Photo by G
"I think we're on the right track," I told Gorgeous, as we crossed the enclosed bridge over the main road outside of the opera building - "Look, the usual broken beer bottles and kebab leftovers have been replaced by broken wine bottles and half-eaten canapes: surely, this must be the path oft trodden by our intellectual elite!" Unfortunately, I had to abandon the hope of finding some nice caviar along the way, as we emerged from the opening of the bridge outside of the opera. "Oh my, that's... white!" Gorgeous gasped as we walked along the slanted side of the building towards the rooftop. "Gah! My eyes! It... it burns!" I whimpered as my corneas practically melted from the overwhelming whiteness. "No wonder people have tripped and broken limbs up here - the whole damn thing is so white, and then they have all these little edges and crevices up here!" I said, almost tripping over an almost invisible 10 cm edge that had popped up right in front of me.
"Stop complaining and let's get the sightseeing over with, I'm getting a headache," Gorgeous said, matter-of-factly. "Where are you, dear?" I replied, half blind and more than a little disoriented. Gorgeous grabbed me by the arm and guided us to the top of the building. "The view is... interesting," she said, gazing over the container park in front of the building. "Yeah, well... it's better than this side, " I said, turning back from feasting my eyes on the massive construction work being done of the railroad tracks and main road across the other side of the building. We carefully descended the front of the building, and made our way inside to have a look. "It's like a twisted, psychedelic architectonic joy-ride, " I commented, having almost bumped into at least three different walls as we took a small tour of the main foyer and the wardrobe area "Everything is angled or curved or both - I feel dizzy. Might be just the snow blindness declining, though." Gorgeous put her elbow in my ribs again (for the umpteenth time that day) and we headed back outside.
We crossed the area in front of the opera and G took - half-heartedly - some snaps of the opera. "I dunno, " she said, "It's awfully white, isn't it?" "We definitely need to bring sunglasses the next time we visit," I said, eyes still hurting. In all fairness, though, I must say that it's a very cool building - isolated from the rest of the architecture in downtown Oslo. Seen in context though, it kinda sticks out like a big, sore, white thumb. There's absolutely no correlation between the building itself and any of the buildings nearby. I should mention though, the same can be said for most new buildings in the area - they're all nice and shiny on their own, but they are all in different styles and separate themselves from each other and the rest of the city. Of course, I don't know squat about city planning or architecture, so I'm blatantly subjective here.
Photo from MrJorgen's Flickr page
But damn, that thing is white!
