Another, far less poetic post about my visit to Norway. This time:
It’s not just bad PR. It really is fucking expensive.
Forgive the profanity, but I was always taught that if you know how you use the language well, then you know when it is appropriate to use profanity, and let me tell you, it is appropriate.
So, yeah, it’s pricey.
To give some context, at the time that I went to Norway, I had been in the UK for about 8 weeks. I’d been spending pounds, not dollars, and the conversion happens pretty smoothly in my head, when I need it to. Generally, I just assume that stuff costs twice as much as it does at home and I’m almost always pleasantly surprised. Not to mention the time that I have spent living in the Bay Area and San Diego, where the climate is welcoming enough to overcome a cost of living that says, “get out! go away! we don’t want any!”
The Norwegian Kroner, at the time of my visit, was 10 to the pound. Most of the time, I only did one currency conversion in my head and I told myself that this trip was being financed by my savings, every birthday gift I received, and a need to visit my cultural homeland and get it out of my system.
So, a quick overview of some things I paid for (go ahead and use the MasterCard commercial guy’s voice instead of mine):
Private room in a YHA Hostel with breakfast: 880 kroner
Tea in a YHA hostel: 20 kroner
Glass of draught lager: 67 kroner
One bed in an 8 bunk room in YHA Hostel: 220 kroner
Lefse with butter at a farmer’s market: 40 kroner
Seeing the very scenery that gave the fjords their name: priceless. (Unqualified apology goes here.)
So, just to review. Yes, I did spend well over $3 for hot water in a cup with a tea bag and a teaspoon of milk. Also, I really did spend $11 for less than one pint of beer that could be most reasonably compared to MGD. Actually, in the interest of full disclosure, I spent that $11 at least once every night of my trip, and on my very most self-indulgent moment (the night of the 8-bunk dorm that was the result of a pension house that had double booked), I paid that $11 three times.
Now, about this lefse stuff that cost me six and a half bucks. Twice. If you don’t know what lefse is, it is the only purely Norwegian food item that I grew up with. To me, it is a very, very tasty symbol of my cultural heritage. It is essentially mashed potatoes with enough flour and butter in them grill them into large pancake-y, tortilla-y things. When they sell them at the farmer’s market, they are spread with and folded around the most wonderfully tasty homemade butter. So tasty, in fact, that you recognize the price might well be reflective of the calorie content and you no longer care.
I still sort of plan to do a final accounting of my trip, though I’m not sure what purpose that will serve. In the end, I could not imagine doing it for less. I ate nutrition bars for all meals, save dinner each night, and aside from that one cup of tea in the hostel in Voss, I indulged in exactly one cup of coffee to accompany my second lefse. No kidding, I wasn’t this frugal when I was a public school teacher.
