Baerum Verk
West Suburban Oslo – 30th May
Today we went to the town of Baerum Verk, which was once an iron ore foundry. From where you approach the town you first sight very old buildings, built alongside the river in a valley. We parked the car to see these buildings which have now been turned into handcraft stores. A lot of the products are made on site such as blown glass, woodcraft, knitwear, pottery and art. There are also handcrafts and specialty foods brought in.
Although the goods were nice, some were impractical to take back to NZ and others a little pricey. Most wood products wouldn’t pass NZ Customs and unfortunately we couldn’t justify the cost a cat serviette holder or a pencil drawing of somebody else’s cat, even if it did look like ours.
We could have stopped at the oldest tavern for lunch, if it had looked opened, however we strolled passed the boutique shops to what was advertised on their website as ‘child friendly’ statues. Their definition of child friendly is that children can touch and play on them; I’m still not convinced they have that definition right.
We walked past the statues to what looked like a furniture store but turned out to be a multi-story mall with upmarket shops and a supermarket, something we weren’t expecting because we couldn’t see any houses. We found the café on the fourth floor and had a ham and cheese toasted sandwich which started out looking like super thick bread and after meeting the sandwich press was super thin. A local came in, ordered the coffee from the urn, it was then topped with frothy milk from the espresso machine, she was so disgusted it was promptly tipped out and milk straight from the fridge added; you just can’t change habits of a lifetime.
We left the Baerum hand workers town and went further up the valley and found an old mine entrance, lots of terraced houses built up the side of the hills, and the luxury of being a snow skier in Norway – ski fields right on your back doorstep. There were little ski fields with poma lifts on the hill that literally started and ended at the houses.
Today’s ABBA tribute is ‘I Know Him So Well’ (1987), the song is from the musical ‘Chess’ and although not sung by ABBA was written by the Abba guys for the musical. The chorus of the song is based on ABBA’s ‘I Am an A’ (1977).
Below is the ‘A’ I know so well playing chess with Mr Junglepants. [Ed – Thrashed him!]
