Stavanger - Norway

Norway was my next travel destiny after Gwalior trip this April. I have been waiting for a long time to run-away from this tengshn-filled IT world. No trips in May, June and July meant that I have been waiting for something big to happen, never thought that I would end up travelling to the top end of the hemisphere.

This one was to a place called "Stavanger" in southern Norway, a small city with the Size of 1/17^th of Chennai and a population of 120 K. Stavanger houses the Global Headquarters of Corporater AS, where I am designated to work for a couple of weeks. Stavanger is a beautiful place to live in, its lush green everywhere cold air blowing all the times, the place is quite windy, but you can manage if you are not as thin as me.

When I first got the info that I will need to travel to Norway, I was kinda worried, I thought is this some sort of punishment for not doing the work right , I thought Norway is completely filled with ice and I will shiver to death if I had to go there. But only when i m there I came to know that Norway is not that bad (at least Stavanger is not that bad). I never got a chance to see the ice. It doesn't mean that it doesn't snow in Stavanger. It jus means that you are reading an august-posted-blog in December (wake up ☺ ). The good climate in Stavanger is because of the hot winds from the Atlantic Ocean. So if you end up in this beautiful place in the end of august you have 2 choices to call yourself, Lucky or Extremely Lucky.

Technology and Norway

Norway has a lack of human density, for a city which can be called as one by global standards (back in India, Stavanger will not even qualify for town-status) there are very few people to live in. If you walk on the road you won't see a human being for miles. And this is a country which tries to compensate its lack of human resources with technology. Almost every shop in Stavanger has a website (bolia.com, kvadrat, deal.no, datakjeden, it goes on…). Wherever we go you will end-up finding a wide amount of automation in systems that were otherwise considered to be manual. I suppose there are very few police (I am even afraid if there are any), becoz I have never seen a police guy during my whole trip, other than the guy who was diverting traffic towards airport on the last day. It seems that all traffic violations will be billed at you residential address. Hotel check-in and check-out is automated and you are debited on your credit-card (I don't know about others, but at smarthotel.no it is the case). It s really funny that you don't find these designations in Norway which we consider to be assumed as default in India, I have listed some of there

• Lift Operator
  
• Bus Conductor - (I am from Chennai, yes)
  
• A guy issuing tickets for parked vehicles
  
• Traffic Constables
  
• Room Boy
  
• Security (Other than the guys with big guns at NATO office)
  

Norway and India are at two different ends when it comes to population, one is suffering from decrease other by increase.

Prices and Lifestyle

"Norway is Expensive", there is nothing much you can do about it. So don't try be creative to find best deals. The best thing to do in Norway with prices is to forget about it , stop converting NOK2INR or stop going out. I did the first two and it did really worked out well.

Here is a small indicative of prices in Stavanger

• Coffee = 20 NOK (140 INR vs 5~10 INR)

• Coke(1/2 lt) = 32 NOK ( 224 INR vs 20 INR)
  

• Cigarattes = 80 NOK (560 INR vs 40 INR)

• Beer = 60 NOK (420INR vs 63 INR)

• Mentos = 15 NOK ( 105 INR vs 15 INR)

• Bus Ticket (Stavanger to Sandes in a Volvo) = 27 NOK (200 INR vs 20 INR in Chennai, 40 INR in Banagore)

The prices are relatively 10 times of what they cost in India, Its infact quite simple to manage, just assume you are spending Rupees instead of Kronas, 20 Rs for a coffee: ok, 27 rs for bus ticket : ok

About the people, Norwegians are shy and nationalistic. They are not open to talk to strangers, but they are helpful. If you ask them a route to some place, they wont say " I am shy i wont talk to you",instead they do help you :) . One strange think about Norwegians is their proud feeling about their country, they are always kind of asking you about Norway, well thats funny.

To be honest, the strangest thing about Norwegians is their insatiable appetite for acknowledgment:

“What do you think of Norway?”

“What do you think of Norway’s nature, athletes, politicians, musicians and (yes, I really heard
this one:) women?”

"why one earth someone expects me to comment about Norwegian politics in 3 days"

I’m not going to claim to be in possession of any facts or statistics, and perhaps the fact that I’m not a Norwegian and that I personally knew very little about Norway before travelling here, colors my impression. However, I do think the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the Earth’s inhabitants do not like or dislike Norway. Quite frankly, it’s not that they don’t think much of Norway—it’s that they don’t think much about Norway.

And, to be honest, I’m envious by this kind of proud feeling among people.

Nature

Fjords

Fjords are crazy formations of sea that you will find only in Norway. Fjord looks like a river but it has the source at the other end. They are a formation of sea towards the land. The complete western coastline of Norway is covered by fjords and they are beautiful.

Pulpit Rock

Pulpit rock is the destination point for any traveller to Stavanger. its a view of a fjord from a cliff top 600 mts above the sea level and a near 8 km mountain climbing track.
Its sheer fun to be on top of cliff to view the fjord, with a fear of being blown away by air.

DalsNuten

Dalsnuten is near Sandes (* a twin town of Stavanger), its a small mountain( i am not used to the word "hill", otherwise i would have called it a hill). this is a place where my mountain climbing skills are put to test and certified a "fit". Its a easy climb, i was shivering in the beginning but i was able to catchup and do it with ease later on.

Cricket for Brazillians

We found friends with the two brazillian guys Christien and Roberto who had come into stavanger to wind-up a business deal with us. We were discussing about lifestyles in our countries, prices and a wide range of things. Finally we went to a restaurant to have pizza, and we were discussing about sports, thats when Roberto quoted about cricket saying

"Oh that strange game where you hit the ball with some kind of a stick instead of kicking it..." I just managed to imagine some batsman kicking the cricket ball to boundary... ha ha ha :). Then it was hard time for both of us (maddy and me) to explain the game with little references to baseball. I was really amazed when someone asked about cricket to me, in here its a part of your daily lifestyle that you can't imagine a person not knowing about cricket.

One more amazing fact about the people there is, many of them know about "Vishwanathan Anand" more than "Sachin Tendulkar", well that hurts me badly.

Beach

Our team mates had planned a team outing on a friday . This is the funniest one, from the morning everyone were talking about this team outing at the beach, I am from chennai, this is where marina beach and few other big beaches are located and I frequently travel to the arabian coastline too, So the moment someone says the word beach , the only thing that comes to my mind is open sea with atleast a 180 degree view of the horizon. But when we went 2 the team outing at stavanger i came to see the smallest beach i have ever seen in my life, i think it should be termed as backwater rather than a beach.


Way back home

Tor Inge, our CEO was grateful enough to pick us up from the hotel and drop us at the airport at 4:00AM in the morning, just when he has a flight to catch at 8:00AM in the morning. Well i got only one word to say "Great".

I was a nice morning flight from Stavanger to Frankfurt. Back at Frankfurt we had a nice time shopping with the euros left with us. The flight back from Frankfurt was really empty , there was so much space inside. Maddy told me that its quite rare to find flights being so empty. There was a nice looking air-hostess. You can find beautiful girls anywhere on earth but these airhostess are just awesome. They look soo confident but still listen soo patiently to whatever stupid things we say. They smile a lot. There was one beautiful indian-look-alike ,who came to me asking for drinks, i ordered a coffee. She gave me a make-yourself-coffee kit comprising of cream, coffee and sugar. Just when i thought of protesting over such unconventional way of serving coffee she smiled at me broadly and moved on to the next row. Again who wants to waste the short interaction time with a beautiful girl complaining ? Damn these airline guyz might have been recruiting psycology phds.

Landing back in india was really a happy moment, and i reached home by some 12:30 am