i have a dream to travel in the northern Europe

It has pleasant elves up there...

I'm born and raised in Norway and I can answer questions you might have about my country.

Well howdy.

Hungry hippo

I am from norway too. Welcome to A2K. In three years, you're the first.
Men det kommer nok flere...

Right, not too many Norwegians here.
What happened to your nice avatar, Cyracuz?

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Hello Jecqueline,
what is your native country? Norway is beautiful but also
very cold, why not go to southern Europe instead?

I changed my avatar. Got tired of looking at my own face every day. But it just might pop up again one day. Who knows.


And yes, Norway is cold, but that's only during the winter. In the summer we have temperatures equal to those in Spain and Greece. Yea to the golf stream.

But to anyone who wants to travel to norway.

If you smoke cigarettes, bring em. They're very expensive in Norway.

If you're from an english speaking country, flaunt it. People here generally leap at a chance to practice their english.

If you're looking for a real taste of what Norway has to offer, travel to the west coast. This area holds the greatest variety of what we have on offer on a relatively consentrated area.

And if you're ever in Haugesund, be sure to enjoy a cold one at one of the many waterfront restaurants.

And beware of the germans. They're everywhere, even though they're very nice people.

Howdy fellow norwegian!

Anyone interested in enjoying a cold one in Oslo in the summer should be prepared to pay 12 USD for it.
Drinking in public is illegal.

In that case they can stuff off.

Selling a country where you can't drink in public must be an extremely tiresome work experience.

There's drinking in public and drinking in public...

In my last home town, we in our gallery - at least for a while, another story - served wine and fancy water or apple juice, plus various foodstuffs, to people who came in to see the art, just as did a fellow who owned the classical/jazz music store, reserving of course the right not to serve the already besotted. We did not let people walk out the door with their plastic glasses. The city sidewalks are public and businesses open to the public are public - so I'd be interested in Norway's rules on that.

I was a tourist in Norway many years ago. It is a spectacularly beautiful country. I traveled by bus and boat from Bergen to Oslo. Gorgeous every step of the way.

I was there in June. The sun was in the sky late into the night.

I have wonderful memories of the trip. Food, people, places. I hope you get to go there, Jequeline.

The rules are simple osso.

You cannot drink in public except in pubs and restaurants, of course, and only if these places have a permit for serving alcohol.

A few years back it became illegal to smoke cigarettes in all public serving houses. The result was that you couldn't drink and smoke at the same time.

The solution was a new practice. All the pubs put chairs and tables outside on the sidewalks, and as long as there was a fence around this area you could drink there. And since it was outside you could smoke.

So when you go out on weekends you can enter a pub and it's almost empty. All the guests are sitting outside in temperatures below zero (in winter), drinking, smoking and enjoying themselves. It's a unique experience as far as I can tell. We're even drinking in the rain! We're not vikings for nothing

I've an odd compilation of changing opinions, in that I am a long time smoker who quit 1/4 century ago, yaaaaah!, but also still understand the pleasures of smoking, and certainly of smoking and drinking.

My public health and welfare trained self wars with my 'let it be' self.

The debacle of people in fenced in exteriors in freezing weather is past ironic...

and yet, I've had friends whose emphasematic lungs (COPD) could be highly inflammed with exposure to any smoke.

Meanwhile, in California, some cities are going after outside smoking too, and... within apartment complexes in some cities (smoke under doors, or maybe through duct systems).

I can see how they get there... given my emphasematic friend, now long dead in large part from his enjoyment of smokes - but also say, oh no, this is going way too far.

On the wine from the gallery, stores all over town did it as part of the pedestrian visit to the city on an evening a month. But, there was a problem - I now forget what - in city north of us, and so the state beverages people said we all had to have licenses. And only non profit galleries could get licenses, as I remember it. We didn't make much profit, but we were considered a regular business.

So, ever after, we gave ourselves some wine in the back room in real glasses, and to the artist who was facing four hours of the public, and to the occasional friend.
That was certainly cheaper for us, but it cut down our choices. One of these days I'll have to look up court cases on this.

Well, belonging to the story of how we ended up drinking and smoking in the cold is the fact that all this happend in a period when the Christian People's party were in government. Goddamn fanatics... Luckily they sunk their own ship with scandals of rape, abuse and filth that only christians can muster. Much to our gleeful amusement.

Let me just join with your expressed glee (well, not that I applaud rapine, etc.)

In part I can see some reasonable adjustment on this stuff. But the proscriptive nature from the 'wise' is electrically repellant.

Meantime, I read today on google that a California politician - I don't dump on all of them, I have some friends in that field - wants to ban incandescent light bulbs. I can't immediately give a link as I trashed it...

I suppose I'm coming around to changing of the popular will in general without disturbing choice. On the light, well, I've weird eyes, and bright warm light keeps me sane - so I represent a loud naysayer.

New York seems to be dealing with choice, at least among the well to do, re a place you can smoke a cigar and have a scotch - that in today's NYTimes.
But of course, all is not equal there, as it has to do with ownership.