Homeless in Hordaland.

If you ever travel to, from, or anywhere within Norway make sure you do it when the sun is up, and that you have a window seat, as the view from above is worth at least 90% of the fare (I say not having paid for the fare). It’s just… impossibly beautiful, it’s magnificent. Literally all you can see for miles and miles outside your plane’s window is a frantic system of craggy and undulating mountains, slopes, ravines, fjords and valleys coated with what seems to be the utmost care by the most delicate white powder snow.  The concept of pure white changed for me after seeing Norway from above. It has that strange combination of the seemingly haphazard and random forging out of contours and lines, and the orderly, logical way in which it all happens to resolve itself. It’s that sort of thing you see all over nature, in the coarse bark of tree trunks and the slithering, writhing mounds of wind-swept sand, but this was nature’s orderly disorder on a much larger and more brilliant scale than I have ever seen before.

Since I decided to go to Bergen during this trip I’ve been looking forward to it more than just about any other place because my parents told me how, out of all the cities they had been to in Europe, Bergen was among the most beautiful. And it absolutely is, in a very particular way. Of course it’s wonderful to walk down the street to your hostel in the direction of an enormous snow-capped mountain looming up ahead, and all the buildings have this quaint, understated quality that contrasts brilliantly with the fact that they are spilling out over from this grand and vastly overstated mountain range, but there is something about the place that is inexplicably off-putting. It was sort of… stale, and lifeless. It was as though the entire town had gotten bored with itself a few decades ago and stopped trying, I suppose it must have been around the same time as my parents left, since they didn’t seem to pick up on it. Literally and figuratively a frozen town. There also seemed to be this slight inferiority complex that pervaded the town… far too often was the name ‘Bergen’ accompanied with the feeble qualifier ‘second largest city in Norway!’ this may be so but it is also only twice the size of Geelong, and for the most part the shops don’t open until 10 or 11, close at 4, and aren’t open at all on Sundays, so in that regard it more or less meets the standards of a small Australian country town.

We need to breathe some life into the people of Bergen

As it happens the hostel receptions (at least for the one I was staying in) also close at 4pm, which became problematic on my second night there. After having lost my passport the day before at some point during my transition between Amsterdam and Bergen (at that point I had no way of knowing where it actually was, as the police stations of both airports have a three day waiting period before any item can be registered in the lost and found) and not making it into the second day of auditions for the contemporary company Carte Blanche I decided to walk out the stress and disappointment with a photo tour, and then a dinner at a restaurant, then a bar (not that I stayed this long… but I was informed that service of alcohol from any venue in Norway is illegal between the hours of 2 and 6am. How ridiculous is that?) By the time I returned to the hostel it was long since closed, which would have been fine had I not locked my key in my room… but as it happens that is what I did. Not wanting to bring my coat out with me in case of leaving it somewhere I was only wearing two layers of clothing on top, which is widely regarded as inappropriate attire for a Norwegian winter’s night. Not having any friends or contacts of any kind in Norway (nor a working phone, for that matter) my only two options as I saw them were doing aerobics until 9.30am, when the hostel would open again, or asking for help at the police station. After attempting the former I eventually decided on the latter. The police weren’t particularly helpful, they told me that there was no way to get me in to the hostel and that they had no facilities for this kind of situation. Their advice, in the end, was ‘just wait until 9.30am’. When I asked where they shrugged and made a vague gesture towards the table in the foyer, so that’s where I spent the 11-or-so remaining hours of my night, interrupted by the comings and goings of other police officers, citizens in distress, and one woman being escorted by two officers who I’m sure was a prostitute. So that’s the story of how I spent my second night in Norway in the confines of a very uncomfortable police station.

The next day, after I had gotten back in to the hostel, I called the airport in Amsterdam and they confirmed that they did, in fact, have my passport. This meant that there was nothing I could do until I got to Oslo, which was great because it meant that I could experience Bergen (even if slightly grumpily) without any immediate concerns. I spent my day in the ‘city centre’ *lol* which contained one of the items that was on my list of things to see in Norway- a frozen lake. I spent rather a long time there photographing and laughing at the ducks waddling even less gracefully than normal as they tried to negotiate the slippery terrain. Fun that turned into embarrassment pretty abruptly once I realised that there was a young kid about 20 metres from me doing the same thing.

Thats so cool

 Flocks of birds here are quite interesting though, or at least a bit interesting, because they are noticeably larger than those in Australia, both the size of the flock and the individual birds. The gulls are the most impressive; they seem to be around twice the size of those in Australia and twice as assertive, as they don’t have any concern for keeping their distance from humans, and they have a mighty, almost prehistoric shriek. Next to the lake were the modern art gallery and a smaller one which I can’t remember the name of but which contained a number of works by Munch and Dahl. The modern gallery had some really great work by mostly Scandinavian artists, which were actually not too different from how I expected Scandinavian modern art to be like; very muted and clinical, analytical almost, but with a subtle sense of warmth and heart that was simultaneously integral to the work and almost completely obscured. The other gallery was actually terribly, terribly boring until you got to the 1^st floor, which is where all of the Munch paintings were (I’m not a huge fan of Dahl). Once you get to Munch you almost wonder why they bothered having anything else in there, why they paid attention to any other artist. The works that were displayed there were just so absorbing but in a way that if you didn’t take the time to stop and look at them properly you probably wouldn’t see it. The longer you stay looking at one the more genius it becomes and the more difficult it becomes to move yourself from it. It became frustrating, because I wanted the subjects of the paintings to somehow become tangible, and to be able to interact with them in some meaningful way and speak to them and learn about them because they looked so curious and interesting.

So that night I set my alarm for an hour before I had to leave to get to the airport. Unfortunately it seems there must be this strange magnetic field or something once you get near the Arctic Circle, some disturbance which confuses electrical time-keeping devices. That must be it, it’s the only reason I will accept for my FUCKING ALARM NOT WAKING ME UP! I overslept, and didn’t stop oversleeping until an hour before my flight departed, when I was disturbed by the whimpering, dying sounds of my battery deprived phone. After a frantic dash and an expensive taxi ride I did manage to arrive at the airport before my flights departure… though only 15 minutes before, meaning I had missed it and had to quickly pay for a rescheduled flight before it left, or else pay an even larger fare in order to get to that sodding, sodden city- Oslo.

Oslo is actually a winter wonderland… that sounds silly, but in the back of my mind I am suspicious that the ice queen might actually live there. I mean, I wouldn’t go round telling people that I actually thought she was around somewhere, dusting buildings and trees with snow and greasing the footpaths with ice… but I wouldn’t be, like, 100% surprised if she was. It was very exciting for me to come in to that environment, one that’s so completely different to Melbourne in just about every way that a major city can be. When I was in Amsterdam I knew in my mind that I was miles and miles away from where I live but it didn’t feel like the world was too different. It was just an amazing alternate version of Melbourne. Oslo is noticeably, drastically and completely the other side of the world. Any greenery that would normally take its place on the stems and branches of plant life was replaced by luscious, bulbous lumps of snow and the entire ground was shiny with an icy covering, it looked like it was coated in that horrible plastic Italian mothers use on their furniture. I really was in a completely different country, which was amazing.

Like I said, I'm not saying the Ice Queen definitely lives here.
But if she does... I'm pretty sure I know where she's hiding.

The first thing I did after checking into the Anker Hostel (the description for which was in Norwegian but I’m fairly sure it read something like ‘you get what you pay for’) was to taxi off with a very gruff driver to the Australian consulate to inquire into getting a temporary passport, or some kind of pass back to Amsterdam so I could collect my real one. Of course, there was no way I could be seen to, as they closed in an hour (it was 2pm), and the woman I needed to see was in a meeting for that time… and I needed an appointment anyway.  I was given a number, which wasn’t very helpful as it was never answered… and an email address, which was equally helpful for the same reason.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see very much of this beautiful city, I listened with raging jealousy and unconvincing grimaces to my room mates’ plans for trips to the Munch Gallery and tobogganing in the fantastical garden of statues while I emailed and researched and attempted sleep, and rejected with all the false courtesy in the western world their offers of beer and bourbon. After numerous calls to the consulate from the public phone in the hostel (which were only answered with apologies for being unavailable) I moved on to trying to organise something with KLM airlines directly, which I had to do from a public phone at the train station, as the hostel’s phone wasn’t able to make international calls. KLM wasn’t able to reach me either, and in a fit of hissiest nature I stormed from the phone booth, only to realise moments later that I had left my wallet behind, only to return moments later than that to find that somebody else had taken it. After checking at the lost and found I found it was still lost, so I reported it as such to the police. For a while they didn’t seem to have any idea how to deal with me, they had about as much of an idea how to deal with me as I did. I had, as my mother likes to say, completely fucking lost my shit. That’s the terrible thing about losing control, you just can’t stop losing it, and if you’re me you just can’t stop losing important things like your passport and wallet. In the end we ended up calling my parents, for whom it was something like 1am, cancelling my cards, calling the unhelpful Australian embassy in Denmark, calling the once again unresponsive Australian consulate in Oslo, and establishing that I couldn’t get any financial assistance from the Norwegian government because I’m not a Norwegian citizen.

After establishing that there was nothing more to be done, I left the police station- alone in a foreign country that is far too close to the North Pole with absolutely no identification and about 20 nok (which is worth approximately 6 times less than the aus $) in my pocket. I didn’t really have anything else to do, I tried again at the lost and found… where it had actually been handed in. I’m not ashamed to say that I did cry a little bit in front of the woman who handed it to me. Okay that’s a little bit of a lie, I am a bit ashamed to say it but it’s true. I went back to the police station to show them that everything had, to a degree, sorted out. One of the officers gave me a jeering look, and told me that I don’t deserve to be this lucky. Not untrue.

The next day I devoted to getting two things done- collecting the money that was transferred to me by my parents and the remaining funds from my now useless travel money cards (which I am still living off), and finding a way to get back to Amsterdam from Bergen. After repeatedly trying and failing to make an appointment with the consulate I headed to Western Money Union to sort out the transfer… what a depressing experience. It’s difficult to comprehend the degree of collective self-loathing that must go on behind that glass barrier. This glassy-eyed army of unattractive, unenthused employees, every now-and-then slurring monotonous Norwegian instructions to their visitors almost as if to show that they are, if not living, at least undead. I’m sure they reserve a special level of contempt for people like me, who are asking to withdraw what I’m sure must be several hundred nok more than they make per week. I wasn’t able to withdraw the money, as I didn’t have a form of I.D.  in hard copy. I did show them the scan I had on my computer of my passport but they needed to photocopy it. Once they I was not likely to leave until they had explored every option that I could think of, one of the drones offered me the service of his usb stick, so that it could be copied onto that and then printed. He came out from behind the barrier and looked at me very sternly, and explained that ‘this is MY usb stick. I am giving it to YOU, so that you can put the necessary files onto it and that is it. You may NOT look at any of my files, and I will be standing here to make sure you don’t.’  And I did try to respect his wishes…  I expected that, given the importance he placed in them, might have been some government related documents, which I had no special interest in as they would have been Norwegian. But it was his idea to double check that the passport had been saved onto the usb, which did mean opening the usb folder so that we could view the documents it contained… the first folder was entitled ‘Alicia Keys- Piano and I’. Scrolling down we moved passed Celene Dion, Cher, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Mariah Carey… LOTS of Mariah, Nelly Furtardo, and finally ‘P’ for ‘passport’. The poor bastard wasn’t trying to conceal important documents he was trying to conceal his sexuality… and I’m proud to say that I managed to hold back the laughter until I left the office, it softened the blow of being told that until I got some REAL identification I couldn’t collect my money.

So I went to the consulate, stormed to the consulate, and demanded to be seen to, as I was in a state of emergency. Being in a desperate situation and demanding the attention of a governmental institution is a good feeling, I don’t care who you are or what the situation is, it’s good. Generally speaking I was not all that impressed by the Norwegian people, for the most part they were as colourless and drizzly as their weather. But if there is one good person in Norway it is Mette S. Berntzen, who took a solid 3 hours- two of which were after her regular hours (though she does normally only work from 12-3pm so, you know…. not all that much sympathy for her)- to sort out how to get me back to Amsterdam. It turns out that most of that time was wasted in organising a temporary passport, which would have meant me having to cancel my existing passport, which I didn’t want to do. So instead she just signed some documents, attached them to a photocopied printed out scan of my passport, and wrote down her number- telling me that if I had any trouble getting past security that I should call them and she would ‘……. take care of it’. Once again most of my day in Oslo was wasted doing what turned out to be jack all, but as we were leaving the consulate to have a passport photo taken it started snowing. For the first time in my life I was walking in the falling snow and it was actually exactly as exciting as I thought it would be. It was way too difficult to pay attention to the process of getting back to my passport and finding money to last me until that happened, which I could tell was much to the annoyance of the lovely Ms. Bertzen. By the time the snow had stopped and the sun had set I was properly equipped with adequate documentation and a few hundred nok which I had received from Mette in an informal exchange for Australian $ (she was happy to do so as her daughter was leaving for Australia in a few days), and it was time to spend my final night in Oslo, which you can read about in my previous post-deathblog.

This is just as the snow was dying down

For most of the past few months I have been pretending both outwardly and inwardly that I can confront the important moments in my life without any sense of fear or of powerlessness, but I can’t really keep doing that anymore. I was terrified to come here in the first place- alone at 20 years old in Europe when my only previous experience of foreign ‘adventure’ was a weekend in wet and windy Wellington. I was scared then because I didn’t know how I would react and I’m scared now because I do. Apart from any troubles with money or identification (or maybe because of it) I miss home so much more than I expected I would. I miss the security of family and the comfort and emotional release of friendship, and I really, really miss my things. Whoever said that material objects are not important is simply a liar, and a rather wicked one at that, objects feel and smell and vibrate and tingle with memories, and comfort. They relate us to our past and in the present they excite and please us in a particular, unique way, different from how any person can.  Of course I’m not proposing that owning and acquiring possessions is better than love or happiness in itself but I don’t think they are too far separate from each other either. It’s the solution to the conflict between the selfish desire for power and sole ownership and the noble desire to not harm or infringe upon the rights and wishes of other people, as well as providing a much needed touch of personal aesthetic to a world that’s in a colour scheme which is not of your choosing. To live as though the effect your possessions have on you is purely negative and to berate others for their attachment to them is a strange waste of time which I’m not sure I will ever understand.

I’m now almost out of Norway, there are only a few hours in between me and my flight from Bergen to Amsterdam. I have been awake for almost two nights straight and all that I have keeping me going is the knowledge that things will be better in Amsterdam. I will be comfortable and warm with money and food and people who speak English, Amsterdam feels way too much like home right now. There was not a lot of good I could find in Norway outside of its extraordinary beauty. It’s as though the patrons of Norway made a trade-off, in exchange for this marvellous wallpaper they were cursed with shitty furniture and dull company. I do want to come back here one day and enjoy myself, I really do, it’s just extraordinary. And while I would never be able to live here, it’s a country in which I would be more than happy to die.