Norway & (a bit of) Sweden, Easter 2012

5 April, Thursday

On the plane I had to challenge a Dublin arsehole pushing for extra elbow room while playing a DS.

“Have you got enough room there?”
“Yeah, I’m grand.”
“So, don’t push me.”
“No, we’re grand. We’re grand.”

He didn’t want to go toe to toe on it.

6 April, Friday

We went into Oslo and visited the Nobel Peace Prize centre and the waterfront. I usually feel tired in galleries and museums. Like Alan Bennett, I’m always looking for a seat or glad to find one. Why is that? A mixture of slow walking and poor ventilation? The first time I was here (August 1998) involved a morning trip to the Munch museum with K. There I was tempted to lie down on Munch’s bed in the basement. We were laughing at the captions e.g. Dead Mother with Child (the ‘pallid’ corpse in the bed, fronted by a child visibly mad from shock and grief). I bought one poster and two cards. The poster was of a painting called Weeping Nude.

7 April, Saturday

We went over the border to Sweden. We headed down the west coast a short bit of the way towards Gothenburg.

The combination of the clear sky and the waterfront in Strömstad was lovely and I didn’t feel the cold the others said they felt. Fantastically crunchy chips (fries) were dished out at a restaurant on a low hill next to the harbour.

8 April, Easter Sunday

Drøbak: today’s filming was done in brighter conditions than November. The sights included an outdoor service at the town’s Lutheran church and what looked like a bullet hole in a window of a BMW, abandoned, without number plates, by the waterfront.

Drøbak is at the narrowest point of the Oslo fjord. In November, T. pointed over at the island in the murk where the fort with big guns sank the Blücher in 1940 and held up the invasion long enough for the king, government and gold to escape to England.

I only felt the cold on the street stroll back to the car. When groups of people pass and talk, it seems they softly sing, in Norway. We had a lovely lunch for three in a familiar café in Son, even though it cost the equivalent of ninety euro.

9 April, Monday

K. and I walked from The Farm – a model farm folly in the woods, where, in November, I was getting my shoes dirty – to the village called Hvitsten, which lies further down the fjord than Drøbak.

We had coffee in Drøbak on the way back. The murk was back. Like on the streets of Oslo in November 2011.