Drammen

On Saturday (27th August) I caught a train to Drammen, a small city with 63000 people.  It is a short train ride, about 30 minutes away from Oslo.  There's an art museum in Drammen which was where I went to.  The ground floor was about the history and building architecture of the city over different time periods and the upper floor was mostly paintings.  They had some rather esoteric things too like scandinavian designer furniture (Herman Miller chairs), designer bowls and a strange racing car made from a skull of some kind of animal on the second floor.  It was a very very small museum and you can easily finish it in under an hour.  Entrance fee was 40 nok for an adult.

"Still going strong" is what's written on the plastic placard on the bottom left

Paintings on the upper floor, some of them are from a famous Drammen artist by the name of Hans Heyerdahl and the rest I'm not so sure :)

View of the ground floor

Ground floor

Apparently Drammen had many many fires over the past centuries.  Everything on the ground floor was in Norwegian so I needed my Norwegian friend to help me translate a lot of it.

There's a door on the second floor that needs some serious lubrication.  The hinges make an annoying eeeeeeee sound that goes on for at least 10-20 seconds after you open it and when it starts to close.

Crazy looking bench chair located near the art museum

The city is separated by a river.  I took a walk all around the city after visiting the museum.  Drammen has 3 bridges, which I find a bit overkill but maybe that's the fashion nowadays (just like in Brisbane).  They have a cool looking bridge though, called the Ypsilon bridge that was builit in 2007.

Ypsilon bridge

Taken from the other side of the river

Aass Brewery‎, the oldest surviving brewery in Norway

Walked to the city of town and took a photo from the church.  Not much of a view buuuut here is the photo.

Weather's not the best on Saturday, there was quite a lot of fog, you can see it in the mountains.  It was raining all day.

Bragernes Church, there's also 4 other churches in the city

Bragernes Church

Had dinner at a Chinese restaurant after that.  I had seafood hot pot, it wasn't too bad.  There were prawns, scallops, cuttlefish, and some green veggies.  It was tasty and spicy.  Also ordered har gow ('shrimp bonnets').  Finished off with dark chocolate ice cream from 7 Eleven after that.

I took a look at the real estate prices here and they are much much cheaper than Oslo.  Frankly I don't understand why people don't move here, it's not that inconvenient to work in Oslo.  For the same price of an apartment in the city in Oslo you could get one a lot bigger (3 rooms vs 1 room, 70 square meters vs 35 or smaller).  Rent is also cheaper.  But according to a Norwegian work collegue there's a saying that people in Drammen are a bit 'special' and that he would never want to live in Drammen.

Anyway to each his own. :)

Walked all around town after dinner and took a picture of 'the thing'.  That's the name that my Norwegian friend calls it, it's a large artsy ball sculpture with water sprays built around it.

'Ting' :P

Caught the train close to 10pm back to Oslo.  Drammen's a nice small city.  Rather quiet but it's nice for its size I think.  I wouldn't even call it a city but that is just me.  I think Oslo is really small but many Norwegians think it's big. :)