Cyan sky? – and being a tourist in your own town

When my child moved out for the first time (pleas note the first time) to go to university, I was in for a full year of mourning. Having a child living at home for 19 years and then off to university in another town far away – not just across the street or on the other side of town – leaves a gap. I think any parent can relate.

Combine that with a completely different topic, and that is that I exercise regularly a couple of days in the week. Saturdays would normally be my rest days and hence not a day for exhausting myself on a winter trail or in a gym. So that particular winter, when my child left for university, I found myself going to the city centre and to re-explore different parts of the town on foot. After a couple of hours of sightseeing, I would often end up in a nice cafe for lunch or something like that. This routine I would carry out that winter season on a lot of Saturdays – come, not rain, but snow-storm – or shine.

Being tourist in my own town is fantastic and in particular I enjoy the new areas being built around the Oslo Opera called “Barcode”. The Opera house by the Oslo fjord that was built a couple of years ago. A must see and a great tourist attraction.

Living in Oslo, it is very easy to forget that we actually live along a coastline and a fjord – the Oslo fjord. Most often we live just far enough away not to see the fjord on a daily basis, but it’s there and very available.

Now it’s January and can be at its coldest and darkest time of the year. But, for us sun-worshipers, we count every minute of longer daylight since winter solstice. Every bit of sunlight counts. These days, my child now done with university, moved back home again and then out again (pfew!) I still enjoy this habit of just strolling around the city on a Saturday midday. Walking around the piers along the fjord, exploring the winter scenes with snow and ice, the spectacular sunsets that create all sorts of magic and then some more.

What about the colour in this story?

I recently learned on social media that when artists choose blue paint for painting the sky, they often succumb to Cerulean blue, Cobalt or Ultramarine. But one particular artist used Colourpickr to investigate the shades of blue and found that it wasn’t blue at all – it was cyan! I have not idea if this is true or not. For all I know, the sky could be all sorts of colours.

But that particular idea, that the sky is socalled Cyan, stuck with me. And it struck me as particularly interesting when I came across this sky one January afternoon in Oslo. Where is cyan in this picture. And if not cyan – is there any blue at all?

Earlier that day the sky had been cloud free, but some rather grey and heavy clouds were coming in during the day, but quite not yet covering up the entire horizon. The sunlight was still making its presence and gleaming readily in the rather windy and choppy water. The colour of the water in Norway is not clear, nor turquoise, nor blue for that matter. It is rather heavy, dense and lack of better wording, the water has a leaden colour quality to it. Grey heavy clouds, dense leaden water and a postive dose of sunlight in the middle, made me wonder where cyan really was. I guess a colourpicker could tell me.

But for those of us who long for the sun, we stand still, take it all in, get a dose of vit D in the process and know that spring will for sure come again. Enjoy the sky in whatever colour it comes in!