In defense of Norway

Today, on Norway’s constitution day, after living in England for nearly eight months, I wanted to publish a post on why, despite London’s opportunities for excitement, I will be leaving this city soon, in favor of a darker, colder, more expensive place called Oslo. I realized I wouldn’t have time for a proper post, as I had an exam yesterday and another one today, and I am here in London to study, not to write about Norway.

Luckily another blogger pretty much wrote my post for me. Go read it while I do my statistics exam.

(The photo is by my friend Margrethe Skeie Svae, and shows me wearing a bunad, with my fingernails painted to match the Norwegian flag. The gesture was meant to show off my nails, and was only rude unintentionally.)

…

Bonus article: “Paradise is meant to be boring”

And for the Norwegian-speakers (or Google-translate-users):

“Ting vi liker ved dette samfunnet” av Are Kalvø, og en god kommentar til bonus-artikkelen av Sofie Gran Aspunvik i Studvest: “Passivt paradis”

Thoughts that go through my head while revising for exams

1. What are those people at the university library doing? I mean, the ones who are there for 10 hours or more per day. The ones who have been there 10 hours or more per day for months. They can’t possibly be working efficiently, or they would be done now. They would have read the library by now if they were reading at my speed. They are probably just succumbing to a false belief in The Osmosis Theory of Higher Education: the idea that close physical proximity to books and professors will make your brain absorb knowledge even while you update your Facebook status, watch random Youtube videos and take three-hour-long coffee breaks. (See this definition of “study”)

2. Why, oh why, did I not move into the university library months ago? The osmosis theory is so accurate, and if (when?) I completely fail at my exams, knowing that I had completely sacrificed all my free time to prepare for them would at least mean that I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about studying less so that I could spend my time dancing.

3. I would rather be dancing. I would rather be dancing. I would rather be dancing.

4. Whatever. No matter what my exam results are, at least I spent some of my exam revision time dancing. That’s learning too.

5. Economic history is fascinating. I love this. I just hope I can remember all this fascinating stuff when I have less than an hour to answer questions like “Why are some countries rich and some countries poor?” or “What determines economic growth?” (Why don’t they just add “What is the meaning of the universe?”)

6. I am one of the luckiest people in the world. My current “job” is to read interesting articles, thoughtfully curated and uploaded for my convenience by some of the most acclaimed geniuses in the field of economic history. Seriously, I have no reason to complain.

7. If it weren’t for the stress of knowing that some of these geniuses are going to judge my writing about what they’ve spent their careers researching, I would be having the time of my life.

 

For Norwegian readers, I have written more about university osmosis here.

I illustrated this post with pictures of books, because I enjoyed browsing for pictures of books. In reality, because I don’t actually like working with paper, my real study situation looks like this:

Picture sources: 1, 2, 3 and the last one was taken by my mom, Lena R. Andersen

Why countries restrict migration–and why they should stop

My most recent economic history essay, aka. an example of what I am writing these days (not blog posts, I know).

“The question today is (…) of protecting the American rate of wages, the American standard of living, and the quality of American citizenship from degradation through the tumultuous access of vast throngs of ignorant and brutalized peasantry from the countries of eastern and southern Europe Francis A. Walker in the Atlantic Monthly, 1896

Between 1815 and 1930, an estimated 50 million Europeans migrated to the «New World» of North and South America and Oceania (Baines 1994:525). Much of this migration took place in the absence of migration restrictions. However, since the American economist Francis A. Walker wrote «Restriction of Immigration», popular opposition to immigration among the native population has generally included at least one of three arguments: «Immigrants steal our jobs.» «Immigrants are unproductive and drain our resources.» and «Immigrants threaten our culture.»

Economists have estimated that removing immigration controls could more than double the size of the world economy, because it would allow workers to move to places where they could be more productive (Legrain 2007:64). There is not much evidence that the negative effects these arguments allude to outweigh the gains from migration.

A sort of electronic book

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a sort of electronic book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything. That’s its job.”

Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands.

“I like the cover,” he said, “Don’t Panic. It’s the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody’s said to me all day.”

“I’ll show you how it works,” said Ford. He snatched it from Arthur, who was still holding it as if it were a two-week-dead lark, and pulled it out of its cover.

“You press the button here, you see, and the screen lights up, giving you the index.”

A screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began to flicker across the surface.

I think it’s funny that I read about this “sort of electronic book”, described in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 1979, on my smartphone’s Kindle app in 2012.

Putting my long distance relationship into perspective

“The Chinese government developed perhaps the strictest set of controls over the movement of people of any state in the modern world in 1958. The basis of control was the hukou, or household registration system. (…) People were supposed to reside and work only where they had their hukou. Transfer of hukou was normally granted only in certain well-defined circumstances, which included assignment to a job in another area, marriage across administrative boundaries and moves to join family members. The administration of the hukou stystem was complex and involved different government offices. A transfer needed the permission of the authorities in the area where the hukou had been held and the authorities in the area to which it was being transferred. (…) Matches between people with different types of hukou or inhabitants of different towns or cities caused some tragic family separations. Marriage did not confer the right for one spouse to acquire the hukou of the other, and it appears that the authorities were determined that this would not become a way to move up the spatial hierarchy. There was no automatic right to be joined by a spouse when assigned a new job in some far-off place., and even when this right was granted to individuals, they sometimes waited years for the necessary hukou and job transfers to be arranged. 11.4 million couples in stable marriages were geographically separated at the time of the 1982 Census.”

- Delia Davin  (1999), Internal Migration in Contemporary China, published by Macmillan Press Ltd., pages 4-18

 

Related post: To all my champagne people

Inspiration

Source:

The perfect city

The great tragedy of having lived in more than one place is that I will never, ever live close to all of my friends at once (more on that topic here). The great annoyance is that I am constantly being reminded that no society can be good at everything. For everything London excels at, it fails at something else. And while I can spend the rest of my life travelling in search of a city that has it all, I know that will only make me miss whatever I liked about my other cities more.

Just in case any of you know where I can find my ideal city, this is how the perfect synthesis between Oslo, Paris and London would work (I haven’t included Boston, because I haven’t lived there as an adult):

The city would essentially look like central Paris: a mix of wide boulevards and charming cobble-stoned pedestrian streets, with sidewalk cafés and well-dressed people. Some of the parks would be designed by Englishmen in the late 1800s. There would be at least one dramatic modern building in the style of the Oslo opera house. The city would be surrounded by Norwegian nature.

Buildings would all be built by Norwegians, as they are the only culture out of the three who prepare for winter rather than deny its existence. Single-glazed windows, insufficient ventilation and inadequate heating would be illegal. All apartments would have nice kitchens.

The British would be in charge of public transportation, as well as providing information about this service. All other forms of communication and information technology (including online banking) would be run by Norwegians. There would be telephone service everywhere, from the tops of the surrounding ski slopes to the deepest tunnels of the underground system – and free WiFi in parks, thanks to a suggestion from the French.

The French would have the overall responsibility for food, but they would be forced to import international wine. Norwegian salmon and Norwegian bread would be available even in the smallest corner shops. Most restaurants would work like in Paris: with affordable three-course standard menus served by waiters who took their jobs seriously and didn’t expect tips. Influences from the Brits would ensure some international flavor varieties like Indian, Mexican and Chinese food, but the English would be discouraged from trying to sell their own pies and mashed things to people. The cafés would be French, but with coffee from Norway.

The pubs would of course be English, but with a wide selection of draught beer from around the world. Everyone would cooperate on other forms of nightlife, but the Norwegians would be completely barred from any attempts to control alcohol policy, including prices and closing time for pubs and bars. This would instead generally be governed by the French.

People would buy their French clothes, French lingerie and French shoes from British sales assistants. These sales people would take lessons in customer service from Americans, but tone it down to a less insistent European level. Thanks to the Norwegians, winter boots and other shoes with good sensible soles would always be available. Norwegians would teach people how to dress in winter; the French in every other season.

In public places, the people would somehow combine the passion of the French with the manners of the English. They would queue and make reserved small talk, but still kiss each other in public. The English would be in charge of television and humor and entertainment in general, so there would be a lot of trilingual wordplay.

If anyone should ever wish to leave, the airport runway would be de-iced by the Norwegians.

Related posts:

• Hunting for coffee in the land of tea – Why coffee wouldn’t be English
• Coffee in Paris – Why coffee wouldn’t be French
• First impressions of living in London

Image sources: Paris Guinness Nature

Paris off the top of my head (translated into English)

This is a translation of a mini-guide to Paris I sent to a friend years ago. I posted the original Norwegian version on this site back then, and now that a friend who doesn’t speak Norwegian is off to Paris, I’ve translated it.

Let’s start with the view from the top floor of the Pompidou Art Museum in the fourth arrondissement:

I prefer to see the Eiffel Tower either like this, or from Champ de Mars or Trocadero. If you insist on going up to the top of Eiffel Tower, take the stairs as far up as possible. There is a line specifically for people who want to walk (shorter than the line for the elevator) and it’s cheaper. To get up the very top, you have to buy an additional ticket.

Museums are often free in the evenings on specific days if you are under 26 (student or not). I’ve added the days of the week when they were free back in 2008 to these brief museum descriptions:

• Pompidou, the world’s largest collection of modern art. The building is interesting in itself, and it’s in my favorite part of town. Go up to the top floor and enjoy the view. (Free on Wednesday nights)
• Musée d’Orsay, the art museum you should see if you only see one. All the great impressionists, in an old train station. (Free on Thursday nights)
• Louvre, actually really stressful. I think the paintings are too close together, and it’s just too big. Go in with a plan, know what you want to see, and then get out. (Free on Friday nights)

My favorite of the 20 arrondissements is the fourth. In addition to the Pompidou, this is where you find Notre Dame, the world’s best ice cream from Berthillon on the island behind the Notre Dame and Le Marais, an area with cobble-stone streets, fantastic fallafel and Jewish bakeries. There are plenty of bars and restaurants here too, as well as my favorite place for coffee in Paris, Soluna Caféotheque (52, rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, Pont Marie metro stop). (Read my guide to coffee in Paris for more coffee info) This is also where you’ll find the stalls that sell used books on both sides of the Seine, and on the left bank, Shakespeare and Company, the English language book store where “Before Sunset” starts.

Once you’ve crossed over to the left bank, you’re in the Latin Quarter in the 6th arrondissement. This is the traditional student area, so there are affordable restaurants and lots of bars. You can eat a traditional three course meal here for less than 20 euros. Afterwards, I recommend sharing pitchers of sangria at Le Dix (10, rue Odeon, Odeon metro stop).

For slightly more than 20 euros, you can get a slightly better version of the traditional snails+baguette+duck+vegetables+crème brûlée at Au Pied du Sacré Coeur (85, rue Lamarck). It’s in Montmartre, right by the Sacré Coeur (hence the name). There are MANY good restaurants in Paris, but if you’re in Montmartre, this is a nice one. Then go up to the cathedral, enjoy the view and watch people drinking beer and playing music on the church steps.

If you get off the metro at Opera, you’ll be surrounded by shopping opportunities, including all the chain stores and the big department stores Galleries Lafayette and Printemps. I did most of my non-grocery shopping at Lafayette when I lived in Paris (both the shoe department and the lingerie floor are excellent). The Marais also has some good stores, and vintage shopping in Rue de la Pompe in the 16th arrondissement is good. Les Halles and rue Rivoli also have all the standard brands for clothing and shoes. My favorite French brands are Comptoirs des Cotonniers (clothes, including good trench coats), Aubade (lingerie) and Parcours (shoes).

Related articles:

• Coffee in Paris
• May in Paris
• Rant of the day: Parisian weather
• Passing strangers

Hunting for coffee in the land of tea

“Can’t I just get a normal coffee?”

This simple question is written on a magnet on my fridge. Beside this fridge, I can get a normal coffee (black, freshly ground beans, French press). But although I sleep in a two-bedroom flat in Camberwell, I live on the LSE campus in central London, surrounded by coffee shops that don’t sell coffee and sandwich shops that don’t sell bread.

Café chains that (claim to) serve coffee and sandwiches dominate central London. There’s Starbuck’s of course, but also British chains in more or less the same format: Caffé Nero, Costa Coffee, Prêt a Manger. Just like in the US, I was initially baffled by the size of their drinks. Forget the Tall = Small confusion Starbuck’s offers; I couldn’t even get a barista to explain what the difference between a small and a medium cappuccino was. An extra shot? More of everything? No, just more milk, apparently. But to me, that means it’s no longer a cappuccino (one part espresso, one part milk, one part foam); it’s caffeinated hot milk.

The Daily Mail did a cappuccino test last October, and found that foam accounts for more than a third of the contents of most high street cappuccinos.

“Order anything larger than a 12oz cup and you are getting a watered-down coffee,”  Marco Arrigo told the Daily Mail. Marco trains baristas at Illycaffe’s Universita del Caffe in London. If only he got through to more of the hot milk purveyors around Holborn station and along Fleet Street.

Just like I wouldn’t order cocktails at a bar where they don’t know what a gin&tonic is, I usually default to americano when I’m unsure about a new coffee shop. Espresso with extra water won’t taste sour like drip coffee that’s been sitting around in a thermos for hours, and you neatly avoid the problem of too much milk or milk at the wrong temperature. And even if the espresso isn’t great, adding water will usually smooth that out a bit. It’s pretty hard to mess up an americano.

Or so I thought. English baristas add milk to it.

Specifying that I want “an americano without milk”, is like ordering “salad without marshmallows”. Yes, I know that it is possible to add sponges made of glycerin and sugar to salad, but surely that stops it being salad. (Yes, I know Americans add marshmallow to salad. That stops it being salad. Nothing can convince me otherwise.)

About half of the time, even if I manage to specify that I want my americano black (oh, it feels so wrong to have to specify that), my single-shot americano arrives in a cup so big and filled with water that I can see to the bottom.

Even if I make a conscious effort to leave the high-maintenance, over-caffeinated side of my personality on the opposite side of the Thames, this is just wrong. I may be in tea country, but I expect more from a cosmopolitan city like London.

So I have started to order like, to quote the PostSecret postcard above, a douche: “Could you make me an americano and use about half of the water you would normally use? Please!” (Must remember to say please. I am not in Norway anymore). So far only one barista has told me this was “impossible” (at the Tea and Coffee Festival at the South Bank Centre, of all places), but most of them give me funny looks. Even so, they don’t get anywhere near as grouchy as the woman behind one the LSE coffee counters did when I asked her – as a curious economics student – why the americano was cheaper than the espresso.

At the Pret A Manger next to Holborn tube station, the guy who sold me a customized americano and a BLT on bread that tasted much like marshmallows, was quite good-natured about my fussiness: “My Italian friend hates coffee in London,” he told me, “He says we add too much of everything but coffee.” I agreed and asked him why the English did this, and he shrugged and said: “It’s different in Italy. Here in England, you can get a white americano.”

I have had decent coffee here. TimeOut wrote a feature on coffee shops a while back, and if you hunt for coffee, it can be found. But even at good places, the quality is inconsistent, and it all depends on who’s shift it is and whether they have time to care (or you have time to wait). I guess I have gotten spoiled, forgetting that Oslo, despite being a terrifyingly expensive miniature city, has an amazing coffee scene.

On the other hand, walk into any London pub and enjoy at least four different draught beers, served with a smile and an offer of samples. Maybe I’ll just drink less espresso shots and more pints.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 18 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.