. The snowmen and women were quickly rounded up and, most likely, shipped off to some rent a tan salon where they are currently undergoing the most humiliating of tortures under the closed lids of scorching tanning beds at the hands of the Global Cartel of Evilness and Stuff.
In response God sent an insulting threadbare dusting of snow as if to say, “There, it snowed.” He could not be reach for comment at the time this story was published.

In other news the Holiday season has come and gone and it was all very relaxing. I spent Christmas watching movies and reading. A friend of mine said it sounded like a “mildly depressing” Christmas, but really it was not. True I like the conversation and the togetherness the holidays bring, but I am just as content being on my own. It’s been difficult to meet people with the traveling all summer and not being in classes or having a group of people in the same program hanging around. If I’d have gotten into a class or two it would have been different, and I’ll try to get into on for a while this quarter. There is a great one about construction in Norway I’d like to take. I have found it listed as being taught in Norwegian in one place and English in another. Classes start on the 15th and I’ll check it out then. The truth is, though, that it worked out perfect. I am zeroing in on a draft of my thesis complete. Hopefully next week, at the latest by the 15th. This is due to the time I had to travel and research and not have to worry about classes. And also, as will I will talk about in a moment, friends would have been a source of cash vacuum. In that friends would want to do things like, get drinks or have coffee or dinner. And I am not opposed to these things in principle, but here, in Norway, I am opposed to them in practice.
This is another description of the economics here (which I’ve talked about a lot the last 7 months and it continues to boggle me.) For instance, today I went to a café. I have not gone to a café or bar or restaurant really because to cost is ridiculous. But I miss sitting in a café, sipping tea, looking out a window, writing, reading. And so I thought these last two months could be a time for that sort of relaxation. A cup of tea. Ease in life. But the cup of tea was $5. And not an American super immense tall, but an actual single cup of tea in a teacup on a saucer. $5. And I was sitting there, drinking it and it occurred to me that I would like to do that everyday. I mean I could, I have the time. And a quick decent into the math found that if I went and had one cup of tea every day until I left it would cost me $280. For tea. This makes my stomach hurt. So I am undecided, because other them that the place was great. Cozy, a sitting bar that faced the street and a park the other side. People in and out. Pretty waitress types serving. Everything you could ask for. Except a reasonably priced cup of tea. Which is key, really.
And so that is to say, if I had made a bunch of friends and they all wanted to go have tea and beers and diner and stuff, I’d be busted flatter then I am already. But if I meet some people now it’ll cost me a little bit as opposed to a lot to hang out with them. Having just written this I wonder about the morality of choosing your friends based on economics. Regardless, the holiday was not “mildly depressing” it was perfect. I got some packages from friends. 3 actually. A package from Matt, full of a bunch of treats. A packages from Christina Haslip, with home baked cookies and an umbrella and some books from Justin and a robot drawing from Coffield. And a package from Tim Mace and his family. Also with treats and a wooden puzzle (which I already beat a bunch of times) and a package from Liz Maly, a small wooden Christmas scene including a fireplace, a tree and Santa. Liz’s gift arrived before Christmas and so I saved it and opened it Christmas morning. The others arrived after the holiday and so it was like four separate Christmases.

For New Year I was going to go check out some festivities. But I started feeling bad and got really tired and fell asleep at 10pm. At midnight I was awakened by the battle like roar of fireworks and the beginning of the New Year. These are not the week ass fireworks we see in America, but heavy artillery type things from china with fire in their guts and screaming exploding glory. And loud. And everyone had them. Crates with names like “Hell” and “Missile Base” and “Hell’s Missile Base.” The first day of Ought Seven I took a walk. All the parks were littered with spent revelry, discarded bottles and charred remains of firework.

My friend in Sweden Carl Baker, mentioned this housing to me as a place he wanted to see. I had stumbled through it one day and new what he was talking about. I finally got back to take some photos:

This is a student housing, the brick on this building was pretty cool:

Here are some photos of Oslo from a couple of walks:

And finally the “snow” and how desperate people are here for it to come:

window, house, library, studio, city, stickers

2006-12-17T17:51:00.000+01:00

I have spent the last couple of weeks pounding out the second chapter of my thesis. It’s draft, but it’s done. It clocks in at 70 pages and takes you from the dawn of man in Scandinavia to the 1800’s through the lens of making buildings. There are a couple of holes, and it still needs work, like I have to sort out the notes and do a few rewrites. But at least it’s at a place where I can start working it. I had wanted to finish by the beginning of December, but that just wasn’t happening. It turned out to be slow going. Now, however, I essentially have two chapters in draft and half the introduction written. And I can start work on the next part, the analysis and comparison between Fehn and the Norwegian vernacular, which is really the thesis part. Hopefully I can knock this out by the time I leave and then have the remaining time before I present in June to work up a presentation and figure out what is interesting about what I’ve done. Sometimes when I think about this I get a little nervous. I’m trying to figure out what exactly I have been doing. What is the purpose for this expedition, and why is it important to the larger context of architecture. As I don’t fully know the answer to these (and many other) questions, I start thinking about the silence that will accompany the end of the presentation. The blank stares of the jurors and the confused muttering of the thesis committee. In my mind it’s a big mess. Hopefully it’ll work itself out before June.

On the weather front (see how I did that? pretty clever huh?) It’s still miserably bright and cheerful here. Sunny days. Temperature soaring into the 40’s. No snow anywhere and it’s almost Christmas. I check the forecasts and Yahoo has snow coming on Tuesday. But the Weather Underground has just overcast on Tuesdays, not even rain and temperatures close to 50. I gotta tell you, I wish the folks at Yahoo are correct, but the Weather Underground strikes me as a group of people who are actually in the know, and not a service of, well, yahoos, trying to pass information on without any real accountability. The sad part is I came to one of the few countries in the world I was sure would have snow on Christmas and it’s looking like there’s gonna be sunny skies and tropical temperatures. Stupid weather.

I took a couple trips into the city the last few weeks looking for various buildings. I took the subway for the first time in a while, out to Holmenkollen to find one of Fehn’s houses. I got lost for a while. It was cold up there, Holmenkollen is on a ridge to the north west of the city. It’s where the Ski jump is from when the Olympics were here. There was ice on the sidewalks up there, even though the sun was bright. Anyway, the street signs were all mixed up and hard to follow. Eventually I found the house.

Unfortunately I couldn’t see much of it. I figured the thing to do is to write letter to the people who own the houses that Fehn designed and ask them for permission to photograph. Otherwise the parts my thesis dealing with the houses will just have to be scanned images of these places, which will be fine. But it would be better if I could get to them, walk around, maybe have a peek inside. Is that asking to much? Can I invade you home for my thesis?

I decided to try to write letters to these people on the way back down into the city on the train. So instead of going out to the other house Fehn designed here in Oslo, which I had planned for the same day, I went instead to the Oslo University to see this building.

It’s a library and there are some other things going on in there. The cladding it’s a black granite and when I was there the sun was shining on the southeast (go figure) and the low angle light was glinting off the flecks in the rock cladding. It was nice. And I liked these window shades on the outside of the building that could be moved as needed. But over all the building was only mediocre.

I also found this building which I have no idea who designed. I think it's some sort of studio. In was on the nrk (Norwegian Television) campus. I liked the great curving copper roof. I spotted it from a good distance away and had to go investigate.

I also went to find another building I saw from the train (not the subway, but the actual city to city type train). A little steel and wood number some where along the line (I’m not sure exactly where). But after wandering around all afternoon and getting lost in the new construction of the freeway I was forced to make my way back into the city with out finding the building. Once in the city I bought a $30 roll of tracing paper, white because all I had was yellow, and a new pencil.

I also went half way to the Folk Museum but had to turn back because I thought I left my stove on. I do that sometimes. Just leave the stove on after cooking some food or boiling water for tea. I’ll discover it minutes or hours later, the burner quietly heating nothing but air. Luckily nothing has ever burned down, but at my old apartment I remember coming home from school late at night having been in studio for hours and finding the stove or oven still on. It troubles me sometimes and so if I suddenly think about it and try to remember if I did or did not leave a stove on and if I can not positively remember turning the knob I am forced to conclude that there is a distinct possibility that I left the damn thing on. This happened. And even though I told myself I was fine, that I shut it off and even if I didn’t it would be fine until I got home, I eventually turned around. Once back home I found that I had, indeed, turned off the burner.

But that adventure was not totally lost because I invented this way of taking pictures of the city that are a little more dynamic then point and shoot at interesting things. I find a f-stop and exposure and then hold the camera in my hand as I walk along and snap pictures from the waist without seeing what I am photographing. Then everything becomes interesting. This works particularly well in crowds. Here are some

I also found another pieces by this sticker artists. This is my favorite so far. I’m pretty sure it’s the same artists as the bunny collages I posted earlier.

Other then that not a lot is going on. Christmas is coming. I’ve got less then 3 months left in country. Things are winding up. I’m starting to turn my attention to the future. Job. Place to live when I get back to city. What it’ll be like to start doing architecture for real. Seeing my new nephew. Seeing my friends. I didn’t really meet a lot of people here. Mostly because I was busy with my work, traveling and what not. It’ll be nice to sit around and have some beers and conversation.

Anyway, that’s where everything stands now.

Trondheim Thanksgiving

2006-11-27T20:09:00.000+01:00

I made it up to Trondheim. I left on Thursday. That’s Thanksgiving where I come from. The train ride was pleasant. I hit Trondheim at a quarter to 3. Dusk. It was cold. And, disappointingly, completely lacked snow. I did see some in the high lands through the middle of the country, but it was thin and wispy. I’ll be honest; this whole lack of snow business is pretty disappointing. I mean it’s coming up on December. I had expected a full two months of knee-deep stick-around-never-leave snow by now. But there’s been nothing. And who’s to blame? Who should I talk to if I want to get my money back on the guarantee of snow in Norway? I don’t know. What worse is, ahh this really gets me, it snowed in Seattle yesterday. Or so i read in a friend’s blog. So here I am, in the country of sure fire snow with nothing but beautiful autumn sun and brisk 44 degree temperatures (no where near freezing I might add) and back home it’s gearing up for a blizzard of a winter.

I found my way to the hostel through the completely dry air. The place was a mediocre accommodation on the east side of town. A bed. A chair. A lamp. A bathroom. I stowed my bag and headed back down town for a look around and Thanksgiving dinner. I decided that I would go out to eat. I don’t go out to eat here because I can’t bare to pay the prices they charge for a meal. But it was Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving. Football. Stuffing. The bird. The family. It’s a great day. I’ve had some awesome Thanksgivings. Most recently those celebrated at Liz Maly’s house. The time my brothers and I were alone on Thanksgiving because of an illness in the family and I made hamburger helper and stovetop stuffing and instant mash potatoes. A flaming turkey loaf in Ireland. Really just about every Thanksgiving has been awesome as far back as I can remember. This one, however, was not awesome. I mean, yeah I was in Trondheim. And that was cool. And I did get to have someone else cook my food, which is always nice. But still.

So I had to decide where I was going to enjoy this meal. What place would provide the most awesome Norwegian Thanksgiving meal there was to be had? I mean the chances of finding a turkey dinner above 63 degrees north latitude seemed pretty slim. I decided it would have to be American food at the very least, which narrowed the selection down. I mean it cut out the Scottish pub, right. Something quintessential was what I was looking for. Something that would remind me of home. McDonalds? No. Burger King? Maybe. Maybe Burger King. I steer clear of the fast food in general and absolutely in foreign countries (This wasn’t always the case. In Taiwan I lived almost exclusively on Wendy’s spice chicken sandwiches.) But maybe I’d make an exception. It was Thanksgiving after all. So I lit out thinking I’d have a cheeseburger and fries, cause really that’s what America is about.

I walked down to and along the river and found an old warehouse district that had been converted into a shopping mall with several restaurants along walk. This seems to be a trend in Norway. Each of the cities I’ve been to has a refurbished waterfront with shopping and restaraunts and people hanging out. It’s pleasant really. One of the places along here was a pizza place called Pepe’s Pizza, a Norwegian chain. I began thinking, well Pizza, right? Becasue what’s more American then that? Really. But I was undecided. I kept moving. I circle the city center and found the fast food and I just thought, Man, fast food sucks for your body. I’d feel like shit after. Maybe pizza. And then yes, Pizza defiantly. So I walked back to Pepe’s and went in.
I ordered a beer. A “stor” beer -- which means big but is really a pint. I was pretty excited about the beer actually. Beer and Pizza, that’s just good stuff. I ordered a piece of garlic bread. I ordered something called a “pizza salad” which was the cheapest salad on the menu, I figured you get it if you are having pizza. I ordered a pizza, the medium (there were no smalls) pepperoni and ham. The bread came first, with the beer and was all right. But really, how can you go wrong with white bread butter and garlic? The salad came with the Pizza. This poor excuse for lettuce was served with hamster testicle sized tomatoes and pungent red onions and a cup of thick ranch dressing. I ate it under protest.

The Pizza itself was sub par. Like a cheaper Pizza Hut for reference. But I wasn’t, in fact, expecting a lot. I find the foreign take on pizza disappointing (with the possible exception of Italy where it’s cheep and real). In Ireland they have curry Pizza. And in Taiwan, Tuna and corn. But regardess of the oddity in foreign pizza, the standards are also less then awesome. I blame it on the sauce. A bad sauce destroys a pizza and I have yet to have a good sauce out side of the states. Anyway, the bread the beer the salad the pizza. I ate. After I finished, spending my time staring at the various people in Pepe’s, the place was packed, ordered a piece of chocolate cake and another beer. The cake was all right. A chocolate bundt cake with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on top. The beer was another stor. So let’s recap, so you understand the extent of this meal and can decided for yourselves. That was 2 pints of beer. 1 piece of bread with butter and garlic. 1 fist full of lettuce stems and microscopic tomatoes. 1 mediocre medium pizza with pepperoni and ham. 1 small chocolate bundt cake with a teaspoon of ice cream on top. Total for this Thanksgiving extravaganza? 435 kroner. I’ll just go ahead and do the exchange rate math for you so you don’t have too, shall I? That’s 435 Norwegian kroner at the exchange rate of 6.3 is roughly sixty-nine dollar and five cents. $69.05. Happy Thanksgiving. After I went back to my room and read till I fell asleep.

The next day I visited the Sverresborg folk museum. The receptionist/cashier was very pretty and talkative. She had red hair. They had some good buildings. The oldest Stave Church in Norway brought from Haltdalen. Here are some photos:

I also went to the Trondheim cathedral and Bishop's Palace. The cathedral is the biggest in Norway. The bishop’s palace is a similar building to what Sverre Fehn’s museum in Hamar is built into. The one in Trondheim, however, is larger, and two of the wings are in tact. Two wings have been rebuilt after a fire in 1983. These new buildings are beautiful. Instead of rebuilding the storehouses exactly how they were before the fire, the architects, Nils Henrik Eggen Arkitektkontor, put two simple brick buildings in their place. The simplicity of the buildings gives them a place in the courtyard; it both distinguishes them and allows them to become part of the whole complex. One is an administration building and the other is the Archbishop’s palace Museum.

I walked around the town. I found it pleasant. The river is great. The Nidelva It sort of snakes through the city, which also sits on a fjord. I visited the technical school.

And wandered up to the Kristiansten fort which over looks the city on the east side. The second and third night I ate in my room and read my book. And that was Trondheim. Worth it.

As I was getting on the train to leave a guy in a WSU sweatshirt was coming down the isle of my car. I went to WSU, or Washington State University, for my first college. While there I got an English degree and an anthropology degree. Go Cougs. WSU is in a small town called Pullman on the edge of the Washington-Idaho border. 8 miles from Moscow Idaho. 3 hours south of Spokane Washington. There are 25,000 locals in the town and 35,000 college students. It is in the middle of wheat fields pretty close to the Snake River, which feeds into the Columbia. There is nothing to do there but drink and party. And study unless your getting an English and anthropology degree. I did that a lot drinking and partying the six years I was there. Go Cougs. However, my opinion of wearing sweatshirts with the letters of the school you went to while doing your partying is don’t. That’s just me. Further, I don’t really approach people who do wear such duds as I find the whole thing embarrassing unless you actually played for a team sport of some sort, preferably football, but I’d take baseball and field hockey as well. (I do, however, whisper “Go Cougs” under my breath when I see one, just in case the wearer actually played football or baseball or field hockey.) So when I saw this guy coming down the isle I debated whether I should say something. In a foreign country, the kid probably went there, I’d could make a friend. For crying out loud it was just Thanksgiving. But, ultimately, I decided to skip it. That is until I found that he actually was in the seat next to me on the train. So I figure what the hell and start up. Turns out he went there for a year. Got back last spring. He’s an electrical engineer. We swapped stories about Pullman. Talked football. He told me what he did. I told him what I was doing in Norway. This all took about 20 minutes. We were pretty much done with our conversation before we left the station. Which only left six and a half hours of uncomfortable silence. Which is why I tend to not talk to people I sit next to in a travel situation. I put on my earphone and fell asleep after a while. Read some. Got back to Oslo yesterday afternoon.

I found a gift from my friend Liz Maly in the mail. A book. Paul Auster’s Moon Palace, which I’ve never read and which solves the problem of which book I’ll read next saving me from starting Stephan King’s Gunslinger series which I don’t want to do, but fear I will. Then last night another friend of mine, Carly, called me up using Skype. (Skype is brilliant. Just brilliant free talking all over the world business with you computer. Brilliant.) That was great. Liz and Carly were part of a group of us who had breakfast each week for the last three years while we tried to learn how to be architects. It was nice to have breakfast to look forward to on saturday morning. Traveling around the city, trying all the best breakfast places in Seattle over the course of three years having great conversations. The other member of our little breakfast cabal was Justin. I miss breakfast.

In the mail was also the letter I sent to Sverre Fehn asking for an interview. Returned unopened and stamped “Retur -- Flyttet, Ny Adresse Ukjunt” Which means: Return -- Moved. New Address Unknown.” You may have read how I staked out an address I got off the Internet for Fehn. And how I thought I saw him in a window. Turns out I didn’t and that’s not his address. I had found another address for him, however, and today I hiked up to that building to check it out, see if I could suss out whether it was Fehn’s office or not. I found this:

Turns out it is his office. So I’ll send the letter there instead.

I also found two great buildings. One I knew about from Byggekunst. The Business school. Here are some photos.

I really liked it as a campus. There are essentially four buildings connected by this indoor street. The pathways cross from one building to the next at different places and different levels all the way up. I climbed to the top. The long escalator was an interesting experience. It sits out in the open space and you rise up and I was suddenly stuck with nerves at rising through the height. The spiral stair also was a bit unnerving at the top, some 7 stories up out in the middle of the atrium. I forced myself to walk the edge to get over the momentary fear of the height. The whole space was active and dynamic. It was done by an architect Neils Torp. Besides the business school, there are shops and café’s and a gym in the complex. It’s in an old industrial part of town that is being revitalized with new and reused architecture. It’s close to where I use to live when I first moved here. Had I found the place before I moved I might have stayed up there.

Across the street from the business school was this building. I know nothing about it yet, but I really liked it.

So today was a good day. The last week was a good week. I feel good. Things are good. Good.

long walk into the past and tom waits

2006-11-21T21:52:00.000+01:00

I’ve been working on the thesis. I’m nearly done with a draft of the domestic vernacular architecture. Then a short section about the Ceremonial building and some words about industrial development and the vernacular draft will be complete. Hopefully by the end of the month. Then I’ll have to write the chapter about Sverre Fehn and analysis his architecture in light of what I think I know about the Norwegian vernacular and then that’s that. I’m on schedule, so far, even though I sometimes think about having to present this information and how that’s going to work and what am I going to say and I get this falling flailing sensation like I don’t know what I’m talking about and everyone’s gonna see right through the ideas I’ve come up with. And then I think that that’s not for nine months and so I don’t have to worry about it yet.
I took another trip to the Folk Museum here in Oslo. i walked out there. It’s a little ways, but it was a nice day. It started out overcast, but then the sun came out. I took these pictures of trees:

And here are some more pictures of buildings from the museum:

I found this piece of graffiti on the way:

And here is a boat and a marina:

It was my birthday a couple days ago. Sunday. I took the day off. Didn’t do anything. Watched a movie. Had a candy bar. Yesterday I walked downtown and bought myself a present. The new Tom Waits: Orphans. It’s a great album. 3 discs. Some amazing tunes on there. I’m stoked. Hopefully he’ll tour again. I saw him on his last tour, for Real Gone. Liz Maly and I waited in line to get tickets. My travel agent buddy, Alex, and a buddy of mine from architecture college, Pete went with us. It was a great show. If you’ve never seen Waits you’re missing out. Check out his new album anyway. Good stuff.

I am headed to Trondheim on Thursday for a couple of days. I’ll see what’s up there. Take some pictures. You’ll see some of them.

Augmented reality and my family

2006-11-12T14:57:00.000+01:00

I was at the architecture school on Thursday. I went to see if there was a lecture. There wasn’t. Deciding to spend some time in the library I turned and found the guy I met at the train station. His name is Halvord. We talked for a little while. I told him a little bit about the Valle and Seattle. He was telling me about his dissertation work. Fascinating stuff. He’s looking at augmented reality and its uses for architecture. Augmented reality is the process of using wearable computers to enhance the real world. I don’t know a lot about it, but the computers seem a similar to virtual reality and in fact, virtual reality may be a pat of Augmented Reality. But one creates and entire environment (virtual) while the other is adding to our existing environment (augmented). But I don’t know a lot about it so if this isn’t a complete picture that’s my ignorance. In Halvor’s case, specifically, he was describing an apparatus that could be worn, video glasses for instance, which could feed information about a specific site from a video camera and combined these real life real time images with a 3D model. The way he it explained it being implemented is that you visit an environment, say a future building site. The client wears the video glasses. A digital camera feeds the real world images to the client. As he looks around, turns his head, looks up and down, the video camera captures the images and displays them on the glasses. Then a cpu superimposes the proposed building design in digital 3D form into the environment. The 3D model is also synced to the movement of the wearer. So wherever the client looks, an image of the real environment is shown with the proposed changes, what ever they may be. The implications are amazing. A buddy of mine in school, Coffield King, was writing an article about using 3D gaming engines for architectural models. Creating a virtual world like a massively multiplayer online video game where architectural models could be displayed for people around the world to visit without leaving their offices. They could just log into some server and walk around a building. I found this fascinating as well. Both of these ideas imply a wealth of possibilities for describing architecture to the layman. As an architect I’ve been trained to read plans and sections and elevations and, using these drawings, I can construct an idea of a three dimensional space. But some one not use to looking at these drawings has a hard time seeing what a building will look like, what the relationships are going to be, how the building will actually work. With technologies like Augmented Reality, or 3D gaming engines the ability to demonstrate, to show architecture to non-architects is wide open. I once had a conversation with another friend of mine, Justin Kliewer about the goal of architects. My contention was and is that architects make buildings not drawings. His contention (paraphrasing from a year old conversation over beers) was that architectural representation was as significant as the building. And I think about this idea in light of these new technologies. If architects loose their hand, loose their ability to draw with their hand and rely more and more on 3D modeling as a design tool, how will that effect architecture. If the clients could have walked through a building like Bilbao, or the EMP, seen it in its real world context versus some drawing of it, even a computer generated drawing, would these buildings have been built? Hard to say, but there is an impact here. There is a definite realignment of the way people will perceive architecture in the future based on the way it is represented in the design phase.

It was a good conversation, interesting ideas. I was glad I ran into that guy. I’ve been working on the thesis and it’s coming along. I visited Akershus Fortress yesterday. Took some photos, walked around.

I found some more of this artists work. I really like it. It's cute, sure, but there is also a grit to it, a sense of balance to the compositions the artists produces. I don't know. They are simple and inspired.

I am taking today to try to decide where to travel to next or even if I should travel again. I don’t think the Bergen trip would give me anything, since only one f the museums got back to me and they are both closed for the season. I have quite a bit of information about the middle ages to draw from already. And the Outdoor museum here in Oslo has examples of buildings from all over the country. It would have been nice to see a farmstead in its original context. I wish I’d have found these farms earlier. My fault, really. It’s still on the table though I’ll make a decision by tonight.

In other news I ran across this:

http://goscandinavia.about.com/

It seems that my weblog about coming to Norway and looking at buildings was listed in an article about Scandinavia on About.com. Thanks a lot to Terri Mapes for having that link there. Appreciate it.

And finally today, I’m looking for my brothers. Well, not them actually, but their addresses. If anyone who comes here happens to see them or know them, I could use their address. Please send it to me at this email address. umberhulk888@hotmail.com. Thanks loads. I don’t fully understand how my family cannot have email in this our technology age, but it seems that hardly anyone in my family understands the convenience of the World Wide Web for things like communication and improving the quality of your life. All of them have email addresses, they just don’t have access to them or they ignore them. Or they ignore me. Which is possible, and likely. I imagine them all getting together on some messenger service, chatting it up, telling jokes, swapping recipes and showing pictures of things like new babies and new cars. I see them some time having set up their own servers and running these great websites letting each other know how things are going. They’ve started Internet businesses about keeping in touch with relatives in distant lands. And some how, for some reason, they neglected to let me in on their family network. As if I was the bastard older brother who fed them butter sandwiches and would let them play with the Atari. It was my Atari; they had their go-bots and their care bears. It was my Atari. Serves me right I suppose. Anyway, I’d like to get them some Christmas presents. And I need address for that. Any help would be great. I’d call but I don’t know how. Long story.

stalking fehn

2006-11-07T20:19:00.000+01:00

I think I am the cause of global warming. Here are some facts: When I was a kid it use to snow in Seattle. I remember it snowing. All the time. As I grew up, it slowly stopped snowing. You might say - Hey, that’s global warming. But the year I went to Ireland it snowed in Seattle and not in Ireland. The year I went to Taiwan it snowed in Seattle and not in Taiwan. The four years that I’ve lived in Seattle it hasn’t snowed once. I am now in Norway. I’m in Norway! And it is November, and despite the last post, it hasn’t snowed here like it should be at all. The Halloween dusting was gone the next afternoon as the temperature shot up to the mid 50’s. And right now in Seattle, well it’s raining. And, yes, that’s normal for this time of year. But here, it’s sunny depressing. If it snows in Seattle this year and not here then we’ll know for sure. I have caused global warming and I am sorry for that.

The last week has been pretty interesting. I took a trip south to a town called Horten to check out the Photography Museum, a building remodeled by Fehn. This trip involved a ferry ride, something I always enjoy. The morning I left, I was on the train station platform here in Oslo when the train pulled in. Normally the train cars have numbers on them that correspond with a number on your ticket. That corresponding number indicates the car you are supposed to ride in. That’s how the civilized world has created order, by labeling things clearly. The usual drill is that when a train pulls in a the station I’m waiting at, I look for the number that corresponds to the one on my ticket, climb aboard and find my seat. Also, conveniently, numbered.
As this train pulled in there were no numbers on the cars. I was confused and anxious. I’m walking up and down the train looking for my car so I can find my seat. I mean I don’t want any problems. I just want to sit down. All of a sudden some guy is talking at me in Norwegian. I stop. I must have looked frieghtend, and confused. I ask if he could say that again, slower and in English. He so “Oh, sorry. Are you going to Seattle?” I thought, no I’m going to Moss to catch a ferry to Horten. “No, I’m from Seattle.” I said cautiously, having decided to just get on the closest train car and sort out a seat later. “Oh, are you getting onto the train?” “Yes.” “Sorry. Are you an architect?” I’m now running through my head where this guy could possibly know any of this from and settle on some affiliation with the Architecture school here. “I’m going to get the grant.” He says. I have know idea and then I realize what he’s talking about. “The Valle?” “Yes. I just got an email today. I saw your picture.” I wasn’t aware my picture was associated with the email sent out by the Valle. (It’s not, all of this years scholars are shown on a page here. This is a what he was talking about.) I would totally have had a conversation with this guy about Seattle and the Valle and stuff but the whistle just blew for the all aboard and I don’t have time…”email me.” I said, thinking for some reason he might be able to get that information from the website or the Valle department. I mean the guy spotted me in city of hundred thousand people, right? “I will.” And the train leaves the station.
Turns out my email address is nowhere on the Valle website. There is no way for this guy to email me. The Valle office is not aware of anyone in Oslo being interested in going to Seattle. And so that was odd. Vonnegut has this idea in Cat’s Cradle called the karass. It involves the people who are connected to you and you to them in the this life ('a team [of people] that do[es] God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing.''). I always find it odd when people enter my karass for the briefest moments and then disappear forever. I ponder their connection to me cosmically. Like the guy who beat the crap out of me at a party in college. (In my defense I was down a bottle of Jack and a bunch of beers. And in his defense I dig dangle him over a balcony upside down over a concrete patio contemplating dropping him on his head for a while. But he started it by being a jerk. Or maybe I started it by being a jerk, but he should have let it go.) Anyway, I saw that guy once and with in hours we were throwing punches. And then I never saw that guy again. Or the group of beautiful Hungarian ladies I met at the 2001 New Years Eve Riots in Portland Oregon. We were getting on well, I was showing them how to view a riot, where to stand to show you are a spectator and not a participant, so the cops do taser you, how to move down the street in an orderly fashion so you can stay and watch the looting and brutality, things like that. After the riot they left and I never saw them again. I find these momentary people intriguing. Where are they, what are they up to today. God knows. Of course, these incidence might represent the “Granfalloon” (''a false karass, [...] a seeming team that [is] meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done.'') But I am New Bokononist and find the idea of anything not working in God’s plan abhorrent.
The photography museum was interesting. It on the top flor of an old military building. There is a history of photography and then a display of Norwegian photographers. And a library.
The people were great. They let me take pictures when you aren’t suppose to (which i found ironic, not that they let. But that you cant take pictures in the photography museum). Here are some of the photographs:
Exsiting building

Cafe

Gallery

The Library

I am writing a letter to Sverre Fehn asking to meet him. I found an address for him, but I wasn’t sure it was actually his. Yesterday, I walked out to the place to nose around. See if I could find a big sign that said “Sverre Fehn Lives here” Like the sign for where the pope was born. The address lead to a house. Or what looked like a house. I scouted the place, couldn’t get to the mailbox (where I figured some indication of who lived or worked there would be) which was behind a fence. It seemed reasonable to consider Fehn having his office in his home. I crossed the street and staked the place out from a park bench.
This is what I learn: several people where in and out of the place. A large windowed office in the front was frequented by many people (I thought at one I point one of them might be Fehn, but I couldn’t be sure.) A man carrying what could arguably be a set of half size drawings entered the house and left. So either they are a gang of bank robbers, or it is, indeed the offices of Sverre Fehn. That was fun, stalking a Pritzker Prize winning architect.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading and have made some connection between traditional building and Fehn that go beyond the use of material, formal ideas or special organization. All of these things are there as well. But they are surface similarities. I’ve been reading up on medieval building practices and the way craftsmen approached their buildings. To a large extent, in Norway, the forms of buildings in the vernacular are set. The loft, the stue, the church, all have specific forms. And the material is largely wood. But the way the craftsman approaches the construction is as if he is creating a poem. The form is the same, but the nuance is different. The articulation of the ideas in the building is used to describe things like the structure and use. And decoration is of these parts, these details. And I believe this is a common understanding shared by Fehn by way of Arne Korsmo. Couple that with the understanding of materials and form and special organization and I think I’m getting close to a real idea about this thesis.
At any rate, it’s spurring me on.
I’m thinking about going back to Began. I may be able to see a couple of farms there that are still standing. It’s tricky, though. Because it might snow and I’ll have to dive a car there, and the roads are not something I want to be on in the snow. And even though I may be cause of global warming, it’s a risky chance. Plus, the farms are closed for the season, but at least one has offered to see if they could help me out getting in. I don’t know if this will happen. I’m gong to wait and see if I hear from the other farmstead. If not, it won't be worth going there just to see one farm.

Snow!

2006-10-31T19:45:00.000+01:00

I was out walking today and it started raining. Just sprikling. Then it picked up a little. Then the rain seemed a little thick, a little heavy to be "just" water. It was sleet! Sleet I tell you! And I thought "Sweet! The snow is almost here."

Well, I just looked out my window and it was closer then I thought. It's snowing! Sweet!


Snow!

leaves and stuff

2006-10-29T15:26:00.000+01:00

The days are getting short. Really short. And cold. And it’s these beautiful wet days where the sky is like a blanket of slate pulled over the earth. The leaves are all turned. This city is veined with green spaces, parks and yards, small oasis in the urban landscape. Streets lined with trees, boulevards. Leaves are everywhere. The smell is hypnotic. That fruitmusk of rotting vegetation. People are lighting fires so the smoke mixes in the wind and you walk outside and hug yourself close and say, “Yeah, this is autumn.”

The best is when the sun does show its face. Pushing its way out from behind the heavy sky to lay rays along the trees and prove that It all does mean something somewhere. The days are still cold, but the sun makes you smile.
The last month has been trying. I got back from that trip exhausted. For about two weeks I didn’t do much. I worked on those last posts. I thought about things. About my thesis. About what’s going to happen next. How to start pulling things together. I worried a little bit because I couldn’t find the energy to pick the thing back up. It was soggy with potential, but weighted down with my own expectations of what should happen. So I was rutting it for a while. I’d look at the books piled on my desk and think “How in the hell am I suppose to synthesize all these ideas.” It was a little bit frightening and unwieldy. So I would go on these walks. Look at how the city was changing. Try and feel what the Vikings felt. What the Danes felt when then occupied. I have been trying to understand Oslo as it slips into the dark. And I gotta tell you it is pretty pleasant. This city is of the dark half of the year. It’s made for winter. Made for autumn.
The people on the street have changed. There are still a good number of people that walk the city. Shopping along Karl Johanes gate. But they are no longer tourists, snapping photos of the statue-ized mimes. Now they are mothers buying cloths. And couples strolling in the evening. And families going to supper. This is when the city becomes the city again, and not a tourist outfit.

I walked up along the Akerselva to its source. A lake that sits above Oslo in the forested region. The trail leads literally from my front door all the way. I was hoping that I’d touch the water, but for some reason it’s all fenced off. It looks like private land all the way around. Which I’m sure is not the truth, I’m sure there is access somewhere, just not logically at the end of the pedestrian trail that leads all the way from the lake to fjord. It was a great walk, but I couldn’t get any closer then these for pictures.

I’ve found some good buildings. A couple of functionalist projects that I really like. They are both quite buildings, off the beaten track, but superb examples of functionalist architecture.

I also visited this great church by Knut Knutson. Good stuff.

I have also been noticing this artists work around town. These are stickers. Some of them are big, 2 or 3 feet tall. Some, like the bunny heads are fist size. There is a simplicity to the work that I admire. And a geometric view of color.

I also saw this tag. Usually I’m not a fan of this type of graffiti, but I like this guy.

I met with Christian Hermansen at AHO. He’s my contact here. I wanted to ask about some papers regarding Sverre Fehn that might be available and also find out if I could get into some classes and what not. When I got there he was going to introduce me to Per Olaf Fjeld. An instructor at AHO who has written one of the few books on Fehn and who use to work with him. But Fjeld wasn’t around and so I missed him. It also seems that I missed classes altogether. Or at least the one I wanted to take this semester. Which is entirely my fault. I was out of town at the beginning of the semester and then gone those weeks on the trip and it seems that they are now in the exam and presentation mode. No big, although the class was perfect, all about Norwegian architecture and Sverre Fehn. There is another class, however, next semester and I’ll try to sit in on it for a couple weeks before I leave in March. They actually build different architectural details from Norway’s vernacular. If I can swing it, it’ll be pretty cool.
I did find out that they have a free lecture every Thursday. I attended the last on. It was interesting. By a guy named Shaun Murry, from London. It was called “The Illustrated Primer for Digital Architecture.” It was about the relationship of research and investigation, using digital tools, to the practice of architecture. In other words, using various research techniques, like collecting data for how a tide affects an outcropping of rocks for instance. Plotting that using various algorithms and whatnot. And then creating representations of these phenomena, whatever they may be, that begin to help the architect see architecture in a way that is more connected to the natural processes in any ecology in which he might want to build. It was fascinating. There are questions about how you then start to make space, usable and comfortable, out of these representations, but the path seems worthwhile. At any rate, there is a lecture every week and it’ll get me thinking about other things. Unfortunately, the week prior, Zaha Hadid was here. Which would have worth listening to her. But I missed.

Things are going good for the most part. Except it’s the Daylight Savings weekend where we “fall back.” This happens to be my favorite weekend of the year. That extra hour seems so luxurious. The extra hour of party on Saturday night where at 1am you’re like, no way, it’s really midnight! The extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning to recuperate. They don’t carry on with any of that nonsense here, so I get to miss it this year. Which means I have to experience two “spring forwards” before I get my next “fall back”. Which sucks. I’ll be down a “fall back” the rest of my life. I’ll never be able to get that back. So I’m a little bummed about that. But otherwise, golden. I’ve downloaded a few things off iTunes. Which I didn’t want to do, but I can only read and write for so long before my head starts to hurt. So while I eat I watch a movie or Lost or The Office or Battlestar Galactica. It’s relaxing. It’s what television should be. A good show when I want to watch it. My pleasure on my time. Anyway, that’s the most exciting thing going these day. I’m getting ready to take a trip up to Trondheim. Maybe at the end of the week. And then one more out to Bergen if I can swing it before the weather turns and then mostly day trip close to Oslo after that. I had one planned for last Tuesday, a day trip that is, but I over slept and missed my train. I felt like an ass, like I cheated myself for an extra hour of sleep. But sometimes it’s hard to get up in the dark. And when it’s dark until 8:30, it’s hard to get up at 8. I’m trying to make this a regular thing, getting up at 8. So far I have done it exactly zero times in the last month. Once I slept until 11:45, something not seen since I use to stay up until 4am writing bad novels and dumb poetry. It’s frustrating; because when I finally am awake I really want to get up in the morning. To be adult. To enjoy the day before noon. But when I’m asleep I want to get up at 10am. So my awake self is fighting with my asleep self right now and that’s a little unnerving. Like having two roommates mad at each other and not talking and your still friends with both. So when you hang out with one they’re always badmouthing the other and vise versa the other way around. All morning long I gotta listen to awake Jeff piss and moan about asleep Jeff and how he’s a lazy bum ruining our future cause he doesn’t have the will to stay awake at 8am when the alarm goes off. And the every morning at 8am I get to hear asleep Jeff cuss sleepily as he stumbles across the room to shut off the alarm that awake Jeff set the night before, calling awake Jeff an asshole for even setting the alarm at all and going right back to that blissful sleep you get when you are awakened hour before you actually have to get up. And I’m caught in the middle, cause I like sleeping. And I like getting up. It’s a no win situation really. And the battle continues.

and four days in Rome

2006-10-14T17:43:00.000+02:00

Our first day in Rome, I was still excited to be in Italy. The swamping of Venice by tourists was down heartening, but I figured Rome would be a big city, lots of things to do, it would be able to absorb and obfuscate the tour-minded. The airport reminded me of a Fellinni film, the glamorous Italian style, the rush of modernity. I was optimistic. The bus ride was pleasant, and our room was only blocks from the central train station, where the bus dropped us off. We arrived at 10am and were told we could not check in until 4pm. So Hope and I had 6 hours to kill. It was raining lightly, but we both had spent time in Seattle, toughened by months on end of rain, and so went out into the mild weather to pass the time. Aimless, I suggested we check out the Coliseum, it wasn’t far from where we were and on the way we could get some food.

Until now everything seemed fine.
At our first meal in Rome, however, things began to turn with regard my appreciation for the culture. We were sitting outside a little pizzeria. There were two waiters. The headwaiter was Italian. The second was foreign, maybe from Southeast Asia. The headwaiter came to our table and was immediately disingenuously shmoozy in a way that was lame and creepy. He had stuff on his face, a large piece of something or other stuck to the left of his chin and his smile was more of a grimace. After taking our order he approached the second waiter and reported what we had ordered and told him to write it down.

The second waiter was clearing a table which he had moments before been commanded to do. He stopped and wrote down our order and disappeared into the restaurant. The headwaiter smile/grimaced at us. Before I go on I want to point out that I know nothing of the established relationship of these two people. I know nothing of their interaction before we sat down at the table. I can only report what I saw. But we watched, throughout our meal, the headwaiter yell and ride the second over various meaningless restaurant tasks. The second waiter stood up for himself, did his job, never got mad for the railings he got, simply went about his business. At one point, the headwaiter commanded the second go retrieve something from the kitchen. The second left and in the process dropped his pen on the ground. When the second was gone, the Head picked up the pen off the ground. I watched him do this. He held the pen with disgusts. Clicked it a few times and then tossed it back on the ground. He knew it was the seconds. Had seen him several time use it to write down the order the headwaiter delivered. He knew. And what he did next solidified my dislike for this man, that restaurant and eventually Rome in general. He actually kicked the pen into the corner behind a table, made sure that it was well hidden and looked up at me and smiled/grimaced. That act, that display of pettiness for pettiness sake we would see again. When the second came back, Hope pointed out his pen in the corner and he smiled and nodded and went about his business.
We shortly left for the Coliseum, potted the thing down a street, looming in anachronistic bravado, and walked towards it. When we reached an overlook I was at first captured by the architecture. I scanned the crumbling structure, imagining the construction, the battles, and the streams of people attending the games and then I saw the streams of tourist snaking a line out of the entrance and causing me to immediately be put off.

We walked down and found the grounds crawling with people. It started raining harder so we took shelter in one of the closed arches of the Coliseum to wait out the rain.
It was here, sheltered by the Coliseum, that I found one of the things that annoys me in this world. Umbrella salesmen who think that just because it’s raining, that I want an umbrella. Men, hundreds of them, all over the city, carried umbrellas for sale. And they would try to hard sell you a bumber like if I wanted one, I wouldn’t have bought one and they had to talk me into it. I grew up in Seattle where it rains all the time. Not life threatening or anything. And not the most measured by inches per year, but a lot, steady and all the time. I have never owned an umbrella. I get wet and then I dry. In Seattle you can spot the people who didn’t grow up there by the umbrellas. So my feeling is the same wherever I go. I can’t bring myself to buy an umbrella. I am close to doing so here in Oslo as I’ll need to draw outside even in the winter months and an umbrella will help with that. But even so I haven’t yet done it and I am trying to think of a way not to. So when the first guy asked I laughed. It was barely raining. And the second guy, not three steps behind the first, still I laughed. And as the rain increased the hard selling increased. I realize these guys need to make a living, but I don’t want an umbrella. I just don’t. I’ll wait it out or get wet. And as we stood, waiting it out, under the Coliseum, bumbermonger after bumbermonger approached demanding that we buy umbrellas and become indignant when we decline, as if I am obligated to buy a portable roof to keep of the water falling from the sky. I am not obligated. I am not. The humor quickly wore off. Because if I wanted to buy an umbrella, if I wanted one, would I not have had ample opportunity to purchase one from the four guys that just asked me.

So you, fifth salesman in line, what makes you think I want one of your umbrellas any more then I want that guys umbrellas? And it went on. And on. And on. I we wondered where they came from, all these umbrellas. Who would plan for rain in such a way? Eventually I saw a shop, an umbrella shop, filled with umbrellas and men collecting them, as many as they could carry. Salesmen. Umbrella salesmen.
The rain let up and we decided to walk up to the Pantheon. As we walked the rain came harder and then let up and stopped all together and still the guys with the umbrellas. We made it to the Pantheon, a little wet but no harm done. It started raining again and, uckily, there were guys there selling umbrellas, just in case we broke down. We didn’t.
The Pantheon was also packed with tourist. But I was there and wet and I didn’t have an umbrella so we went in.

It was perhaps, one of the most magnificent places I have ever stood in. Despite the hundreds of people taking stupid flash photography and milling about, it was still serene and mystical. The rain fell through the oculus as through a hole in the sky. Drifting down. We hung out there a while. I was awed. The porch on the Pantheon was gathering more and more people as the rain continued to pick up. Eventually Hope and I decided to go sit in a café that ringed the piazza where the Pantheon sat and have some coffee and wait out the storm sitting down. And by now it was a storm. It was two o’clock by this time so we still had some time to kill before we could check into our room. We choose a café, the closest to the Pantheon and found a table. Since we had just eaten we ordered coffee and a desert. The total of Hope’s coffee and tiramisu and my tea and chocolate cake was over twenty euros. But we were there and the rain was now actually pouring from the sky. So sitting and drinking five euro tea was all right.

The thing was the owner of the restaurant was all bent out of shape because we didn’t order food. We ordered twenty dollars worth of product. It’s not like we were drinking water. And it’s pouring down rain, pouring down rain. This group of three people comes to sit down and the waiters are asking them if they are going to order food. The owner is standing over our table yelling that they can’t sit unless they order food. Not just coffee. They say they aren’t interested in food and the waiter turns them away. Tells them they can’t sit down. Tells them to go out into the rain and find some other place to sit. Another group comes and the same thing happens and we know it’s because of us because we weren’t asked whether we were going to have food or not and they keep hovering around our table and side eyeing us like were bringing down their house. But the thing is, it’s going to cost us twenty euros to sit here out of the rain. And it’s not like we imagined we couldn’t order something. So this next group says they are interested in ordering food. And all of that would have been fine, but I swear to God the owner, a real piece of work, topped himself. As the group of four people began to order, one gentleman ordered a pizza that him and his grandmother were going to split. The waiter looked at the owner and I could see the uncertain fear in his eyes. He asked if this was all right. The owner, man this really rips into my gut, he looked at the table and said no. They had to leave. And at this time it’s really pouring rain. I mean thick sheets of rain like Noah saw. And this owner kicks this table out of his restaurant into the rain. Old ladies and all because they wanted to split a pizza. Unconscionable. And I could see maybe if the place was full of people and there were other people waiting to sit, but it was half empty. And so another example of Roman’s. I grew more and more uncomfortable with the sidelong glares and the whole situation so eventually left. Hope wanted to stay because we were paying. But to me it’s not worth it. So after I finished I went and stood under the Pantheon to wait out the storm. Hope sat for a while longer to spite the guy. Eventually she paid and when she found me she reported that they charged us 10 euros just to sit there. Amazing.

While waiting under the Pantheon porch for it to stop raining, a group of Christians from Korea began to sing gospel songs really loud. The Pantheon is currently a catholic basilica, but its origins are as a house of the roman gods, thus the name Pantheon. And I wondered if this group of people realized that that was the case and they are, in fact, worshipping in front of a pagan building. Anyway, they sang and people watched. Eventually the rain let up and it was close to four so Hope and I decided to head back to the room. Not a block away from the Pantheon the rain picked up. And picked up. And fell harder and harder until it was raining so hard that walking in it was difficult and eventually we had to stop and find shelter. The worst part was I had to find our way back without the map because I couldn’t pull it out in the rain. We are now soaked through and the rain isn’t letting up. We find shelter in an car entrance to a building and we’re not there thirty seconds when a guy comes and kicks us out. It’s literally raining so hard you can’t see across the street and this guy is like, you can’t be here, with his tsk-ing Italian disapproval. So we head out again. And there is no shelter for blocks. Eventually we find a cloths shop and stand there. But the lady comes out, and although she doesn’t tell us to leave, our being there disgusts her. She shakes her head and goes back into the shop. Eventually I tell hope we just have to keep going. It’s not going to stop and we’re already wet. Hope is reluctant, but I insist. So we head out and find our way and make it to the hostel completely soaked. The kicker is people were still trying to sell us umbrellas. I mean I am as wet as if I had just gotten out of a witch dunking and these guys are asking me if I want to buy an umbrella. How is that going to help at this point? So yeah, maybe I should have bought an umbrella earlier, but how was I to know there would be a mini biblical flood in the afternoon?
The Hotel was pleasant. We stayed in the rest of the afternoon. I eventually got some food and beer at a grocery store and we ate and drank for under 10 euros that night. I decided the next morning I would get up at 7am and go to the Coliseum before the throng of people showed up.

I was in Rome for two reasons. I figured being so close in Venice I should check it out and one of my advisors was there from UW teaching this quarter at the Rome Program. Her name is Kathryn Merlino and she is the vernacular half of my team. So I wanted to take the opportunity to talk to her about what I had done over the summer and show her some things. We had planned on this, but not set a date. So after the Coliseum I intended to go to the UW Rome Center and see if I could connect with her. I would meet Hope in the afternoon and we would go and do some stuff. The Coliseum was great in the morning. I showed up before it opened and drew for a little while. Then went in and took some photographs and read some history. After that I walked up through the ruins of the Forum and found the district where the Rome Program was located.

I found the program offices and went in. Some of the kids from UW were arriving. I knew some by site, others by name. I asked after Kathryn, but she wasn’t around that day. I left her a note saying I would come back the next day to set up a meeting. I then went and found Hope. We had lunch on the Piazza Navono. And then went to Campidoglio to see the head of Constantine.

The sculpture here was pretty cool. The head was awesome. And the building, designed by Michelangelo, was magnificent. On this trip I saw a lot of buildings that I always really wanted to see. This was one of them. I missed the bronze of Romulus and Remus suckling at the teat of the wolf. But the other sculpture was amazing. Then we walked past another of my favorite architectural items, Trajan's column.

This was a column erected for the Emperor Trajan and it contains a spiraling story carved in the column in relief. After this we headed back to the room. The next day we were heading to the Vatican.
I met Kathryn at 10am and we made arrangements to talk the following day. Then Hope and I walked up through Trastevere to a botanical garden and a nice view of the city and eventually to the Vatican. I wanted to see the Sistine Chapel, but we didn’t get there until close to three and the last people are let in at 3:15 so there was no way we were getting in there. We walked around St. Peters, I looked for something for my grandma at the Vatican gift shop, but could find nothing reasonable. Hope sent some postcards from the Vatican.

I would have too, had I had anyone’s address. I’m just not a fan of fancied up churches, and this is a pretty fancy church. I understand them in terms of architectural development, but give me a simple, understated place to worship any day and spend all that extra cash on helping people out in the world. I mean compare Gamel Aker to St. Peters, I’d rather be in Gamel Aker. Any day. So although there are some beautiful things in the cathedral, it wasn’t my favorite place as far as house of God goes. And I told Him so.

To top it off, the Vatican was over run with tourist. And it was here that I finally decided that Rome has the worst management of its tourists and tourist sights of all the places I’ve been. And that there is no respect for the sites that these people visit. I believe the Romans themselves generate this lack of respect. If they are not going to respect the cultural things that make their city great, why should the throng come to snap pictures of it respect anything about it? In their defense, Rome has been a tourist destination for more then 2000 years and I can see how that would, eventually, eat at you. But still.
After the Vatican we made our way back to Trastevere. A lot of the things I wanted to do and see in Rome were courtesy of my buddy Josh who had been to Rome the year before on the Rome Program and who had sent me an email listing the places he recommended. One of them was his neighborhood, Trastevere. And where I found Rome a disagreeable city for the most part, I like the neighborhood of Trastevere. It was filled with artists and families and people just living. The streets were quaint and quiet and there was a lot of graffiti. It’s across the Tiber from the main part of Rome.

We made our way back here and found a place to have dinner. But there is this thing I also found annoying about Italy. No one, or the few places we wanted to eat anyway, served food between 3 and 7. I understand it’s cultural, but it’s still annoying. So we had a few beers at this place and then split. Still hungry. Eventually we made it back to the area where the hostel was, planning on eating from the grocery store. But it was after nine and they were closed, so we ate at a pizzeria. It was fine. A couple of beers here and I was ready to go to sleep. Hope wanted to go out, but I’d been up since 7 and wasn’t really in the mood. Plus, unless you have someone to show you where to go, it’s a crapshoot and I didn’t feel like exploring the nightlife. Just didn’t feel like it in general the whole trip. So we turned in. I think Hope was a little disappointed by this.
The next day I got up early again, planning to make it back to Vatican to see the Sistine Chapel before I had to meet Kathryn at 1. I struck out on a different path then I had traveled thus far and ended up at Circus Maximus, which was great.

Not planning to get here and then getting here and seeing the place where they had all those chariot races. Today it just a big field with a faint bowl shape where people jog and gypsies sleep. I wonder if people running here think about how they are running in the tracks of the ancients. I would. Just walking there made me think of the races and the violence. I made it to the Vatican by 8:30. The line for the Sistine Chapel was already so large that it simply wasn’t worth it. It stretched around five blocks and it wasn’t even open yet. So I decided to skip it. There was, however, something I had neglected to do the day before. Josh had asked me if I would, when I visited the Vatican, try to locate a small door where unwanted babies are left to be raised by the church. So instead of seeing the Chapel, I walked the perimeter of the Vatican looking for this door. I found three doors. One was this back door, which I don’t think was it.

The second was a door for the Vatican train. The Vatican has it’s own train line if you didn’t know. The doors were huge steel. I found a path that lead up to the rail lines. The lines were fenced off and the path, paved, ended there. But next to the path, on the Vatican side, was a small grove of trees, which was enclosed by a waist high wall. There was a break in the wall and I figured two things, maybe the door I was looking for was back there in the grove, because I assumed a door like that would have to be both secluded and accessible and this place fit the bill. And second that those big steel doors were cool and I wanted to get a closer look. So I made my way into the grove of trees. The grove broke into a small lawn before hitting the Vatican wall and as I came out of the trees into this lawn I noticed out of the corner of my eye a couple standing there looking at me.

I glanced up and found them both with I-just-been-caught eyes. It was a young woman, pretty but street hard, and an older man, nicely dressed. I kept walking, the space wasn’t that big. I realized that I had intruded into some sort of transaction. Either at the beginning or the end of a transfer of money for sex or drugs. I walked up to the train doors. Looked at them for a moment. Nodded like I was really interested and turned around to see what they were up to. But they had left. So that was interesting. I also found this door.

Of the three doors that were accessible on the whole exterior of the Vatican, this is the most likely candidate for the baby-leaving door. But I don’t think this is it either.
I met Kathryn at 1 and we had a good talk about my thesis. She gave me some good advice and directions to go. In the afternoon Hope and I went to a couple of museums. I was ready to leave Rome and not really go back ever. That night we were going to have dinner at an another restaurant. But sitting there, looking at the prices, feeling the vibe off the waiter we deiced to just go back and have pizza and beers again. Which was fine by me. The next morning I woke up at four to catch a bus to make my flight to Paris. I left Hope in Rome. She was headed back to the states having decided that a) it was too expensive to come to Norway and dive in the North Sea and b) she had had enough time with me the last three weeks.
I made my flight and landed in Paris a 10am. It felt good to be back in Paris. I dropped off my bags and headed to the Dali museum. A collection of drawings by Dali. Illustrations for various literary works Gargantua and Pantagruel, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Tristan and Isolda. I liked these drawings a lot, but was disappointed there were none of his paintings there. Then I went back to the Louver and wondered around the ancient Egypt and Greece exhibits. I was exhausted and found my way back to the Hotel. I got a couple of beers and some food and ate in my room watching French television. The next day I was back in Oslo. And that was my trip to the continent.
And now here I am. I was exhausted when I got here, and a little sick. I had a cold. So I took the last week and rested. I am now getting back into the work. I visited a great church my Knut Knutson the other day. It was by Ikea, where I bought a new chair to read in. That’s pretty exciting. I’ve been sitting on crappy chairs and the bed, which is pretty uncomfortable for three months. Now I can lounge a little, be comfortable while I read. I’ve got a couple of buildings lined up to visit in the next week. And then maybe I’ll start trying to meet people at the architecture school.
To recap, Paris is the best European city I’ve been too. Bavaria has great people and good food. Venice is a charming city loaded with tourists and Italians. Rome has few redeeming qualities. Oslo is where I live.

As a side note two men just showed up at my door looking for faults in the alarm system. I told you about the first alarm that went off and how it was the middle of the night and how I had ripped the alarm from the ceiling in a confused effort to make it stop. Well, it turned out I ripped a few wires from their housing and these men were here to fix it. The alarm goes off a lot as it turns out. A couple times a week. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening. I think people are starting to ignore it because less and less people are outside waiting for the firemen to come and turn it off. I myself have thought about ignoring it figuring if it really was a fire, and my life became threatened, I could jump out the window. It’s not that high up. I am also pretty much at the exit, so unless the fire were at my door, I’d be fine. But that’s dangerous thinking. I’ll probably just leave when the alarm goes off like I have all my life. Following the alarm bell out of the building so I don’t die in the “fire”.

...and, well, Venice

2006-10-09T14:37:00.000+02:00

Italy was not the most impressive place on the trip. Both Venice and Rome were filled with two types of people, both largely disagreeable: the tourists and the Italians.

In Venice we stayed at a campground across the water in a place called Fusina. Camping Fusina. We arrived about 7pm and so didn’t have time to go into town that first night. The campground was decent. It was really cheap. 14 dollars a night for a “cabin”. There were tent sights and trailer hook ups available as well. Two restaurants, a bar and Internet service. A boat left from across the street to Venice and it was pretty cheap also. It only ran until 10pm though, so the first night we ate at a restaurant at the campsite. I was stoked to have real Italian food made by real Italians. In Italy, most of the restaurants are Italian. The food was mediocre; it was a campsite restaurant after all. But the wine, the wine was awesome. A cheap red house.

After the meal we went and sat outside and had a few beers from the bar. We met some people and I took their picture. Drank a few beers not nearly as good as the wine. On the way back to the cabin we found one of the restaurants had turned into a dance club. We went in and had another beer. Hope met some Australians on a huge bus tour. We hung out for a while. Hope got sick and went to bed and I stayed and bullshitted with the Australians. Good bunch of people. Most of them were blue collar, electricians and carpenters and the like.

The next day we got up early to catch the first boat into Venice. It was a thirty-minute trip across the water and it was a brilliant way to enter Venice.

Venice, early morning ferry ride

I found Venice to be architecturally charming. The canals, the bridges, the jagged streets and winding alleys. I enjoyed navigating the city, although I found it really difficult to keep my bearings. Eventually, I began to navigate from Campo to Campo and Piazza to Piazza. I would say, I want to go to this place. That will take me through this campo and this piazza and then it’s right there.

I was in Venice to attend the Architecture Biennale. I was pretty stoked for this event. In my mind it sort of means something larger then it is in reality. There is a Biennale every year. But it alternates between architecture and art. Essentially, for the architecture anyway, there is a theme and each country produces an installation based on that theme. This year, the theme was Cities. In addition to the country pavilions, there was a large exhibit about the cities of the world and the importance of understanding the urban environment. This was cool. There was also an exhibit about stone architecture that was great.

Urban Exhibit

I organized this adventure to the Biennale because Sverre Fehn designed the Nordic Pavilion and so I went to take pictures of it and draw it.

I even talked my way into the back rooms and took some photos of the bathroom.

The building was beautiful. Simple, gracious. Not perfect. I went back twice, and the second day I met ladies who got the pavilion ready into the morning. (They are the ones who let me into the backrooms.) Their job was to clean up the pigeon crap off the floor since the pavilion was not closed to the outside, the joist being exposed on the ends, pigeons made their nest there in the night. But still, the place was inspired. It’s one of the first buildings I encountered by Fehn when I began architecture.

The exhibits as a whole I found lacking a certain passion. A few stood out, though. The American exhibit was all about the devastation in New Orleans and Mississippi with some urban solutions to building in flood regions. This was both touching and well done. I also liked the Korean exhibit. They had a series of boxes that opened like books. They were on a shelf incorporated into an undulating wall. There were several sets marked by different colors. Each box contained some artifact from a different place in Seoul. But the exhibit I found the most intriguing was the French (Which continues my theme of thinking France rocks.) They had built a little community in their pavilion called Metavilla.

It was different work/live spaces built out of scaffolding. There was a kitchen, a nest of sleeping spaces, some work areas, a TV space, and on the roof were the showers, bathrooms and sauna. And they had people working and living there as part of the exhibit.

I went two days because the first day my battery ran out while I was taking pictures of the Fehn’s building and the other battery was back at the cabin in my backpack. Hope didn’t go the first day because she wanted to go to Murano. Murano is a glassblowing island off of Venice. So I met her in the afternoon. The second day Hope didn’t go either, because it wasn’t that interesting for the twenty bucks it cost to get in. I met her in the afternoon again at a restaurant on a campo. We started drinking wine at 3 and stayed there until after 7. Drinking wine all afternoon on campo in Venice, it turns out, is one of my favorite things to do. All the people with their families come out and inhabit the square. There were few tourists. It was really pleasant.

We were in Venice for three nights. And then we flew to Rome. Also full of two types of people.

and Bavaria

2006-10-04T17:58:00.001+02:00

I was real glad to hear form the German. It made for a good nights sleep and a relaxed plane ride to Munich. Anna said she got off work at 3pm and we could meet then. We arranged a place and that was that. The next day, Hope and I flew to Munich. Munich has always intrigued me. Bavaria in general, actually. Some dark things happened in this part of the world. The town and region do not suggest any of this. And the people were great. They were friendly and jovial and all around good to people. While we were waiting for our luggage a lady came over the intercom and called me to the nearest information desk. I’ve never had that happen in an airport before. I’ve heard other people called to the nearest information desk and all I could ever think about is the intercom in my sixth grade class linked directly to the office that, whenever anyone would get in trouble, they would call the room and interrupt the lesson and ask for some miscreant to be sent down. That’s what it felt like, and I wondered briefly if I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. Thing is, I couldn’t fully understand where they wanted me to go or how I should get there. While wandering around looking for something or someone to help me, a lady asked me if I was all right. I must have look befuddled and lost. Ultimately, she help figure out who and what was the matter. It was Anna. She was going to be late. Not a problem.

apartment in Muich with Giraffe

Hope and I took the train into Munich, stashed our gear at the train station and headed into the city for lunch. As we walked Nuehauser strasse towards Marienplatz I was reminded of National Lampoon’s European Vacation (I would be reminded of this movie, which I saw in drive in with my grandma 20 years ago, several times on this trip.) Nuehause stretches from the train station to Marienplatz and is one of the main pedestrian shopping streets of Munich. It was packed with people. This was Friday, Oktoberfest was to begin the next day, and so all these people were here to celebrate beer. Our first stop was lunch. We sat outdoors on the square at a little pub. I had brats and beer. It came with sauerkraut. I’ve never really eaten sauerkraut, maybe once when I was a kid. But in Bavaria it seemed like the polite thing to do. Turns out, I love sauerkraut. Love it. It goes well with brats and beer. Which were fantastic. Bratwurst is actually from Nuremberg. Munich is known for it’s Whitewurst, but I didn’t know this at the time.
After lunch we walked around a little bit. We were meeting Anna at 6pm so we had the afternoon to kill. We watched the clock do its grand cuckoo business in Marianplazts and then we looked at some sculpture and stuff. Anna showed up and she showed us a couple more things, the market where all the Bavarians go in the evening, the church tower. We talked about the plan. Armin, Anna’s husband, lives in London. He was coming to Munich to see Anna and join us for the weekend. We were originally going to stay at her sister’s place all weekend, but because of a mix up that turned out not to be possible. Armin’s good friend invited us to stay at his apartment, but only for Friday night, as Anna wanted to get back to Eggenfelden, the little town where she lives outside Munich, to see a dog hunting show, which sounded great.
We met up with Armin and his friend Marcus at Marcus’s house, had a few drinks, talked and then went to dinner. Marcus is a great guy. He collects BMW’s and he took Hope for a ride on the Autobahn in his coup. For dinner we had traditional Bavarian food. It was awesome. Rich and thick and full of taste. With Weiss beer, Heffeweisen is Bavarian.
Bavaria is the region we, as American, associate most with Germany. It is a region in the south by the Alps and it comes complete with the lederhosen, the polkas and the Oktoberfest. From what I understand, the north part of Germany is completely different. What we were experiencing, and would experience for the next week, was the mythological Germany. It was beautiful. The next day we got up early, had breakfast and headed to the Oktoberfest parade. The Oktoberfest was originally a celebration of king’s birthday. All the breweries brew a special beer for the occasion and drive it through town in a parade. A lot of people are dressed in the traditional gowns and lederhosen. People were already hoisting steins. The barrels of beer are delivered to a specific tent at the Oktoberfest grounds. There are several tents, each with a different atmosphere, catering to a different type of experience. Each “tent” (really a large hall holding between 2 and 8 thousand people each) is run by a different brewery. The Hofbräu Festhalle is the tourist tent and it’s the one everyone who isn’t Bavarian, goes to. The tents are really hard to get into as they fill up early and fast. We showed up two hours before they actually taped the kegs and couldn’t find a seat. You have to be sitting down to get a beer, and so we were hunting pretty hard. Eventually we found two seats and then a couple across from these seats left so we all got to sit. At noon, all the kegs have arrived and the mayor taps the honorary first keg and then the festival begins. We were going to sit in that tent, the Schottenhamel, with the mayor but we couldn’t get in and we didn’t want to be with the tourists. So we got into a nice little tent called Hacker Festzelt.
This is how it works. Just prior to noon all the servers begin lining up at the taps. All morning long you could get pretzels and other Bavarian snacks, but no beer until the first honorary keg is tapped. There is a count down, much like new years, and then the German brass band begins to play and everyone cheers and the beer begins to come. This first round is where you see the ladies carrying ten and twelve litters of beer at a time. Stout German ladies with bright smiles and so much beer it makes your heart melt. They visit each table with these armloads and people buy the beer and begin drinking. After everyone has been served the servers come around to each table taking more orders for beers and eventually food. Chicken is a traditional food at Oktoberfest and I had been looking forward to this for a couple of years, ever since Anna and I talked about it. So throughout the day the band played tunes, people drank, and every fifteen to twenty minute the band struck up a particular song, a nationalistic tune, which everyone sung, and at the end they count, in German, “One two three, drink!” And everyone was obligated to slam their beers on the table and hoist it to there mouths. Everyone was so happy. Singing. Drinking. 5 liters of beer later we decide it’s time to go. We stumble outside. Anna is not drunk, she’s driving. Armin is drunk. I’m drunk. Hope is drunk. Hope, throughout the day, had been taking pictures of the lederhosen asses, each pair having a different stitch pattern or embroidery. The Germans loved it. She probably got a hundred guys to bend over and rub their asses and pose for a picture. Outside we ran into Anna’s sister and went for another beer with her and her friends. Then we walked through the ride area. Anna had a favorite ride that she always went on as a kid. It was the swing that spins around and goes up. Anna and Armin and Hope did that while I stay on the ground making sure not to throw up and watching all the people. They went on a few more rides and then we left. It was a great thing to have done, Oktoberfest.

On the drive to Eggenfelden I passed out. It’s about an hour, hour and half away. When we got there I was pretty much sober and we met Anna’s dad and his wife, our hosts for the next week, and settled in for the night. I claimed the cabana, a little one-room bathhouse down by their pool. This proved to be a great place to relax for the week. Anna’s dad is an architect and he designed the house.

It has a postmodern feel on the outside, but there is a real attention to craft and detail on the inside. The cabana was simple and well thought out. The pool was a fresh water pond really, the plants doing the filtering. It was inspiring.

Hannes and Ursala made us welcome in their home for a week. They fed us and entertained us. Hope is a scuba diving instructor in Belize and Hannes and Ursala are both divers. One evening they showed us movies and slides from some of their diving adventures. We mostly relaxed and didn’t do much. Anna and Armin have two dogs. Hugo, who was with us in studio from the beginning of architecture school, and a Hugo’s son, Emil. Anna’s father has a practice in Eggenfelden where Anna works. So while everyone was at work, hope and I would play with the dogs, or go for walks.

Hugo and Emil

A Bavarian forest

Small Church in Eggenfelden

The Fountain at Bauturm

The Dolzer’s had a lot of art in their place. One particular artist struck Hope and they had a lot of her work. It turns out that she was a friend of the dolzers maned Mio Kupka and Ursala made arrangements for us to go into the city to visit her. So Hope and I took the train back to Munich one morning and visited a couple of buildings. We saw St John Nepomuk Church, a small baroque church along the storefronts in Munich.

After we walked up to the Haus Der Kunst, or the Artists House. They had a show called the Black Paintings. This was several painting using just black done by the Abstract Expressionists. There were five artists represented, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhartd, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella and Barnett Newman. These paintings were fascinating. Black, rich and deep. We had planed on visiting a few other museums before meeting Mio, but they ended up being closed. So instead we walked out to the Olympic Park and saw one of the buildings that made the trip worth it. This was the Olympic Stadium by Frie Otto. I was inspired. It’s shear mass and scale for a cable stay structure, I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it. You can book a tour to walk on top of it. I wanted to do this, but you had to book in advance, so I skipped it. The pool was amazing. We walked around here for a good hour.

Olympic pool

We met Mori at her house in the evening. She showed us a bunch of great work and Hope bought a few pieces. I also wanted to buy some stuff, but couldn’t afford it. In truth, I cannot bring myself to spend hundreds of dollars on art yet, although I would like to. Her stuff was exciting though and I like it.

The next day Hope decided to go back into Munich to visit the art galleries and museums that were closed the day before. I went to a town on the Austrian border to see the world’s longest castle. Anna drove me out there on her lunch break and I walked around for a couple hours, did some drawing took so photos.

Hannes was in a meeting close to the town where the castle was so he picked me up in the evening. On the way back to Eggenfelden he drove me past the birth place of the current Pope who, as it turned out, was just in town a few days prior visiting his brother who still lives in Bavaria. So I saw where the Pope lived his first three years. There is a big sign on the side of the road with the smiling Pope waving and an arrow point the way to his toddle home. Crazy.

On our last night there Hope and I wanted to take Hannes and Ursala and Anna to dinner. They choose to go to the water castle where Anna got married for another traditional Bavarian meal. I had seen pictures of the place and it was nice to see where my friends celebrated their union in person.

The next day Anna dropped us off at the airport and we said good-bye to Bavaria and all the Germans.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Bavaria. The people we met were friendly and warm. The tourists, even, were well behaved and respectful, and drunk eventually. The weather was perfect. It was a good week. My thanks to Anna and Armin and Marcus and Hannes and Ursala.

So there is Paris...

2006-10-02T16:47:00.000+02:00

I entered Paris in the late afternoon, the metro taking me very close to my hotel. I know little about Paris actual. I know little French. I took French 1 twice in High school. The first semester I got a C. The second semester I got a D. I didn’t really apply myself to the accusation of this language. I took it again just after high school so I could get into college and did slightly better. But that was all 20 years ago. I am fluent with French greetings (Bonjour, Bon soir.) and I can count above thirty. Plus I can say, “I am a red fish.” (Je suis un poisson rouge.) Not all of this is extremely useful.

Our hotel was in Montemarte. I didn’t know a lot about this area before I choose the hotel. But it was a good neighborhood to be stationed in. It’s north of city center and is defined by a hill and a cathedral. The population is pretty mixed, a lot of ethnicity and flavor, small art galleries and such. I climbed the hill to the cathedral on my first evening. It was late, 7pm. The steps of the cathedral were filled with young people just hanging out, enjoying the panoramic view of Paris. I think this is the place in the movie Amélie where the titular character makes her love interest climb the steps following her hints and look down through a pay-per-view telescope. That was interesting to realize and I would spend the rest of the trip seeing things I had seen in movies and television all my life. It was awesome to touch some of this stuff, to actually have a haptic experience to associate with the mythology of these far away places.

This is from the top of the steps:

I had dinner in a small café on a square just west of the cathedral. This was awesome. There was a crazy guy spinning and dancing and singing in the corner of the square, not hurting anyone. And the café’s garçon kept talking to him, yelling things at him in a friendly way. The guy would respond with a thumbs up and keep on with his act. I had a jambon fromage, pomme frites and bière. (Ham and cheese sandwich, french fries and beer.) When the sandwich came I was given mustard. I spread it on the sandwich and took a bite. As I did I realized three things. First, the bread was “French” bread, for real. The fries were “French” fries for real. And the mustard was, by default, Dijon. This whole meal was very amusing to me and I began to really like Paris. Even though the square was piled with tourists, it seemed all right. There was a good mix of people in most of Paris. Even on the steps of the cathedral, there were a majority of locals there. Enjoying a busker, having ice cream. It didn’t have the hectic “I-need-to-see-this-quick-so-I-can-get-to-the-next-thing” feeling that some of the other places in Europe have. It was just people sitting and enjoying the world. This was true for most of the things I did in Paris.

The view from the cafe:

The next morning I woke early and headed into the city. I was meeting my friend Hope, (who would be joining me on the rest of the trip) in the afternoon at the tower. My morning was spent wandering Paris, seeing things, getting a feel for the city. I walk down and saw the Pompidou Center.

This is a cultural center designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano in 1977. The interesting thing about this building is that all the systems are on the outside of the building. And each system has a different color. So the circulation is red, the HVAC is blue, the electrical is yellow, the plumbing is green and the structure is white. A buddy of mine, Brad Gassman, once said that the thing about this building was that although it was interesting to have the systems exposed like this, they were in fact, 30 years later, suffering from degeneration. I am not sure I agree. I was looking for this degeneration and found little evidence. There was a lot of city grime, and I could imagine that the maintenance in general was a nightmare. Having to repaint all the ductwork and plumbing every couple of decades is a huge expense. But over all I felt like it was in pretty good condition. I paid particular attention to the joints and where the systems connected. There was a little rust, but not as much as I had expected. It will be interesting to get back and talk to Brad about this.
I then saw my first flying buttress. This is the Eglise Saint Merri. I didn’t go in. But I admired the flying Buttress.

On my way to the next building I wanted to see, L’Institut du Monde Arade, (The Arab Institute), I stumbled across Notre Dame. So I checked that out for a while. Went in, walked around. Took some photos.

This was one of the places in Paris I found thick with obvious tourists. I don’t much like the whole tourist business. I once lived 10 miles from Blarney Castle for 9 months and didn’t go there once. And I think I would really like Blarney Castle, but for all the milling about of people who haven’t taken the time to understand the cultural significance of the place. Anyway, in my opinion, the Disney-fication of sacred places is a crime against culture. That the throngs of people pushing and shoving there way into Notre Dame to snap pictures and gawk at stain glass is obscene. And when I find myself confronted with exploring a place of architecture or cultural interest that is infested with tourism, I get really uptight and want to leave and not participate in the degradation of the place. The people who control the cultural artifacts are ultimately responsible for this, I believe. And throughout the trip I saw both good and bad examples of this control.

L’Institut du Monde Arabe, however, saw only a few obvious tourists. I went to see this window screen. Each of the circles is a controlled oculus, which opens and closes in a spiral allowing a varied amount of light into the space beyond.

Since I first discovered this building I have been fascinated with this idea. The pattern is reminiscent of the vernacular screens on windows in the Middle East, but with this extremely technical operation. The building was designed by Jean Nouvel in 1987.

After seeing this building it was time to make my way to the tower. I walked along the Seine. I am fascinated with the rivers of the world it turns out. I have seen a few of them. The Thames, the Lee, the Liffy, the Aker, The Snohomish, the Tiber, the Columbia, The Snake, the Isar, the Pearl, others. I believe I account for my life by the rivers I have seen. Where others measure themselves by the states and countries they have visited, I count the rives I’ve looked over. The are the veins of the world. They reach the highest points and travel down to exactly sea level. A river, by its nature, is a traveler, it meanders and moves and crosses borders and I just really like rivers.

Here is the Seine:

I met Hope at the Eiffel Tower. I figure there are a few places in the world where you can just say, “I’ll meet you here, at this exact spot.” and neither of you have ever been there before but you know exactly where it is and how to get there. The Eiffel Tower is one of these places.

We walked up the Avenue des Champs Elysees, and down to the Louver.

Arc de Triomphe

We only had an hour in the Louver, but I’ve now seen the Mona Lisa, and Venus Di Milo. Eh. There were much more interesting paintings and statues. But both of the rooms with these artifacts were pact with people. I just don’t understand both why people are like that and why it repulses me so. I mean I was at the Louver too. And I was walking down the Champs Elysees. And I was at the Eiffel Tower. And I was being a tourists. And I don’t want to separate myself from that, to believe that I am better then the tourist, despite what I said a few moments ago or what I will say in the future. But it just seems to me that there is a lack of respect in the “Tourist” that rubs me the wrong way. (I will most likely bring this up for throughout the description of this trip, as there were places that were terribly repulsive to me because of the tourists, and others where it wasn’t repulsive at all. And I am trying to figure it out my attitude and why I feel the way I do and where that feeling comes from. Any contradiction on my part regarding this over the next couple of days is just me following different lines of thought. Bare that in mind and any comments are welcome.)

The pyramid entry of the Louver by I.M. Pie it much more interesting then I had given it credit for and it works a lot better then in person then I ever thought it did in photos.

After the Louver Hope and I walked back through the city to Montmatre. I found some interesting pieces of graffiti. This space invader one was cool to get.

I began explaining some of the ideas Justin and I have talked about regarding graffiti and sticker culture. Hope was totally into it. By the end of the trip she was spotting them and photographing them as well. Ultimately, this makes walking through a city much more interesting. Discovering interesting buildings, interesting doors, or details, and cool little pieces of art. You can’t do that on a bus or in the subway.

We had dinner in Montmatre. I wanted to show Hope the little place I had discovered the night before. She wasn’t that impressed. Ah well. I had coq au vin and a bottle of wine for dinner. Until now I still hadn’t heard from the German. I was a little worried that something had actually happened to her. I tried contacting a few other people regarding her whereabouts, but I had heard nothing. At dinner Hope and I made alternate plans if we, when we got to Munich, did not find Anna waiting at the airport. I had no phone number, no way of getting a hold of her. We figured it would be impossible to get a reasonable place to sleep in Munich as Oktoberfest was beginning the day after we got there. So we talked about renting a car. Maybe going to Budapest or Switzerland. Or trying to see if we could hook a place on someone’s floor in Munich. I wasn’t sure what to do about Anna.

We got back to the hotel at 9pm. I checked my email one last time before bed and there it was. A note from Anna. She had been on vacation for the four weeks since I last emailed her. I thought this was a possibility and hoped it was what was actually going on. The alternatives, Anna in trouble, Anna deciding she wasn’t having me at her house, Anna struck by amnsia, etc, were terrible to think about. I was stoked that vacation was the case. We made arrangements to meet in Munich and Hope and I turned in looking forward to our early start the next morning and all the things that Munich would hold.

All things considered, I found Paris to be an excellent city. I like it a lot. It is my favorite European city so far that I’ve been to. I have been thinking about it, and my new goal is to get a design job and move there within the next five years. I would live in Paris and that would be awesome. So there you go. Everyone will be invited to my house when I get settled there. I look forward to seeing you all and drinking wine and going out into the French countryside.

back and looking for action!

2006-10-01T00:58:00.000+02:00

I returned to Oslo today. This afternoon I relaxed in my room. It was raining and cold here. I figure the weather has begun. It was getting dark at 5:30. It felt good. We had mostly hot muggy days in southern Europe. The trip was successful. I met my friend Hope in Paris at the tower. I found the German. We went to Oktoberfest like Bavarians. I saw the canals of Venice and the Biennale. And Rome was full of art, architecture and tourists. I will post a serialized commentary on the whole trip in the coming days. I got almost a thousand photos and couple stories. For now, just know I’m back and looking for action.

tasting the vinegar

2006-09-12T16:07:00.000+02:00

GON OUT
BACKSON
BISY
BACKSON
j. o.

Rådhus

2006-09-10T22:47:00.000+02:00

My friend Heather is in town on Daylighting Lab business. I use to work for the Daylighting Lab in Seattle. We did extremely scientific studies on the affect daylight has on architecture. The lab is run by Joel Loveland (Cheers, Joel). Heather is a fellow student at the University of Washington and has come to Europe to take part in the Rome program, which starts on the 26th. (I’ll be seeing her again when I show up down there around that time.) Any rate, Heather is taking some time before the Rome Program starts to look at some hospitals, one of which is here in Oslo. So she’s in town for a couple days. We hung out today. I showed her some buildings I like. We got into the Rådhus, which was awesome. Check it out.

She’s going to the Hospital tomorrow. And we’ll meet for dinner. It’s good to have conversation. I did, however, find out some of my language center’s functionality had begun to atrophy in the last couple of months. But that was quickly overcome and the conversation was had by all.

And also the Oslo City Graffiti Aquarium, still for Jessica:

Building Excitment

2006-09-09T23:28:00.000+02:00

I’m starting to get stoked for my trip. I’m a little worried though, and here’s why: I’m going to meet my friend Hope in Paris. Hope is great; I’ve known her for a bunch of years. I’ve been to Machu Pichu with Hope, and my buddy Alex. That was a great trip. Once, Hope and Alex and I drove from Pullman, Washington to Reno, Nevada and back in two days so that I could get my Aunt’s album collection she was storing in her garage after her complete switch to compact discs. (Her records were awesome; she had all this great vinyl from the late sixties through the seventies and eighties. Hundreds of them. When we got there I found out a good part of them had been stolen. I still made it back with over a hundred great records, but it wasn’t what I had thought. These albums now sit in a storage unit in Portland, Oregon under the care of my brother Dustin. Thanks, brother.) The point is I dig traveling with Hope. She lives in Belize now, teaches scuba diving wants to build a resort and is not the reason why I am worried. (Although I haven’t heard form her and don’t know if she got the information for the hotel in Paris, but if she doesn’t show up I’ll deal with that then.) What I am worried about is that I haven’t heard from The German. Some of you know The German. Those who don’t are missing out. Anna, as her friends and family know her, sat across from me the first quarter of Architecture school. She was on a Fulbright and was only suppose to stay a year, but actually graduated this last June from the UW. She is funny. She has a Vizsla named after Hugo Boss and another named Emil after the letter e, I think. She kept a pigeon. She married another German named Armin. She grew up in the Bavarian Alps. She is my good friend. Hope and I are suppose to meet Anna’s in Munich this coming Friday and spend some time there. A week. And although I’m sure it is all cool (Anna and I have been talking about this for a good year) I haven’t heard from her in a month and I don’t know how to get a hold of her in Germany and, well, I leave in three days. This makes me a little edgy. But here’s my plan: If I haven’t heard from her by Wednesday, I’m going to fly to Paris. I’ll spend a couple days there and if I haven’t heard from her by Friday, I’ll fly to Munich. If, when I get to Munich, I find that she is not at the airport, Hope and I will figure it out from there. But good luck getting a hotel since it’s Oktoberfest. At this point maybe a night in the airport, and then hitchhiking to Vals to see the Zumthor Baths before making our way to Venice. Something. So, although I am worried, it is more about Anna and whether or not she is all right. Because it’s just not like her, then what’s going to happen to me and Hope.

To pass the time, here is the Oslo City Graffiti Zoo for Jessica:

Packages and Ruins

2006-09-07T15:05:00.000+02:00

Today I woke up feeling all shitty, a stuffed nose, sort of tired. I thought I might be getting a cold, which would suck to get sick just before the whole Paris-Munich-Rome business. I took some vitamins and drank some water and sat for a while waking up. I was really hungry, but I didn’t have any food. So I gathered myself together and decided to go to the grocery. I wasn’t looking forward to it because I only had about 200 kroner to spend and that’s just not a lot. And my head was a little light. But I went out anyway. I go to the store. One of the things I needed was laundry soap, but it’s 30 kroner and that’s a good chunk and I needed these few kroner to stretch until next Wednesday. So I traded the soap for some ramen noodles and got a couple extra meals for the next week. (It’s not all that bad. If I really needed to I could go use my credit card at a bigger store, I’m just trying to save up for this other trip.) I’m not sure what I’ll do about the laundry.

When I got home I checked my mail. Ussually full of flyers and adverts, today there was also a slip for a package. Awesome. It was from my friend Matty C. Made all that more awesome because he sent it in June and, for the nature of these things, the move and such, it didn’t arrive. We had both written it off. But here it was, waiting for me at the Post. I was totally excited. I walked over. They told me it was at another Post. I thought it was the one by my old place. I walked up there. It was raining, but I told myself it was like Christmas. (Mostly because it always rains on Christmas in Seattle). When I got there they said it was at yet another Post. The problem in both cases was I didn’t have my map with me and they kept saying the name of the area in which this Post was. I asked for direction and the lady gave them as best she could with no map and me unable to understand the road names. So I walked across town, with no map and spotty directions and eventually found the place with the package and I’m stoked. Thanks Matt. It has some toothpaste, some real chips, some books and movies and pepperoni sticks and candy. And it is awesome. The perfect thing to pick me up. I’m stoked.

A couple of days ago I went and checked out these ruins in Oslo. They are the king’s residence and a few cathedrals from 1000 A.D.

walks and buildings and rain and television shows

2006-09-04T13:24:00.000+02:00

Thursday Friday and Saturday, I circled the city looking for buildings by architects from the first half of the century. I found some pretty cool stuff of these long, leg aching 8-9 mile walks. It was mostly housing I was looking for. Magnus Poulsson, Arnstein Arneberg. Ove Bang. Knut Knutson. It was a good couple of days. Sunny. Mid 60’s.
Arneberg/Poulsson

Magnus Poulsson

Arnstein Arneberg

Ove Bang

Yesterday I stayed in. It rained all day. I need to get some sort of rain slicker or maybe just a hat to wear when it rains so I can go out and look at stuff when there is water falling from the sky. The rain is not a problem, per se, more of a nuisance. I have even been thinking about *GASP* buying an umbrella. Oh my god, nooooooo! Yes. I have lived the better part of three decades in Seattle and I have never owned an umbrella. What for? You get wet – you dry off. Not a big deal. It rains a lot in the Northwest, but it’s not unpleasant. Well, let me tell you, Seattle has met it match in Oslo. And the rain isn’t unpleasant here either, it’s just thick, knuckle sized drops pelting the world in satisfied fury. And it’s only going to get worse. And I was thinking that if I had an umbrella I could sketch under it. But I’m not sure I’m convinced. I think I’d look like and idiot with an umbrella. I’d feel like an idiot with an umbrella. And is it worth that to stay dry when, in truth, I would just dry off on my own? I’ll probably end up just getting a hat.
It’s sunny again today. So I’ll go take some photos. I think I’m going to go to St. Hallvard and explore the area around there. St. Hallvard is a pretty cool church by Lund & Saaloto. We visited it when I was here last. It’s got this great ceiling I’ll try to get some photographs of.
That’s been the last couple of days. Pretty uneventful really. About the most exciting thing has been that I have recently opened up an account at iTunes where I can download television shows. And this is pretty exciting. I watched the second season of Battlestar Galactica. If you haven’t seen this show, check it out. It’s really well written, plus there are Cylons. Anyway, they have the first two seasons of Lost, which I’ve heard was all right. And The Office which is comedy. And pretty soon Apple will be offering movies for download. So my entertainment is set for the winter months. It’s pretty cheap too. Well, reasonable anyway.
Check out the map under the Photographic Albums link to see where some of these buildings are.
Pigeons

Graffiti

Photo-mapPhoto-map

2006-08-29T18:43:00.000+02:00

I’ve added some photos to Flickr, mostly ones that appeared here in the past. They are here and if you click on the “map” tab you can see where all these places are in the world. The map isn’t that good and, for instance; those places in Oslo are best guesses because the map only goes so far in. [As and aside, I find this a little bit annoying. I believe information should be more readily available then it is and I sometimes forget how new all these tools are. That said, I would like to see more mapped data for less traveled areas of the world, not just Norway. A finer grain of detail is doable, and in the future it will be there, it just isn’t there now and now is when I’d like to see it. Even so, the information on these maps for Norway, both the satellite and the line maps is lame for Norway.] That said, you can get a sense of how things are situated. What’s up there now is essentially a glimpse at all the places I’ve been since I’ve been here. I will add more photos as the days go by and as I take them. I can only upload like 100 photos to Flickr a month, so I’ll choose them carefully and maybe wont duplicate so many on the Flickr site and the blog.

Alarms!!!!!!!

2006-08-28T16:10:00.000+02:00

Two nights ago I quietly went to bed around 10pm. Read a book for a little while, The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks. (It’s all right. Science Fiction. Some parts are very poetic, but other parts are dull and lifeless and the action is drawn out and it makes me say, “get on with it.” a lot. And I think maybe Banks is trying to do something with the way it’s organized but he’s failing on the whole.) I fell asleep eventually and there I lay, minding my own business, catching z’s like there was no tomorrow when I was suddenly awakened by a screeching panicking alarm. I leapt out of bed. And when I say that, I mean literally leapt, my sleeping bag flying across the room the panicking screech alarm pulsing it’s frantic alert. It took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from one of two alarms in the ceiling. I spent a few seconds or so sleepily-wired trying to find some way to shut the thing off before the neighbors were awoken and, pissed, out circulating flyers to pull together some sort of mob to come to my door and tell me to quiet the fuck down. The alarm wouldn’t stop and I thought for a moment – how in the hell am I going to sleep with this thing going off. And all this in the span of seconds before I realized it must be some sort of building wide system and the alarm was larger then just in my room. This was confirmed as I held the screeching device in my hand having ripped it out of it’s casing) and saw the wires disappearing into the ceiling. I replaced the thing, dressed and found my way outside where were gathered everyone from my building. I was the last one out and we all stood there in the cold small hours a slight rain pelting us looking up at the tall building to see if we could spot any flames. We couldn’t. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes later the Oslo Fire department showed up and silenced the alarm and let us all back to our beds. I hope that this isn’t some sort of Norwegian pastime. Fire alarms in the middle of the night as a way of building commentary or showing the comedic side of sleepy humans in the rain.
Today I went to AHO again to find out about the computer lab business but it is proving very difficult. In my worldview the computer lab should be a place where you can enter and find some one readily in charge and speak with them about any number of problems. In my current reality the computers are behind a glass wall. And you can see the people working away, but no one is obviously in charge. So there is no one I can speak to that will be able to help me. And the door I opened brought a panicked screeching alarm as if my dna was being read and rejected. Or possibly I had opened the wrong portal and the sign, in Norwegian, was actually trying to tell me that an alarm would sound if I opened the door. For when I closed the door the alarm vanished and so did I. Embarrassed. Plan B was to ask at the reception to see if they could tell me who to speak to. The receptionist turned out to be no help at all. In fact she made things incredibly complicated and so I fled in frustration, mostly because there was a line building behind me and all I wanted was the name of the person who ran the computer lab but she kept telling me to just go into the library. I couldn’t figure out why she would tell me that, the library is in a different wing of the building from the computer lab. And I assumed she misunderstood me (now I think maybe the Library might have some answers and I’ll try there tomorrow). And the line was growing and I was standing there. Saying computer lab. And she was saying, the library is just over there. And so I skipped to the next thing, which was to try to get a hold of the professor for a specific class about Norwegian architecture I want to sit in on. And so I asked about the name given on the web site, Nina Berre. And she asked are you sure that’s a professor. And she began flipping through a book. And I said well, she teaches this class. And the lady said I recognize the name but I don’t see her name here. And I said thank you and left.

So here now I sit, making plans for how to attack the problem tomorrow. Reading, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. (A bit long winded), It’s free from Project Gutenberg. They have a bunch of classic material that has gone out of copyright, which you can download and save the text to your computer. So I figure it’ll be cheaper then buying novels while I’m here. I just saved $300. Probably not, I’ll probably still buy novels. I can only read classics for so long before I crave some sort of contemporary endeavourer.

Later this week I’ll get to Horten. Until then it’s just reading and thinking. Exciting, no?

So here is a Google Earth image of my neightborhood. My building is the blue square, the Red square is AHO. To the right is my neighborhood. At teh bottom of the page you'll find a large map of Oslo.

Coupel random Photographs:

A Knut Knutson House

Half-timber frame with brick infill

aho/tickets/rain/some other things

2006-08-25T19:17:00.001+02:00

I’ve been working on my thesis the last couple of days. Reading some books. Doing some diagrams. I’ve been hold up in my room mostly; with the occasional run or trip to the grocery just to say I got out. But most of the time has been spent in this round room, working out some thoughts. In a little while I’ll post some of the stuff I’ve sorted out for the introduction. Not today, it still needs work. No sense in putting up sophomoric ideas with retarded sentence structure (right, with the exception of all that has come before and a large part of what will come after this.) I’m still trying to get access to the computer lab (and by trying I mean I think about it and wish it was already done.) Once I do though, I’ll scan some sketches and stuff to show off. I can tell already how excited you all are.

That said, I went to try to figure out the computer lab business today, but the school was closed by the time I got there. So maybe tomorrow. I took these photographs:

The building is an old factory redesigned by Jarmund/Vignæs, completed in 2002. Jarmund of the pair is Einar Jarmund, who got a Masters in Architecture from University of Washington in the early 90’s and designed the Washington Pass Rest Facility in Washington State. He is a friend with Peter Cohen, my thesis chair, and we visited his office when I came to Oslo with the Scandinavia Program (run by Peter Cohen and Jen Dee) a couple of summers ago. Einar also was one of reviews for the Murrcut Studio a year ago last spring. At any rate, Jarmund/Vignæs designed the AHO or Oslo School of Architecture and you should check out some of their other projects on their website. I like their stuff a lot. I am going to go see Einar and maybe try to get some part time work. It would be pretty cool to watch their process.

After not getting into the school, I headed down town to buy a train ticket to Horten. Fehn did the Photographic Museum there. I got half a block from the school and it start with the rain, big thick drops which, literally, you could walk around. These, however, increased in frequency and although I took refuge under some sort of indescribable structure, it would not let up. Eventually I decided I’d get wet and went ahead on to the train station. When I got there, however, the idiotic ticket machine refused my debit card. Which tripped me out and forced me to come right home because I thought someone had gotten a hold of my banking information since there is no reason my card should have been denied. This would be a real big hassle. Some yahoo depleting my funds for some nefarious activities while I, all innocent and unsuspecting, get stranded in some foreign country with no way to buy hot dogs from the kiosks. So, out into the rain I went, trudging and worrying. I accidentally stepped in a puddle and splashed dirty water up the inside of my leg. I was thinking about all the things I would have to do if I had actually spent all my money and didn’t realize it (This could happen. I am trying to keep close tabs on my accounts, but I am notorious for letting zero balance appear and quickly descend into the depth of Overdrawn.) But when I got home, soaked all the way through my jacket, I found that no one had actually gotten a hold of my bank account and that it was some other problem probably to do with NSB. Thanks to the God.

But this did force me to evaluate my financial situation. It looks like I’m going to have to stick close to home for the next couple of weeks. I paid for all my airfare and some of my rooms for the trip to Germany/Italy/France. That, and the car trip sucked my funds near dry. So while I’m not totally busted, I’m pretty light at the moment. Ah well. I got things I can do around here for a few weeks.

I added some stuff to the sight. There is a search now, to the upper right. See it? You can search the whole Internet or just my sites. I also added a section for books. If you want to buy a book you should do it from Powel’s. They are an awesome bookstore in Portland. And if you are going to buy a book from Powel’s, you should do it through this website cause I’ll get a kick back and that would be sweet. And you would be sweet for doing it. Anyway, I’ll put up a bunch of different titles, books I’m reading, things I like, categories that interest me, excreta. I’m thinking about a sister site with reviews and annotations and what not. If you have any suggestions feel free to comment.

And finally, a couple photos:

the nimbus

door

sticker

leaves

Driving, yeah!

2006-08-21T20:58:00.000+02:00

Four days on the road last week, a couple nights sleeping in the car, salami sandwiches and apples, 700 photographs, 3 churches, 1 Viking village, 2 Fehn museums, 5 ferryboats, and 1 Medieval farm. It was a good trip. I began by driving across the south to visit the Viking village at Avaldsnes. The village is a couple fjords north of Stavanger on an island, and I had wanted to visit it when I was there before, but I had no way to get there. So I skipped it. But, seeing as I had a car and decided I should see it. I was 8 hours to getting there. I stopped at 2 stave churches.
Roldal

Heddal

I arrived at 9pm. The sun was setting. The light was lush. This is the cathedral at the site.

I walked around a little, but couldn’t get to the actual village. I ate and then found a place to sleep. It’s tricky sleeping in the car. You want some place semi public, someplace where you wont be noticed but you also wont be broken into. It would be a hassle to wake up to someone’s arm coming through the window. You want someplace that is lit, but not some the light comes into the car. You want to avoid parking lots of retail outlets before they are closed to avoid suspicion of nefarious intent. Business parks are nice. The people arriving in the morning serve as a decent alarm clock. That’s just what I found. I had an Opel hatchback this time around. The back seat folded down and there was enough room to stretch out diagonally. With the exception of the seam between the folded down seat and the back digging into my back all night, it wasn’t half bad. I woke at 8, had some breakfast and made my way back to the Viking village.

Long House: the main dwelling of the farm
Viking Temple: This temple was part of the farmstead. Worship was conducted not as a comunity, but as a family.
Boathouse: A collection of farms was responible for building the boathouse and manning the ship in times of trouble. There would have been many of these boathouses along the Viking Kings coastal region.

I spent a couple hours taking photographs, drawings, talking to the people there. In the afternoon I headed north up the coast on my way to Ørsta, which was the true reason for the trip.

In this small, far-flung berg is the most remote of all Sverre Fehn’s buildings, the Ivar Aasen Center. I am only going to get one trip there and this was it. There are few buses there and as the weather turns into cold the roads over the mountains will shut down. So I had to get there this summer to document it. I made it to the small town of Sandane where I slept another night in the car. At four in the morning I woke up and had to pee. I climber out of the car and found a bush and took a leak and then took these photos. The fjord was so calm and the light was this gray.

I climbed back in the car, but couldn’t fall back to sleep. So I read for a couple hours and finally nodded off. I woke after 8. Before I left town I booked a room at the only hotel for that evening. And then I was off.

The Ivar Aasen center was awesome.

Very similar in organization to the Glacier and Aukrust museums. A long circulation spine with exhibitions to either side. This people here were very generous. I told them i was a student to get the discount (Usually fifty percent the adult price) and they offered to take me down stairs and show me the offices. They let me watch a movie in the theater about Ivar Aasen, who traveled around Norway in the 19th century recording dialects, folklore and eventually created Norway’s written language. He was an awesome figure, he declined to go to university because he felt it would separate him from the common folk, but he spoke like 12 languages and wrote poetry and create dictionaries and grammars. He was also a botanist. Brilliant man. He essentially had to walk all over Norway, and he covered a great deal of the place in his life. He was born in Ørsta, thus the museum. Which collects his writings and botanist notebooks and his accoutrements as well as other Norwegian language related items. The have a library, which the librarian was kind enough to walk me through and talk to me about its function and such. I got a lot of photographs of the place. Not many drawings though, time was tight and I had to get back to the hotel.

That night I slept in a really expensive bed, far over priced. I paid more then a hundred dollars and the television was so ancient the remote was as big as Buick. But the shower was nice and the bed was comfortable and it’s a prospect of relativity.

The next day I drove to the Glacier museum, took some more photos, drew some more sketches, talked my way into the offices here, so it was worth it.

Again, the Glacier Museum.

Two of the actual glaciers. If you ever get here, there is a film about the glaciers in the museum that runs on the half hour that is spectacular. There are also hiking tours of the glaciers and helicopter tours.

Then I drove home. I made a stop at a this farm:

Farm house
Pump house
Interior of a stable.

The whole trip was more then 2000km of road. All told, it was a fruitful trip. I’ve been back a couple days. I wrote another entry for Tun, and decompressed. Now I’m planning a couple more adventures before leaving for the continent in September. I’m going to try to get to Bergen for a couple of days and then try to see another Fehn building south of here. Which should, in my mind, be easy to get to, but there are no busses or ferries or trains that go there from here. It’s like 20km away. So it’s this whole complicated changing conveyances to get there.

Here are some various photos from the road. I tried to stop and take shots of various places.
This was in the high country.

The Fjords in this region are the most beautiful color green.

This is a slug I found.

I find myself drawn to the way sheep position themselves in fields.

Also, the school started up today. i most likely wont be taking a class this fall. But I’ll contact some people and try to see if I can get into any of Fehn’s houses. Maybe try to meet the man himself. Check in with some of the professors and run my ideas by them, see if they have any insights. The travel may be winding down, but the work is just beginning.

Hausmania

2006-08-14T20:31:00.000+02:00

I was out taking some photographs today:

I thought I could enter a photograph of this thing in a photography contest, and I was taking these pictures and lamenting the light, which way flat and uninteresting. I was wandering around the lot, trying to find an angle and an interesting background on this thing, when this yard caught my eye.

I’ve actually been circling this place for a while. Intrigued by the graffiti and the obvious art community that was here. So I was minding my own business, standing outside this gate when a found a destroyed piano in the bushes. I was investigating, thinking that it would make an interesting picture when this guy wandered out of the gated yard and approached me. He said something in Norwegian. I apologized for being ignorant of his language and then he said, “Oh, yes. It was a piano. Then in was vandalized.” I agreed. He asked me where I was from. I said Seattle. He introduced himself, William. I returned, Jeff. He asked me if I’d ever been inside. I said no. And he invited me in. William was meeting some other people who he was to show around the place. We sat and talked. The couple he was meeting showed up. He invited them to sit. We were lounging on broke down couches under a tarp strung up between buildings. It was raining. William was explaining about Hausmania, the community we were sitting in. It’s an arts community, based on squatters who occupied this old fish production plant on the Akerselva River. They have a theater, studios to rent to various types of artists, venues for bands, a vegan restaurant; they squat four buildings additional buildings and are trying to set up a community within Oslo that is self-sustaining. As we sat there talking about the community, politics, squatting, anarchy, responsibility, people drifted in and out of the space. They would sit. Smoke cigarettes. Exchange pleasantries. Participate in the conversation. Leave. After a while, William began to walk us around the community. He showed us all the rooms, told various stories. At one point we were standing in a hallway when a gentleman approached. William introduced him as Günter. He then introduces the small group of his new friends. Kristin, Norwegian woman who was squatting in an abandoned five star hotel in Brussels. Her boyfriend, Guy, A Belgium and also a squatter. Both of these people had come to Norway to visit various communal situations. And myself, an architect from America. Günter looked at me and said, “Would you like to see our the model of our plans.” He lead us up to an office where they had an architectural model from a charette they had with the city to develop the community. We spent another hour and a half with Günter talking about the plans and the community. I was inspired. The effort and passion these people exhibited for their community, the obstacles they faced, from bureaucratic frustration to individual indifference to selfish acts, was amazing. I offered what help I could afford. I will visit them again.

some days of not too much

2006-08-13T23:31:00.000+02:00

I have been planning a few trips the last couple of days. Figuring out how to get to Paris, Munich, Venice and Rome next month. I have a new found respect for my buddy Alex who is also my travel agent. It is actually work organizing planes flights, hotels and transfers. Anyway, I am almost set with that. And Tuesday I have a car rented and will be gone all week driving around the country. Should be cool.

The other day I met Andrew, another Valle student. He's down in Ås, south of Oslo. He's an Urban Planning PhD. We had dinner. He seems like a reasonable sort of fellow.

Here are photos:

Kiosk

Gamle Aker Kirke

Bøler Library

Sticker

Copper built Røros

2006-08-10T13:23:00.000+02:00

The last couple of days I‘ve been in Røros. This little town is 5 hours north of Oslo. It was built in the early 1600, designed around copper mines that were found in the area. The town is a World Heritage site and has preserved both the smelting works as well as original dwellings from the earliest parts of its history through the 20th century. There are a lot of lessons here with regard to the development of the architecture.

There are two main streets, Kjerkgata and Bergmannsgata. These run parallel to each other and the river, northeast-southwest. The first two shots are looking up and down Kjerkgata respectively. The third is looking up Bergmannsgata and the forth is a random street.

Here are some shots of the river, north of the city.

The smelting works. There were several copper mines all over the region. The raw ore dug out of the ground was brought here and turned into copper. The river was used for various aspects of the process. The large building on the left is now a museum.

The smelting process is basically a separation of the copper from the imperfect stone. This process uses heat and the byproduct is slag. The slag is tossed into a heap. Now you can walk around on this heap and take pictures. The chemicals have colored the ground into reds and browns and grays. Quite beautiful if not a little depressing.

The cathedral in Røros holds the most people of any in Norway. 1600 people. It’s made of both stone and wood. It was paid for by the copper mines.

A stone barn. I like this building a lot.

A small piece of anachronisms.

At night I just hung out in the Hotel. I was only there for two days. I would have been there a third day, but the ticket I thought was for 4:37pm was actually for 4:37am. It’s a problem with the twenty-four hour clock. Sometime when I’m checking boxes off in a computerized form I forget that if you want to have something happen at 4pm you should actually be typing in 16:00. So yesterday morning I had to get up at 3:30 and catch a train. This turned out to be fine, but I was really tiered all day yesterday. Here is a photo looking up Kjerkgata at 4am.

So here is a thing. The hotel room had a television. I don’t have a television; I haven’t now for a couple of year. I like not having a television. I watch movies on my computer, or read. Since I’ve been here in Norway I’ve found a couple of fair use sites which stream documentaries and old movies that are no longer under copy write protection. This suits my needs. But I love television. I enjoy going to my friend’s homes and watching the cable that they have. I don’t need to do it a lot, but every once in a while it’s nice to just watch television. If I had one of my own I would watch it all the time. That’s why I don’t have one. It wasn’t helping me in Graduate school. So anyway, the point is when there is a television around, I watch it. And there was one at the hotel. And it was on the entire time I was in the room. Even while sleeping. But there were only 2 channels, NRK1 and NRK 2. National Norwegian Stations. And they showed a bunch of Norwegian shows, in Norwegian. And a couple of English sitcom and dramas and stuff. It would be useful to have a television to help learn the language, especially since everything has subtitles. But I’m going to get one. But I’ll watch it if it’s available. So I was watching the television, bouncing back and forth between channels when a drama for deaf people came on. It was awesome. But while I was watching it I realized that I didn’t know what they were saying in two languages at the same time. I understood neither the finger language nor the Norwegian. I was astounded at my ignorance. Then I turned the channel and Friends was on and so I watched that.

Here are some movies of the train ride home. I was trying to get different parts of the landscape so you could see the way the land changes in such a short amount of time. From thick forest to river valley to rolling fields to mountains. It’s quite beautiful, the land, not the movies. The movies are all jigglly and rocky and of considerable low production value. Enjoy.

Lake

2006-08-10T12:30:00.000+02:00


This lake was so still and the relfection was sulblime.

River

2006-08-10T12:26:00.000+02:00


We rode along this river for the better part of the morning. This wasn't the best part, the best part was just before this. It was a large sandbar where the river forked and there was a clearing on the other side and moutnians and fog in the distance. Very beautiful.

Mountains

2006-08-10T12:23:00.000+02:00


This was early, probably 5:30. There were these great low clouds laying across the land.

Farmland Also

2006-08-10T12:22:00.000+02:00


This farmland is closer to Oslo. You can tell because I'm sitting backwards on this train. I hate sitting backwards on trains.

Farmland

2006-08-10T12:19:00.000+02:00


This is farmland in the north, just below Røros.

Flat: The comparison.

2006-08-04T10:29:00.000+02:00

This is a side-by-side comparison of the two living spaces.

Old neighborhood. Notice the lack of people on the dead street.

New neighborhood: Lively. Jane Jacobs would be proud.

ROUND: New

Old building. They look like condominiums in Bellevue. The quanza hut structure was the grocery store.

I lived in the room shown here.

New building. This was a retrofit silo that sat vacant for many years. I don’t know what the stored here. It’s in an industrial area. You’d like to think it was some sort of grain, but it could have been chemical, or stores of talcum powder.

Decision: New

Old digs: The rectangular plan. The narrow entry. The slim “great” room. It was pretty cramped even with the limited amount of stuff I had. Just the way the furniture was, made for not a lot of space.

New Digs: The room is round. Terribly inefficient normally, but they had all the furniture especially mad so that it fits along the wall. And with the amount of stuff I had the space seems gracious.

Verdict: New

Old daylight: The entire wall at the back for the room is window. The daylight here was great.

New daylight: Little. I think because of the structure of the building they could only remove so much material from the exterior walls. This provided for the slime French style doors and that’s it.

Outcome: Old

Old Bathroom: Sufficient, well-organized space. The toilet was sturdy, the showerhead and water pressure solid. There was a shelf for my toiletry bag but nowhere to hang my washcloth or towel.

New Bathroom: Expansive. Towel rack. Small hanging caddy set into the wall out of the way and unusable. Nowhere to put my toiletry bag. Shower has a nasty clog and water backs up flooding the whole room. Toilet faces the mirror, like this:

Winner: Tie. I like the space in the new bathroom, but the clog and lack of shelf even this category out. And watching yourself in the mirror while doing your business is awkward and funny at the same time.

Old View: I faced into the complex looking out on this pathway and this building. The people walking and those living in the buildings could look into my place because I could look into theirs so walking around naked with the curtains opened was more of a show then I was comfortable with.

This is what I saw if I leaned out the window.

New View: Vegetation. That’s the trail along the Akerselva. Beyond that, basketball courts.

This is what I can see if I lean out the window.

Bonus: New digs have this lounge on the 17th floor along with a roof terrace

With these views of the city.

Advantage: New

Champion: New Digs. [Crowd goes wild: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]. All of these facts clearly give the new digs a character and substance to living that the old digs did not have. Coupled with the proximity to the city, and to the architecture school, the new digs are the clear winner. The daylight issue is substantial, especially with the coming dark of winter and went a long way in helping the old digs stay in the game. But in the end a few extra lamps negated the effect. Plus the new digs are round.

In the end the move was well worth it.

Extra:

This is my new hall.

And this, this is awesome. This is the wall that separated the entry, where the kitchen and bathroom are, from the main space. It’s thick [notice the scale hand] and beautiful.

Finally, in Homage to Katie Idziorek weblog, What did the pirate say when... of her trip to Shanghia, I give you, Yellow Awnings. Her weblog is awesome, a lot of photos, little talking. You should check it out.

The move

2006-08-02T20:33:00.000+02:00

So I’m in the process of moving. The new place is awesome. I have a side-by-side comparison that I’m working up in photos and words for you guys. I’ll probably post that tomorrow. But let me just say, it’s totally worth the extra half c-note a month. It’s not perfect, and there are things about the other place that were better, but all things considered, this is a fantastic place.

The move, however, sucked. The new place is 1.5 miles from the old place. I, having no vehicle, had to carry all my stuff, 3 trips. I have the least amount of stuff I’ve had since I was 3 months old and it was the hardest move I’ve ever had. And I’ve moved a lot. Every year, sometimes twice, from the time I was in forth grade until I entered graduate school at the age of 33. This by far was the most strenuous, weather extreme, process I’ve endured. Right now my whole body is aching and I have a slight fever and I’m exhausted. So here’s how it went down. I got all situated with the office attendant, got my new key and such like that, and went and packed. I borrowed a hand truck for my books, 70+lbs of words I didn’t want to have to carry, and the rest was going on my back, in a blue Ikea bag or in a suitcase. I figured I could get it in three trips easy.

Trip one (3 miles total, there and back.)
I over estimated my strength, which is mighty and told of in myths. But today, the Ikea bag full of dishes, the backpack with all my cloths and the suitcase with various items proved a heavy burden. Plus it was almost 80. When I made it the new place I was drenched in sweat, my hand was numb where the stupid blue Ikea straps cut off the circulation and the my legs were burning from the hills and stairs. As I was coming up the last bit it started raining. Just a little. Now in all those times I’ve moved in all the years I’ve been nomadic it has rained every time. Without exception. If you want to know if it’s going to rain, find out if I’m moving that day. I have always found this amusing. And although it was sunny all morning and hot when I started, today was no exception.

Trip two (3 miles, there and back.)
This was the trip with the books. Two boxes of thesis material, plus the stuff I’ve picked up since I’ve been in country, I was glad to have the hand truck. This and another load in the backpack made for a heavy burden, but nothing like trip one. I was watching the sky the whole way, telling it to wait, just a little bit. On the way back from the first trip I could hear distant thunder. What I wanted to avoid most of all was pushing my books through a thunderstorm. Praise be, I delivered my books dry and safe to the new digs and headed back for the cleaning and the final load. Moments after stepping from the new building it began to rain. Huge, apocalyptic size drops. But they were spread out and you could walk around them. This began to pick up as I crossed the Akerselva and began the trek back. It increased in frequency and size and the thunder returned and I figured I’d get wet. Then it left off, and then it started again. Stupid flies began attacking my ears (I don’t really understand this. It’s happened a lot and I don’t know what they find so attractive about my ears.) And then the rains came. Torrential. And cold. I was immediately soaked through and shivering because I had packed my coat and it was back at the new place. By the time I returned the hand truck to the reception I was wet. I went to the old place, took off the shirt, rung it out and hung it to dry some while I cleaned. The rain increases. It was perhaps the hardest rain I have seen. And I still had one more trip to make. I was not looking forward to it. But when the place was almost clean the rain suddenly let up and so I made my escape. I have to go back and finish up the cleaning, sweep and mop, and take care of some other business tomorrow.

Trip three (1.5 miles, there and done.)
It drizzled all the way. And I was wearing a shirt soaked through. I had my bag with my computer and some books, my suitcase and a bag of food. It should have been fine, but I was getting tired. I’d already carried my stuff 6 miles. It was slow going, but eventually I made it. Everything was fine. I got here, took a shower, unpacked, set everything up and that’s that.

I went for a walk in this neighborhood. It’s everything I hoped and completely different then the last place. Right now, out the window, I can hear kids playing in a park. The streets were lively. I the grocery was earthy and pleasant. There is a bakery and a bunch of cafes and it’s going to be great. I’ll show you more tomorrow.

Hamar Bispegard Museum

2006-08-01T21:07:00.000+02:00

Today I went to Hamar, a little town a couple train hours north of Oslo. It’s just east of Lillehammer, which was the site of the 1994 Winter Olympics. In Hamar is one of Sverre Fehn’s best works, the Hedmark’s Museum. It is an archeology museum as an intervention into an old farm, which was, in turn, built on top of a ruined Bishops house. Fehn’s intervention is simple and brilliant. He lifts the modern day path off the ground with elegant concrete trays so that the museum goers walk above the excavations. The concrete tray breaks out into the inner courtyard and sweeps around to the entrance. There are several layers to this building, both historic and imposed by Fehn. It is the building that suggested my thesis and it remains an inspiration for the ideas that I am pursuing while I’m here. I feel fortunate that it is so close and that I will get to visit it on several occasions over the next several months. Here are a few photos from the museum.

These two are special for my German friend Armin, who I will hopefully see in Munich at Octoberfest in September. These are hundred-year-old fishing poles.

I apologize for only having photos of the one building. I saw a couple of cool things in Hamar that I intended to take photos of - including the famous ice rink from the Olympics that looks like an over turned Viking ship. But I got carried away taking photos at the museum and my battery ran out of gas. I charged it last night so it was full and I got 250 shots of Hedmark’s museum (and I wasn’t near finished getting everything I wanted). But since this my first full on digital camera I didn’t realize that the battery life would be associated with the number of photos. So even though I got a couple of gigs worth of memory cards, I can still only take 250 at a go before charging the battery. Well, 500 now since I bought another. I suppose this is obvious and I should have realized, but I didn’t. It made me cuss out loud when the light started flashing “low battery….low battery”.

In other news, I get to move. Grünerløkka, H0304. I’ll let you guys know how it turns out. Here are all the upsides to this: It’s within spitting distance of the Architecture school. It’s in a park on the Akerselva river. It’s a street over from an awesome little neighborhood. It’s very close to downtown. It’s in an old silo and the rooms are round. Some of the downsides: It’s $50 more a month and there might not be Internet in my room. The first of these is fine; the second would be a pain in the ass. But I figure I can work it out. At any rate, it’s pretty exciting. It means, however, I’ll have a different phone number and mailing address, which I’ll let you know if you want to send me fun things in the mail or drunk call late at night.

Stone

2006-07-31T23:05:00.000+02:00

the houses

2006-07-31T21:35:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was great. I went on a long walk and found 9 houses by three different architects from the 30s and 40s, plus a bunch of other interesting domestic arrangements. The architects I was looking for were Ove Bang, Arne Korsmo and Knut Knutson. The Korsmo stuff was the best stuff I saw yesterday. One of his houses is on exhibit on Sundays so I went in and had a look around. Here are some photos of the place.

It was exceptional. Korsmo also designed a set of silverware. I asked about it and was told that they are reissuing it. I hope to get a set before I leave. I am a fan of Arne’s. He was Fehn’s teacher, just to put that in perspective. Here is a photo of the cutlery he designed with his wife, Grete.

The walk I took led me up into the trails North of the city. It was a good walk. I started out at 10am and made it downtown at 4. Here are some photos from the trail.

The trail.

The Devil’s Football Pitch.

I also found this snail. I haven’t seen any snails here all summer. But it was raining so I figured this must have brought them out. I saw a couple more on the walk.

And this slate growing this plant.

I didn’t take any pictures of this, although I thought about it. I ended up downtown waiting for a bus and there was this crazy who couldn’t control himself, jigging and sort of convulsing in the park. He seemed drugged, but I couldn’t tell if he was just a really bad drunk or some other demon had a hold of him. Anyway, he kept bouncing off the atoms in the air, throwing his arms around, wagging his feet and head, taking his shirt off, putting it back on, taking it off again. I was standing around waiting for this bus, reading my book and sort of watching him out of the corner of my eye. I was also watching the people who walked by. They would be peacefully walking down the street and then suddenly look up and catch a glimpse of this guy doing some unnatural bend to pick up some god forsaken item off the ground and they would stop short, a look of horror and confusion on their face. “That is not normal,” they seemed to say with their exhalations and gasps. And then they would continue. Couples would grab onto each, pull their kids closer ease by with cautious eyes. This was sort of interesting to me. I’ve been building a theory about Norway that I won’t get into here fully, but I’ll say that there is an incredible expectation of public normalcy in this country, and those things that step out of the norm are truly offensive to the citizens. This fact, this offense at public abnormality, is why I was surprised to witness a Norwegian cross the street from a restaurant and begin engaging the spirited young man. And the thing was the guy who entered the situation was trying to engage the frailer by dancing with the man who obviously couldn’t control himself. The new man would shuck and jive and try to get the crazy to enter some rhythm, take on some cohesive set of repeatable steps. But the crazy was having nothing to do with the order of a dance, he continued to flail and such and the other kept slapping him on the back and helping him pick up his dropped items. Eventually the crazy settled and they were sitting on the sidewalk and I could tell the new man was imploring the crazy with some tale of greatness or some infernal mystery because he kept raising his arms and pounding his chest and then offering his hands out to the man who didn’t take them, but who also seemed to be contemplating what the man was saying. After several minutes of this they both stood. The new man sort of bowed and turned and walked back across the street and sat down at his table in the restaurant. The crazy went on flailing. .And I left.

I worked up another video all last night. It actually took me a couple days to figure it out. It should be live soon and then I’ll post it. It’s called “bees butterflies and old sally goodin.”

Today it rained all morning. I spent the day trying to figure out how to put a map of Oslo up here that would show the different places I’ve walked and such. I haven’t quite figured it out yet. I might have to learn some javascripting for it to work. We’ll see.

Tomorrow I’m going up to Hamar. And lucky me it’ll be raining all day. Should be great

Videos are cool

2006-07-28T23:30:00.000+02:00

So that worked out well. Let me know how it plays for you. It works good on my connection, but I got some fat Norwegian pipes bringing my data to my computer. I'm totally into it though. I'll make some more crappy little videos and post them so you guys can see stuff moving. I already got some ideas. If you have any requests, anything you really want to see, anything at all just let me know. All suggestions entertained, only the interesting ones implemented. That's my new motto.

waterfall on the Akersela

2006-07-28T23:24:00.000+02:00


This is where I like to read sometimes. It’s quiet and pleasant. To the right of the frame is a small building that has a café and a gallery. They hang paintings outside on sunny days. There is a nice park here and a path both sides of the river.

Couple of Things Going On Today

2006-07-27T22:36:00.000+02:00

I am trying to get some videos up on Google Video. I’ll let you all know when they go live and you can go check them out. I’ll try to shoot more. They are crappy quality with low production value but I’ll try to make them interesting. The fist was a practice and it’s of a waterfall where I go to read sometimes. I have another of Karl Johans Gata. That I’ll put up as my first two installments. They will be Quicktime format, if you don’t have a Quicktime player, you can get it here for free.

Also I’m having a great conversation with my friend Maureen on the other blog for this adventure, Tun. Click the comments at the bottom of the post to read what’s been said and participate.

Here is a couple random photos form the 1300 photos already in the bag:

It’s a window from Gamle Aker kirke.

It’s a Volvo.

Lastly, Good People, enjoy your time.

Stavanger by twilight

2006-07-26T19:13:00.000+02:00

I took the night train to Stavanger. 9 hours across the twilight. It was a hot day before I left. I had gone on a walk, found a building (But forgot the battery to my camera.) so I didn’t get any pictures of it. I’ll have to go back. Ran some errands, packed and left. Thought about changing my shirt but didn’t. The shirt had spent the day soaking up my sweat, see, and I felt like maybe changing it would be best for the people sitting around me. But then things got rushed at the end of the night. My friend Liz Maly called (using Skype, which is a free program that allows people to talk with their computers. You can download it and talk to me as well if you want, for free. Just put it on your computer and search for my name. Easy) moments before I was walking out the door and things were hectic and so I didn’t change my shirt. I left at 9:15pm to catch a 10:15 train. At the subway station I found I missed the train to the train that I wanted to take and so had to wait for a half hour for the next one, which gave me exactly 5 minutes to get from the subway station to the train station once I made town. This made me a little uptight. I took this picture of my subway station.

There are many like it, but this one is mine. It’s a couple minutes north of my place in an area called Nydalen.
It turns out that the train was a half hour late in leaving and so I had plenty of time. I got on and sat down and pretty soon we left and the porter came by and stamped my ticket and said I could sit in a different seat that was not going to have anyone sitting next to it the entire trip. This was great. I looked out the window till in got too dark. I read for a little while. Then I pretended to sleep for three hours. Then we were in Stavanger. It was 7am.
Stavanger is on the west coast. South of Bergen. It’s pretty small. A town more than a city. When I got off the train I realized that I forgot the information about the hostel I was staying at, things like where it was at or the name of it were sitting home, safely tucked away on my computer. But I sort of remembered the direction that it was in from checking it out on the map in my Lonely Planet, so I headed that direction and figured I’d just find it. While walking along a road, toward what I thought would be the road on which I hoped the Hostel was on, a lady stopped my and asked in I was looking for the camping. I said yes, because the Hostel also had a campground. She told me right where it was and told me to walk along the lake because it was nicer. I thanked her and did just that. Here is the lake from that morning.

Shortly I arrived at the Hostel and was told that check in was at 4pm. It was 8:30am. This was fine with me. I left my backpack at the hostel and went to find the Iron Age farm, one of the reasons I was in town. It turned out to be pretty close to the hostel, a couple on kilometers away. I walked there. I had wanted to shower, but instead I was walking. In the same close I had walked in yesterday. And although it was a mist shrouded morning, it was muggy. And this would have really been fine. Really. Except for the flies. 10’s of them. Swarming around me as I walked through the pastureland on my way to the Iron Age farm.

These little stupid flies trailing me, orbiting me, dive-bombing my ears. Dive bombing my ears for Christ sake. Like little tranlucent winged kamikaze’s hitting my ear and buzzing a buzzing type fly laugh. And there’s me, 3 hours of pretend sleep, having his ears dive-bombed by flies, swiping at the air like an idiot, spinning around swatting the little bastards, cussing them and telling the to go the hell. I imagined thick tendrils of stink lines wafting off of me as I walked attracting flies from every direction. I almost didn’t go to the farm cause I couldn’t imagine what people would think. This stinking American with his swarm of pet flies. But then the flies went away and I went to the farm. It was great. Here are some pictures.

The kid in this picture was kicking a piece of sheep shit all over the pasture. He wouldn’t stop. He did it for a really long time. It made me laugh.

At 4 I checked in to the hostel and took a shower and walked back downtown. It was a couple kilometers away. A good walk. I had to figure out how to get to this town on the other side of the fjord the next morning. I was hoping to take a ferry. I figured out where the ferries were and went to check them out. It turned out that the regular ferry didn’t run on Saturdays. I didn’t really understand this. But I did find a sight seeing ferry that stopped in Forsand, and figured I try to take that. Forsand is next to Landa where the prehistoric village sits. Happy I went back to the hostel, read for a while and slept.

The next morning I caught the ferry no problem. It was a nice boat ride through the fjord to Forsand. I was on my way to see a prehistoric village. The ferry let me off and would be back 6 hours later. I walked to the village about 3 kilometers from the ferry. I was hoping it wasn’t closed, because that would have been stupid. A lot of things are closed here when they should be opened. It wasn’t closed and I got some great pictures of the buildings. One bronze age and two Iron Age structures in an amazing long house of a chief.

All the buildings I saw were reconstructions. I joined a tour with a German family that was being given in English by a Norwegian lady who thought she was funny but who wasn’t. Except to the Germans, which were her main audience so I guess it was all right. After this I walked back and waited for the ferry. I ate some lunch from a little store on the water. I read for a little while. The ferry came. Here is it coming to Forsand.

Easy. There were a lot of Russians on the ferry. I think they have replaces the ugly American and the Loud Australian as my least favorite touring foreigner. There were a lot of Russians in Stavanger and they were all loud and obnoxious and annoying. Anyway, they were all over the ferry letting their kids run around unchecked. Yelling at each other. Making nuisance. And then we were back in Stavanger and they all drove away in their BMW’s.
With that the two “work” things I had planned were taken care of. I got back to town and walked around for a little while before heading back to the hostel. The next day I spent in Stavanger. I went to the archeology museum. I saw the Old Town. Here are a few pictures.

I went to the Cathedral. It was built by English masterbuilders in 1200.

All and all it was a pleasant trip. I got a lot of stuff done. And now I’m back in Oslo. Today I’m going to look for some houses. Tomorrow I think I’ll go to Hamar and see a Sverre Fehn building. One I’ve been to before, Hedmark’s Museum. Fehn has done some additional buildings on the site since I’ve been there and I’m pretty excited to see them. Next week I might head up to Røros. And then after that another driving tour. I’m trying to see as much as I can now in the beauty of summer because I’m not sure how much travel I’ll be able to do in the winter. I am curious to see if, for instance, the trains still run. Or the busses. I know I won’t be driving those curving winding roads with the addition of snow and ice. So I’m trying to make sure I get enough information for my thesis now, while the weather holds.
I decided to try to move. Two things swayed me finely. Since I’ve been in town a month and a half ago I have been thinking about this. There is this housing in an old silo. It’s pretty cool. The rooms are round. I could have chosen to live there initially, but it was slightly more expensive. Well, it turns out to be right next to the architecture school, on the river. I’ve been going back and forth about this for a while. Should I move should I stay? I thought I had decided to just stay here. But then I would think about walking the half hour walk to the school in the cold dark winter. From here it would be half an hour. From there it would be half a minute. But this still wasn’t enough. I told myself I needed to be stronger then that. What the hell. A little cold? Come on Jeff. Then I was on a walk the other day, when I found the drug dealers, and I happened into the neighborhood where this other housing is. (I usually head out in a random direction following streets haphazardly with a general inclination to where I think I need to go. It leads to interesting experiences.) So there I was, walking down this lively street, with interesting shops and people and I felt like I really want to live in that neighborhood. But still…the final thing was I read how that area was the hip secret place in Oslo. Where the best coffee shops and nightlife and stuff were. How the local know about it, but the travelers steer clear. That was it. I decided I’d try to live there. Too many things were pulling me in the direction. So I put in the application and we’ll see. It’s up to fate now. I have to weight for an opening. Hopefully soon.

vice

2006-07-19T23:33:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I found the prostitutes and today I found the drug dealers. I have noticed that this town is pretty easy. There seems to be little crime, little homelessness, little urban blight. There is no part of Oslo that I wouldn’t walk alone at night. In fact I have walked most of this city and never once felt threatened in any way by anything. However, there is a particular street populated with grubby drunk people. Skippergata, just south of the train station. So I pegged this for the skid-like row. And I secretly wondered how a drunk, how a full on 9 in the morning lush drinking all day long eschewing anything that resembled responsibility could afford such a life style. It made me wonder if, in an economy such as this, would these people, by necessity, have to be the welltodo? I can’t say for sure, but I’ve given up the drink, at least for the time being and it is directly related to price. But that’s neither here nor there, because on several street corners a few blocks away from Skippergata, are trollops done up for solicitation. I have seen them approaching cars for the lean in negotiation and I have seen them in uncomfortable cloths hanging out on the sidewalk and I have seen politi patrolling certain parks in the neighborhood with a frequency that is astounding considering you never see a politi ever anywhere. Conclusion, Oslo’s red light district. Drugs, on the other hand, are for sale along the lower reaches of the Akerselva river. I have walked this many times. Seen the groups of men sitting on the park benches and thought nothing of them. This day I was offered hash three times. It’s a simple procedure. As you walk by one of the men will “ssssspppsss” at you. When you look over they smile and say “Hash?” Either you want it or you don’t. Their business men. And so, the vices of the city are uncovered. I bought neither the prostitution nor the drugs.

I did buy a train ticket to Stavanger. I leave tomorrow night at 10pm. Three days. So there is that.

Graffiti

2006-07-18T22:54:00.000+02:00

Today I bring you some graffiti. Just a couple of pieces. I’ve said before, and it’s true, Oslo has a dearth of worthwhile graffiti or sticker culture. This is pretty disappointing. Stockholm is full of amazing pieces of graffiti and stickers and I was looking forward to hunting some pieces here. But I’ve found little in the way of stickers, and most of the graffiti is lame tag stuff. I did see a really cool one in Bergen while driving around. I’ll have to get it when I go back. These are all from Oslo. Two are obviously the same person, MIR. I like them. And then the cute panda and the spooky girl.

Also, perhaps you noticed the AdSense at the top of the page. Seeing as it is so expensive here i thought I’d see if I could generate some more cash using this account. But I need every bodies help. Every time you come here all you have to do is click on one of those links when you leave. And if you could pass this around to as many people as possible, and get them all to click on the add an ad as well, if everyone did it in the whole world a couple of times I might be able to eat some chicken every once in a while and maybe enjoy a beer while I’m over here. Just a thought.

1600 kilometers in three days

2006-07-13T21:14:00.000+02:00

Driving across Norway was pretty cool. And although it was filled with some hassle – mostly due to my idiocy – it was totally worth it. I got the car on Monday morning. They upgraded me from a Ka (the car so big it doesn’t need an ‘r’) to a Peugeot something or other. That was cool. I took the subway to the rental agency, which was right across the street from the station at Enjso. Easy. This create an inherent problem that arose as soon as I pulled out of the lot. Turning right, towards the city, I realized I didn’t have a map or a clue about where I was. What I did have was a general idea of where I lived, namely: right. So it took me an hour of driving through this small city to find my way home. Three dead ends and two circles lead me, eventually to something I recognized and then to home. I loaded up the car and headed out. But with the detour and the screwing around before hitting the road, I was late leaving. About an hour and half or so. I figured it would be fine, what are they going to do, lock me out? It was 6 hours to drive to Bergen, my first stop. I left at 12:30. So I’d only be a half hour or so late for my check in at 6pm. No problem. 6 hours was conservative anyway, for all those saps driving the speed limit. I am, if perhaps only in the arena, not a sap. I like driving fast. So I got on the Ring 3, this is the outer of three roads that, well, ring Oslo. The Ring 3 to the E18. The E18 to the E16 and then I’d be riding that all the way to Bergen. Pretty straight forward. The Ring 3 and the E18 are both four-lane highways. At least around Oslo. And the E16 is the major highway between Oslo and Bergen. This is like driving from Seattle to Spokane. The implication, even on the map, is highway. But as soon as I turned onto the E16 it presented itself as a two-lane road. And this only changed when the yellow centerline disappeared and it became, arguably, a single lane road. Now with the exception of the speed with which you can go on this highway (the posted speed limit is 80km/h. Through towns it’s 60km/h. That’s roughly 50 and 40 mph respectively) it was awesome. The road winds its way across the country, up into the mountains, down along fjords, through small bergs. Beautiful. Several times I wanted to stop and take pictures, but the other thing about the roads is there is no shoulder. There is road, white line, and pavement ends almost immediately and then earth and grass usually at some sharp incline either up or down. There were provided turnouts, but these were often at dull places along the journey and not where I wanted to take pictures. Ultimately, it did turn out to be a good thing that I could take pictures.
I drove and drove and drove. The other thing about these roads is that you can go pretty fast, I mean relatively. I could do 100-110km/h. Twisting and turning and having a good old time. But inevitably I would come upon some Norwegian doing the speed limit. Or worse, some Norwegian camper headed to some holiday campground that could only do a fraction of the speed limit. This was compounded by all the winding and twisting and turning. I have to wait behind these people for a clear straight away to pass. These were few and far between. All told, with the late exit from the city and the driving conditions I ended up rolling into Bergen at 8:45. Almost three hours past my check in. Keep in mind; Bergen is like 450klm away from Oslo. (Roughly 270 miles.) Like driving across one state right. When was the last time it took 8 hours to drive across Washington? Never. 5 hours from Seattle to Pullman At the outside. And that’s over 300 miles and half of that is also on a two lane road. I got a buddy who did it in 3 hours and 45minutes when I was an undergraduate. 8 hours? I felt like a sucker. But whatever.
As I pulled into Bergen I realized I forgot the directions to the place I was suppose to park. I had asked the Hostel and they gave me a reasonable place to leave the car for the night. Also, my map of Norway does not include a side map of Bergen. It has a side map of Oslo, which is fine. And then it has one of Stockholm and one of Malmo, two cities not in Norway and of little help. Any rate, I had the address for the Hostel and I had my Lonely Planet and with these I promptly got lost in Bergen. And then I swear to god I drove around in a circle five times trying to find the street. I mean I would think I was going somewhere different and I would end up back at the same intersection no where near the street I was looking for. A good 45 minutes of this finally found me where I needed to be, which was good cause I had to pee and I was starving. A quick check in and then food.
Quick was not in the cards. First off, I found the building, it had a huge sign on the side that said “Dorm.com” That’s where I was staying. I also lucked out and found parking on the street just up the block. Sweet. I got out and walked to the door I thought was the Hostel, which turned out to be a bar. And the address, Kong Oscars Gate 40 was not what was above the door. The address here was Kong Oscars Gate 44. “Oh, It must be across the street there in that…no that’s K.O.G 38. Well then maybe it’s over there…no.” So I went into the bar and asked. As I waiting for the bartended I checked the address again. Kong Oscars Gate 46! “Oh, it’s just the other side of this bar. Right, well that makes sense…” I told myself as I exited the bar and headed to the hostel. “I should have checked the address because here is 46…but it’s all papered over and locked and that doesn’t say anything about a hostel.” I went back to the bar and the Bartended was like “Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s down the block and to the right, because we’re 44” Right, but down the block and to the right was across the street and no longer on Kong Oscars Gate. There was a hostel there, but not the one with my reservation or deposit. I went hunting. I walked up and down a couple of streets with no luck. And then I had to pee. I had to. And eat. At this point I gave it up and decided to sleep in the car. I walked down to the water. Figured I pee in some restaurant and then get some food. And I found a lot of restaurants but they were all so damn expensive (and you thought I wasn’t going to bring this up) that I couldn’t bring myself to eat at any of them. I eventually found a public wc and used the hell out of it. And then went to 7-11 and got some waters and figured I’d eat a sandwich form the food I’d packed. As I was walking back to the car I got a hunch that the hostel might be through a little gate behind the bar where I asked for direction. I walked in, there was the door to the bar from the patio and there, not ten feet away, the door to the Dorm Hostel. Awesome. I’m set. I wish she had said so before, the bartended, I mean I could actually see the door from where I stood and asked her for directions. If I’d only knew what I was looking for. And I reached out and turned the knob I found that it didn’t matter. It was locked. All the lights were actually off and there was no one behind the counter.
Back at the car I made a sandwich. I drank some water. I tried to figure out if I sleep in the car or get a hotel. I can afford a hotel, but I didn’t want to. I could go to that other hostel around the corner, but I could just as easily sleep in the car. Peugeot, as the guy said at the car rental, knows how to make comfort. Not quality, but comfort. As I finished my sandwich I decided I’d head up the road towards the Glacier Museum, the Fehn building I was planning on seeing on the trip. I would drive as far as I could and then find a place to sleep on the road. Then come back the next afternoon and sort out the bed. So this I did. I drove for another hour. Found a parking lot in a small berg and fell asleep. Here is a picture of the hostel I didn’t stay at:

And here is the Parking lot I did sleep in:

It wasn’t bad, but after a while it wasn’t comfortable anymore. I woke up at 6am, rested at any rate. And headed up the road. I figured the Museum was about 2 hours away. Turned out to be 4 and a half hours away. Still, beautiful country. Part of the time was spent on a ferry, which was nice. When I got to the museum it was awesome. I had seen pictures in books, read about it. I knew the building, but here it was. I pulled into the parking lot and got out of the car, pulled out the camera and went to work. It’s a great building. Here is a picture of the buildng and a view of one of the glaciers:

After an hour out side, walking around the building, taking photos and drawing, I headed inside. And it was while I was taking pictures inside that the next hassle presented itself. I am lining up a shot when the battery light starts flashing. It was running out of juice. I had charged it a couple days before and it was usually good for what I had planned, but here it was dying. I had brought my computer so I potentially had an infinite number of pictures I could have taken. (I only have one SD card at the moment.) But if the battery died I was done for. There would be no need to go anywhere else or do anything else. It would be wasted. I bought a hot dog at the museum café and sat down for a think. (I tried out my Norwegian on the girl behind the counter. I said “Polse med brød.” The girl looked at me like I was retarded. I said “Hotdog with bread.” She smiled and said “Oh, yeah.” As I ate I drew a couple of details of the building and thought about my options. I could go back to Bergen. But without a camera I could get little work down. I could draw, which is fine, but I needed to take pictures of specific buildings. I decided to head home. I figured I could stop at a couple of the stave churches on the way; I had planned on doing this anyhow, and take as many photos as I had juice left to take. At home I could charge the battery and then go see another building north of Oslo, the Aukrust Museum.

After 3 hours at the Glacier Museum I hit the road again. The first stave church I stopped at was a treasure. Not necessarily for the building, which was simple and pretty cool in it’s own right.

This is Kaupanfer Stavkirke:

But the guy taking money at the door came in while I was figuring out how the thing was put together and we started talking. He gave me some great information the best is that he turned me onto the preservation society. So I’ll go see them next week and get permission to take pictures on the inside of the stave churches, which is now prohibited unless you have a piece of paper saying it’s all right.
At the next church the battery died. I filled up most of the SD card, though. After this I was on the road headed home.

Borgund Stavkirke:

6 hours later I pulled into Oslo. This proved to be a good move given the situation. I charged the camera and got a good nights sleep.

The next morning I headed north with the intention of seeing the museum and then going to Røros, which is farther north. I’d spend a day and half at the old mining town, get some good photos, it would be great. The Aukrust Museum turned out to be fantastic. Even if it took 2 hours longer to get to then I estimated. The museum itself was such an elemental and simple building that it was totally worth it. I have about 150 photos on the camera and I ended up taking 130 of this building. Usually I run about 50 photos a building. Elevations, perspective, elements and details. That’s about all I need to get pretty good documentation. When I was leaving the house for the second time I had balked at taking the computer. It made me nervous to leave it in the car the previous leg of the tour and it’s heavy to lug around. I figured I’d have enough photos for the one building and a preliminary survey of Røros. But 20 pictures, it was not worth the additional 5 hours of driving (plus the 2 extra hours that it would actually take to get there). I decided to once again come back to Oslo.
Aukrust:

And that was the trip. All things considered I got some great images. I saw some excellent architecture. I really liked Bergen and I’ll go back on a separate trip. I also plan on visiting both these museums at least two more times. Now that I’ve driven it and know what it takes I can make better plans. I turned the car in a day early because it was rather expensive. Worth it, but there was nothing I could see in a day so it wasn’t worth keeping it.
The whole trip got me excited about being here. Being out in the countryside, seeing those buildings, it just made me feel good about what I’m doing. I will be putting together a more detailed report about the various buildings I’ve seen in the last month and what they mean to my thesis for Tun. This should be up next week if you want to check it out.
For now, I’m in Oslo. I’m going to start planning another trip. I was reading about a prehistoric village near Stravanger. That might be next on the list. In a couple weeks I’ll rent another car and go driving some more.

The car I drove in front of Aukrust Museum:

the same old

2006-07-09T22:00:00.000+02:00

Nothing exciting to tell right now. Just visiting buildings, taking pictures, drawing. I spend about five hours a day most days walking around the city looking for buildings. A typical day is shaping up like this: Get up around 10am. Check to see if I have any love in the email. Shower. While I’m drying off I figure out what buildings I need to see that day, find them on a map, plot a strategy for getting there and head out around 11am. Depending on the day and where I’m headed I either catch a train into town or walk. Sometimes I take music, sometime I don’t. On the way to the buildings I look for interesting things. I think about people I know and love. I plot future adventures. I think of poems and stories. This happens all day. I don’t talk to too many people. The city is crawling with tourists, both foreign and native. In July the people of Scandinavia all take there summer holidays. This means that the city folks go camping and the country folks come to the city. The shopping street, Karl Johans Gate, is madness with people here on holiday. It makes me feel unclean to walk down that street and I always try to find a different route. I feel especially awkward pulling out my camera to take pictures because it marks me, also, as a tourist. And I’ve never really been a pictures type of tourist. I prefer experience, taking memories, living in a place rather than documenting it. Searching for a deeper understanding and not collecting trophies of the a place. I realize that this is not a widely held sentiment. There are people I know, people I consider close, who view photos and photo albums with pride. I do not take this away from them. In fact having looked through photo albums of friends and found it pleasurable, I know that my stance is perhaps not even the correct one. However I can't help pocketing my camera until the very last moment before I need to take a photo, because, after all, that is what I’m doing here: documenting. You should see the lengths I'll go to not have to pull out my map. The other day I had to check the map, there was no getting around it, so i walked down three blocks and up another from where I was to a secluded side street. Goofy. But so I pull out my camera in a crowd and stand there trying to pull the perfect shot out of the subject. Usually this means waiting until most if not all of the people and cars have moved out of the way, cause we can’t have those types of things mucking up our pretty buildings. I spend the better part of the afternoon doing this. Around 5pm I head home. Mostly because of hunger. I don’t eat before I leave. And I find it incredibly difficult to buy anything in the city. Sometimes I think, “Oh, maybe I should go to that restaurant. That hamburger sure does look good advertised there the way it is.” And then the quick math. 129 Norwegian kroner and 6.3 kroner to the dollar is 129/6.3=$20.47. And then I just tell myself I can wait until I get home. [I can see this economic business becoming a reoccurring theme of this trip]. Anyway, once I get home I check to see if I have any love in the email. But these excursions usually happen between 1am and 7am Pacific Standard Time which means that there is never any love in the email in the afternoon. So I settle in, put on some music, which I can only listen too within a 5-foot radius of the computer, as I don’t have working speakers so every sound is piped through my ipod ear buds, and work on the photos I’ve taken that day. Pull them out of the computer. Resize them. Mull them over. Put them in appropriate files so I can find them later. This takes maybe an hour. Which leaves me with a good five to seven hours of free time. Sometimes I work on the thesis. Sometimes I play chess against artificially intelligent opponents who kick my ass. Sometimes I write poems. Lately I’ve been creating a comic strip on MySpace. It’s called Just Guy. That’s a diversion. Sometimes I read. I make some food, rice or noodles and sandwiches and salad and peas. When I get tired I strip down, get into bed and read until sleepmonkeys overtake me. Then I dream bizarre dreams. For instance last night I dreamt I traveled back to 1954 and I had to find my grandfathers house, except everything was different then what I knew and so it was really hard. Right now it’s almost 10pm. it’s raining outside and pretty light out. This sometimes gets me. I’ll look out the window and think, “It’s 7.” A quick check of the old timepiece shows that’s it’s actually 9:30. It’s raining right now. It has been sunny and in the upper 70’s all week. Today was overcast and now it’s raining. I leave tomorrow for Bergen. I hope the weather comes back.
I tried to put more pictures here but stupid blogger wouldn't do it.

FotoNorge #1:Boats

2006-07-09T21:17:00.000+02:00

the post that was not

2006-07-04T22:23:00.000+02:00

Let me just say that you guys are lucky. I just spent a good half hour writing about how much I paid for a couple of pens and a sketchbook today ($43) and then I lost it cause I’m an idiot. So you are spared that flabbergasted lecture on the economics of Norway. Instead I will just write a quick note about this new idea I had. It’s called “FotoNorge” It’s where I post pictures that aren’t necessarily of architecture, but rather of things I see that describe the culture and people. Should be more interesting then a lump of images of all the cool buildings I’ve seen. I’ll throw those in for free. So look for that in the coming days.
I will retell this part of the awesome lost post: I’ve been visiting important modern buildings in Oslo the last week. I’ve seen some great things. It’s terrific fun. I’ve read about these buildings, I understand their place in the urban fabric, their function in the process of architectural development in Norway. And now I’m out hunting them down. Some I have seen before, such as the Artists House.

A gallery and café designed by Gudolf Blackstad and Herman Munthe-Kaas in 1928. Others I can find address for, which is nice because then I can check them out on a map and walk in the general direction of the place. This building designed by Erich Mendelson for instance was easy to find with the address.

Others, however, I only have a black and white photo to work from. The Workers Association by Ove Bang for instance. Thing is I’m pretty sure I walked by this building the first couple of days I was in town. But now I can’t remember where it is and I can’t find any address and so I am stuck wondering the city looking for the building. It’ll be a great find. I’ll take some pictures.
I’m going to Bergen in the next couple of days. Renting a car and driving. Going to visit a bunch of Stave Churches along the way and a Fehn building, the Glacier Museum. Adventure.

art architecture boats architecture art

2006-06-29T21:04:00.000+02:00

Gustav Vigeland was a Norwegian sculptor during the first half of the twentieth century. In the 1920’s the Norwegian government built him a studio and house in exchange for the sculptures donated to the Vigeland sculpture garden. The park is larger then the procession of sculptures, but it is the sculptures that attract tourists. They depict various states of the human condition from birth to death, love, aggression, happiness, and indifference. When I was here before I wasn’t that impressed. I preferred Carls Mills mythology to Vigeland’s. This time, wandering through the park, I was struck by the sculptures. I decided that there is a particular Norwegian sentiment in these depictions of the human.

Norsk Folkemuseum is a collection of traditional buildings from around the country brought to Oslo and arranged to recreate the setting of the original architecture. This was the beginning of my studies. The first stop on a journey into the ideas and principles that led to creating architecture not from the minds of individuals, but from the hands of a culture. There are a number of farms here that date from as far back as the 15th century and come from all over the country. They also have a transplanted stave church. It’s like a little sampler of different techniques and ideas pulled out of time and space and set down for all to enjoy.

The Viking Museum is a collection of three Viking ships that were used in the burials of Viking kings. The ships were discovered at the end of the 19th century. They were excavated along with the remaining grave goods and brought to Oslo. It’s a great museum; the three main wings are devoted to each of the ships. The most interesting thing about the Viking ship is that the structure actually comes from the skin. The strakes, or planks, are overlapped and held together with iron nails. The gap would have been filled with wool and tar to make the ship waterproof. The nature of the construction was such that the boats were flexible yet solid. This made them incredibly sea worthy and is what allowed the Vikings to sail as far west as Greenland for sure and possibly North America.

Norwegian Museum of architecture: This is what I did today. I was stoked. I figured there would be a wealth of information that I could use here and I was eager to scope it out. I walked downtown and found the building it was suppose to be in but it wasn’t there. I walked a little further and found a building under construction. I read the sign, “New Architecture Museum” it read in Norwegian. Below that it read “Architect: Sverre Fehn.” I was so proud. I had found one of the fabled current projects of Fehn. And it was the new architecture museum. I immediately went to the fence and took pictures of the building being built. Not for you all, but this was pretty exciting. These pictures are some of the first published of a new building by one of the greatest Norwegian architects ever. And as exciting as that was, and still is, I was unable to find the architecture museum’s collection. I went instead to the museum of contemporary art across the street.

The museum of contemporary art was disappointing. The main exhibit was a Norwegian fashion designer who made it big in Paris in the 70’s, Per Spooks. I didn’t read too much about him, mostly because I found the whole thing incredibly boring. Upstairs they had the permanent collection, which was also, largely, boring. There were a few interesting things. Three paintings by Per Kleiva Blad fra imperialistens dagbok I-III. This is I:

A few other things, but over all disappointing. The whole experience was made worse by the fact that the souls of my shoes squeaked the entire time I was in there. Each step an echoing screeches of dying mice. Finally I just left.

I’m trying to decide if I should move or not. There is student housing closer into town and practically right next to the architecture school. It’s also on the river park, which runs all the way up to where I am now along the Akerselva river which runs down into Oslo Center. I walk this everyday, it’s quite lovely and there are some cool buildings along it, old industrial buildings from the 19th and early 20th century. Anyway, it would be nice to live closer to the city, but at the same time it would be a little more money each month. The student housing is in old grain silos, which would be interesting. I’d have a more interesting view. But at the same time, i could use the money in my pocket. Well, I’m just mulling it over. We’ll see what happens.

and i say eat, that you may live

2006-06-25T21:53:00.000+02:00

Because eating is so important to life I’d like to take a moment to describe the way I eat here. One word. Rice. A lot of rice. I like rice, but that’s not the primary reason for the choice. It mostly has to do with economics. In a few places I’ve mentioned the cost of living being almost criminal. And it is. So I went into the store and tried to figure out how I was going to eat without going broke. Cause you can easily go broke trying to eat in this country. Economic Example: the exchange rate is currently 6.3 Norwegian Kroner to the Dollar. Great. In a vacuum, that’s a fantastic deal. in the gravity of reality, it is only marginal. Because at the store, when I want to buy .5 liters of water (like 12oz) I have to lay down 25kroner. That is roughly $4.00 a bottle. I buy them, I open them I start to drink them and then I do the math and my stomach tightens. “How can I drink this? If I drink on of these a day I’ll spend more then a thousand dollars on water alone. Maybe I should buy something with taste at least.” I knew before I came that it was expensive. And I’m not complaining, I’m just talking about how to deal with it. So meat is off the menu for the most part. Meat is relegated to luxury. One meal in ten, say. Eggs, I thought eggs would be a good value and source of protein, but not at $6 a dozen. Now I love a good piece of cooked flesh, don’t get me wrong. But Rice is simply more economical. Rice and vegetables. Rice is $4 for a bag. Good substance. Fill you up. Add some vegetables, which are pricey in their own right, but there is economy of nutrition that makes it worth it. Add some protein in the form of salami slices. I can make a meal for $5 total. That’s good value. At the same time I feel that it will be important to eat out in the world every now and then. A meal at a restaurant will make me feel good every once in a while. And that’s the plan. Here is what I ate tonight:

Rice. Peas. Salami sandwich. Tap water.

The Mad Men of Immigration were mostly Beautiful Norwegian Women

2006-06-23T07:21:00.000+02:00

I was up at 4:30 in the ah em this morning. It seems my mind and body are locked in a battle over what the appropriate times for sleeping and waking are. Currently my body is winning because having spent a lot of time with my mind I know for a fact there is no way on God’s green acre that he’d want to get up at 4:30am, ever.

Yesterday was Immigration day! That is the day I checked in with the feds and let them know where I was at and such. It was three hours of standing around for a sticker in my passport. But now I have it. So I’m legal for nine months.

The foreign delegate

After this was over I walked down to the Rådhus to take those photos I missed the other day. Here are a few of them:

And this is the Oslo Fjord:

I then walked part way to the Vigelands Sculpture Park. However, after a beautiful morning, the rain came in again, just as hard and the day before. So I headed back home instead. Vigelands for another day. I found a park along the way home to walk through. There are actually parks all over so this isn’t really surprising. This one is called St. Handhaugen. But here’s the thing, I am walking through this park, it’s pleasant, on a granite ridge and I spy up ahead a fenced off play are with a building, something like a daycare. And as I get closer I notice that there is a host of baby carriages in the yard. Like twenty, twenty-five baby carriages all parked under the trees. Then I notice that there are bunches parked under a small shed. And one of these baby carriages has a child standing up in it. He had pushed himself up through the plastic rain protection and was just, you know, doing some child investigation of the world. I’m walking past the place now and I see that the at least two other carriages contain babies; I can hear them and see their feet kicking at the sides of the prisons. And the thing of it is, there were no adults around, none. 25 baby carriages filled with babies sitting under the trees in the rain and no adults around at all. It was disturbing because where were all the mothers? Who was in charge? Certainly not the one brilliant barn that had crawled out or his confinement, smart as he obviously was. I took up station by a tree and watched. I stood there fifteen twenty minutes. The little tyke just looking around, playing some unfathomable game with the zipper on his buggy. But no one came, no mother, no trouble. I left. The strangeness of it suggested everything was fine. If it had been one or two buggies’s parked haphazardly I’d have been more worried. But twenty-five suggest an operation of some sort. Strange.

The excursions.

2006-06-21T23:49:00.000+02:00

#1: Tuesday 20 June
So there I was, 6am yesterday morning and me having already done everything I could actually do in this small room in the proceeding 6 hours. So I up and left. My first actual exploration of the city began at 6am June 20th. I had no real plan, I figured I’d walk into town, get the lay of the land, and assess my proximity to all things Oslo. The walk was pleasant. I wondered in the general direction of the Rådhus, or City Hall as we say back home. Even at that early hour Oslo is a pretty dirty town. Last time I was in this part of the world with a bunch of people everyone was really down on Oslo. It rained the whole time we were here, true. But Oslo is not like the other Scandinavian capitals. There is an edge, a grit that defines it as a true city. Stockholm was all façade, prettied up and freshly painted but substanceless, like royalty n name only. Copenhagen was like an aging hippy who came into money. Helsinki was like business executive on vacation. But Oslo, Oslo was blue collar. It was tough. Things might happen here and there is no telling what the outcome would be. And now here I am again. And Oslo is still tough. Even at 6am.
The walk was pleasant enough. I’m just shy of 2 miles out from city center. [I just figured that out with a map, an engineers scale and math. It’s an approximation.] I walked aimlessly, plotting my course by memory and a general sense of direction. I noticed two things besides the grit, One, graffiti and sticker culture in Oslo is sophomoric and disappointing so far. [Stockholm had great stickers, as did Copenhagen. Here, not so much.] And two, as I got into the city proper there were people everywhere and a lot of them were incredibly beautiful Norwegian women. The gene pool here is fantastic that way. But also the people on the street, people walking, markets being set up, conversation and it lasted all day. Crowds of people occupying the city in a different way from how they do in Seattle.
After getting lost for a little while I found the Rådhus and sat by the water for a while. It was 8:30. I took a picture of Oslo Fjord and that’s when the first setback occurred. Memory Card Error. Damn it. The card just broke. It just up and broke. No explanation. No goodbye. Just nose thumb and an AMFYOYO and then it was gone. So no pictures. Not of the Fjord, not of the Rådhus, not of the trippy ufo play toy thing I found all graffiti’d out. Nothing. To bad for you.
Putting that aside I decided I should go to Ikea, because Ikea is where you go if you want the good things that make life worth living. And although I am traveling, I am also sad just now and I could use some good things that make life worth living. Like a plate and fork. A pillow. And a pan for cooking. Not so much in the states, but here in this part of the world, Ikea runs a bus service from the city, in this case Oslo, to it’s far removed front door (two towns over, a suburb really called Slependen). I had a recollection of this bus pulling up while we were standing somewhere 2 years ago and someone (Laura Lenss?) exclaiming “Ikea has a bus!” Well I knew I could ride that bus for free if I could just find it. And so I stood around where I thought we were when that was said. But no big blue Ikea bus. I waited. Nothing. I sat and watched people at a bus station, but no Ikea. After awhile I gave up and went to a book store to get envelope. While there I paid $13 for a paperback book. Yeah for weak dollars!
I then went to find the police station and that took a while because it’s on a road that’s underground. So I walked passed it several times. I have to go there to have my passport checked and stamped with a visa. When I finally found the place the line was too much. It was eleven by this time, and I’d been up for a long time and I was tired and didn’t feel like waiting, so I marked the fact that the station was on another road that is actually above ground and made my way home.

#2 Wednesday 21 June
Today’s adventure started out with a trip to the Police station. Again for the passport thing. I left about 10am. Took a different route into the city. Found a nice park with ducks and seagulls and big fields. Walked along a river. It was nice. I was glad to be out. I almost didn’t leave the room. When I woke up it was raining, hard. Now I love the rain. I love it when it’s raining. I love being in the rain, watching the rain, waiting for it rain. I like also staying inside when it’s raining with the window open and reading a book. It’s peaceful for me. At 9:30 I crawled back into bed and intended to sleep a little more, read some, and basically kill a day. But then I started thinking about all the stuff that needed to get done. And the rain had stopped. And so I got up and left. [Yes, I dressed first, which would implied I spent the morning in my underwear. Fair enough.] When I got to the Police station I was told I needed to go to a different police station around the corner, but they were closed at 11:30. All right, something to do tomorrow. I left and decided to find that Ikea bus come hell or high water, as I really needed that fork and plate.
Circling I eventually found it and road the half hour to Ikea. This in itself was pretty uneventful. It’s the same set up as any other Ikea. You walk around and find everything in a sleek modern Scandinavian fashion. I got two bags worth of good stuff to make life worth living, like a wok and cups and all the other stuff and a reading lamp. On the bus ride back it started raining and when we got off the bus it was coming down like the business end of a giant water hose or something. But I walk in the rain all the time. so whatever. I went five blocks and the rain was so heavy that I had to actually stop and wait it out. I don’t usually do that kind of thing. I mean I was already wet, why not keep going, but seriously, I couldn’t. And as I was standing under the canopy, I contemplated hailing a cab. Hailing a cab? I even counted up my money to make sure I’d have enough for the trip. Then I remembered I’m not a crybaby and sucked it up. When I finally started walking the rain let up. And then it was gone. So there I was, carrying sixty pounds of goods things to make life worth living, drenched, walking home, and still no picture. But the river was swollen from the rain and the waterfall was mighty and strong. And when I got home I cooked some stuff with pans and ate them with my fork and plate.

So far that’s it. Two excursions, no pictures and a bunch of good things to make life worth living.

the first day or so

2006-06-20T04:03:00.000+02:00

It has been 32 hours since I've been in county. In that time I wrote a really long love letter while sitting in the airport for nine hours. I checked into my monk's quarters, a room 12x22 that includes a kitchenette and a bathroom (below are some photos of the place). I slept for 12 hours, from noon to midnight. And now I am beginning my documentation of the tour.

I have another blog documenting the thesis research. It's called tun and you can find it here http://tun23.blogspot.com/. Check it out. Moldegata 25 will be for stories and adventures; strange facts and photos; ramblings and musings. All are free to comment on either site.

If you look close you'll see a $6 loaf of bread.

As you can see I've only unpacked. There has been little attempt at organizing things yet.

The canal I overlook.