Things to do in Stavanger when the weather is nice
It's almost the first day of Norwegian spring and a dim sun casting a cold shadow warns that the fjords are not what we thought. In Madrid it rains a lot and you have to bundle up , they tell us, and here we have burned our foreheads already at noon because no one has thought to bring cream. Sunday mornings in Stavanger are colonized, like anywhere else, by couples with prams strolling up and down, looking for the sun-filled open spaces and plenty of benches, because here there are more benches than terraces.
They drink coffee in Styrofoam cups in lumberjack shirts, they rock languid 16-inch blonde locks. At any high point seagulls and other seabirds that I can't identify sit. As in houses, as in hotels and restaurants, everything looks like a decorated designer headdress in which a conscientious interior designer I would have millimetered each piece of props, as if two minutes ago someone had whispered “action” from behind the spotlight that is this solecico so rich.
Everything is 'cute' in Stavanger
The quiet life fills the streets of the city and walking with them is the first thing I recommend doing in Stavanger if you come here and you are surprised by the good weather (which for Norwegians is not surprising: they have been waiting for it for months from their halls with enormous windows made to collect and pack at home the minimum suspect sun that Frey sends them) . A walk not so difficult to achieve with Vueling's direct spring and summer flights between Barcelona and Stavanger (with two weekly frequencies that will be three in July), which make a Norwegian pack with which it operates from the capital of Catalonia to Oslo and Bergen.
All This quiet life walks next to the Cathedral , which is so reminiscent of Norman churches that you suddenly understand the connections between the English and the Norwegians, between the Vikings and the hallucinated monks that the series describes so well vikings . Commercial and military connections that the Nordics won over and over again, because historically one cannot beat warriors like Ragnar Londbrok and company, very seriously gross people who are going to receive in a paradise with a lot of wine and many carnal pleasures as soon as they die in battle.
Carnal pleasures in Stavanger
But the sharp arches and pointed towers of this cathedral show that by the year 1100 the one God of the Bishop of Winchester had finished with Odin and all his kindred without bringing about the end of the world that the sagas prophesied. A pissed off troll threw a rock at the Cathedral in a last attempt not to vanish on the shores of mythological time, perhaps foreshadowing what they were going to do with them in David the Gnome. He narrowly missed, but shaped the lake adjacent to the temple, a reservoir where children run around and pregnant women read , a pure allegory of the Roman peace that devikingized all this.
Stavanger Cathedral
The jewel in the crown of the city are the 173 white and wooden houses of Gamle Stavanger , located next to the port. They give an idea of how cute the Norwegian fishermen were even then . The fondness for beautiful and orderly things is not something new here: it dates back to at least the 18th century, when this neighborhood was founded. Now it's a dazzling white place in the sun, as full of flowers in any corner as craft shops and art galleries. I am told that the natives don't like you sticking your nose through their windows, but when I do I find myself with rustic chic Ikea decorations in which the older ladies in flowery dresses and their grandchildren themed as sailors or hipsters, who here you can't tell them apart, don't clash at all.
Gamle Stavanger, white and wood as a Norwegian way of life
Stavanger it is full of the ghosts of the minnows that passed through here by the millions. Especially the Museo Nacional de Conservas, an old factory where they teach me everything I ever wanted to know about canned fish and more.
It is one of those small and charming museums that you find yourself out in the world and suddenly they open a very illuminating door to a time and people you knew nothing about. The chain processes with which they converted intensive fishing into thousands of cans of sardines a day : how they decapitated them, how they smoked them and canned them, how they did this non-stop for days and years and lifetimes. It shudders a bit because you see them doing it, you step on their place in the chain and the man who shows it to us tells it very well.
National Canning Museum
The other museums I visit in Stavanger are the city itself (with the street graffiti left by the Nuart Festival; if you download the Nuart App you can geolocate all of them), the Science Museum, an interactive space where you can touch everything if you are a child or you want to be for a little while, and the Oil Museum, the Norsk Oljemuseum. The museum puts you inside the platforms , follow his story and play house with lots of models. Oil is a fundamental part of life in Stavanger and fills its streets with residents of more than 170 nationalities who, according to what they say, work two intense weeks extracting the liquid fossil from under the sea to rest after another four.
Stavanger Oil Museum
So I realize that the alleged tattooed descendants of the Vikings that fill the terraces of the port are probably Russians and I already decide to leave. my obsession with looking for norsemen from saga everywhere and having herring for dinner , which is very Viking, in the Sjohuset Skagen. It is one of the colorful port houses, where they serve traditional food with a touch of design on the plate how not
viking food
The terraces come alive throughout the night. The gay-friendly and tourist club in the port is Hot, the city's classic (with live music and Sports bar), Ovenpaa, and there are a few clubs on both sides of the port. For quiet times, Cardinal has 400 brands of beer Y, the street of colors , a few bohemian bars in typical colorfully painted wooden houses . The clientele are Americans and English, expats of all colors, Erasmus and Nordic tourists. And then there are the native girls overproduced as if for a wedding, with tight black dresses and lots of jewelry and brand name accessories.
They have been waiting for this moment all winter and here the excess translates into dressing up with everything before going out and drinking fast, very fast, before the end of spring.
Life on the terrace, the best life