Rise, Fall, Rise Again
Mandag 06 Juni 2016 | 18:05 | Oslo, Norway
Fredag
In keeping with the park theme, Friday’s plan was to visit Vigeland Sculpture Park, the world’s largest sculpture park featuring work by a single artist, Gustav Vigeland. The sculptures are made of bronze, granite an wrought iron. To find the place, we had to make a few new stops. We took the T-Bane to Majorstuen and then another one back the same direction (with a different turn) to a graveyard. I forget the exact name of it, but it was so awesome. The place was enormous, and it didn’t have generic headstones; most of them varied greatly and it had a very...supernatural feel to it. I definitely want to return when I have more time, preferably in cloudy or rainy weather.
Across the street from it is a very nice-looking school, and a little bit up the road from there was Vigeland Park. Again, this is one of those areas that pictures and descriptions do little justice, but the sculptures are ridiculous; the attention to detail in the human forms is astounding. The center has an obelisk made out of stacked, naked forms. It was hot as balls, and Tea Leaves found some very melted ice cream, so the crew (Wedembois) ate some hotdogs at the same stand. Rando fact: there are lots of Asians there. They literally travel in fleets of buses.
As we returned, it rained a bit on us, quite hard I might add. But after the rain subsided in roughly 15 minutes, there was a barbecue on the grounds. They served pork, beef, and motherfucking LAMB.
SO. DAMN. TASTY.
After stuffing my bloody face full of random meats, I proceeded back to the guard shack and started pre-gaming this concert with the Rat King. We arrived and sat beyond the tape, watching the bands come and go. There were mostly cover bands, but there was one badass metal band. Things got hazey, I got a sandwich, died for about 10 minutes, returned to the party concert, got bored, went back to my room, was abducted by Bjorn, left like a ninja, then went back to search for the Rat King who was nowhere to be found. It was this last visit to the Billa Bar that was interesting. Tjore came up to me, put his left arm around me as the other was occupied with drink, and began:
Tjore: Hey man, I’ve been meaning to tell you!
Me: Yeah, what’s up?
Tjore: Not to be rude, but the first time I met you...
Me: ...
Tjore: I thought you were gay. You come off a little gay.
Me: Oh! Yeah, I’m actually kind of used to it, really. It’s the -
Together: hair!
Me: The metrosexual demeanor doesn’t help, does it?
I found the situation completely hilarious. Honestly, I get it a lot, and I’m totally fine with it. So think twice if you’re going to insult me on that front.
Lørdag
Saturday was the new Lord’s day of rest. The Rat King was dethroned and deceased on his bed, where he lie sweaty all day. Daddy Dram, Queen B-Word and I travelled to the main mall at the central station with the mission of finding some sunglasses; I lost mine on the first night. After much deliberation and price-comparison, DD and I purchased some from the Nille, basically a tiny trinket store. The rest of the day was spent purchasing clothing, so now I’ve finally got some European shorts. The evening was spent chilling with Quen and watching the first three episodes of the first season of Peaky Blinders; he hasn’t seen it and it’s the best show ever. Go watch it. Now. Run. Why are you still reading this?
Søndag
The mission was to revisit Ekebergparken. Sunday was a larger troupe, with the addition of Karl, a graphic design student at Blindern. As we made our way there, we passed the Oslo Hospital and observed a woman squatting down on the sidewalk, fumbling with some cigarettes. I knew something seemed off about her, and as she urinated in broad daylight like an animal my suspicions were confirmed. I was equal parts disgusted and saddened. How do people descend that far, what brings a person to such a level? Anyways, we made it to the park and found the Turrell pieces we came to see. They only took 8 people at a time, there were no pictures allowed, and you were recommended to go through the exhibits barefoot. The first of the two pieces was in my opinion much more exciting, a light piece that induced snow blindness. I sat in a meditative position (thanks, Kenton) and stared and let my mind go blank. Curiously, I thought of an idea for a photoshoot while losing my mind staring into colored nothingness. The second piece was a skylight with a lit dome, but the lights only come on before sunrise and set, so it’s worthless during public hours. They close at 4 and the sun sets at 10. After this we found the Abramovich piece Scream. It’s just a metal frame where the Scream was inspired from.
We travelled to the Blå Market from here. It’s basically a hippy alleyway with a bunch of trinkets; I really need to go back and get some gifts. Along the way we walked along the river, which was nice. The negative was that across the river we saw some fucked-up people shooting up in broad daylight, one in the vein in the leg, another prepping a tourniquet. Sad stuff. After the market, we went to a place called Illegal Burger which was more than excellent. The potatoes came with a peculiar aioli, and the meal filled you the hell up. We ate at 15:30 and didn’t even go to supper.
Mandag
Today we worked in our groups again, hashing out ideas for the museum. The real highlight was eating dinner, which included reindeer meat, so I guess I can cross that off my list now. All I’ve been doing since is writing this post and editing photographs, and I plan to keep it up because I get behind so quickly.
Cheers.
