Random Observation/Comment #284: If there’s nothing to do, go eat something. If it’s too expensive to eat, go get drunk. If it’s too expensive to get drunk, go take a nap.
For context on the socialism and pricing piece of Norway, please first read the previous post.
Things Norway does well:
Infrastructure and cleanliness
Men seem more attractive than women (from our sample at least).
Fjords (whatever they are) are pretty.
Statues. Boy do they like their naked statues.
Public transport. As for the last post, people are trusted to pay and the buses and trams come fairly regularly. The downtown bit is also fairly walkable
Driving. I’ve really had no issues driving around downtown although you need to get lucky with parking
Things Norway Can Improve
General gray bleakness. I think we had the only green car in the entire country.
Tourist attractions. I just don’t feel like a lot of tourists come by except to museums and that naked sculpture park. This could be just because we’re here on off season
Drinking. Beers are around $20 at a bar so most people seem to wean their beers and focus more on conversation. Good on ya!
Parking rules. We have no idea where we can park overnight. That just might be us though.
Vegetarianism. I guess you’ll be eating fries and whatever that American sauce is.
Lessons learned
Buy your alcohol before exiting duty free. It is surprisingly cheaper than local prices. Seriously.
Norway is very credit card friendly. I’d only take out 500kr max for misc museums and such if you already have your credit card for meals.
Try not to stick to a normal sleep schedule. It’s so dark all the time in the winter that it makes you want to take a nap at 4pm. This will also lead to shorter sleeps at night (and I’m really good at sleeping)
If weather permits, walk around. Very walkable city or basically hop on hop off buses to anywhere
Our itinerary:
Day 1: Drove from airport to airbnb, dropped off things to have a $6 coffee and went to the Viking ship museum, ate at nighthawk diner, took a much needed nap, bought groceries and cooked for the night
Day 2: Drove south towards Sweden on E6 and stopped by fredrikstad old town for some photos, drove into Sweden stromstad to eat a much cheaper dinner and buy a lot of liquor at the eurocash by the main exit (gas is also much cheaper)
Day 3: Drove around to take more photos an hour out of town, searched for photo, went to Vigelend park to look at weird naked sculptures, went to Mathallen for stangeriet pulled chicken sandwich. Took a nap and walked around Oslo. Dinner at Fyret with a nice catfish burger.
Day 4: Took a bus to town to see the Nobel peace prize museum, a few cathedrals, the fort, and in time for the futbol match between molde and odd. Terrible terrible place to eat for $200 at Eilefs Landhandleri.
Day 5: Norwegian Folk museum (open air museum) which is awesome, gruner lokka waterfall, drank a beer and best food in Norway at grunerlokka brygghus (highly recommended!)
Day 6: Drove back to airport to return car and flew out
Overall, I’m not very impressed by Norway, but that might be because we’re here in the winter where there are no tourists in the streets and it’s always bleak and gray. On day 3 and 5, we had a glimpse of sun and everything looked so much more amazing. Perhaps if we had a full day of this and saw the Northern Lights as well, this whole thing would be much more memorable. I will definitely not miss the prices. Maybe we’ll just go to Iceland or Sweden instead.
Special Post on Norway Prices
The number one thing you’ll find about Norway is the unbelievably high prices for everything. Here are a few benchmark examples:
$15 Big Mac at mcdonalds
$6 latte
$120 lunch at nighthawk diner where we ordered 2 burgers, a tuna melt, an omelet, and 2 0.2l of aass beer
$125 grocery shopping (which was relatively okay given the amount we bought) closer to a really expensive whole foods
$6 carton of eggs
$6 a bottle of beer from a store
$10 bag of ice
$5 0.3l bottle of coke zero
$2.50 a liter of petrol
$18 a pint of beer at a bar
$16 pack of cigarettes
$30 burgers (more or less)
$40 to add cheese to a baked potato*
As you can see, it’s ridonkculus. Freaking 25% VAT. Speaking to a waiter and some locals about this, we learned that the socialism aspect of Norway reduces the outskirts of the lower and upper class to push everyone into an upper middle class standard. This floor manager at a diner made $60k a year before tax and also claimed to have a summer house in Florida. With the higher wages, there are higher taxes (15-25% VAT on top of bill prices) but they all have the free healthcare, free education, and fairly low costs of housing.
Norway justifies these high prices because they don’t really import goods from anywhere else. They have 0 debt from other nations (unlike the trillions US has to just China alone), so they truly function outside of the world economy.
While an upper class still exists, it seems like there’s less frivolous spending and more saving. They’d probably just have 2 extra dinners out and spend their whole months rent. As a side note, we joked around about it, but the dating scene here must be a lot of cooking at home for others. As marketable dating traits go, I bet cooking is a big one.
Norway budget travel advice:
First off: Don’t come here if you’re on a budget.
If you’re staying at a hotel, it usually comes with some complimentary breakfast. It was recommended that we also use this for a packed lunch.
Learn to cook. There’s no getting around it. If you don’t want to spend $20 on lunch, you’re going to have to cook (and still probably spend $10 on ingredients).
Travel in a larger group. I think this makes more sense in splitting expenses for groups in terms of cooking food.
Don’t rent a car for the whole time. Car rentals are about as high as NYC, which is around $80 a day
Buy your alcohol from Sweden. Stromstad is an hour and a half south on the E6 and clearly created for Norwegians to cross the border and buy alcohol.
If you cannot get to Sweden, buy it before you leave the duty free area on arrival. Seriously.
Go to museums on Sundays. They are free on Sundays and although regular museum tickets are around $10-15, you can save where you can
We heard that (similar to Germany), they don’t always check the tram tickets (especially during weekday). I also don’t get the impression they expect crime here.
All in all, just be ready to get shocked by how utterly impossible it is to get by with budget living here. I also found it funny (but now not so funny) that all Norwegians will say “Welcome to Norway…” in that same sarcastic tone.
