No
beverages served after 9.30pm? Not even a cup of tea? Yes, this is Oslo!
“I’m sorry,
we are not allowed to serve any kind of drinks here after 9.30pm" said the waitress at an outdoor restaurant down the road.
“Why?” said
my friend.
“Because we
are in the St.Hanshaugen district. But hey, if you walk across the street, you
are suddenly in Frogner disctrict, and they are licensed so serve alcohol even after
9.30pm” explained the friendly waitress.
Ok, it was
the hottest day of the summer, with temperatures rising up to 30 degrees
Celsius. It was the Sunday of the warmest week in Oslo for 60 years (according
to some tabloid papers…). But no beverages served outside after 9.30pm? You must be joking. But no, this is
Oslo.
I started
contemplating how expensive everything is in Oslo, the city that several times
has been named the most expensive city in the world.
And I realized that I have lived here a year
now. I left Spain on 21 July 2012. Could this have happened in Spain, the
country where people have dinner at 9.30pm?
***
My friend
Solveig participated in “Opera Idol” at the Opera House today. She competed
with 15 other young talented singers, and was of course the best singer on
stage! (Sadly the jury didn’t agree.) This concert was a part of the summer concerts
at the Opera House, which are held four days a week, at 2pm. Tickets are only
50NOK, which I have to admit is a joke. It’s extremely cheap compared to other
kinds of entertainment. (Going to the cinema, for instance, costs 100NOK.) However,
some of the tourists I started chatting with at the concert couldn’t stop
laughing when I claimed that 50NOK is cheap. So we ended up discussing prices,
wages etc in Norway compared to their home country, Poland. Very interesting.
After the
concert, Solveig invited her fan club (her brother, mother and me) out for
something to eat and drink. Solveig’s mother is from Argentina, and although
she is fluent in Norwegian there was a mix between Spanish and Norwegian spoken
at our lunch table. I loved it. And it was scary, because I have forgotten so
much of my Spanish.
Aim for the
next year in Oslo: Improve my Spanish.
One year in Oslo. I have landed now. And I have learnt that I have to go out for something to drink before 9.30pm in certain parts of Oslo ...
