Karlstad - A Walk Down Memory Lane (3)

Tuesday, 12 July (continued)

After spending a bit of time with old friends + a nostalgic walk on my own through parts of town with lots of memories from my youth (cf the previous two posts), I met up with my brother at Värmlands Museum. It was built in 1929 to house a collection of antiques that had been donated to a foundation almost a century before that. More recently (1998) a modern extension has been added. In my photo above the extension is hidden behind the trees, so I'm borrowing a photo from Wikipedia again to show you how they fit together:

(Värmlands Museum - Wikipedia)

(You'll get another view of it from a different angle further down in this post.)

Enlarging my photo of the old museum, you can see a star-shaped window above the door.
When inside, upstairs, looking out of that window, this is the view (towards the city centre):

Entering the museum, one of the first things to catch your eye is this white elk (moose):

On the ground floor, they had  temporary (and contemporary) art exhibitions. One was by an artist born (1967) in Värmland, Kristina Jansson, entitled 'Space - Lost and Found'.

Upstairs, there are some more classic works of art on display:

Typical classic landscape for the province of Värmland. (Sorry, I forget who painted it.)

 

 

 

There's also a play-room for children, featuring some well-known characters from picture books by local artists Inger and Lasse Sandberg. This is from a story entitled 'Little Anna and the Tall Uncle':

After our tour of the museum, we finished off with tea/coffee and frozen yogurt in their café downstairs. 

Refreshed from that, we then went on to explore another part of my 'Memory Lane', crossing the river on a cycle/foot-bridge and walking on along the river for a while.

The back of the modern extension to the Museum seen from across the river.

We could not work out whether these poles in the river are supposed to be "art" or not.
(If they are - what are they supposed to represent? And if they aren't - what are they??)

There were other mysterious things going on in the river as well!

But this was what I was looking for. After one year in a small 'bedsitter' student flat in the city centre, this is where I moved to the following summer. The house had four flats, my landlord was living in one of them, and had his business in the basement. The street is still a quiet back street in between the river and a little lake (across a more busy street), and within easy walking/cycling distance from the city centre. My flat was on the top floor towards the street.  It was rather worn-down, and I rented it sparsely furnished with old second-hand furniture, also not in the best condition. But it was three times as big as the student bedsitter. It had a proper kitchen, a big living room, a small bedroom, and a bathroom. This made it possible for me to also frequently have friends over. And as things turned out, I remained living there 8 more years after graduating from secretary school. (I kept adding furniture of my own, and certain things also got fixed up by my landlord over those years. Like new wallpaper, some improvements to the kitchen, and a laundry room added in the basement).

 A big tree I could see from my windows back then is still there - and has kept growing!

View across the little lake nearby.

The cathedral sticking up on the horizon, on our way back towards the city centre.