30th Birthday and polite Norwegians.

Our first weekend back in Norway and we travelled to Myrkdalen for a friends 30th birthday party. Vibeke 'the birthday girl' had arranged 3 cabins next to the slopes and she had invited a mixture of British and Norwegian friends from work and home. Myrkdalen is 130km from Bergen and takes approximately 2 hours to drive. It has a new chair lift, 4 button lifts and boasts the most reliable ski conditions in the area.

John and I were one of the first to arrive on the Friday and with the staggered arrival of different groups of people to the party it allowed me to observe the polite and endearing manner in which Norwegians arrive at a social gathering...

A Norwegian entering a party will first greet the host/hostess and then make their way around the gathering and acknowledge every person present - with no exception. If the people are known to them they will normally greet them with 'Takk for siste' which directly translates to 'Thanks for the last time' and if they are unknown to them then they will introduce themselves and indulge in a few minutes of small talk. It is so ingrained into their 'party culture' that you can see the people sat down become agitated if the person is distracted from doing the rounds.

The 'arriving at a party culture' that I'm used to involves rocking up and putting your drinks in the fridge, finding your mates and maybe saying hi to the host/hostess if you know them.

I think the Norwegian do it pretty well.

Start 2009 with a car tow and some statistics..

Spent Christmas 2008 in Costa Rica and New Years Eve in Panama and I'm now back to the harsh reality of my life in Norway. I landed back at Bergen airport in the mid afternoon and it was already dark. The plane doors opened and the familiar surge of cold air consumed by body and shortened by breath. Returning from a hot country I always find the coldness a refreshing change but I still had to pull my jacket closed and stuff my hands deep into my pockets. Brr..

The luggage hall in Bergen is no different to any other airport luggage hall in the world right down to the scrum that gathers around the carousel. There is one thing however that sets a Norwegian airport apart from any other in the world and that is the sickly smell of pølse. The Norwegian passion for putrid smelling hotdogs that contain lips and ears fills airports and newsagents the country over.

On my way home I started to think about where I had left my car before my trip. I live in the old part of town where the streets are narrow and the parking a challenge. I have often forgotten where I have parked my car but this time my car was definitely missing. Now if I had been in the UK I would definitely have assumed that my car has been nicked.. but not in Norway - cars just don't get nicked here in Bergen... or so I thought.

According to the Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (2002) (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention), Britain sits proudly at the top of all countries in Europe with a staggering 350 thousand car thefts in 2002. As I expected Norway sits way down at the bottom in 13th place with 25 thousand car thefts in 2002. However, a closer look at that data and I discovered that per capita Norway isn't as squeeky clean as I would like to believe that it is.. and it actually ranks number 3 of European countries for car theft per capita... just slightly less than the UK. So in reality, if these statistics are correct the I am just as likely to be a victim of car crime in Norway as I am in Britain. That's scary!

My car had on this occassion been towed away but instead of feeling relieved for the safe return of my trusty golf I was raging that I had to pay the equivalent of 160 pounds for the release of my car and to add insult to injury the car was frozen shut and had a flat battery. Welcome home.