Oslo, a.k.a. Arkham Asylum

I hate to malign a city after just a couple of hours, but things don't seem entirely right here in Oslo.

My hotel is thirty minutes by T-bahn out of the city and another 15 minutes walk through desolate countryside. I was sceptical about it from the first, but all the reviews were raves and it has to be said it is in a stunning location. Indeed as the train began to mount the hill, my jaw in sympathy began to drop. The view of the fjords, lakes or whatever and the city was amazing. Everyone else in the train wore a glazed expression, immune at this stage to the effect.

I made it to my stop. The train station itself looked like a deserted outpost in the Appalachians; beautiful, but isolated. Then there was the walk to the hotel along a country road fringed with firs, with just an occasional signpost. I was grateful when I arrived, and would have been if it was a shed, but regarless of my relief, I was impressed. Apparently it is built on the site of the sanatorium Edvard Grieg used to frequent (this I discovered just after putting on some Grieg piano music). I am sure it will be stunning tomorrow morning (what I saw as the sun went down was stunning enough).

But I am still in the middle of Nordic woods with a walk to and from the station along a road with no pavement and few lights.

Anyhow I arrived after eight hours travelling etc. around 7 o'clock. I had laundry and asking about a suitable laundromat I was helpfully given directions to a place in town.

As I journeyed into the city, I noticed that all the monitors on the ticket machines, not one or two, but pratically all monitors, had been smashed. Why in the midst of so much beauty were they smashing their infrastructure. Something was rotten in the state of Norway.

A (rare) young man got on leaving his girlfriend on the platform. He drew a heart on the window. Sweet though this act seemed, it seemed to take on overtones of overstretched romantic passion in my jaundiced mind.

50 minutes after leaving the hotel, I arrived at the laundromat to be told the place was closing at 9. This was at 8.55. I tried to ask was there another place nearby, but the woman just pointed at the hours of opening on the door. I shrugged my shoulders and moved on for something to eat.

Firstly what struck me about Oslo was the darkness. There were lights everywhere, but the blackness seemed to suck all the illumination out of them. Actually what I think it was was the fact that not all of the lights were working. You felt there were lights everywhere, but there was less light than there appeared to be.

Next thing to strike was the cost. This place is ludicrous. Seven euro forty for a pint of the local brew (Ringners, and I can see why the world got Carlsberg instead of this; I like my beer with a flavour). All the restaurants were through the roof, though I settled on a Chinese for a reasonable noodle dish. Unfortunately I had a table in front of one with a Norwegian and a Chineseman being told by an Englishman why they were being screwed by their suppliers. I felt like slitting my wrists there and then. Once finished I went on to the Scotsman Bar to be ripped off on the pint. As I sat there I thought how impossible it would be for me to be standing at that deserted crossroads in the mountains, signposts in an alien language, the time close to midnight and a mile yet through darkness to trudge. Trudge because my haversack of uncleaned laundry would weigh on my back. Could this really happen? And yet if I was to live, to go on, that's exactly what would need to happen. The guitar act was only getting ready to play as I left.

There are a lot of people around, but somehow it seems very quiet. As I walked down Karl Johan Gate to the station all the prostitutes were coming out (Norse-African for the most part, one called to another as Sonya). I stormed down as fast as I could, but, as earlier, outside the station is crawling with junkies. I kept my head down and got to the platform.

The platform was full of young men in beige uniforms with caps and tassels. I felt this was the aftermath of a Hitler Youth rally. So this was where all the young kids go. None of them got on my train.

In Sweden the trains were super clean and super efficient with shiny, happy kids everywhere. Oslo trains are clean too, but rundown, empty and silent; what clientele there is is older and weirder. The few people I have seen so far are not all young and not all healthy and rarely seem to speak. Earlier a young guy got on with either some palsy or on drugs, he was frightening to behold. He nearly fell forward, and beacuse he couldn't coordinate his hands it thought he'd drop. He didn't. Instead he gave out to people as he got off. Now a middleaged guy got piously on with a carton of juice or yoghurt. When he finished it, he ripped it open and began licking the insides. Meanwhile the driver is mumbling something in a monotone everytime we stop at a station, something that bears absolutely NO relation to the station name. It seems to be his own private language and he is talking to himself, debating whether to slit his wrists now or at the end of the line. Outside the darkness gets deeper. Inside carton man is poking at the end of the container. A drunk man gets off (how he can afford to get drunk bewilders me) and I am alone in the car with carton man. I try not to catch his eye. Eventually through luck rather than any signposting (the signs can only be seen after you pass them), I identify my stop and get off.

As if it wasn't dark enough, there's fog everywhere. For good measure, a guy in a hoody gets off the train too and starts walking behind me. I am walking through Nordic forest miles from anywhere (including my hotel) in fog with Michael Myers behind me. I can't get back quick enough.

But I do.

If ever I was to write horror, Oslo would be the place I'd come to to do it. I know it's unfair. I haven't seen it properly in the day yet, but tonight was eerie. It's like the beauty of the place has an edge underneath and I feel a little sympathy for the inhabitants. They face a place of extremes; what is beautiful in the day is dark at night and frozen in winter. H.P. Lovecraft set his fictional city of horror in New England, but Oslo is the real Arkham. Somewhere out there lies the Miskatonic and in one of those beautiful wooden houses Herbert West is working on reanimation. And I came here to rest.