The Susanne

I remem­ber when I first learned the expres­sion ‘playing hookie’. It was when I saw Huckle­berry Finn played by Elijah Wood, and I remem­ber con­fus­ing ‘hookie’ with ‘hooker’. Oh, to be young again!

Today, I needed a day off after my long house arrest (read: for­cing myself to work on my essay which never got any­where) so after a long, slow morn­ing of break­fast, two cof­fees and the entire morn­ing paper I left the house in search of the Museum of Con­tem­por­ary Art. I’ve never been there before and I didn’t look as closely at the map as I should have before I left: the museum is in the one part of Oslo where I always get lost. So I took a wrong turn of course, and found myself at Akershus Fort­ress. I quickly decided that as I was already there a walk around couldn’t hurt — I hadn’t been in years and years! When I got up to the castle a tour was just about to start — so obvi­ously I joined it. (if you’re inter­ested in seeing the photos from the tour of the castle, I’ve posted them here: Tour­ist in Oslo) And it was really quite inter­est­ing! I got to see the dun­geon — the only cell still there today is the ‘Witch-cell’ (or ‘Trollkjerringhølet’ as it’s called in Norwegian…)– but it was pretty cool, com­plete with witches and all:

The rest of the tour was also cool, espe­cially as there were only seven other people besides myself and the guide: an old couple and their two grand­daugh­ters, and three for­eign guys who didn’t com­plain once even though the entire tour was given in Nor­we­gian. The old lady kept but­ting in with extra inform­a­tion and her hus­band kept quizz­ing their grand­daugh­ters about events that had happened there, people who’d been imprisoned, kings and queens. I noticed that they didn’t always seem to hear him…

After the tour I decided to take a walk around the grounds. They are so gor­geous this time of year, when the foliage shows its pret­ti­est dress and even through the gray skies and the rain the per­sist­ent sun lights up the sur­round­ings. Abso­lutely beau­ti­ful! I decided to take a pic­ture of one of the poor guards, whom I feel deep sym­pathy for. I really do sup­port con­scrip­tion for young men as I think it builds char­ac­ter and teaches them to stop acting like the spoiled babies they are raised to be. But I pity the ones who join the Royal Guard. Ima­gine just having to stand there, for hours, in all weather, with no notice­able dif­fer­ence in uni­form whether it’s summer or winter. So tiring and so boring, so hot and so cold! Ah. My heart goes out to you boys.

Then I left the fort­ress and star­ted walk­ing back towards the city centre. On the way I found a stun­ning little park, and another girl pho­to­graph­ing her sur­round­ings (just like I was!) and then… the Museum of Con­tem­por­ary Art! Yey! I found it! I was only one block away of course. I’m going back soon — pos­sibly tomor­row, if not then def­in­itely this weekend!

As I got closer to the main street Karl Johans gate, rain was pour­ing stead­ily. I didn’t have an umbrella; mine was still hanging in its place on my ward­robe door where I’d left it this morn­ing because the sky was only a light gray and it didn’t look like it would rain. Yea. Silly me. I noticed this little guy and felt sorry for him:

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