Kauffman Commentary

Today we started at the same little bakery for breakfast. I had a cardamom roll and Bryan a blueberry pastry. Both were really yummy!

The Munch Museum, pronounced Moonk, is a really new building (2021) that is a tribute to their best known artist. Edward Munch was born in Oslo on December 12, 1863. He loved to paint and draw from early in life. His mother died when he was five and he was raised by his father and Aunt. He never married, though he came close at one point. He was trained in Paris and spent a considerable amount of time in Germany, which was where most of his best works were created. He is most famous for his work called “The Scream”. He actually created three versions and they are hung one at a time in the museum. This is mainly to keep them from deteriorating from the light. At his death in 1944 he left all of his paintings to the city of Oslo.

In 2007 Oslo opened a new opera house. We were not able to take a tour, they were booked through the next day. A very modern building with a restaurant inside. We mainly spent time walking on the rooftop, it is a huge tiled area with good views of the city.

An area to the north of the train station was known as a working class area in the 1800’s, but it has been given new life with vintage shops, restaurants and bars. We saw lots of apartments and a laid back group of unpretentious folks. It is called the Grünerløkka district. Just adjacent to the area is the Akers River, we took a tram to the big waterfall and walked the trail down the river to the train station which was about 2 km.

For dinner this evening we ate at “Dinner” an Asian restaurant really close to our apartment near the National Theater. This was a suggestion by a friend from Houston and the food was fabulous.

A few observations from our stay:

• there are over 19 hours of daylight this time of year, so at 10:30 it can be difficult to sleep
• for some reason many men here dress in matching suits
• there are very few motorcycles and tons of electric vehicles
• school children are totally unruly at museums
• very few tourists from English speaking countries
• most Norwegians do speak English
• we saw lots of NY baseball caps