Bør Man Gifte Seg?

Gift og forgiftet. En rar ironi i det norske vokabulær.

Det som jeg har å bidra med til diskusjonen er at man må finne tonen og bølgelengden og at faktisk man bør oppsøke en del enighet om dette temaet før man gifte seg, eller egentlig blir samboende.

I etterkant av sammenbrudd i forholdet er det egentlig lurt å sette seg inn på NRK Partest for en liten debrief om hvorfor det gikk galt. I forkant kan det være kanskje ikke så lurt å øddelegge en del romanse ved å bruke et dataverktøyet for å avdekke ulikhet og kilder for konflikt. En uharmoniske forhold?

Hva skaper et uharmonisk parforhold?

Det største er endringen i bosted. Ofte å bli samboende er det vanskeligst trinn.  Dette er den nye sammlivs modellen som mer enn 80% tar opp før de evt gifte seg, og nå er sambo-eskap større enn ekteskap på sikt, hvis ikke i framtiden når varighet i forhold vurderes kanskje om ti års tid.

Samborskap anbefales sterkt av mange forholdseksperter i nåtiden, og selveste kirken liksom godkjenner det som en del av et videre onske at mer folk gifte seg og trives sammen. Det er veldig få vestlige statsborger i EU'en nå som må gifte seg før de får bo sammen eller har et egentlig parforhold og sammliv.

Er det noe i det hele tatt å si for at sekulære folk skulle gifte seg i dag?

Har vi faktisk mistet fullstendig det romantiske høydepunktet i livet, det hvite bryllupet ?  Skal vi  alltid tar snarvei til sex og boskap under det samme taket?

Det er nesten umulig- ekte kjærlighet ikke lar vente. Vi har fritt valg og vi velge å prøvekjøre, og egentlig tar et pratkisk utgangspunkt når vi bli sammboende økomiske sett også. I utgangspunkt i alle fall. Det virker fornuftig.

Ingen egentlig vet hvor mange samboerskap går i oppløsning, og på hvilken grad av alvorlighet og satsing det har vært når man sammenlikner med det som skulle være det største i livet - ekteskapet. Et forhold som i navn er mer ekte enn andre.

Det som kan da mangler er statsing og egentlig noe forpliktelse. Vi har det lett å bli samboende og egentlig noen utnytter det fullstendig på økonomisk grunn. Det er ofte billigere å spleise leighliheten, eller egentlig noen blir parasittiske på en som eier selv.

Økonomiske forventinger er då også noe som kan antagelig handteres mye bedre under samboerskap. Det vil si det kan være en del av det som firma som slår seg sammen i fusjonering kaller på engelsk "alignment"....innretting kanskje ikke funker i denne sammenheng, men det betyr her at man korrigere litt mot et felles forståelse av økonomi og et felles formål- hus, reise, familien, nyskaping, næringsdrivende, deltid ansettelse og så videre....mange muligheter kan vurderes. Men også det er lurt at dette foregår fordi det er ingen ting verre en en sjampåagne charlie eller en liten bortkjempte prinsesse som tror av penger vokser på grantrær og at det andre skal skaffe dem mye eller tilby et bedre felles økonomi enn er egentlig oppnåelig.

Når et par blir sammboende og det er ensidig flytting fra hjemmebyen, ofte til Oslo i Norge i sammenheng med jobb eller utdanning, då er det både ekstra stress på forholdet og en felle for at forhold vare lengre en det skulle. Det ene samboer da er utsatt for ganske skjeve sosiale omstendigheter med hensyn til familien og de gamle, trygge vennergjengen. Det kan også være en viktig satsing og fremskaper livet for unge voksner som selvstendige, fremgående og modene mennesker. Ellers kan det fort bli en ensom felle....det kan heller bare blir oppfattet som det for en inadvent eller engstlige ny samboer.

Men saken er at folk endre seg. Jeg er blitt mye mer opptatt av økonomi selv og innser nå at jeg må trappe opp i arbeidsliv ellers blir jeg sunket. Jeg må jobbe hardere og bryr meg om å gjøre et bedre inntrykk blant sjefene. Kan gjøre, villig for alt, stor leveringsevne.....Fine damer ofte ser over gjerdet og mener at de kunne gjøre bedre med en ny man. Kjekkiser blir lei av sammliv og oppsøker spenn og nye forhold som de var mer vant til før det bodde sammen med noen og alt ble litt kjædelig.

Kanskje det er bare bra at det  forpliktelset som var for det meste styrte av mannen i gammeldags ekteskap har falt fra. Men kanskje folk har det for lett å bli misfornøyde og dermed ikke satser på forbedringer og unngår å endre seg. Folk også har det for lett å bli opptatt i det materialistiske. Og folk tror det har retigheten til å drømme seg bort til et mer romantisk forhold eller til typen av forhold de hadde før de traff den riktige med Stor M eller K men som ikke var riktig allikevel.

Man tåler lite og man er ikke villig å bøye seg for partneren. Det kan bli en langvarig utvikling, bygget på små unegiheter eller en stor begivenhet som føre til dette. Man innser ikke at man bør bare modifisere atferden og snakke sammen eller oppsøker hjelp før det er for seint. Man heller innrømmer til hverandre at deres personligheter ikke er kompatibelt i stedet for å arbeide mot løsninger. Denne prosessessen å finne tonefall, å kunne diskutere problemstillinger, å komprimisere i saker fra begge sider er egentlig en del av personlighets sammenspill og utvikling der av i et forhold. Noen ganger går det ikke, men ofte pga av det synspunkter at man har rett eller feil og er fint i seg selv, man vil ikke endre personlighet. Man heller ikke trenger å endre på personligheten- det endres i løpet av livet- men instillingen til sammliv, tidsbruk, kjærlighet, fravær, lokalisering og konflikt kan utvikles fort og det er det som skaper grunnlaget til en vellykket forhold.

Det forbrukersamfunnet har førte til en transaksjons orienterte syn på forhold i følge eksperter.  Det er klart for alle fra statistikken og fra egen sysnpunkt er at vi vil ikke bli varende nå i et forhold som ikke funker. Lett kan det bli å velge fra, men ofte det er like tungt å flytte fra hver ander, hvis ikke tyngre enn det som er offentligegjort , offisielpapir drevet skillsmisse. Man har satset for seg selv, på mange år i en varig samboerskap.

Kanskje sammlivet og romanse nå begynner å likne på det som er ofte nevnte for en selvfølgelihet i nåtiden for karrierer. Vi bør forvente å bytte yrke to til fem ganger i løpet av et liv på grunn av vi og våre omstendigheter endre seg. VI blir mer eller mindre ambisøse, mer eller mindre opptatt av familien, frisk eller sykemeldt, sliten eller fyllt med ny energi.

The Dollar Barrell Down Turn has an Up Side for Expats in Norway

Well we never really did think it could last for ever with 100 dollar and more per barell and green lights on all the new projects, all the maintenance and all the public money in Norway.

As an in-wanderer you probably wonder if you may soon be wandering out into the job market, stickign in your below worth pay level, or if you are outside the job market feeling a bit desparate?

Hope is at hand- in fact the down turn in the economy can be the very best time for you to get a new job, if maybe not the most secure of new jobs. Why? Because in the Up Times you are competing with all and sundry who are sitting in a job and just fancy a move, and are willing to use their network and charm to get that move. People are more willing to move into a new area (ie where you live!) and take those positions on spec' that they work out. Norwegians know all too well about the traps of temp'ing or the dreaded six months probationary period which is often an open advertisement to anyone who knows people on the board and want their offspring in your job...oh yes it happens to Noggies as well as we "invaders".

The down side is of course that firms know that they can get some better productitivity or believe they can at least out of their existing workforces, but often it makes it harder for them to be rid of dead wood and the ambitious types who spend more time networking internally than effective working.

What I recommend in this time most of all is indeed to either take the risk of moving job if the rewards of experience are worth it, or getting a job if you are out of work by going the extra mile - turn up with your CV and a couple of well prepared questions. Speak to the person in charge of the position with just a couple of meaningful questions and a coy hmm, maybe it could be a position for you.

For me in the last down time in 2008 Q3-Q4 and into 2010 I was far too laid back about it all, and took out pappa perm' without looking at the job market. I ended up with a low paid contract but it was very good experience. Just as it started to pick up though I was able to use that experience to pick up in the oil industry and get a much better job, but had to live away during the week which just didnt work and it wasnt so 'glimrende' that I could or wanted to move the family.

Personally I would avoid small firms with under say 20 employees right now, they are most exposed to bad gearing. Larger firms with a diverse customer base and those mid sized firms with high growth are the ones to bet on. They can seem hard to get into, but find names, use linked in and get in front of them with the delivery of a CV to personnel and any really relevant department manager. Also keep on applying if they advertise several times in a row.

In terms of a job you have to move for and take some degree of personal risk, it is worth working around the recruitment branch especially if the job is out through three or four, which just reeks of BS and free advertising rather than any real interest in trawling for the very best candidates. Find out who the client is and go direct, saying you have heard they are recruiting from a friend. For a local job through a recruiting firm I would ask the personnel dept if there is a need to use them first and then only apply via them when it is clear they are in such an agreement. A lot of firms are pre-empting the proposed labour law changes here, to being able to always be a temp basically, by using be-manning companies to fill 20% of their staff. this is very negative for you as an immigrant because it is easier for Norwegians to do the dirty on an immigrant unfortunetly. I have seen many temps who are better than the incumbents but who are in the 20% buffer and personnel would rather not  recruit them into permanent staff, being happy where they are in that gang, and the majority of these have been immigrants. The answer is simple, if you are a really good candidate then avoid going through bemannings hired in staff, or remind them of the current legal stance as of mid 2014 that you are due a permanent job and not just a renewed contract after six months full time work.

Live in Love and Hate : Boplikt in South Land Norway

There can be few political causes which have stirred both passion and resentment and divided both parties and neighbours in South-land Norway than " Boplikt". Literally translated, abide-duty, a deed of covenant on acquiring a home that you shall live in that home for five years as your main residence. It covers also inheritance, which is where it can get really bitter. An often forgotten fact is that you can of course rent your property out at least 6 months of the year and also cover your legal duty.

Grimstad  have now swept away the duty-of-habitation in a week where also there are more empty town centre shops than ever before. The irony is not lost - if people do not need to live in the town centre, where boplikt is most debated and has most influence, then you are at the mercy of the Grimstad suburbs and their car driven choice of shopping in the bigger centres (no pun intended).

Boplikt had begun to fizzle out and be willfully eaten away around the edges, but in fact it still had a very secure core in many areas. Why then is it being allowed to disappear by neglect and will? Firstly people say that it just doesnt work, and it is true to say that it is nibbled around the edges.

People cheated it. If you could afford a lawyer then you could claim various get outs, all the way up to using the EU court of human rights rulings on freedom of movement. Some were pretty cynical with it, buying a house just before they got a new job outside commuting distance, like Torbjorn Jagland when he went off the the EU commission and then the Nobel committee having bought a house in Risor oddly enough a few months before he got the new job. Also it only lasts for up to five years in  the precendent legal ground work which was done, then it does just fizzle out and especailly after the kids have flown the nest, people start to move to the bigger towns and use the traditional house as a summer house.

There in lies of course one of the big counter arguements. There is the core, that the whole market outside those designated holiday homes or 'cabins' (often luxuiry summer houses!!) was influenced by there being a need to live in the house and there with local society, most of the year. When charming southern belle white houses come on the market without boplikt, they get sold to folk from Oslo.

Now here comes the rub when people say that outside those small, charming and often 'impractical' southland houses circa 100 years old or more, boplikt has no effect, and who wants to live all year round in such small houses from days when people were 5 ft 2" ? On the one side, we in a community with boplikt, had a spectre bidder who lived in Oslo and we live in a pretty ordinary terraced house, 120m squared, with only a partial view. Our bid was pushed up about 150 000 NOK over the actual local value just becauise of a third bidder put up the stakes early in the process by 75 / 100 000. Now we have negative equity! So removal of boplikt would do us no harm personally.

In these small towns there are then not only the dreamy little red roofed white wood panel houses with a single apple tree outside. There are large gentlemans mini mansions of around 200 - 300 m squared, and there are ordinary houses which happen to have a bit of a view which are all influenced by outside non resident buyers, who will maybe use the house five or six weeks per year, maybe not even that.

What is important in any housing market for sellers in Norway is that you have buds-runder, a bidding round, otherwise you will not make any profit and worse you may get a buyer who kicks the tyres and wants some repairs done, or wants a better gaurantee on anything needing repaired after initial survey and purchase. You also risk not getting your house sold.  However buds runder means than there is space for speculation and collusion from estate agents, pushing prices up and moving property into capital ownership which is then rented out on the market to locals rather than being at a price they could have bought for.

Currently in fact it is not the presence or abscence of boplikt in Norway which holds house prices down in the rural areas. The loans party for the Oslo public sector managers with their 2 million euro family incomes is over, they cant have over a million krone in debts. Captial speculators have been really burnt on both mountain resort flats and seaside holiday flats, with now many developments on ice or practically bankrupt. First time buyers are now not allowed 100% mortgages and most councils have either given up on 'deposit loans' or are dreadfully slow with processing them. Now the Scandinavian model of mass home ownership rather than council housing is broken, and even quite high earning young folk will not afford a house until they save up a huge deposit, which of course grows per year with price increase in houses. Also they compete more with the richer families who can leverage them selves into investment and student flats in the educational towns. Thus it gets pretty horrid for first time buyers for the moment.

There is also an argument that removal of boplikt could lead to lower prices by better availability of housing. This is a bit of a tautology because it would be the local people who would benefit from more houses being on the market, who would have first lost out by having to compete with external holiday home buyers and investors with the withdrawal of boplikt. It is actually quite likely a scenario if many speculators come in to compete and then find resale is awkward, which it will be, or for example if interest rates went up again or second loans lost their MIRAS.

My own view point is that if boplikt should finally be removed from all coast towns in south norway, then the councils should look to introducing property rates on properties where people do not live during the week, 40 weeks or more a year. This tax could be related to sales price after boplikt was gone, rather than actual survey price which can often be mysterioulsy low depending on the individual who is doing the surveys. This is then a way in which holiday homes can contribute better to the council economy, and it is an incentive for people to use what they are paying for. Housing is seen as investment, and you get MIRAS in Norway on all loans (stupidly!!!) but taxation is seen as dead money. The benefit is better services and in areas like Risor, Kragero and so on, council sponsorship for cultural events and concerts can be increased, rather than an area for squeezing.

Food on A Budget

Right now we have a real financial squeeze due to various reasons and the new school year so we are basically skint. Owing a pal a decent slap-up-dinner (where did that rather vulgar expression come from?)  I was at a quandry to actually do something a bit different or special.

It came to me in the frozen aisle of Rema 1000. The cheapest game meat you can get is Reinsskarv, which is shavings from the calves and other bones or bits left on the sides of sinews. It is quite lean, but it is tough when compared to normal cuts, being a bit like rump steak or a poorly cooked minute steak. Usually it is fried in masses of butter and then made up in a cream sauce, seasonally with the bounty of wild mushrooms on offer this week in every birch wood here. I find it firstly a bit hard to get just right and secondly it becomes a bit sickly as a dish.

I have never seen reindeer mince, but have often used Elg mince, which is about 100-120 NOK /kilo but is mixed with some beef and maybe some lard in that too so that it is not too dry for frying. Hmm, combine reinsskarv with the 'karbonarder deig', a high quality lean mince. Hence you have 70 kr for 300g of reinsdeer and 45 kr for 400g of the said quality beef product. Serves at least three!  Nicest with a gravy or you could make a slightly salty creamy mushroom sauce with just a bit of garlic.

Great little dinner, recipe below. My mate came with a nice smooth, neutral red wine which washed it down. A valpolicella or primitivo would do, but really I find it hard to beat the Argentinian Malbecs for game and may pallette.

Other great, really good value dinners in Norway are to be found, but you should steer clear of prepared meals- they are very expensive for what you get here. Since we have family friendly working hours it means you do have that half hour to whizz on freshly made food, as your very own home grown short-order-cook.

My favourites include at the top of the list> Seibiff med Lok:  Sauted Saithe Cutlet with Caramelised Onions. Saithe is a cod relative also called Coley, but it is both more tasty and less boney than Pollock its near relative. It is caught as a big offshore fish, which has a greay inner flesh which is really tasty but the steaks you buy of it are one inch thick fillet of usually white succulent fish, frozen at sea. Compeletely unappetising as a solid block, and currently thus only 70p for 700g at kiwi. Defrosted but cooked from quite cold, it is rolled in seasoned flower, fried thoroughly as square steaks or large fingers, and once golden it is left in the oven for some fat to drip off and the core to be cooked through at 120'c. The onions are fried in the same pan to pick up some stock flavour from the fish. Noggies use their oxo powder on it and the wonderful liquid caramel colour, Kulor. Take home if you are visiting, great for darkening onions and anaemic beige sauces become a rich colour in the twist of a wrist.

Unfortunetly over the last two years, all the cheap kilo price cuts of beef, like brisket, have been picket upon by the supermarket 'butchers' counters and are silly prices for what you get, brisket being now about three quarters the kilo price of good steak, and that being on the bone, so in fact it is the same price eaten as sirloin! It used to often be on offer too, but some celebrity chef has probably waxed on about slow cooked brisket (Bringe) My pressure cooker stands a bit idle due to this dish being off the monthly sunday stew list.

Stew back on the list, pressure cooker or Le Cruset as you may have to hand, you can get quite cheap Modradsbiff, which I presume is rump steak. It is pretty chewy steaked in the pan usually, but does very nicely diced and slow cooked.

The other doyen for us being so skint at the moment is chicken mince, which is dirt cheap and is usually very fresh. The thing to do though is not to use it within two days of its use by date because it can start to go whiffy we find. It is dirt cheap about 4 quid a kilo in kiwi for their First Price or what ever they have there. It is used as also a healthier alternative to standard mince then in : bolognese, tex-mex and burgers/meat cakes. The latter appreciates onion and garlic and breadcrumbs, done in reverse order in a food processor, mince then made into a proper dough at the end. Egg to bind and you are away. Fry a little dodd to then taste  it for seasoning before you commit.

Our only fast food is actually salmon of all things, because it is currenlty 36 kr at Kiwi and under a 'fiver' most often as cuts from side fillets and tail. We need two boxes, but cold it makes a very satisfying sandwich topping next day or salad lunch. They even come in an aluminium tray, just remember to take out the little swab pack under the fish, and remove all the plastic film. I use a 'healthy' cooking margarine oil stuff or opt for butter, simply seasoned usually to keep folk happy, but Lime juice is really nice, as is a mix of light chilli powder, tarragon and paprika worked into the butter. Daughter doth not like, so she gets cod fish fingers which are also very good value for money and better than average you get in the UK.

Kiwi's first price chicken legs were a staple for us but we are so bored with this weekly chew that we avoid it, and I also wondered about the antibiotic content of such cheap chicken.

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Recipe

350-g reinsdyrsskarv Rema 1000
400 g Karbonarderdeig
half a medium onion
three boats of garlic, crushed,
potato meal to bind
one egg
tyme, salt, pepper
one medium red onion for side onions
vegetables

Fine blend the onion and add the crushed garlic , place in a large mixing bowl
Blend the reindeer meat to a dough, and then do the same with the mince
Season now with salt, two tea spoons and some ground pepper
Mix all together in the bowl, add egg, mix again, add potato flour about two table spoons,
add herbs
use butter in olive oil, bubbled off so to speak in a good frying pan
do a test dodd and taste for seasoning
make the cakes with two oiled spoons, and you can leave them over night to bind even better for example
Fry until brown on top and bottom and any large edges
Heat an oven to 130'c
Start frying the red onion as you end the production line of meat cakes
put the meat cakes in the an oven dish in the oven then.
caramelise then the onions, take them out and make gravy or cream sauce in the pan, or fry mushrooms and then make the sauce.
seved with brocolloi, carrots and mashed potatoe as a must!

Bygda Rant

Ah the idyll of moving to the countryside. No more queue on the  ring-way , no more tailgating, no more crammed public transport. No more overly ambitious bosses and sniping coworkers. No more anonymity  Alas the bid rounds on houses we couldn't afford even at first asking price never materialised because we just took fright and moved out of the big smoke that is Oslo. It's a bit of a dump anyway. Nice fjord, nice hills and woods but Carl Johan and the red blaize at the palace? A lot like Birmingham.

So we moved to a place a lot like.....like... Cornwall. We moved to a small town with unbelievably low house prices and low rents so we could 'suck it and see' ...it does actually suck a little bit. The bigger decision was not to follow a corporate career, to go out and spend time with our children...a running cliche. Usually people sell up a city "hybel" or two and move out to be the new gentry, flush with wonga and bling. Not us quite in that cliche nor the other bug bear, the MBA clever clogs who gets to run the local business much to the murmuring of the yokals.  ....actually I ended up with a promising corporate career anyway for a while after giving up on the local job market.

The local yokal job market. Yes. That is exactly why house prices are so low, despite pay being relatively high in that ratio. There is just no competition for buying houses over 1.8 million krone ( about a hundred and eighty grand). The plus side for the lucky in a good job in a local firm is that they can pay off their mortgage, remortgage in their late 40s and get a big yacht or a mountain cabin secured on the value with the new spondoolics. They tend to have safe jobs because the companies here are canny and either bumble along or squeeze productivity out of their workforce in overtime, multitasking and making them manage sub suppliers for excess capacity and risk ventures!

This last year I have been looking for a job within 40 minutes commute, because that 40 minutes becomes an hour on snowy days anyway, and it means I can do at least one side of the school-walk , yes walk, not run, not in a car, walk up and back in 20 minutes. There have been two or three jobs I was maybe qaulified for or could have retrained and although I got interviews for two of them, no job resulted: better qualified candidates. Our region or 'fylke' is the worst in the southern half of norway, and per capita it must surely be the worst in the whole of the country for job creation. Or at least advertised job creation. Many jobs go internally by shifts, often the old , lower position is not refilled. So there is an element of dead mans shoes. This week it has hit an unexpected all time low in advertised jobs: the two main cover-all sources list 112 from the employment service and 60 on the meaningful private web site Finn.no. On the NAV web site around half the jobs are in the public sector, and you can bet that most of those have sitting employees and just have to be advertised due to EU rules. I have looked at the job market and that is lower than it was after the 2008 finance crisis.

Also our three local councils have just had a reduction to employer's stamp contributions, presumably to stop them downsizing because the three or four largest and the next tier down have not advertised a sausage : a couple of smaller companies have, but they are growing or have staff leaving anyway.

The idyll of being here is not completely broken, it is just the economic reality of being a double immigrant: just like anywhere, you are an outsider, an alien when you move to small town.

I thought about this a lot; I come from a small town which has the exact same cliquey, snobby, inverted snobby, do gooder, do nothinger, family centred stuff as here. I must be mad methinks, but I would rather my kids grew up in this environment I convince myself. And they dont really get to play with the old families and they get discriminated against by the old collective circles. They are in, but only just.

I am out, I am so out. I just cannot get on with this type of cliqueyness. I tried, I really did. In fact I tried far too hard and that is all the problem. Softly softly catch a monkey when you want to get a tacit acceptance from the Cosa Nostra, our thing, we ourselves, Sinn Fein.  It is a bit like a criminal or terrorist organisation. They don't let you in. They have their suspicions about you. They talk behind your back. Worse they plan little avoidances behind your back, or more often some individuals take opportunities to exclude you or your kids when they are deciding who gets to play. This extends to jobs unfortunately, but luckily most jobs here are advertised so at least I get a stab at it all.

It sound bloody awful eh? Well it is just the same as a white settler would get moving to Cornwall or Wales or Argyll or Orkney. There are welcoming figures who take you under their wing, some with ulterior motives, but some just busy bodies -  I remember my mum was a bit like that with the English navy wives who were on rotation to the naval yard near us. I think it wore her out, but gave her a breath of fresh air in the stifling village hall atmosphere.

About a year a go I stopped making any effort what so ever with locals who had not really taken me in, and stopped bothering to ask them the one sided question "how's it going?" . Their curiosity about me was satisfied after I'd been here three years. Helped by a local gossip who knows the wife, they think I am a tad arrogant and riding on my high horse. I can't undo that.

Whether this small town thing is a natural consequence of size I do not really know. I suspect it is easy to find much more friendly small towns around the world. But there is a culture here which has a critical mass and a large degree of pass it on, in the negative sense. Kids learn to group themselves around the known families, to be stand off to the 'others'. That is something they take with them through life, it is a kind of feeling: like the "bad smell" guy at the surf camp: a perfectly decent guy, he was just a late comer to the group, and a bit too good looking for many of the guys.

Worse in fact I find are the other one time immigrants from other parts of the country: they also pass it on, and I presumed many of them were dyed in the wood yokals: they have managed to come in to a limited social circle , 'krets', and remember when they were stung or how long it took them to eak their way into that now treasured social circle. They pass it on , and in a more vehement snobby way than even the worst locals. Also they are the most curious often, because they want gossip ammunition: they need just a few micrograms of Semtex to blow apart your fledgling social life.

The whole thing was getting on top of me, but we made a new friend, and my local ex pat friend moved back to his house half an hour away this week. Also a half expat woman I like is looking to move back here. I can also work here for a good thirty percent less than the national average and be much better off than we were in Oslo. Now the kids are a bit older I can also go back to weekly commuting while I wait, or take some education perhaps next year. However the centre of gravity is back here and I am even thinking of going back to some of the "verve og dugnad" volunteering I used to do and some new.

I would say that if you are going to move, then don't do it blind and dont do it because one of the wives' pals lives there, you being the expat that is. Even for Norwegians an Oslo boy husband often struggles with the culture I hear. It is best to look before you leap into a move to Bygda. Spend time socialising there before you move. The key is to ask more questions than you answer! Then you can gauge if they are closed, and just curious about you or if they are friendly and open to new comers. Also you may want to spend weekends and holidays making a point of having an acitivity you can join in with the yokals, like the ski club, or the local DNT, or the sailing or motor boat club. See how you get on.

I have to remember also that I am in that phase of life people used to enter at a much younger age: tied up with two kids and a mortgage. When I were a lad...people had the decency to get married in their mid to late twenties and be of child, 2.4. by age 32. Now it is all ten years later, which means we are even older and have given up on even more pals from our 20s when we do settle down. So we limit our own social lives doubly by being "old" or rather now "modern average" parents. In our town, the vast majority of people fall into three life phases: retired, 50 something with kids leaving the nest, and families with the preverbial 2.4, average paretn age 42. That means that people just do not have the energy for new people nor even that for keeping up much with their own good friends. Social circles become a bit ever decreasing and there is a bit of a Koselig Nostra which keeps others out of those precious, fun, and well bonded out of family relationships. The lobster or elg filet supper, the poker circle, the Lions club...and so on and so on.

So take these thoughts with you when you first consider to move out to the sticks, to Bygdaland and go carefully, not like us!!

On A Cycle Path to Nowhere

Business took me to Tvedestrand and as I am on a sporty-fatty diet with 2 hour training sessions on the cards, i flung the bike in the car in the knowledge that most of the day could be stolen for training purposes.

I know the area pretty well for driving and cycling to some extent, and had notice that a long stretch of the E18 was under road works for over a year it seemed. I suspected this was the first of the dual carriageway which Hoyre and the Borgerlig talk on being rolled out everywhere faster than the last lot of lefties. However it proved to be the connection between two fine stretches of cycle path, long out in the country and away from the evils of suburban dog walkers and their effing extender leads and bad attitude to 'sharing' ie they get space at everyone elses expense. Rant yes.

The bigger rant though is that as with so much of the road system here, the cycle path is simply not joined-up-writing.

I chose not to start in Tvedestrand where the cycle route splits from the road routes along the coast and up to the E18 main cycle artery as it could be. This is because there is a bloody dangerous 600 m or so of twisty, narrow road with a nasty 1:8 gradient for the return trip. The road is so narrow that you cannot in dire emergency pass a cyclist without going over the white line. Howevver the cycle path , or cycle-pedestrian-bridle path as it is by signage, is a nicely engineered 3m wide route with only a few tight bends and a couple of garage forecourts to cross with caution.

I had done some of the route before on another chance occaision, using a little under two hours. So I wanted to extend this over to 2 hours by exploring further into Arendal. I had presumed that the cycle path was at the side of the road, marked off, on the old E18 route into Arendal north. However it becomes a twisty road where you are in traffic again, with a steep hill. It is wider though.

So the ends of the beast are not joined up properly to the centres of population who may care to utilise the route for commuting, which is healthy, or going out from the front door with the family for a sunday doddle on the bikes.

This shows some of the stupidity with planning here and local councils versus the region and the state. The other example which springs to my mind and probably many a Norwegian who travels often to Larvik or Kristiansand from Oslo, is the stretch past Torp Airport in Vestfold which remained resolutely single carriageway and accident strewn until a couple of months ago. Like a non mans land of idiocy in regional planning versus local sloth and inaction, it was bounded by dual carriagway on either side, while it runs in fact through gentle rolling farmland ripe for four lanes and a central reservation in stead of subsidy per acre for Farmer Ole Giles.

The idiocy is amoplified when you learn that the council areas who were so sloth like were Hoyre FrP controlled and that now there will be more toll stations on the route.

The thing is like the cycle path island cut off by a moat of being in traffic, things can be agreed upon but only when the money is agreed upon doth work start. And that can mean that it starts despite it being a waste of money, or an alternative plan being better, or a down sized plan being better, or an alternative virgin route being more cost effective.

Same in Oslo" at one point in Furudalen the E6 north and south consists of a total of eight lanes wide, yet it feeds into by in large the ring way which is a joke from an east european country in 1981. Now the Swedes have egg on their faces because the final stretch of E6 from the continent to hamar which is not four lanes is over som boggy moors on their manor.

Britain, German, France can all build a national network of roads and then of course completely overload them because new motorways are a magnet for cars and drive the commuter belt house price boom. That is not going to be so extreme in Norway, with most Oslo Akershus dwellers not being interested in pressing flesh outside their own solar rectum. They fly. Apart from the Kragero and Lyngor crowd who shoot down to their properties in southland for a meagre few weeks in the summer and cause traffic chaos.

Now there is a big focus on the E39 from K'sand to Stavanger. It is a pretty lightly trafficed road compared to any European motorway, and is maybe on a par with the A9 in terms of lorries, hard to say, there never seem to be that many on it really. It has some major engineering challenges for four lanes, but that is the promise. Currently K'sand is still enjoying an oil equipment boom, very little of which gets shipped to stavanger, but they want to have a service rub off loing term as building stuff leads to fixing the same stuff eventually.  However how long will it all last ? Is the investment to show off ' we have four lanes Oslo-Stavanger' such a brag when everyone who is anyone of importance uses SAS or Norwegian Shuttle on the short flight  from Gardemoen. Howevver it is agreed upon in the borgerlig more or less, so now it is only the money to agree on...ahem, well they want to be able to raid the international investments part of the Oil Fund in order to pay for it. The inlands investment fund is a poor country cousin and would hardly pay the Oslo parliaments civil servants pensions let alone make huge, toll free road investments.

If it does go ahead then it could be a white elephant within 20 years if oil prices fall. I am not against road improvements and bypasses and some stretches of four lane and crawler lane on it. Will they not see their folly or are there just too many blue tinted votes  in it to stop the ball rolling now?

Norges Rart Forholld til Tyskland og Utland

vNorge har et litt merkelig forhold til Tyskland. Forsatt er det hat rettet mot nasjonen og noen stakkars turister som bes;ke dal og fjord. Det viser seg ogs[ i hvordan politiker henviser seg foran det norske befolkning dvs landets diplomatisk og handels- forhold til den mektige rikmans tomt ved enden av det skandinaviske koselige rekkehuset. Det er synlig ved sitt fravaer, dvs at de ta et labprofil over de store avtalene og posisjoneringerer som foregar med Fru Merkel og sine.

Men sterk er Norges langvarig forhold til det germaniske kjempe som jeg oppdaget ikke f;r jeg flyttet hit. Saa sterk en paavirkning og forbindelse at det har overlevde andre verdens krig forferdeligheter s'rlig blant kunstner, artisaner og Herr og Fru Teknikker Nordman. Jeg var veldig overrasket aa faa vite at saa mange av mine bekjente hadde tatt utdanning, gjerne mastergrad i tekniske fag, i Heidelberg, Munchen eller de andre store byene. Jeg hadde trodde heller at Norge hadde en mye sterkere forbindelse med "England". dvs Storbrittania (merk irritasjonen min Ole og Bente!) pga vikingtider og andreverdens krig, da i 1941 Storbrittania stod alene mot den tyske krigsmaskinen og Kong Haakon fikk asyl i London. Ja,. han var en assylsoeker delux!

Det er sant at de faa folk som jeg har truffet som var i motstandsbevegelsen eller de som var barn under krigen og hadde foreldere som var i den tapre gjengen, har et respekt og kjarlighet for Storbrittania, og oftest med Skottland hvor de fikk opplaering i krigsfaring og forsyning fra Shetland. Saa er det sant at mange fra Stavanger og Bergen saerlig tok utdanning i Newcastle og Skottland p[ universitene paa 80 og 90 tallet og snakker varmt om vennskap, immotekommende folk, og mest av alt det som var mest viktig for vi Briter, pub-kultur.

Men ellers er det ikke slkit har jeg oppdaget. I snitt er det en viss netalende skepsis til England og sine snobbete beboere. Verst er noen i Nord Norge som vil ikke severe britiske turister paa utesetedet, grunnet vaer at de folte seg forraeret av aksjonen i Knarvik,. som var bare Churchills maaten aa gi kjaere adolf, mobbegutten,  en blodig nese som vi sier. Det var ikke en invasjon som kanskje noen i motstandsbevegelsen trodde,  eller som var en del av det spillet med hva ble kommuniserte til dem. Saa er det noe som er helt banal : aa faa en tau (skjoete) som laase seg selv paa vinsjen om bord en seilbaat heter "Engelskman", dvs noe som er litt uonsket ombaard.

Skotter faar litt bedre respekt heldigvis for meg, men ofte det er med en tonefall som er "aah ja, Skottland, ja vi glemte det var en del av England eller hva som helst erobring dere var ofre for, stakkars". Men det er som om korn blokaden under napoleonisk krig fastbunder England med negativit som perioden 1941-45 aldri helt gorde opp for.

Alt dette skulle ikke bli overraskende til dem som studerer norsk historie og spraak (skriver dette paa en ikke norsk bokstav testatr uten spellcheck og i mitt middelsmessig nivaa) Det norske spraaket er mest paavirker av germaniske spraak , rett og slett en form for enkelt gammelt tysk. Norron er kanskje fra en enda tidligere spraak men det ogsaa spre seg nord over med vandring folk fra det frodige skogsomraadet som vi kjenner som tyskland i dag. Saa har man keiser vilhelm og sin kjaerlighet for landet i de tidene naar Norge endelig reiste seg og tok grep i det som hadde blitt skrevet p[ Eidsvoll i 1814. Tyskland sikkert ble det storste handelskunde for alumina og andre norske vare etter firgoeringen i 1905.

Det er de som er intellektuelle og med hoyeste utdanning som venner seg mest til opphold i Tyskland og det tyske spraaket. Dette maa vaere pga av to faktorer> f;rste var det en tradisjon i Danmark og Sverige for aa ta fag iTylksland som var sett paa da som naa for en senter for teknisk kvalitet og politiske filosofi og makt. Kunsterne ogsaa ta gjerne reise til Berlin og Munchen i stedet for Paris og Barcelona kanskje fordi spraaket er enklere men kanskje mest fordi norske kunst og grafisk er mest paavirket av tyskland. Gothiske, baauhaus, romantistisk, middelalders selv om kitsche. Det virker som de genrene beunderes mest frem for det franske og latinske som er paa verdensbasis sett som av hoyere verdi enn det fra tyskland. Kanskje det er mest fordi nazisitnene misbrukte saa mange av disse genrene i alt fra propagandaplakkat til militaer uniform og offentlige bygg. Kanskje det er fordi Tyske kunst foeles litt strammet , litt formulaeisk, litt stygt av og til.

Det nye tyskland gjennomgaar enda en blomstring som det mest vellykket okonomi i Europa gjennom finanskrisen.  Berlin stiger fram som enn av verdens store byene for kunst og kultur, ikke hindret med snobberi mot pop kultur som tyskland har alltid tatt med seg i etterkrigenstid. Norge er lite paavirket av merkels taff okonomisk medisin for Eurosonens 'sviktere' . Norge naa har en sulten energi 'partner' (les melkeku) og nordmen flest taaler tysketurister og selv om la seg ikke blir saa veldig pissa med bobileene. Men neida Ole og Bente vil ikke ta feirie saerlig i Tyskland, og vil ikke faa maskin produserte der- altfor dyrt og altfor mye styr rundt hvem som har nok autoritet aa ta ansvaret, er du  viktig og utdannet nok for micht sprekken mitt  og en obsessjonn med kvalitetssikring, dokumentasjon, plannlegging og enighet. Ja takk tyskland for MSc utdanning, takk for at duholdt EU sammen, takk for at du kjoper vaart miljovennlig, dyrt strom men nei takk, vi er ikke saa glad i deg allikevel.