Norway Conclusions
August 18, 2010 4 Comments
Well, I’ve been home from my sojourn to Stavanger for two days now, and after 11 posts while I was away, it seems only fitting for me to write some sort of conclusion to my Norwegian adventure (although the word “adventure” is being a bit dramatic). My conclusion is that it was great. Do I really need to add any more? OK. I suppose I do.
The scenery was stunning, the standard of living is extremely high, the town was picaresque, the night-life was lively and most of the population support Liverpool. What more could I have asked for? Oh, well in some of the bars I saw a higher concentration of beautiful women than I ever thought possible. Yeah, that just about seals it as a perfect location for a long weekend break.
I am lucky that I don’t drink, though. As I mentioned in an earlier post, bottles of Magners cost over £9 each, but the average cost of a pint (that was actually only 400ml) was about £7. To be fair, a soft drink cost £3-4, so it wasn’t that cheap for me, either. Pretty much everything you find in a supermarket seemed to cost twice as much as it does in the UK, so it’s not just alcohol where you get stung. It cost £10 for fish and chips from a chip van, which is just completely insane. I suppose the high prices are worth it to have such a high quality of life.
Anyway, the best thing about the weekend was being able to spend time with one of my best friends who I really don’t get to see often enough. I also got to meet his lovely fiancée (a very talented artist – check here) and her son. What could be better than finding your friends happy? Not a lot. Especially when they make you very welcome, feed you with enormous fry-ups and suspiciously moreish crisps, and play you all of their favourite songs at 5 in the morning.
They’re all the ingredients of a perfect weekend.
About sherby57
YOu don’t drink???!!! AWw.. you are such a good boy! Kristin’s art is really cool, I like the photos and drawings in Kjemi, it feels like peering into someone else’s intestines and organs or something.
No, I don’t drink as my body is literally a temple. People come from all over in order to worship inside me. It can get quite messy.
The whole quality of life thing is relative. Beer is more expensive, but maybe the wages are higher, taxes are fewer and less and VAT is non-existent. As you say, people seem to live a nice life out there (though I wonder about the winters!) so this more than offsets the price of beer.
Here (en suisse) all things are more expensive (apart from wine, cheese and chocolate) but taxes are lower. The crime rate is the lowest in Europe and it’s beautiful. It’s hard to put a price on those, but they do have value and that more than offsets that it cost £3 for a loaf of bread!
I believe that the taxes are high in Norway, but that’s only what my mate said. I’m certainly not a financial expert.
I only mentioned the high price of food & drink as it was about the only negative I could draw, but it certainly didn’t put me off the place. It seemed like a small sacrifice for the brilliant quality of life that they seemed to live over there.
If anybody wants to offer me a job over there, then I’m open to offers!