Oslo | 0 degrees | fog
arriving in Oslo
at the airport – all pale wood and clean lines
along the windowed corridor
and emerging from the downward escalators
in small groups we hold up our passports
one by one
and later emerge to collect our baggage
trains this way, tickets for trains, which train express or what ?
machines for tickets
– in a queue
head to express train
it smoothly slides in view and on I get
through Oslo it goes, into cold countryside
and towns – ghostly grey in shrinking fog
there are screens with rolling news
in Paris they’ve stormed a flat
women have blown themselves up
at Oslo Sentralstasjon
am overheated in this fast and modern place
down the escalator and out
into the brittle chill air
ahead is the chic and whitely slanted opera house
about me are men dishevelled,
layered up for outdoor living
but to the left and right again
is the hostel
definitely not chic nor slanted
a man opens the door
handwritten signs point to recepsjon
up a load of spiralling stairs
a get a key, a dark red towel and linen
for the bed
up 2 more flights
past orange rag-rolled walls
a place once grand now carved up
to a room that smells of cold and dirt
twin beds – gritty pale blue lino underfoot.
I head for Karl Johans Gate
the main drag
parliament, cathedral + theatres
can be seen from here
national gallery and marc jacobs
can be seen along the way
Det Kongelige Stottet
(a royal palace)
modest by Buck house standards
sits neat and tidy above of the city
looking out to sea.
lots of shops – could be Brighton
but beggars and christmas lights
line the street.
after pizza, whiskey and a read of
M. Wollstonecrafts’s letters from Norway
I sleep
despite the battered door
outside my room, with a sign that advises
‘all to lock their doors or look
what happens !’
