Big City Blues

As we snaked up the mountain to Haukåsen airport for our flight to Oslo, a lump formed in my throat, a clear expression of the anxiety I had developed before the flight. Fun story (I apologize that some of you in Sogndal have already heard it): I’ve endured a somewhat forced fandom of the National Geographic television channel during our stay in Sogndal, a fact borne not of its scintillating entertainment value but rather its standing as the only available English option. Heavily featured in their programming has been a series about investigators who unravel the causes of plane accidents. So, as of this morning, it’s fair to say that my eagerness to board a plane was at an all-time low.

Our Norwegian flight captain, undeterred and unfazed by whatever doomsday augury I had imagined, handled the heavy rain and fog with aplomb, landing us in Oslo without incident. In a flash, our transition from small town to big city was immediately apparent. Multi-lane highways. Skyscrapers. Honking horns. Hustle and bustle. All of these are things I know–after all, I’ve lived in two cities bigger than Oslo–but it’s pretty incredible how quickly your mind adjusts to alternative surroundings. The brief culture shock was very real.

As we stepped out to explore the city for the first time, the weather was absolutely incredible, defying all expectations to the contrary. We were greeted with warm sun, clear skies, no wind to speak of… Nope. I’m kidding. The weather has frankly been miserable. We’ve been battered by cold surges of rain and gusting wind. The show must go on, but it has been a difficult psychological hurdle to clear. Oslo is not like Sogndal, where we can huddle inside a relative’s house and enjoy some cake for a rainy day. Our time here is limited, and our determination to make the best of it must endure.

It made the most sense to us to begin our reconnaissance of the city in the Oslo center, near our 2019 home base, so we hopped on the T-bane (metro/subway/train, for you American lot) and headed to Oslo Sentralstasjon. It’s a remarkable part of town, where many of the city’s various forms of public transit converge into one giant central hub of transportation (there is a reason our previous hotel, located next door to the sentralstasjon building, is literally called “The Hub”).

On our way to our first attraction, it was time for some grub, as we had not eaten since our early breakfast prior to our flight check-in. My selection took a page out of the PDX handbook: Barcode Street Food is one of Oslo’s many pods featuring a handful of food stalls, very similar to Portland’s famous food truck squadrons. The indoor space sports over fifteen different businesses offering a huge variety of international cuisine (including the ever-exotic Texas barbecue), tables made out of repurposed oil barrels, and an upstairs cocktail lounge. For my late lunch, I fell into the arms of a favorite comfort food that I’ve missed during my time in Norway and ordered the sampler plate from Der Peppern Gror, the Indian food stall. (I’ve yet to meet samosa chaat that doesn’t vastly improve my day, and this one was no exception.) I could eat there every day and be very happy.

We have seen the Oslo Opera House, with its geometric silhouette set against the inner Oslo Fjord, but it has recently gained a new neighbor of particular interest to my dad. Munchmuseet–the Munch Museum–was erected in 2021 to house and exhibit the many works of Edvard Munch, perhaps Norway’s most famous visual artist, most well known for The Scream. The piece enjoys near-meme status in my family; we’ve been gifting my father various Scream-themed memorabilia for decades, but he has never had the opportunity to actually witness the real thing in person–until today.

I was passingly familiar with Munch’s work before today’s museum visit, but I certainly left with a deeper appreciation. I don’t possess the vocabulary to critique or analyze art with any particular authority, but I enjoyed the artist’s perspective and philosophy–one that valued emotional expression of the human condition over dogmatic instruction or fixation on artistic detail. I was struck by his use of the brush–often with heavy, bold, undefined lines–to convey movement and feeling rather than relying on complicated, technical illustrations of facial features and other cues. Insofar as art is a vehicle through which we understand and question the human experience, Munch seems to have understood what was important and what was not.

Kaffebreneriet won the title of the first coffee shop we visited following our museum tour, and is one of many spots that demonstrate to me that the specialty coffee scene has noticeably exploded in Oslo since 2019. I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of promising possibilities my Google searches have yielded; indeed, I’ve struggled to whittle down the field to a manageable number for a four-day itinerary. Tomorrow’s meandering will likely include a pilgrimage to what is perhaps Oslo’s most famous espresso bar, at least for industry insiders, and I am very much looking forward to that as we attempt to counterbalance the rain’s dampening effects on our spirits with experiences that spark joy even in the gloom.