Living in Oslo...

Living in Oslo has its ups and downs ....in the summer its bloody great but in the winter its basically hell on earth ....for an Australian experiencing his first proper winter it was anyways haha .

First of all its so clean and tidy and proper haha there is basically no rubbish anywhere and the public transport is exceptional ...the trains are luxury standard and even have a huge toilet and even coffee making machines etc , all just on a 30 min train ride ...also if ur smart about it u dont have to pay for the public transport ....I have been here for nearly a year and not bought a ticket once .... ( they just hardly check ) they also have signs telling you which train carriage will have a conductor so they make it easy for you ...friendly Norweigans ;)

Ok so the winter ...I will never forget the first time I saw snow ( saw some really light snow in Aus ages ago but not proper snow ). Anyways I was at work talking to a mate of mine and I looked outside and it was snowing and I said to my mate " THATS FUCKING SNOW ISN'T IT!!" He replied yeah man ur gunna see a lot of it ...not dettered I was so exceited I opened the window and stuck my hand out to try and catch some on my hand haha. But the excitement slowly dissapeard and when it got to minus 20 degrees celcius and I was walking to work and my beard was freezing everytime I took a breath then I was just angry ...I call that cold angry cold because it just used to make me angry . In saying that it was really nice to be in a climate of snow and proper winter seeing as though I come from Brisbane where its super cold if it ever gets to 0 degrees.

In the summer Oslo is fantastic as its situated on big fjords and breathtaking coastline where you can bbq and swim up until about 11pm when it starts to become dark ...even though sometimes it never gets fully dark at all ...which was just insane for me to experience haha .

Norwegians are generally very friendly people even if most of them are quite reserved when you first meet them and they all speak nearly perfect English which was a huge releif for me. :) Norwegians do seem to have a lot of money from all the oil that was discovered in the North Seas around the 1970's but they only really actually started to see any of the money around the early 90's because of a lack of organisation and since then the government has been firm on taxing the oil companies as much as they can to benifit the country , this has resulted in a very rich/expensive living standard ...a pint of beer will usually set you back around $13 AUD ( one time I paid $16.50 for a bloody pint !!!) And I will never forget the first day I arrived and Sara and I went to get lunch at some normal and not fancy cafe and I got a steak sandwich and an orange juice and it cost me $35 AUD ! ....and I remember thinking to myself ....your fucked ...thats fucked ....it wasnt even a good sandwich haha . But since then I have learnt all the tricks of making your money last here in Norway and probably my most succsessfull theory is to stay home and do nothing because whenever you leave the house it costs money somehow ( boring but effective ) ... Sara used a toilet in a shopping centre and it costs bloody $1.75 AUD ...ppl ask me if its expensive here and I tell them its even expensive to wipe ur ass...because its true ;) .

Living in Oslo is pretty cool and I have made some good friends here already , its a big city but not too big ( 600,000 people ) I would say just right almost ...there is a lot of immigrants though and being one myself I find it hard to complain about it ...but I still do haha ....its not that I dont like or agree with immigrants its just that it seems to me that there is way to many here ... immigrants are fine and all but if you have a country full of immigrants then the whole culture of Norway can change and it could possibly loose some of its identity...at my work there are about 20 or so guys who I work with and only 4 or 5 of them are actually Norwegian with most coming from Poland.... sometimes it seems like Norwegians think they are all entitled to a job and that they dont have to work hard on the jobs because the other people from other countries will just do the work anyways ....not one of the Norwegians at my work seems to work hard , one guy I know for a fact basically does nothing and everyone knows but because he is Norwegian nothing is said ...this of course doesnt count for all Norwegians , just some of the ones I have met so far :) .

On a whole there are many things to do in Oslo if u know the right places/people and many cool places to check out and I always love having people come and visit so I can show them the sights and delights of this Scandanavian city .

End of story . Peace out . Catch ;)