On Kongsvinger

Did you know Bob Dylan also paints? Even if you did, did you know that he once painted my hometown, Kongsvinger?


The latter is a stretch, but he really is a painter. Last year, my writer’s group, the Burrow, cooperated with Castle Galleries, a UK gallery chain, writing drabbles that were displayed along with artworks in their Cardiff branch. One of the drabbles I wrote corresponded with one of Dylan’s paintings currently displayed in the gallery. It felt like I was doing something rather silly, seeing as Dylan is one of the last century’s great poets, and I did not feel like comparing myself with him, to say the least. However, one of his images reminded me strongly of a place I have very conflicting feelings about.

Kongsvinger is the city I left thinking it was the ugliest place on earth, knowing that every now and then it’s the exact opposite.

It’s more a town than a city, really. We keep calling it city because it got its city status more than 150 years ago. At the time, what determined whether a place was a city or not was whether or not it could be called handelsstad [commercial city]. Kongsvinger had a railway; Kongeveien [the king’s road] – the main road between Oslo and Stockholm – (an important road at a time when the two countries shared a king) went through it; and it had a fortress. It was a potentially important city, with its close proximity to both the capital in Norway, Oslo, and to the Swedish border.

However, progress didn’t go well with Kongsvinger. First of all, the peaceful end of the union with Sweden in 1905 meant that the military capacities of the fortress no longer had any function. There remained military activity at the fortress until around the turn of the millennium, but in reality the fortress lost its importance after 1905. They didn’t even attempt to fend off any Germans from behind the grand old stone walls in 1940.

The railway gradually lost its status too. Once an important stop at the Oslo-Stockholm route, Kongsvinger became another blurry dot at the railway reduction map at the end of the 20th century. The old slogan “There’s always a train” became the parody “There’s never a train”. No one goes to Stockholm by train anymore. Flights are faster and more convenient, and with time, they became cheaper too. Eventually, there were no trains.

Few passes Kongsvinger on their way to Stockholm these days. Those trying to find the old Kongeveien will see that it’s been reduced to a bicycle path, and you can go faster by car via other border passes. Kongsvinger doesn’t benefit much from its proximity to the Swedish border either. Sweden’s price level is cheaper than Norway’s, and thus it draws customers from the border towns. All in all, it can be difficult to find reasons to stop in a town like Kongsvinger.

But then there are certain days. Right now, the yellow lights from the old railway station are reflected into the river, slowly drifting by. The headlights of passing cars light up the strange mix of old wooden buildings and 1960s-disasters, but the darkness disguises the architectural calamities fairly well. The fortress majestically rests on the top of a hill, still looking impressive in the soft light of the city underneath. It may not be much, but at least it’s not all bad. And, after years in Oslo and with temporary stays in other parts of the world, Kongsvinger still is home.


Below is Dylan’s painting, “Train Tracks”, and my accompanying drabble.

This was a town founded when railroads were the mark of civilization.
It was to be an official stop on the main line to the rest of the world; where you left the train for ten minutes to stretch your legs, have a cigarette, look around.
The last stop before the border, the final chance to turn. But as the world turned, it surpassed this town.
A railway station did not make you the centre of the world, soon it did not even make you a stop on the way to the world.

Not even the train stops these days.

On trainspotting

For those of you who expected a review of the movie – sorry. I have seen it. I seem to remember I kind of liked it, but while every other teenager loved it because it was so “real, man” and because they all secretly wanted to be heroin addicts (I might be over-projecting), I was a prude and thought the poop-in-laws scene was disgusting. That’s the closest thing to a review of Trainspotting (the movie) you will ever get in this blog. As for Trainspotting (the book) – sorry again. I haven’t read it. I have, however, read (one) other book of Irvine Welsh’s, and while I kind of liked this one too, the heavy accent was too much for my 16-year old self and I could not face defeat and read the Norwegian translation. That’s the closest thing to a review of Trainspotting (the book) you will ever get in this blog.


On to trainspotting as in being spotted on a train; and more importantly, spotting things on or from a train.

As previously mentioned , the train ride to Boston was long and sleepless. Well, here’s news for you: the train ride from Boston was also long and sleepless. On the plus side, though, the ride back was during the day, so technically I wasn’t supposed to sleep. And since it was not just any old day – it was a beautiful, sunny day – I got to see lots of cool stuff.

Expecting my solitary train ride to be long, I came well prepared. I brought food (hastily gathered from Leanne’s pantry, since we were too late for the store Sunday night). I brought books (one and a half of which I finished on the train). I brought a notebook and a pen (on which I wrote some very unreadable notes since the train was shaggi… No, wait, I think it says shaking heavily). I brought my mp3-player with my new ladybug ear plugs (of course you need ladybug ear plugs. It rhymes. When you say it in singular. Though technically, the ladybugs are in plural, since there is one for each ear, so maybe instead of “ladybug ear plug” it should say “ladybugs ear plugs”. Which makes it rhyme again. Did you all know that ladybug in Norwegian is marihøne? As in MARIhøne. Now you know). And I brought my camera, since I suspected that I might be able to get a few shots of whatever cool stuff I passed on my way through nine states (does that count as visiting them, by the way? I never left the train, but I do feel that I still should be able to say “I visited Delaware”. If not, I haven’t technically visited Luxembourg either. Or did I get out to buy a coke? Hm…).

The train passed such familiar and unfamiliar places as Providence (television show with that girl from CSI New York!), Mystic County (complete with a sign that mentioned the Mystic Fire Department – instantly made me think of superheroes), New London (it looked nothing like the old London), Philadelphia (where the Prince of Bel Air was born and raised, yo!) and Baltimore (I know I have some pop culture reference to this too, but all I can think of at the moment is that one of the girls from More to Love was from there…).

Oh, and of course that place you might have heard of – New York. Sigh. It’s been a life-long dream of mine to go to New York. I was there. So close, yet so far. Penn Station (did you all know there also is a “Penn Station, Newark”? This has got to be a deliberate attempt to trick foreigners, like me, who has immense problems pronouncing “New York” and “Newark” differently…) isn’t exactly what I most dreamed of seeing, though, and the skyline as seen from the rails didn’t quite make up for the fact that I didn’t get to leave the train and see the city that never sleeps. Oh, well. Next time.

Despite the joyous train ride, however, I was (and my back was too) glad to finally leave my seat in Union Station and head home. And it was lovely to come back to find two happy dogs, two surprisingly affectionate cats, three friendly people and my own bed (that, ironically, is less comfortable than Leanne’s couch. This is a compliment to the couch rather than a comment on the bed, though).

On walking between bookstores

The final day of Leanne’s visit in D.C. had one goal, and one only: to make us completely and utterly exhausted so that we would be able to sleep on the overnight train to Boston. We did our best, and we were pretty exhausted, but did we sleep on the train? Not so much…


Thursday started early – we had a breakfast date with our mutual friend, Sarah. Even though we did most of our packing the previous night, somehow we were still unable to be completely ready at time. Fortunately Sarah was patient, and tolerated being attacked by my host family’s over-enthusiastic dogs. When we finally were off, it turned out that the intended destination – a vegetarian breakfast place – was not yet open. We settled for alternative number two – bagels in a local college hang-out. The place was more that good enough, but in reality it probably had not mattered at all where we ate – we would have had a great time anyway. I have met Sarah in person before, Leanne had not, but our online interaction goes a long way back. We had such a great time thinking back to the “good, old times” we used to have, and since we share a lot of mutual interests, the conversation never stalled.

Sarah kindly dropped us off at the metro station, and then Leanne and I headed into the city. My office at George Washington University is, as I may have bragged about before, just a few blocks from the White House, so we went there to drop off our luggage before we started the day that was to be characterized by walking.

We walked to the White House, around it, from there to the Washington monument, around it, down the mall to the Lincoln memorial, yes, around it, and back to the White House area where we had lunch. Then we returned to my office, walked around it (but it’s not very big), went out again and ended up in Georgetown.

During this walk we also learned that Leanne apparently speak squirrel. The squirrels in D.C. are plentiful and relatively tame – they will for instance happily pose for photographs. However, I have never seen one approach by request until now, in fact it got so close that both Leanne an I were slightly worried the little bugger was going to climb her…

Squirrel pit stops set aside – in total this is a decent walk, especially considering we gradually added weight in our bags (we did naturally stop in every bookstore on our way). When we finally returned to my office that evening, we were tired enough to take advantage of my GWU privileges and call 4-RIDE to transport us to the metro rather than walk some more. This ensured that we got to Union Station in one piece (well, actually, Leanne and I were two separate pieces, and we had many pieces worth of luggage, so let me estimate we got there in maybe seven pieces). From there we managed to print our tickets, have some food, and board the 10 o’clock train.

The train ride was long. It is one thing to spend ten hours on a train when it’s light and you can see things. It’s a whole different matter when you’re exhausted and cannot sleep. No matter how comfortable the seats were, they were not comfortable enough, and I had a feeling my neck wasn’t attached to my body in the same spot as usual when we finally left the train in Boston. However, despite the lack of sleep, our spirits were high. After a (not so) quick stop at Leanne’s apartment to leave luggage, freshen up and introduce me to her two beautiful cats, we went for a(nother) walk – this time around the area where she lives. It was very nice – one of the highlights was, naturally, a bookstore (before Leanne went to stay in one for the rest of the night – aka work).

When she left for work, I went on my own to the area around Harvard university. Forever and ever I will now be able to say that I once went to Harvard. Feels good.

The area is, however, worth a visit even if you hadn’t been able to say those words. It’s filled with quirky little shops of every kind (not to mention the bookstore of bookstores – I will shut up about them soon, I promise, or at least consolidate my thoughts into a single post…), lots of college students (but in my opinion they looked slightly smarter than what I see at other universities – this might be a trick of the mind…) and beautiful, old buildings.

Finally, however, the walking caught up with me, and I was thoroughly happy when I finally could go to sleep on Leanne’s couch.