Kevin Blake's Blog

Gorilla outside the gallery shop

I’m in love with Berlin already. There’s graffiti all over the place, art galleries of the bizarre and obscure, fantastic displays of architecture, restaurants to cater for anyones taste the world over, and enough to keep you busy for a very long time.

Just as the tube map looks remarkably similar, Berlin looks and feels like it could be London’s long lost brother. Hopefully I feel this way after 5 days here. I found one free art gallery hidden away down a side street off of Friedrich Strasse which left me wanting to buy everything. I’ll most likely compromise and buy a postcard instead. Iron exhibits both huge and small fill the central courtyard and various huts off to the side as bunch of those artists responsible sat around making more.

It felt like I’d walked into some sort of rennaisance fraternity in gotham city – they had their own bar, which nobody seemed to be interested in using, a group huddled around an open fire, and a small burger van tucked away in the corner.  If the rest of Berlin stays like this (and first impressions indicate it will), I might not even mind staying in a city for longer than days.

I’m now back home from a week away in Norway, and whilst there are still draft blog posts sitting on the server, I’ve gone ahead and procrastinated over their completion by sorting out photos instead. All these pictures come from Norway mostly along the Oslo-Bergen route, including a stop off in Flåm.

The rest of the photos, including the ones in the video above are on Blakepics, where you can also find a full quality version of this video. The music for this one is an acoustic version of “My Heroine” by Silverstein.

“I liked him before, then all that terrible stuff with the kids”, the receptionist joyfully proclaimed.
Nervously looking at the back of the guy who had just checked in, “oh, yeah” I replied politely.  What kind of people were I about to be sharing a dorm with?
“I mean, it’s worse in England – he had a lot of shows booked there, didn’t he?”
“Sorry, wait, who are we talking about here?” I asked, listening to Thriller playing in the background.
“Y’know, Michael Jackson”, she said, nodding towards the cd player.
It finally clicked.  “Oh, of course, yes, if he ever turns up to any of his shows that is.”
“Well, he definitely won’t now”, she replied, turning her head to one side.  Probably trying to work out if I were about to throw the rented bed linen over my head and run around pretending I was a ghost.
“Why not?”, echoing her feeling that I was talking to someone not quite on the planet.
“He’s dead.”

Ah.

The whole world could end over night, Norway could be the only place left on the planet.  I probably wouldn’t find out until I went to board my flight.  I’m not saying that Michael Jackson’s death is such a comparison, but it’s interesting what news does filter its way through after you’ve spent just 2 days hiking and travelling up and down fjords.  This is the only news that has.  Does Iran still exist?  Has the London economy recovered while I’ve been away?  Is Gordon Brown still prime minister?

It’s nice being shut off from the world for a little while.  I’m sure if anything really big’s happened, I’ll hear about it on Twitter when I get back.

Having arrived in Oslo yesterday, it didn’t take me long to work my way around the tram system, and find my hostel lugging my backpack to the top of the hill.  I’m quickly learning that there are two very different types of hostel across the world.  There’s the shoe-string student traveler type, often with bar attached and generally coupled with a group of 20-something travellers sitting on the doorstep watching the world go by and picking out newcomers that might be worth speaking to before anyone else does.

Then there’s the ones with endless character-less corridors filled with clean, comfortable and spacious rooms that are behind various different stages of Vegas-like key card check points.

In this case, wanting a more relaxing trip, maybe even with less travelling than Vietnam – this just about suits me.  But I wouldn’t have wanted it anywhere else   Norway, like most of the Scandinavian countries is one of the few places in the world that I as a Londoner can walk around thinking, “damn that’s expensive.”  Actually, with the current strength of the pound there are probably a lot more right now, but Norway is at least consistent.  It’s made me think that I should be freelancing a lot more web sites out here, as well as caused me to struggle to find a 500ml bottle of water for under 2.50.

But it’s not like it wasn’t expected.

So for a mere 6.50, I found myself a 24-hour tram pass which should get me through my first and final full day of Oslo, providing I wake up early enough to get to the train station tomorrow.

The first stop was a Gordon-recommended trip to Frogner Park, which houses Vigelandsparken, a sculpture park featuring hundreds of statues by a man Gordon describes as someone who would most likely have “been put on a register if he was alive today.”  I’m not going to argue.  The statues are all part of a collection that culminate in a central obelisk featuring humanity as Vigeland saw it.  To paraphrase Rough Guides – a writhing mass of playing, fighting, teaching loving, eating and sleep humans all clambering over one another to reach the top.  Other statues around the park represent different parts of this view.  A particular favourite of mine depicting a man balancing four babies on his arms and feet, in a desperate struggle to protect or play.  I’m not entirely sure.  But certainly the man would be on a register, now.

Like many statues in Norway, and I think the same can be said for the style I saw in Iceland, the figures are very much bold, strong figures with chiseled (excuse the pun) jaws and wide thick torsos.  It reminds me a lot of the communistic displays of power I saw across Poland, and dotted throughout Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia.  But there’s something a lot more human, personable and connected about the ones I’ve seen in Norway.  I worked out how it could be best described today, and I’d really like it if the phrase “communists with jazz hands” caught on.

Onwards from the sculpture park, and I took a trip to the National Gallery to see one of the versions of Edvard Munch’s Scream paintings (the one that wasn’t stolen).  There’s a funny thing about seeing paintings in the flesh – not being a particularly well-scholared art-lover and instead a fully paid-up member of the digital information, more more more age – I can’t really explain it.  There is a certain reverence from seeing the brush strokes up close, and knowing that you are one of millions of people to have stood in the exact same spot staring at the exact same picture.  Every picture tells a different story, and every person sees a different side.

I am starting to get more of an idea of where I’m heading, now.  So tomorrow I’ll try and catch a train west to Myrdal, and take one of the world’s steepest train lines to Flam, then ferry to Gudvangen along the Naerofjord, before heading onwards to Bergen, and a smooth 7.5hr train ride back to Oslo later in the week.  Having said that… I have just read if I go North beyond Trondheim, there is a place called Hell (meaning “good fortune” in Norwegian, but I don’t want to spoil it).  It’s incredibly attractive to ditch all my plans and go there instead.  Not least because if anyone tells me to “Go to hell” in the future, I can assure them I’ve already been, and it was rubbish.  But it probably still wouldn’t earn me any friends.

It’s been a month since my last blog post and it really is about time I posted again. Not being able to think of something to write about, I found this old unpublished post in the vault, whilst doing a routine clean-up of PDAs, phones, and memory cards. I’d written this just after I left Mostar, Bosnia, and started on into Montenegro. It has been tirelessly restored by a dedicated team, and is reproduced in its full form, here for you.

Excluding the quick 10-15 minute power naps on the bus this morning, it’s now hour number 33 since sleep was my nearest and dearest friend.

After the tour pretty much wiped out any energy I might once have owned, we left the hostel en masse for the nearest alcohol we could find… Small twinges of bad ideas probably began around to be realised around that 30 minute argument between the police and the bar owners over whether they should close the bar, since it was well past last orders.

Or perhaps it all started before that, when Aaron convinced me that the 7am bus to Budva, Montenegro was a really good idea. Riches lie there. Milk, honey, that sort of thing. The alternative was a stop at Dubrovnik, which I was a little opposed to having already spent a couple of nights there back in 2004.

Although, the point it all started spiralling into the pit of really bad ideas, actually, if I’m completely honest with myself – was probably around the time we all decided that ending the evening by visiting Mostar’s only nightclub was a really good idea..

This is a weird travel-circuit – there are very few hostels, and there are very few directions in which interesting things lie. Split, Sarajevo, Mostar, Dubrovnik, Budva. The only choice most travellers in this area have is whether they’re going North or South. Both Montenegro and Albania only have 2 “real” hostels in the whole country, I’m assured. The others are clearly mere pretenders. Not hostels at all. 5* hotels masquerading as traveller meeting points, with golden bunk-beds stuffed with goose feathers from paradise, I would assume.

Most people I’ve spoken to about my holidays have asked me if I wouldn’t prefer travelling with other people instead of on my own. If you’ve never stayed in a hostel or you enjoy the opportunity to meet with large groups of complete strangers with very different backgrounds. Now’s the time to try.

What I’m trying to say is… It probably all went wrong, when I went clubbing.

I’m not much of a dancer. The best places to drink only really serve beer, they have warm fires, a pet cat, a quiet jukebox lightly humming any number of rock classics, they’re often found on the back of a mill. They most certainly don’t have bubble machines. See, there are two types of people in this world. People who love clubbing, and the people like me. Fortunately I wasn’t the only person like me in our group, as quickly became apparent after a few beers. “What the fuck are we doing here?” asked Welsh Alun. “You’re right, I hate clubbing”, I replied. Our separatist group quickly grew in numbers, as we all stubbornly stood near the bar enjoying ourselves clubbing only through the act of collectively hating it. Still not leaving, of course.

And so it turned out to be quite a memorable night. We got back to the hostel in the very early hours. Others helped me to stay awake so I could catch my bus at 6am, including a trip into Mostar so I could actually see the place “by day”. Before it becomes hour 34, and the hallucinations get stronger – I think I should probably go and find my golden bunk bed, and catch a little sleep.