III. Life's Art in Oslo

The whole crowd cumulated in the entrance area of the arriving ferry and the excitement rose as quickly as the temperature inside of the exit area of the ferry. Those were the foot passengers and I spotted some joggers without any luggage who were the happiest in their chatting. They had nothing with them and they would only run through our destination of Oslo for that one day they had and on the evening they return into the giant of a boat with its cosy beds and the good food, taking a shower and some entertainment while driving back home to Copenhagen. The sorts of people waiting to exit from that ferry seemed to represent the whole human diversity in this world but I stayed the only folk of my type. That realisation would deepen itself throughout my journey. I was alone in what I was doing. In a country that couldn’t be more beloved for traveling with a tent and a backpack I apparently managed to find the point in time, which made me to be alone at what I was doing. There are many reasons that it would be like that and the first one clearly was the freezingness of a Norwegian March. The ferry docked onto the mainland of Norway, the gates opened into the glas tunnel of the port of Norway and the whole sauce of people started pouring out. The jogging people meant it serious and they started their ‘thing’ right at that time. They made the mortal rest of us look pretty old… I came out of the port and redressed myself completely since the realisation struck lastingly that despite the very cold air, my backpack and the weight for a workout like carrying it would make me sweat in whatever outfit, no matter the layer number. The burden was much more than I had thought and my body was aching under it more than the day before on which I already walked 17K steps with it on my back. Now I had my water refilled and a big bread inside. So all in all the backpack would never be more full than right now and I felt it. My backpack explains itself without any words for the fact that I was able to buy it for thirty euros. The only kind of cool thing is the camouflage style but especially the structure of what is touching my back could’ve used some more effort. There are no elements supporting that part, making it less stiff, unstructured and pretty uncomfortable for my poor, 20 year old back. It was really like carrying a big sack. And the looks were not far from it. Every latch was used to cram some things in it and on the outside I had tied up my thick jeans jacket with the white wool and a wooden shopping bag from home which had all my food in it. Since it was the furthest away from my body its leverage was the biggest and made itself extra heavy. It’s really not that I learned anything in physics during school time but things explain themselves when they wear the mask of a teacher that is named Pain… a very good teacher indeed. Therefore my aggregate was closer to a wandering water drop than to anything human, based on the amount of sweat I release due to my five layers of clothing I wore when dressing inside the ferry for outside the ferry. I get rid of most and keep walking in T-Shirt and Poncho towards the Operaen - Oslo’s house of voices - which has a white and walkable ceiling with wide flat surfaces making out most of it. I guess it’s famous for its looks. I am not sure if Copenhagen can say the same about their construction. The inside has a massive wooden spiral as a staircase to upper atmospheres. I use a bench right there to cope with life and I happen to find out that I can use my mobile data in Norway. That's wonderful. Looking around the giant inside of this place and checking out the people has something alien to it. Most people come inside, take their phone, and while shooting the picture they look through the phone screen. But when the phone goes back into the right pocket they leave without using their own eye enjoying what is real for a split second. I felt a little lost. I had no plans made for Oslo and no matter where I went I would keep being lost. An interesting perception that didn’t feel pleasing at the time but which forms into the love of travels when being at it. At some point you praise the feeling of not knowing where you are, what you’re doing and where you’re going. It has something special to it because it is different and you might have never felt it for a longer time period.
I excited this building again through its broad glass front in order to walk up on one side to reach the top of this white building which had the shape of a ‘Z’ in full width in it. Standing on the top was unfortunately much less exciting than I thought and only enabled me to look at the surrounding and pick some spots that I want to check out. There was a giant grey glas block which might be art in another universe and the name on it said ‘MUNCH’. Well, it very might be the museum of his creation. The rest is not as easy to explain because there is nothing I can really compare it with. The amounts of greyish colours under the heavy trist sky made those whole buildings become something else. Their forms and everything about them wasn’t like any other city I’ve seen so far. Every building was for itself, had its own style which was very much one in the whole building and stood right in the middle of that huge landscape of other buildings, also having their very own distinguishing forms. It scared me in some ways I couldn’t really describe. Maybe it was the distance to nature where the human eye doesn’t recognise anything anymore that it would be used to. It’s like being in another world without anything that could you remind of what has been before. Scary, like I said. I do see a mall light blue pool with very shallow water and a giant white building right next to me tho and I decide to go there. Sitting on a stone bench right next to that pool I started drawing the Operaen and I even got a short term visitor. A old man asked me with his north German accent what I was up to and he smiled happily to his partner telling her about it. I told him to be around in Norway for this month without much of a plan but with a tent and the plan to walk a lot. I was happy to have had a first interaction here as well. Drawing made me calm down a little and it felt settling. My fingers were freezing a little and the proportions of that building jut wouldn’t be as I wanted to… the white building to my side was a library. A giant one of course. I’ll turn up the pace of what is following a bit and I will spoil already, that this book is really absolutely not about Oslo at all. Really not. So I went through streets of a city that I didn’t know and which doesn’t know me. I watch the visible and am occupied in pain from my backpack, walking bent over thinking that this might help. But it really makes me look more like a drug addicted homeless person carrying all his possession under pain from one place for the night to the next. I miss my mother and am still wondering about what I am doing here. Only months and years later I will actually understand what this I was doing. Not so much my actual self, but what was done with it and what path I was seemingly guided. Looking back on it I think to have lost parts of my belief in coincidence and randomness during this travel experience…

My way led me along some nice roads, an old train station, a small shop that was selling immense amounts of podcasts and CD’s in cracked cases. I bought some postcards for home. Some had old Norwegian writing on their back which made them not less valuable. They portray drawings and landscapes full of snow, of red wooden houses covered in deep snow, skies flooded with the green of northern lights over frozen lakes painting the sky around the peaks of the mountains close by. They were beautiful but I realised how I barely had a place for a thing like that, no matter the size. The volume of my backpack seemed to be reached completely. 100 litres inside capacity and things like shoes, tent, linen bag with food etc. hanging on the outside. I found a giant park like area and a path leading to the royal palace not long after. It was late afternoon by now but I sat down and had some of my cabbage while pencil drawing a draft of the king’s house itself. Halfway through it got a little too massive and I made a smooth transition of drawing to only staring at a thing. Luckily for not all too long, because a man approached me and began a chat with a friendly hand towards me. It was about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Consider me a Nihilist to this point in time of life. I listened attentively like I used to in school and he told me his own wicked story and how after so much bad he had found to God. I was happy for him and we had a good interaction of someone simply sharing what gives them joy and hope. He was really just doing that. Afterwards he gave me a tiny green paper book, tiny, but with the letters on the front that said ‘How to know God’. I ended up carrying this small gift around with me for over one year in the same pocket that I put it when he handed it to me that day… The sun was setting and the time of my first day was running out. The snow fall of the morning had made some breaks here and there and was about to start in the late evening again. I looked on the map of my phone to find a place. There was nothing to worry about for today. My mother had looked at the weather forecast long ago and thought it through as only a mother could do it. She insisted to buy me a first night in a small hostel somewhere centre so I wouldn’t day right at the beginning. With that all the pressure was gone and I knew to be safe somewhere. The way was long and cold and still painful. If you read other travel books of mine you know how much I can stress this aspect of my experience. I will try to not drive the descriptions of pain too far in this one. But I wasn’t comfortable. Just saying that. Coming to the hostel I got the room through the online reservation number and receipt and my passport. There was a room on the base floor with a lot of luggage in there and I was able to put my backpack there for now. From the warm inside I watch the world behind the thin glass. I see the coldness that I would’ve otherwise felt very clearly and I wonder what I’ll do tomorrow. I just know that I can’t camp in parks. The other law in Norway just demands you to be further away than 150 metres of a building with people living in it and then you’re already good to go. Or good to tent and do your thing. Obviously this is a huge advantage but there is a great responsibly given to all the people using this opportunity to not destruct any nature or to leave a place unclean. Thoughtless fires, trash in forest, loud music in nature… all that makes me feel uncomfortable, knowing that some people do it. In my warm living room I sit on that couch like seat while watching the big windows, the seats, the young person working with headphones on their laptop, the group of German students around a tiny small table with comfortable chairs and the man at my side. I was happy to have gotten somewhat of a social training beforehand and it was a main decision for the short term job I chose on half time during the last month. Customer interactions taught me a lot. Asking strangers thing, approaching them, being friendly, warm and welcoming, always with the reward of people of meeting really friendly new people in your town, learning new perspectives and gaining a bit human knowledge and sometimes getting a tip for your work and way of being. I was not able to come up to a person in public before, or so I felt. Having had this little practice made me at least knowledgable enough to be sure that I can manage to speak to people, even to girls, and I want die having tried so. Therefore I wasn’t totally surprised when I managed to speak with the three German med students which were doing a short city tour during a brief pause in their studies. They were about to head out to catch a bus to return to the ferry soon and we only spoke shortly. But as soon as you’ve tried at least once to connect, the next step comes much more naturally and it was easy to talk to the Japanese guy sitting in another comfy chair close to the corner where I’ve been sitting earlier. He was really cool. He also is a student but at least not a German one. He flew in from Tokyo the city itself and as we got to know each other, spending the evening together, I learned that he studies aerospace engineering. He answers all my random question about his studies. He is the first person from Japan I’ve ever met. I never heard anybody ever speaking in this accent before and I had this perception of having met a really random person in the world who could’ve been anybody. My luck was it that it’s my friend Tomo. The unfortunate aspect is the short time we only were gifted to share despite the fact that there would’ve been worlds to tell each other about. It was a first short taste of what a person in the world could be like. And even you don’t know anything about their background, about their country and culture, it still makes you wonder and excited about learning about it. He came from Tokyo. The Tokyo… We went to our shared room in a hallway that was painted pink to an extent where there is nothing more pink possible. Our roommates were cool and since you don’t share more than a night and a few phrases it’s a short getting to know. But hearing what people are up to, made one thing clearer. I was not doing the usual. Not at this time, not with this budget, not with this competence or pre-experience. I lack a community in that way ever since but it brings a fortune doing something that others don’t. We’ll see. I slept okay. 

Accompanied by thundering snores, my hostel night tilts its first half to an end. An open window and the smoothie of noises, partly snores, partly birds and honking cars, which seep through the night traffic of Oslo - all they make it worth starting the day outside of my mattress. I said it was night… well, it wasn’t. I just stated my subjective perception of tiredness projected on something so abstract as time itself. I woke up by my ‘Charlet’ alarm and packed. I found myself actually planning what to do for this day, after yesterday has been somewhat of an agonising pain to my poor little blonde head and of course my feet and back. The plan includes the brilliant Munch museum with the original of the most famous ‘The Scream’ made by Edvard the man himself, - ‘raspeballer’ (Norwegian potato dumplings or so), and the National museum. I succeed in the museum parts but don't manage to find the food, so instead I enjoy a smoked salmon with tiny potatoes and cucumber salad. What a highlight. Until then I've been only eating plain bread and raw cabbage. And it will stay like that… it’s not like I could afford fancy food and this dish has been by far the most financially damaging one in my whole life time. From money centred thought-struggles back to what was real and is now real again. That morning in the first and last hostel… 

Some pieces of clothing I had hung up since they were soaked in sweat. They started stinking on that first day. Try to find the passenge in this adventure that lets you know where I washed my things. You won’t be very lucky, I can tell you. For this day I knew to have a real destination but it had to be made up. Normally you wouldn’t find me in cities so much. The only reason why I was still in Oslo is this guy that I found on the platform of choice. ‘Couchsurfing’. You pick a destination, look who’s offering their couch, write them a message and with a bit of luck they invite you in. You get a place to stay, a local to hang out with, an experience more human than any hotel room could ever be - and those people get stinking visitors from all around the world into their home. Cool, mostly open people from around the world and you can meet them, without leaving your house. My guy is named Karl. I had tried out the platform in a different way since I was totally new. I posted my idea of a travel and published it for the area of Oslo. That resulted in me making my travel plans and the chosen approach public, thinking that people would reach out to me to invite me without any real reason. Two people did actually did so. How random is that? The one guy, an elder guy being on couchsurfing for ages, offered me his place 70 kilometres outside of Oslo and would have probably been the guy for a cool adventure if I was willing to pay 35 crowns, Norwegian ones, for each day I’m there. I was trying to establish a route during my time but I never managed to be in the area of this friendly man. We did have a call tho on this day while I was sitting in a grave yard and he was telling me that I am doing something without much plan. He analysed that astonishingly well. He asked me if I knew winter in Norway. I said the truth. He gave me some good tips and some places I should try to be at. The second person on the other hand was somebody completely else. He could be my dad. He's a rich nudist, gay and lives in the neighbour street of the king’s palace. I wouldn't realise what that actually meant until being there. Two nights I would need to survive until this shelter is offered to me. Therefore I had to find a way to camp somewhere...

As I wander through streets, after having left the lovely hostel my thirsty lust for food arises once more and I buy another loaf of plain bread trying to learn what ‘smerbred’ could be all about from the cashier. She doesn't know. Based on frustration I buy a cabbage instead of an answer which I'll eat just hours later in front of the royal palace leaf by crunchy leaf. From now on pretty much daily.

Sitting right there, in front of that block of a building, in which an actual king is still residing I have the pleasure of obtaining a most wonderful interaction between a young lady and one of the royal soldiers making his patrols around the building. His frightening appearance of inhuman stillness didn’t hold that young brave lady off. I wondered if they might have been school mates. That black woman seemed extraordinarily friendly and without me trying to get one of those poor security men in trouble - this one did seem to melt a little bit under such generous admiration and had this small beautiful conversation with her, breaking his act which I had been watching for surely half an hour. To her greatest delight they took a photo to the conversational end and she went her probably most beautiful way, leaving me dazzled about what would be possible, if the bravery would be lividly residing in my inner self to speak to other human beings. Admirable… she proved my belief wrong, that those guards would be untouchable and distanced to any communication. It was very lovely to see their fun while chatting. A new scene arises, as a man called Oven approaches. - Very honestly, and this might be a little too honest, since I am the author of this and I am telling you, that I messed up… this guy, Oven, he appears in my diary notes twice and now I can’t twist it correctly anymore and have admittedly no idea in which point of time he actually appeared… - He gifts me a little book about how one can find to God when searching with the whole heart. We have an interesting chat about his life and exchange handshakes when departing. - You see what I mean? Writing is a real struggle… writing in anything which is not your mother tongue is like pushing a full shopping cart up upon a hill, only using your two pinkies… painful and probably unnecessary. Because who of this small german community of book interested people will cope with my style of writing either in German or now as an extra using the words of Frankos and Anglos? Man…

I start walking a long while through Oslo, since the Munch museum is close to the Opera building which again is close to the ferry port where I started this whole fantasy of a journey. After I spent the whole of yesterday walking to my first night hostel, I had quite a way in front of me. My black thick boots are not really good. Blisters started forming yesterday on the heel. I used some creme and an aid bandage sticky thingy  -lacking the terminology here. My backpack showcases most lovely why it had been such a cheap shot by telling me, that 27 kilograms in a simple bag on your back is not worth much. There are no supportive structures in the back part. I have stuff knotted to each and every corner of this beauty, but it is just not it. And still we keep going. 27 kilograms… yeah, usually people tend to over exaggerate when it comes down to numbers like this. You just do your thing. Belief is that one thing, we can all have our own power over. Never trust people and their numbers - that isn’t aligned with the wise ways of being raised over here. Trust is that lacking thing when people start not seeing themselves in others. Tragic, especially in this case, since 27 is not far beyond the possible. The backpack has a filling volume of a 100 litre - but that number is a case for itself, since that was only stated in the product description. I have therefore no way of proving it, since there wasn’t a plan until now of going for a swim and most certainly not with that stone like, second torso like bag. I might just grand you the freedom of belief in this case without ignoring the fact that there is a not to be ignored fluctuation in between weight states, since my food stocks and water bottles are either full or empty. You can feel that clearly…

I did get to that Munch museum. I did pay what was requested. I did use the voluptuous, ginormous, vast spaces offers as store containers for luggage and managed to press the whole luggage in, after taking it into smaller parts. I still had that smell of death and sweat on me but my dress code was now less Mexican poncho but more than ever smart all in black with a tight long sleeve and black rain pants with a belt, black boots and long blond hair. The consequences were felt most immediate but in ways I didn’t necessarily expect. After I entered the multi layer building scene of art, a woman spoke to me - behind her a group of at least 20 small kindergarten kids - she asked for the way… I looked dazzled and made my message clear enough without many words to be used. That happened again shortly after. A young, very handsome Chinese student living in Copenhagen mistook me for a staff member and asked for some sort of direction or instruction of how to consume the insides content of the Munch Museum in the most tasteful and fashionable way imaginable. I couldn’t really help that request, but after taking on my other identity again, which writing now about it I might regret a little bit because I could’ve at least tried to play that act, I offered her as the backpacker Lennart to walk along and explore side by side which she was most amazed to do. I told her what I do and she said it’s very cool! She told me to study in Copenhagen, to be from China, a world travelling educational degree hunter and named with the shortest of all names - Ao! So that’s Ao. We spend four hours together. Her visit to Oslo is of short breath. She booked two tickets of a ferry. Both drive over night and she gets to spend the one day in between the to darknesses here and must take the ferry back in the late afternoon. That’s a weekend… we have some very interesting thematic touching points. Two worlds touching in a conversation of two beings. Many of the silhouettes fall which were put around the Chinese realm by western story telling. I felt like a child waking up to stories of fairy tales, the Santa Clause and God herself. We had our tour, admired a picture of Friedrich Nietzsche, then exchanged world views and I got some insights into Apps, which are most commonly used in China and finally I did a bit of myth busting as I felt totally comfortable with her and took some of the thesis in my head to throw them at her and to see what reaction you get. Feeling safe with the other person, making sure a way of communication is established and a zone in which no personal and emotional damage can be dealt, one can almost ask anything unfiltered spoken through the giant hole of missing knowledge. She was a very good fit for this type of exploring worlds through exchange of experience and she herself was most curious about what people would assume about her country, her culture, her believes. Open minded people are a blessing. Ao certainly was so and therefore it came to pass, that after our completed admiration of all the Munch pieces and the most famous ‘The Scream’ that we had our stuff packed and I introduced to her my full outfit plus backpack which she the even more admired and we spent her last hour outside, in the streetworld of Oslo. We had us a quiet corner with some unused tables and lucky as I am had my deck of cards somewhere close enough to offer a round of cards. Neither her nor me knew how to play a single variation, so we made it up as we went along. Each time somebody made up a new rule, that one was valid from then on. She taught me a first useful Chinese phrase and wrote it on a piece of tissue for me. The tissue she later gifted to me and it’ll stay in my unused possession and pure admiration for some years. It has a panda on its green-white plastic shell and some brownish quadratic paper inside. On one of them is written the Pinyin for ‘I love you’. We went to the port together and the same scenario from yesterday seemed to repeat itself. After she had entered the big building of the ferry port I was standing by myself once again in front of the Norwegian shore of Oslo. And still I had something to do before leaving the city. I had a host who was probably less excited than I was to take me in over the weekend…

A beautiful day was passing in front of my eyes in loving thoughts about that wonderful young Japanese Tomo and my dear Ao, who was admiring what I was doing. Honestly, I haven’t necessarily experienced that so often. It gave me a nice feeling which beneath the foggy depths of my unconsciousness would connect with my pride many more times while living this life of a traveler. Maybe I would come to realise, that in this act I found self respect and admiration myself, too, more or less for an important first time. I was able to recognise that I agreed with that lovely Chinese. It is a somewhat weird realisation to be written down, when you find yourself liking yourself for what must be the first time in a long and enormously important chapter in your life. A big thank you to Ao and a short quote, which I remembered while being with her: “Half of the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need!” That’s a quote of Richard E. Byrd who’s mainly known for his polar expeditions and his career at the U.S. American Navy. This guy… yeah, I am not known. Well, either way, I’m at least getting to know myself better bit by bit, even when now sitting here and writing about it. Apparently I have messed up my notes again. There is a problem with my memory, the usual one, but then also my notes make me lose some of my mental orientation. Can you imagine that there is a second night at that very Hostel? How boring is that?! Did Mama honestly not believe that by the second day in Oslo I would be good to go? Did the fact that I have exactly zero experience with backpack travels  alone or the circumstance of minus seven degrees and slight snow over the day or the weight of my backpack constantly 25+ suggest to my Mom that I might not make it alive? Well, recognised and excepted. I wasn’t sure myself at this point and appreciated the possibility to procrastinate the brutal upcoming life in a tent a bit. Even if it’s just one more, short, not worth a mention of a night. I’ll skip this small comfort and take you into that very day, on whose end there is no safety waiting and nothing planned and no warmth. That very day started at the hostel, where else, and the feeling of leaving that building made it even recognisable to me that something in my life must have changed just now. -