What's in a name - Sunday in Oslo or Kristiania or Christiania or Ánslo

What's in a name

This lovely city where we are staying has had many names. In Medieval times it was known as Ánslo or Áslo - there is much discussion about its derivation but the majority argument is for the meadow beneath the ridge. In 1624 a fire destroyed much of the medieval city and King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway replaced it with a city west of the river from the original city and named it Christiania after himself. By this time through language development Áslo had become Opslo and was the eastern suburb just outside Christiania. In 1877 the city name was changed to Kristiania to represent Norwegian linguistic forms rather than Danish ones. In the same period Opslo had become part of the expanding city and in 1925 the decision was made to drop the Danish name and apply the village name to the old City, the name was now (from a map of 1923 onwards spelt without its p! 

As I walked to Mass on Sunday Morning I came to Christian's Square, which formed the centre of Kristiania, with King Christian IV standing proud in the middle of it. 

The significance is not clear, but sitting facing him is another statue - of three hens!!

Breakfast

I woke today at 3.30am, funny how I often wake early when I have been up later than usual the night before, not sure how that works! But I got up and begin to edit the previous day's photos, there are quite a lot (332) of them.

Drew woke at 5.30am and I made him some Lady Grey tea. At 6am I went to shower and complete my other ablutions and Drew went in after me to do the same.

Given our experience of yesterday we aimed to be down just before 7, rather than being two minutes later with a crowd in front of us. But even at the earlier time there were still a large number of American people in the hotel, a different set from yesterday, all of whom are catching a cruise ship later today. 

Breakfast followed a very similar plan to yesterday, with me starting with yogurt and fruit

While Drew began with a fry up, which he repeated as his second course.

I then opted for pickles and cheese, a Norwegian Blue cheese this time as well as pickled cucumber and beetroot along with pickled red onion, pickled fennel, pickled pumpkin, smoked salmon and mustard herring.

 

I finished with a cooked meal, today the chef had a number of eggs cooked right through, rather than them all sunny-side up. That is a good development from my perspective.

We went back up to the room at 7.45pm and I began to draft a blog post about the previous' night's meal, but it took a bit longer than I expected. I then prepared to leave the hotel at 9am for the walk to St. Olav's Cathedral. Which was like this:

Going to Mass

I had the choice today of attending Mass in Norwegian English, Croat, Polish, Czech or Vietnamese. When looking at our plans for the day, the best Mass seemed to be the 9.30am in Oslo's Catholic Cathedral, which was in English - celebrated by a friendly priest from Kerela whose first language was Malayalam.   

I arrived at St. Olav's with plenty of time to spare, the sun was comfortably warm this morning and the air clear, and approaching the church the sun was shining on it.

The church has a very strange representation of St. Olav outside, he makes him look more like Edward Scissorhands to my mind, but in art each person's taste are different, it clearly did enough for me to be able to recognise him!!

I arrived at the cathedral at 9.20am, there is a young lively congregation from many different backgrounds and heritages. The cathedral seats about 250 people and was 80% full. 

The hymns were all familiar to me and were sung with great gusto. A young man was the cantor and sung the psalm in a tenor register which worked very well.

In his homily the priest focussed on the first reading from Ecclesiasticus 1 with that ancient English phrase: "Vanities of vanities ... all is vanity", he then went on to reflect on all the things we might put before God in our lives, all the focus on money, self-image etc. and how the truth is only our core relationship with God matters, as all else falls away. He then referred to the rich man in today's gospel, Luke 12, putting all his money into new barns and dying that very night. He reminded us all that death might be tonight or a long way away, but that every day we should be ready to go to meet the Lord, not to wait to see if we get an extra chance to put our lives right in his eyes. 

This very simple message, strongly presented, was impactful; to me more impactful than lots of detailed reflection. The time is now, this is when God wants us to love him; in the words of my mother's favourite hymn: "Lord for tomorrow and its needs, I do not pray ... keep me from sin, just for today". A good reminder.

Meet with Drew

I'd arranged to meet Drew outside the church after Mass and when I came out he was there ready. We went back into the church and between the English and Norwegian mass (at 11am) took photos of the stained glass. These windows honour the saints of Norway (and one from Sweden). Not saints I'm very familiar with (except the Swedish one). It also includes the relic of the arm of St. Olav, which was brought back from Sweden to Norway on request of Queen Josephine, the Catholic wife of King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway. It still seems strange to me that a king born in Paris and a Queen born in Milan could be rules of these two nations. Here are the images:

As we walked down the hill after taking the photos I got talking to a friendly Nigerian (Ibo) couple, the husband had been one of the Eucharistic ministers at Mass. They had been in Oslo since the 1990s and said they love the country and the city because of its openness and friendliness, though still can't quite get over the temperatures during what they called 'the five months of winter'.

Oslo Domkirke

From St. Olav's we walked down to the Lutheran Cathedral, known locally as Oslo Domkirke. There was a big sign outside the cathedral saying: Service in Progress, please do not enter until it finishes at 12.45pm - clearly with services running for an hour and 45 minutes these Lutherans are a bit more serious about Sunday worship than we 50 minute Catholics!!

The exterior of the church is quite formidable.

Espresso House

There was an espresso house immediately opposite, so we took the opportunity to stop for our usual coffees, Americano for me and Latte for Drew. I still can't get over that the idea of a large Americano isn't part of European culture. The four espresso shots americano, used in Starbucks and Costa Coffee, isn't part of life here, so again my cup is about 2/3rd the size of Drew's. [Co-pilot's note: It is, dear readers, at the time of writing, 5.30pm on Tuesday evening, and you will note that he is still whinging about it. 😜]

Aker Brygge and Tjuvholmen

Our route today followed this path:

We left the Expresso House by Oslo Cathedral walked down King Karl Johan's Gate and past the Ukrainian support demonstration going on in the park in front of the Storting.

Drew had mentioned a few times how quiet the streets of Oslo were. Shops were closed in a way that is now unfamiliar to us in the UK. He wondered if it was because Oslo was a religious city. But it turned out we were just in the wrong part of town. 

When we arrived at Aker Brygge, the trendy, cosmopolitan part of Oslo, it was packed with people, some taking in the sun, some boating, some looking at the statues, others eating or drinking, but generally a hub-bub of people.

Akey Brygge leads through to the equally trendy, but more mixed use (shops, exhibition spaces and apartments) island called Tjuvholmen (which translates as Thief Island, recalling its troubled past.) 

Here are some of the images from our wanderings:

There are many others, you can see them on Flickr, start from here and scroll forward. Both places are very eclectic, with lots of strange and wonderful statutory and street art. Lots of my friends would have as much joy out of wandering the streets as we did.

Back to the Hotel

We got back to the hotel just before 2pm and I spent a lot of the afternoon naming and uploading the remaining photos from yesterday, half of which I had done this morning. 

Then I began to write the blog post about yesterday, then it is on to last night's dinner photos and that blog post. A fun but busy time enjoyed with five or six cups of tea as the afternoon went on - two were Lady Grey, two English Breakfast and the other two Prince of Wales tea - a new flavour I've not had before, quite mellow, not a good thick builder's tea, but fine for the afternoon refreshment.

Back out

Drew had been reading his novel through the afternoon, but felt he needed more air, so at 4.30pm he went back out for his final wander around the City.

He spotted the location of the Oslo Humourfest, 

but wasn't tempted enough to go in.

He also came across the old Town Hall, Gamle Rådhus, at the heart of what had been Christiana/Kristiana and which is now a restaurant. 

He also spotted something which we had missed when walking along the harbour earlier in the week, the Vacant Chairs memorial, established to to commemorate the Jews who were deported and killed in Auschwitz - The site faces the place from which 529 Jews boarded ship to be transported to their death.

Drew returned at 5.30pm and we showered and got ready for dinner.

Dinner

We hadn't booked anywhere for tonight and Drew had spotted a Vietnamese restaurant with good reviews on Google Maps called Lille Saigon, i.e. Little Saigon, which he had liked the look of.

We are partial to Pho, ever since we first tasted it in Wichita, Kansas, so we try and have one bowl during each of our summer breaks.

We left the hotel at 6.40pm and after a 20 minute walk we arrived at Lille Saigon at 7pm. 

We were sat immediately and explored the menu. For starters we choose to share two dishes, Cha Gio – Crispy spring rolls with pork and crabmeat with chilli sauce.

A common choice of ours, these crispy rolls with salty, pungent sauce, are always a delight, and these were as good as we expected.

The second starter was Chao Tom Cuon, this is grilled prawn and pork poste, served with rice paper noodles, herbs, salad and a peanut-fish sauce.

This was a first time for us with this dish, it was an interesting mix of meat, shellfish, peanuts and vegetables with a lightly spiced fish sauce. Somewhat challenging to eat with chop sticks but very tasty.

Next came the main courses. Pho Dac Biet, the special beef noodle soup with king prawns, herbs, onion, and coriander that is our normal option at Pho restaurants.

The beef pho was not as spicy as others we've had but was still tasty. It felt like the pho broth had been cooked first and the other ingredients added later, so they hadn't picked up the unctuous taste of the broth.

Drew's choice was Pho Dui Ga, chicken noodle soup with onion and coriander.

This too didn't have the flavour we would have expected, even worse, from Drew's perspective, was the fact that Drew was surprised that the chicken is this dish was roasted on the bone, rather than breast meat, which is the normal option. Drew hadn't come across this before and he isn't a fan, which is a very polite way of describing his response to it. 

We left Lille Saigon and walked back to the hotel. We got back at 8.15pm, sorted our of clothes and repacked our suitcases (now we are on the move we had a clean clothes case and a dirty clothes case, ready for the wash tomorrow. We completed this and went to bed at 10.15pm ready for a 5.30am alarm in the morning. 

We had had another enjoyable and busy day. We had walked 

23,401 steps, well Drew had, mine were a little lower due to the absence of an afternoon stroll. This is 17.6km or 10.9miles, plenty of positive effort, but we'll not be doing anything like this tomorrow with spending 7 hours or so on a train.