...and they lived happily ever after

Jose K and I have left Oslo and will be returning home very soon.

It's been a strange year and we will take away many memories with us.

This is far from the end of our adventures, there will be many more to come.

But for now, we shall say, "ha det bra!"*

(*"have it good"- the Norwegian way of saying goodbye)

The penultimate trip - Gothenburg/Helsingborg/Helsingor

One day, while trying to work on our theses, we got distracted and decided that we would take a final trip to Sweden and so we booked out bus tickets and accomodation to Gothenburg on-line.

A few days later, again distracted from our work, we decided "Why stop at Gothenburg? Why not keep going?". And so we bought return bus tickets from Gothenburg to Helsingborg, Sweden.

As it turns out, we didn't even stop in Helsingborg, but managed to visit Helsingor in Denmark as well. All this in three days. It was good.

Gothenburg is the 2nd largest city in Sweden and is less than 4 hours by bus from Oslo. It has the busiest port in Scandinavia. Its supposed to be the city which most Swedish would prefer to live in. If you're in your late 20s or early 30s you may be interested to note that Gothenburg is the city that gave the world "Ace of Base". There was a statue in Gothenburg called "Johanna". That isn't its real name but apparently thats what people called because it was unveiled on Johanna's day. Apparently Swedish have "name" days.

We next visited Helsingborg which is about a 2+ hour bus ride away from Gothenburg. A Swedish friend of mine could not understand why we wanted to go there and knew it as the place where you take the ferry to Copenhagen from.

We of course HAD to go to Helsingborg because that was home to the castle KARNAN (the keep). Yes, there is a castle in Sweden called Karnan. As it turned out Helsingborg was the nicest part of the trip. The town had a lot of character and the people there seemed to be very proud of their history and sights. To our surprise there was also a little beach with small palm trees right next to the ferry terminal.

Helsingborg is just a 20 minute ferry ride away from Helsingor, Denmark - best known as the home of Hamlet's castle. We visited the castle and walked through the casements (basement) where I presume many, many people have been locked away. The castle was quite beautiful and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


All in all, the trip to Sweden/Denmark was really fun. Once again we were reminded of the stark contrast between Swedish and Norwegians (or at least the people in Oslo). For example the Swedish really seem to enjoy eating huge but inexpensive set lunches at restaurants. The Norwegians on the other hand eat quick lunches consisting mainly of bread and cheese which they bring from home wrapped in paper. Most Swedish and other foreigners I've met never fail to make fun of the Norwegian eating habits.

Its interesting to have been able to learn over the course of the year the differences between the different Scandinavians. When we first got here, we didn't even know what Norwegian sounded like. We'll be off in less than two weeks.

Dinner Party

Last Thursday night, Bjorg and I finally got down to having our chinese and korean friends over for dinner.

We have been very bored over the last week and needed something to look forward too. Also since we're leaving pretty soon we figured that we might as well try to finish as much of the spices that we had.

There were eight of us in all and it was the first time we were preparing so much food. We have had that many people over for dinner before back home but that only involved cooking simple things like spaghetti and making salad.

This time we wanted to bring our guests the complete taste of home (or as much of it as possible). So this is what the menu was like:

1. Prawn Crackers & Thai Chilli Sauce
2. Bak Kut Teh
3. Beef Rendang
4. Green Vegetables in Oyster Sauce
5. Mee Goreng
6. White Rice
7. Cereal Prawn
8. Raita
9. Grass Jelly with Longan and Sea Coconut for desert

Much to our surprise the food turned out pretty well and our guests were very happy. We could tell that they were not just being polite. I would say that the only "problem" we had was with recreating an authentic tasting mee goreng. I think we managed fairly well to recreate a dish that looked like mee goreng but we're not too sure about the taste.

Although the plan was to try to cook food that our guests would never have tasted before (so they wouldn't be able to tell if it was authentic or not), the chinese recognized some of the dishes. To our relief, they really liked it.

Apart from the food, the evening went well and we all had a good time.

Unfortunately, we have no pictures of the dinner party. Wasn't thinking too clearly after all the cooking.

The look of...

The public system here in Oslo runs on an honour system as much of Europe's public transport systems. They are however in the midst of upgrading the system to include gantries to all the train stations. When Jose K and I arrived in August last year, there were announcements made that the 'new' system will be implemented by the following year. Well.. it's almost June 2006 and so far, no progress.

In the meantime, the public train authorities do their best and run these advertising campaigns which target not your sense of honour but your fear of public humiliation. I guess this proves conclusively that we Asians do not have the monopoly over the concept of 'not losing face'.

In the previous campaign guilty, posters showed ticketless persons (shrinked toy-size) being stared at by everybody else on the train.

In this recent one, which I must say is one of my favourites, everybody is staring at YOU, the viewer in horror as the inspector presumably finds you without a valid ticket. I suppose the Powers that Be decided on a more direct approach, perhaps the first run was too subtle for most people. Anyway, check out the guy in the middle. Priceless. He looks like you just asked him to show you his underwear or something along those lines.

In this version, everybody looks like they came from the Village of the Damned. The baby (bless his/her little heart) kind of spoils the mood though.



I wonder what the next campaign will be? Close up of ticket inspectors looking menacingly at you? Or big slips of the fine? ( I hear it's about 800 kroners or SGD$200) Or maybe they will just hang up mirrors on all the trains and use the slogan. For the curious, a rough translation is
"Do not get caught in an embarrassing situation. Buy a ticket".

The possibilities are endless.

Fire Drill

There's really been nothing much going on since the last blog.

I'm still in the middle of my exams. My last paper is on Monday. Bjorg just finished hers today. As with my last paper her 6 hour exam question consisted of one rather short sentence.

Even the sun-seekers aren't out because its been raining the past two weeks. There has been some sun occasionally here and there but its been a little too cold to lay outside. I never realized until now that you can actually have rather long conversations with people about the weather.

The most interesting recent event would probably be the fire alarm going off in the building. This happens about every two months. The alarm usually goes off because someone in the building has left the frozen pizza in the oven too long.

By the way, we may have mentioned this before but Norwegians are supposed to be the biggest pizza consumers in hte world. No one can live in Norway and not try "Grandiosa" frozen pizza. It tastes nothing like any pizza you've ever had - and thats not a good thing. Its rather stiff and hurts the roof of your mouth if your not careful. That said, the pizza restaurants here like Dolly Dimple's and Peppe's Pizza are pretty good (although you can't get one for less than US$30).

Anyway, here are some pictures of the fire truck and the bored looking firemen who had to come all dressed up.

Needless to say, there has been a lot of internet surfing going on and here's an interesting site I came across when I suddenly felt like listening to the theme song from the "Green Hornet" (the one with Bruce Lee in it). Its got theme songs from all the TV shows. Like Dallas, Falcon Crest, Bonanza, Magnum PI...even the Andy Griffith Show.

I most certainly have watched a lot of TV.

Spring

Spring has suddenly begun and the parks and open spaces are littered with pale bodies. The weather is pretty good. I hear it lasts till about August.

This is just the view from our apartment window!

The Haircut

I got my haircut at a barbershop in Grunerlokka over the weekend. It cost me 100 NOK which is I guess about the cheapest haircut you can get in Oslo.

The barber was a middle-eastern guy and asked me in Norwegian how I'd like my hair done. I just said "short" which is what I tell barbers everytime I get my haircut. I figure it doesn't really matter what I say because once I take my glasses off, I can't see a thing and I've got to leave everything in the guy's hands anyway. The only requirement is that the haircut is short so that I don't have to be back for the next haircut too soon.

So anyway, once he started cutting my hair, he asked me in Norwegian where I was from. I told him and asked him where he was from. He said he was from Iraq.

So far, in my stay in Norway, I've met people of many, many nationalities but never before an Iraqi. I don't know much about Iraq except from what's been in the news the last couple of years. I don't often make small talk but I was intrigued.

I tried asking him in Norwegian how long he'd stayed in Oslo for. I stopped taking Norwegian classes this semester and what came out hardly sounded the way it should. It was at this point I realized that the barber could actually speak pretty decent English but probably only spoke Norwegian because he thought I did!

The conversation went a lot faster after this. He told me he'd been in Oslo for 4 years but his family was back in Iraq. More interestingly, he told me he used to be LAWYER and had graduated in 1989! Of course since coming to Oslo, he hadn't been able to get a decent job and decided to settle down giving haircuts.

Interesting isn't it?

I had recently read on www.aftenposten.no that contrary to what most Norwegians believe, immigrants to Norway are the most qualified in the world, after UK and Ireland. The thing is, many of them can't get jobs.

When I got back to my apartment and told my Norwegian apartment-mate about the Iraqi guy, he immediately acknowledged that as a foreigner, it was difficult to get a job in Norway. He mentioned the story of an educated Norwegian speaking foreigner who was so frustrated at not being called for job interviews that he changed his name to a Norwegian one. Thereafter he immediately got job offers! My Norwegian friend (who is half mexican) told me that when he applies for a job, he's definitely not going to put down his Mexican name but only his Norwegian one.

While many international studies place Norway as amongst the "best places in the world to live", sadly, the reality appears to be that it is the best place to live only if you are born Norwegian.

I've met lots of people from many nationalities in my time here and, interestingly, none of them really has a very good impression of Norwegians or Norway, except that the country-side is beautiful. I agree the scenery is pretty good.

Having said that, I must admit that I do have some Norwegian friends. The thing they all have in common though is that they have spent quite a bit of time outside Norway and have a different perspective of their country and the world.

This is of course a generalization, but the feeling I get is that the average Norwegian thinks every foreigner is either a refugee or at best living off their welfare. I think the country has no interest in skilled immigrants and this is perhaps fueled by an innate fear that if the country really gave expatriates a fair chance, the Norwegians would have to face the reality that they aren't all that great.

Bjorg and I were trying to figure out the right word to describe the situation. We settled on "xenophobia". For all the anti-racism, and human rights talks that go on in Norway, I'm pretty sure that we treat foreigners better back home.

My experience here has been pretty good but I'm still glad that I'll be leaving.

Update: Afterposten just published another article regarding employers' resistance towards hiring foreigners, you can read it here