Subjective ramblings about beer, pubs and associated topics

No more lunchtime beers

I read an article in Sydsvenskan a week ago (I cannot find it online) that the Danish lunchtime beer is disappearing. Since the beginning of time, the Danes have had a beer or two with their lunch, but new figures from the Danish health authorities shows that just one company in ten now allows their employees to drink alcohol at the workplace.

The alcohol ban is just about everywhere in the service industies, but it is also taking hold in more manual jobs.

If I remember correctly, the employees at Copenhagen Airport got a nice pay rise many years ago if they agreed to abstain from drinking during working hours. Suddenly the percentage of luggage that went astray dropped to almost zero.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 11:13 | link | comments
beer, denmark

Swedish import monopoly under pressure

I wrote the other day about the web booze shops marketing their goods in Sweden. According to Svenska Dagbladet, the EU Attorney General is of the opinion that the Swedish import monopoly is in violation of the European Legislation, Article 31 concerning government monopolies. I have no idea how long it takes to settle this type of issue. For the time being, it is probably wiser for the Swedes to take their Volvos across the bridge to Denmark and fill them up themselves.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 09:03 | link | comments (1)
beer, sweden

Anniversary

I have been running this blog for one year today. There have been quiet periods, especially during the summer, but I have managed to keep up the publishing schedule to almost a post per day. Thank you for the feedback, both on the blog, via e-mail and occationally in person. I aim to keep the blog going for some time yet - though how many readers I actually have is anybody's guess! Most of mye readers are probably Norwegian, but I prefer to force myself to write this in English - I don't have that many opportunities to practice my written English.

 

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 09:32 | link | comments (13)

No cheers for the lager

While Sweden is undergoing a micro revolution, and the range of imported beers on offer is also quite respectable, the majority of the beers sold in the state owned Systembolaget are canned pale lagers.

The Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter has tested the top ten beers in the Swedish market, and some of them get really bad marks. The worst message is for Harboe Pilsener - it does not taste as bad as it smells!

Mariestads Export and CArlsberg Black Gold get the top marks among this crowd.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 09:35 | link | comments
beer, sweden

Nørrebro to go

Nørrebro Bryghus in Copenhagen now has bottled versions of some of their beers, and I assume there are more to come. When I looked in, they hard bottles of the New York Lager and Ravnsborg Rød, but the Bombay Pale Ale is listed, too. Price to go around 40 Danish Kroner. So if you have friends or relatives going to Copenhagen, you know what they should bring back if they ask!

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 17:32 | link | comments
beer, denmark

Too good to be true?

One thing about the Scandinavian alcohol regulations – they make a creative challenge for those who try to find loopholes. A company called goods spirits .se  is based in Germany - at least they have their warehouses there - but delivers alcohol directly to customers in Sweden – at close to German prices. They have beer, wine and spirits, the beer of course have to be bought in larger quanitities. They claim this is within the letter of the law. I am not a lawyer, but it is fairly easy to see that this is a grey area, to be really polite.

They even have an offer for us poor Norwegians – pick up the booze at the nearest border town.

Some fairly decent beers – which are not that cheap, and some hard discount Swedish and German beers.

And this is no low key operation - they are running full page ads in major Swedish dailies.

Well, if they offered mixed cases of Belgian beer....

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 16:21 | link | comments
beer, sweden, norway

Copenhagen interlude

The snow covered most of Europe North of the Alps last weekend. The lakes in Copenhagen , where the water reflects the sunshine so invitingly on a summer’s day were frozen, and on a Sunday morning the empty bottles from Saturday night littered the ice. Cold wind swept in, seemingly all the way from the Siberian tundra, and the people huddled in their coats.

 Luckily Copenhagen is filled with cafés where you can escape from the cold wind in the streets and the Swedish dopeheads filling the local trains. A very inviting place is Plan b in Frederiksborggade, close to Nørreport station. I had a splendid salad with turkey and lots of crunchy seeds and croutons on top. I had two beers I never tried before, first a Spring Bock from Bryghuset Braunstein. It started out with a rather mild taste, but then it opens up in the mouth – the flavour comes out when it gets warmer. A malty richness is there, but then it is ruthlessly kicked out by the hops. The Rug ( Rye ) IPA from Ølfabrikken was also a fine specimen. Rye beers are not very common, and it gives a special taste and grainy character to the beer. Combined with a generous use of hops as is proper in an IPA, the result is both successful and a pleasant variation on all the pastiches of famous beer styles.

 Both these beers are on tap, but they have a large range of bottled beers, too.

I have a feeling this café is more of a beer place in the evenings. On Sunday lunchtime it is more the domain of the female chattering classes of Copenhagen , and the tables are close, like an over furnished sitting room, so you might get more information about what happened last night than you really needed. But I found it rather charming. There is vintage vinyl on the turntable in the background. And the chattering girls are quite good looking!

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 11:15 | link | comments (1)
beer, denmark, ipa

From a Copenhagen railway staion

They would probably have banned this in Norway. It says something like: We have cooked the most delicious springtime fresh liver paté. You have to get the cold pilsner yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 12:44 | link | comments
beer, denmark

Can we trust the lager boys?

The director of the Norwegian Brewers' Association is interviewed in Dagens Næringsliv about the beer tax in again. He complains about the Norwegian taxation level, which is his job, and points out that the beer tax is 16 kroner or around 2 Euros pr litre (plus VAT). This is probably the highest in the world, and I have no doubt that this leads to smuggling and a black market.

 At the same time the brewers are boasting about the sales of alcohol free beer, which went up by 63 per cent last year. If you look closer at this segment, however, you find that the retail price is about 10 kroner per bottle, more or less the same as the discount pilseners. The alcohol free beer is sold without the 16 kroner tax, and accordingly the profit margin for the brewers must be very nice indeed.

The question I then ask myself is whether a cut in taxes will lead to a similar cut in prices. Maybe an extra profit of five kroner per bottle will be more tempting than avoiding the border trade. Especially if the border trade is with Carlsberg products from and anyway. With Carlsberg dominating the market on both sides of the border, they can laugh all the way to the bank!

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 09:56 | link | comments
beer, norway

Back soon!

I have updated daily for a month now, but I'll be away for a few days. In all probability I will have stories to tell when I come back. Meanwhile, I will be watching the bubbles in my beer..........

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 16:02 | link | comments
beer

New blog

New drink blog by Eric Asimov at the New York Times, the Pour.

I quote: This is a new blog about the pleasure of drinking wine, and beer and spirits, too. That’s drinking rather than tasting.....The point is to talk about wine outside the clinical context.

Good point.

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 11:49 | link | comments
beer

Today it's about quantity, not quality

The Beacon Journal in Akron Ohio (or whoever writes syndicated articles for them) has looked at the different import brews on offer in the US, and which beers are dominating various markets across the world. To jump to their conclusion: So what can we conclude about beer drinkers worldwide from the best-sellers' list? They love their lagers and pilseners. Inoffensive yellow beer rules. And, most important, best selling doesn't necessarily mean best tasting.

Amen to that.

These are the top five in eight countries. Depressive, isnt' it? (But I never even heard of the German Hassenroder. I'll have to look for that one.)

Japan

Asahi Super Dry

Tanrei Nama

Honnama

Ichiban Shibori

Kirin Lager

United Kingdom

Carling Lager

Foster's

Stella Artois

Kronenbourg

Carlsberg

Mexico

Corona Extra

Tecate

Sol

Modelo Especial

Carta Blanca

Brazil

Skol

Brahma Chopp

Antarctica Pilsen

Kaiser

Bavaria Pilsen

Germany

Krombacher

Warsteiner

Bitburger

Beck's

Hassenroder

China

Tsingtao

Yangjing

Snowflake

Zhujiang

Double Beer

Russia

Baltika

Arsenalnoye

Ochakova

Yarpivo

Klinskoye

United States

Bud Light

Budweiser

Miller Lite

Coors Light

Natural Light

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 08:35 | link | comments (4)
beer, england, german, usa, russia

Scandinavian style drinking comes to Spain

While I keep on spreading the beer gospel, I have to underline once in a while that seeking out the pleasures of a tasty pint is quite teh opposite of binge drinking. In Spain, according to the Independent, they have come up with a drinking marathon called the macro-botellon, which has spread via internet chat forums and a blizzard of e-mails and text messages. The aim of the contest is not to establish who can drink the most, but which city can mobilise the largest number of young swiggers on to the street. This will take place on Friday, so if you haven't booked your tickets yet, maybe you should go to Portugal?

The momentum for Friday's mega-session began on 16 February when students from Seville University decided to celebrate the end of their exams with a botellon. (The practice is particularly well entrenched in Andalusia.) They alerted their friends by the usual electronic bush telegraph, and up to 5,000 young Sevillians flocked to the university campus clinking their carrier bags.

The rival university city of Granada saw television footage of Seville's drinking multitudes as a challenge, and within days citizens called their own botellon for Friday. Other cities signed up to what they called "a spring fiesta": Bilbao, Murcia, Barcelona, Huelva, Valencia, Madrid, Zaragoza, Santander, Burgos, Badajoz ... Vigo and Santiago de Compostela even held a dress rehearsal last Saturday, to ensure they could drum up sufficient numbers.

The Spanish Health Minister warned would-be participants that macro-botellones were a danger to their health, and urged parents to keep their teenagers at home on Friday. A spokesman for the region of Madrid asked youngsters "to reflect on the leisure alternatives on offer to them". 

Somehow I feel that it will be hard to make the youngsters to stay home with their stamp albums this weekend!

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 15:06 | link | comments
spain

Two good ones from Samuel Adams

I picked up these two bottles from the Boston Beer Company in Sweden. They have no distribution in Norway, but I think these are widely available in more civilized countries.

The Cream Stout has a nice coffee aroma, and - as a proper stout should have - a taste of roasted grains and toast. Fine hoppy finish, too - an excellent stout! Their Boston Ale is not as sophisticated. Very soft and smooth - a craft version of Kilkenny, if I may say so. Creamy and easy drinking, a good quaffing beer. Not at all a challenging ale, so don't go out of your way for it..

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 12:08 | link | comments
beer, usa

Beer on tap

Since google news has this story from all corners of the globe, I just quote the BBC without bothering to translate any Norwegian media:

A woman said she thought she was in heaven when she turned on the kitchen tap to find a plentiful supply of beer.

Haldis Gundersen was planning to do the washing up when she made the unusual discovery at her apartment in Kristiansund, west Norway.

But two flights below, workers in a bar faced the more disappointing realisation that water was flowing from their beer taps.

A worker had connected a beer barrel to the apartment water pipe by mistake.

She did not say on Norwegian television that she was in heaven - rather that it was impractical not being able to get a glass of water.........

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 07:14 | link | comments
beer, norway

Swedes worth a pilgrimage

In rural Sweden, hundreds of kilometers from Stockholm in what used to be Norwegian territory in bygone days, one should think the odds were against setting up a successful micro. Yet this is what has happened in Pilgrimsstad, a town named after a stop on the medevial pilgrim route to Nidaros or Trondheim, the Jämtland brewery have done just that, and they have taken home dozens of gold medals from the Swedish beer festivals. Sure, the water from the pilgrim's well is probably good, but there must be something more?

The hops. The best hops available from England, Germany and the Czech republic. They give character to these beers which puts them ahad of most of the competition in Scandinavia. Their Pilgrim Ale is a beautiful copper colour. Top fermented like an English ale, sweet and dry at the same time. Starts with candy sugar, which develops into flowery but yet crisp dry hops. And it is not too strong, it is a beer you can have a few of. Like many of the best British beers it shows that it is not neccesary to have high alcohol strength to make fine brews.

The Hell has fantastic complex aromas. Roases and peaches leading to a dry hoppy finish, almost crying out for another glass. The President is a splendid lager, too, but it pales next to the President. Still, another grassy dry lager that most brewers would be happy to name as their flagship! The Postiljon, not pictured, is a full, well balanced ale with malty swetness, strong hop aroma and bitterness. It has an almost creamy finish while the hops linger in the mouth.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship! For more information on the brewery (in Swedish), there is an article in Dagens Nyheter you should read.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 21:21 | link | comments
beer, sweden, microbreweries

Norwegian roundup

The Norwegian Nøgne ø brewers have ad problems keeping up with demand lately, and they have given priority to their premium strength beers. This means that their supermarket strength beers have not been available in my parts since before Christmas. They turned up again this week, so I decided to try them out, alnog with the stonger Porter from Haandbryggeriet.

The Brown Ale has a nice smell of roasted malts. It is quite aromatic, with a liberal use of hops. I think they have improved this beer lately. This could easily be my new everyday staple beer! The Bitter is a very fine pastiche of an English bitter. Close you eyes, and you are in a back street London pub. This should be on offer in every pub in Norway that claims to be English! The Havre (Oat) Stout is also rather good. A taste of burned toast as it should be, and a slightly bitter finish. A decent beer - try it if you can find it!

It is a bit unfair to line up a stonger Porter along with those, but this is not excactly scientific notes anyway! Some burned toast here, too. It feels a little thin for a porter to start with, but then the full flavour kicks in to show a serious beer. A great finish leaves you wanting more. Still, a bit too lightweight to becoome my favourite porter.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 10:19 | link | comments (3)
beer, norway, haandbryggeriet, nøgne ø

Books, beer and whisky

The rich brewing and printing heritage of the Southside in Edinburgh is to be celebrated with the opening of a new community museum, according to the Scotsman. Among the exhibits will be artefacts from the Boroughloch Brewery, which was a major employer throughout the nineteenth century.

When I read the whole article, the museum turns out to be four glassfronted museum cabinets, which hardly seems worth travelling to Scotland for. Maybe the concept could be used on a somewhat larger scale? A books, beer and whisky museum for Scotland?

(The whisky was unfortunately not present when I took the photo).

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 15:31 | link | comments
beer, scotland

New Norwegian brews

There is a new Porter out from Haandbryggeriet in Drammen, which I plan to try tonight. The new Atna brewery now has a web site in Norwegian, describing the beers they plan to offer. I have e-mailed them about their distribution, but with no reply so far. But their label design is great!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 07:07 | link | comments
beer, norway, haandbryggeriet, atna

Old ale

I showed you the CAMRA drawing of Porter and Stout the other week. Here is the Old Ale, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 19:56 | link | comments

No beer in the beer ice cream

On the web pages of  Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, you will find a "Cream stout ice cream ". To quote the blurb: We've no idea how many Ben & Jerry's fans might be beer enthusiasts, but we suspect that once you've tasted the way we've blended real cream stout ice cream....

 This might be a good idea, but when you click on the list of ingredients, there is no beer listed. You have Cream, Liquid Sugar, Skim Milk, Water, Cocoa (Processed With Alkali), Egg Yolks, Malted Milk Powder, Natural Flavors, Guar Gum, Chocolate Extract and Carrageenan. No, Carrageenan is not an obscure Irish stout. It is a seaweed extract. What happened to the stout? Did Ben and Jerry drink it themselves?

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 13:52 | link | comments (2)
beer, usa

Trappiste Rochefort 8

I promised on New Year's Day that I would write more about Belgian beers this year,  but I cannot say that I have kept the promise. Well, today I present a real classic among the Beligan beers brewed by Trappist monks, the Rochefort 8.

Smells of malt and candy sugar, tempting you to take the first sip. This is close to an ultimate beer. An explosion of taste. Sweet, dry, spicy at the same time. Not a beer for novices, but a beer for any friend you might have that boasts about rich burgundies but finds beer boring. One of my overall favourites. The question is: Is this as good or better than Young's Special London Ale?

Unlike the elusive Westvleteren, this beer is widely available, even in Norway.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 12:59 | link | comments
beer, belgium

Three more ökos

The last three bottles I bought at Frankfurt airport, all from the Rother Bräu ecological range. Their Ur-Trunk first. Cloudy apperance, lots of fruitiness.Complex flavour, this is probably what a pilsener used to be a century ago. A fine bitter finish, a refreshing beer. What's next? The Ur-Pils. Full, round flavour. Lots of malt, some fine bitterness from the hops in the finish. Fruity taste - apricots and oranges. A good pilsener.

The real find of the trio was the Ur-Weizen. Hazy gold, large rocky head. An explosion of fruitiness and a lovely citrus finish - with the proper hefe yeast rounding it off. Maybe the best hefe I have ever tasted.

I have said this before, but maybe not on this blog: There is a lot of mumbo-jumbo about the organic way of producing food. It is, however, a trend that appeals to those who want to make small scale products of high quality. And that is what it takes!

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 17:25 | link | comments
beer, german

Splendid Russians

I was given two splendid porters a few weeks ago by Maria, a Russian reader of my blog, and I opened them during the weekend. Both of them very fine beers, which should have a broader market. Sadly, the Stepan Razin Porter is one of the last bottles from that brewery, they have switched to boring lagers instead. Owned by Heineken, so what could you expect?
Very full flavour, with a complex aroma. Heavily roasted malt. A little sweet and sour - sour cherries perhaps?
The Tinkoff Porter was quite similar, with a nice flavour of brown toast. A little lighter than the Stepan Razin, perhaps, but both are fine brews. As this is part of an international giant as well, in this case InBev, you should probably grab this if you can find it.

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 08:28 | link | comments (5)
beer, russia

Stout and porter festival

The White Horse Pub at Parson's Green, London, has an excellent selection of beers as a matter of course, but in a few weeks it will be really worth a detour. They are running a Stout and Porter festival, with a quite impressive list:

Meantime Porter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5%
Fuller's London Porter. . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4%
Porterhouse Oyster Stout. . . . . . . . . 4.8%
Porterhouse Chocolate Truffle. . . . . 5.0%
Porterhouse Plain Porter. . . . . . . . . . 4.3%
Porterhouse Wrasslers. . . . . . . . . . . . 5.0%
Adnams Oyster Stout. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4%
Harvery's 1859 Porter. . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8%
Dark Star Espresso Stout. . . . . . . . . . 4.2%
Hook Norton Double Stout. . . . . . . . 4.8%
Ohanlons Port-Stout. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8%
RCH Old Slug Porter. . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5%
Freeminer Slaughter Porter. . . . . . . 5.0%
Rooster's Oyster Stout. . . . . . . . . . . 4.7%

They have an excellent kitchen as well, so they will probably be offering a menu fit for the festival, too. I'm afraid I'm not able to think up an excuse to go to London at such a short notice!

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 17:50 | link | comments
london, beer, stout, porter

For the soccer season

Although I try to avoid televised sports, I have heard there are some championships coming up in Germany. If you feel that the trip to the fridge and back deprives yu of vital action on the small screen, this gadget should be the thing for you! Available from www.argos.co.uk, and they have a range of other mini fridges, too. They even have a Homer Simpson talking bottle opener. No, I do not particularly want one.

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 08:29 | link | comments (1)
beer

Hermione grows up

I see that Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, has embarked on a beer-drinking career. Well, she is not the first teenager in history to have a beer, and she is not likely to be the last, either. But could someone please give her a bottle of good beer?

 

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 07:22 | link | comments (3)
beer

New look for Adnams and a beer battling against a paramilitary organisation

According to the East Anglia web site Business.EDP24.co.uk,  the Suffolk brewery Adnams is going through a major redesign. They are also introducing their latest beer, Explorer, to pubs across the country.

Their marketing director point out that unlike many other brewers they have one of the smallest pub estates with well over 90 % of the beer being sold in other people's pub and not their own. “Our brands have to stand on their own two feet”, he says.

As well as new pump clips and adverts to promote the beers, a new glass is also being produced by Adnams to coincide with the today's rebranding challenge, which involves pubs in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex and London.

On the other hand, the Advertising Standards Authority has rejected complaints against a newspaper ad for Spitfire beer. Readers said the ad, in the form of a crossword clue "__SS German lager (4)", was grossly offensive because the letters "SS" were written in the style of the Nazi SS insignia.

From the ASA web site:

Complaint:

Objections, to an ad in the Evening Standard for Spitfire beer. The ad stated "__SS German lager (4)" in the style of a crossword clue. The letters "SS" were written in the style of the Nazi SS insignia. The complainants objected that the use of the Nazi insignia in the ad was grossly offensive.

Codes Section: 5.1 (Ed 11)

Adjudication:

Complaints not upheld
Shepherd Neame said the Spitfire campaign had run for eight years and was very popular. They said the campaign used wartime humour at the expense of Germans, similar to that used in the TV programmes "Allo allo" and "Dad's Army", that evoked the "Blighty spirit" of that era. They said they had used over 80 different ads in the campaign and that none of them had been found to be in breach of the Code. They conceded that the humour was, at times, edgy but said that it was not their intention to offend. Shepherd Neame acknowledged that the ad used the SS insignia and accepted that, as a symbol of Nazi oppression, it could be highly evocative to some. They apologised to any readers who had been offended by the ad. They believed that, because the SS insignia was the butt of a joke, the ad did not glorify the symbol and would not cause serious or widespread offence to readers. They said the ad appeared only once and only in the Evening Standard. They said they had no plans to repeat the ad.

The Evening Standard said the ad was part of a campaign entitled "Bottle of Britain"; they said previous ads in the campaign had featured well-known Nazi symbols used humorously, such as an iron cross used in a game of noughts and crosses. They said the use of the SS insignia to replace the letters "SS" did not glorify the SS. They said their readers were sophisticated, witty and would consider that the ad was humorous rather than offensive, in the same vein as previous ads in the campaign. They said they had received one complaint about the ad.

We noted that the Oxford English Dictionary defined the SS as "a paramilitary organisation within the Nazi party that provided Hitler's bodyguard, security forces, concentration-camp guards, etc". Nevertheless, we considered that, because the ad belittled and mocked the SS insignia, the ad was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence to readers of the Evening Standard.

To add to the confusion, Shepherd Neame can tell us on their web site that Holsten Export is brewed at Shepherd Neame under the Reinheitsgebot Bavarian Beer Purity Law of 1516. Betting on both horses?

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 08:58 | link | comments
beer, england

The beer prices again

When the travel writers of the English-speaking world report from Norway, I am afraid the emphasis is not on the scenery, the friendly natives or other usual features in stories about European countries. It's mainly about the beer prices. Today it's Gwladys Fouché in the Guardian, with the headline A Pint of beer, yours for £7.  

The gravadlax has been delicate, the reindeer steaks in cranberry sauce tender and juicy, and you are looking forward to round off the evening over a pint. But then the painful truth hits. On this single meal for two, you have spent well over £200. Half of it on the wine alone.

Welcome to Oslo, the most expensive city in the world, where a pint costs between £5 and £7 and a packet of cigarettes £6.

A night out in Norway means spending as little money as possible in bars. Locals usually meet for a pre-drink party at home before hitting the town - and you had better bring your own booze because no one will offer you a drink. Then, you head out for a swift glass or two. Buying a round is frowned upon as a crass gesture of showing off how much cash you have.

One of the main topics of conversation in the city is where to get bargain beer and how. People exchange bar addresses where the alcohol is marginally cheaper as if they were gold dust. Buying groceries is also a budget buster. Two meagre chicken fillets cost £4, a little entrecôte is £8, while a cheap bottle of wine off a shop shelf sets you back at least £8.

Oslo is not far from Sweden, so people will often cross the border to do their shopping, where prices tend to be half of what they are at home.

Buying a car here is almost twice as expensive as in Britain - a Volkswagen Polo in Norway sells for £22,500 compared with £12,000. At around £1 a litre, filling the tank will also break the bank, despite the country's status as the world's third-largest oil exporter.

However, living in Oslo is not all bad news.

One can rent a flat in the centre of town for less than half of what it would be in central London and even young people can afford to buy their own apartments. Public services work: it is still very rare for people to go private.

Finally, if you take the tube for 20 minutes, you can go cross-country skiing deep into the forest, even at night because some tracks are lit. And that is priceless.

Well, it is quite accurate, and it goes a long way in explaining why I am hassled by the size of my hand baggage at Milan airport. But she forgot to tell that the £8 bottle of wine is not available in a grocery store, but is to be found in a government monopoly shop.

But, as she points out, the scenery is quite nice, and it comes free of charge

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 14:50 | link | comments (2)
beer, norway

Word cloud

Here is the word cloud of this blog. Not exactly useful. perhaps, but...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by: KnutAlbert at 13:57 | link | comments
beer