I’ve been to Oslo quite a lot in 2018 for uninteresting reasons. For a dedicated car-guy the whole place is... Well, let’s say that it’s unamusing car-wise. Fascinating and beautiful in a lot of ways, but not for cars. You arrive at the clean and “green” airport of Oslo-Gardemoen and straight away You’re greeted with three choices for transportation towards the Oslo city: You have the bus, the train and a different train. No cars in sight. I don’t really know why You’d take the bus other than You like travelling slowly and stopping every 30 seconds or that you simply enjoy the smell of rotten bananas. The train it is then. But which one, you ask? Well to be honest they’re both the same but the other one is a bit more expensive. So it’s up to you. I usually take the cheaper one. But before you go, take a gander at the infrastructure surrounding Gardemoen. Notice how there are normal multiple-lane airport roads, but no one seems to be driving on them. Notice how there are vast parking garages and areas, but no one seems to have parked there? Except from the row of Nissan Leafs and Teslas in the “Electric Only” -row that is… This is not your typical airport traffic. But then again this is not your typical motoring country either.
And I’ll tell you something else that’s not typical. The last place I went from airport to the City by train was from JFK to Manhattan. The A train... Immediately I was greeted by a man who first told me to go back to my home country, and then started urinating on the floor right in front of me. The distinct smell of New York public transportation. That hasn’t been the way I’ve been greeted in Oslo’s NSB trains. I’ve been greeted by lots of suits going about their business, a biljette-machine, and a nice, air conditioned and comfortable train car. You get the distinct impression that someone somewhere in NSB headquarters has made an effort, and a financial one as well.
That brings us to the first degree of irony that is a cloud hovering above this crisp and clean Norwegian air. It’s that all this fighting against fossil fuels and towards an electric, “sustainable” tomorrow is funded by – you guessed it – oil. It’s been masked in such a way that without Wikipedia, you wouldn’t even notice. But it’s true.
I know what you’re thinking, I’m not that daft. I know the oil-money has started shifting in to new business ventures and there are signs and plans for the oil production to slow down. But still, I think there is some sort of irony in this green greatness originating from drilling holes in the bottom of the ocean for dead dinosaur bone goop. I don’t for one second think that cutting down on fossil fuel dependency is a bad thing as such. And what good would my opinion do anyway? It’s the way of the world. What I mean is, we all wish we wouldn’t have banged our dumb ex-girlfriends when bumping in to them at a local music festival and under a minute into a discussion finding out that she hasn’t become any smarter than she was ten years ago. Same thing with fossil fuels. Once so gorgeous, but the magnitude of her lack of brain function slowly dawned on us and we decided to shift away from her. The only thing is… After all those years… She still looks kind of hot though.
But back to Oslo. The train takes You straight to the epicenter of modern Oslo, which is right next to the part that used to be modern Oslo, which is right next to the never-was-modern-Oslo. There are a noticeably small number of automobiles, and the ones that you see are i-Miev’s, Leafs, Teslas, Amperas and an odd Hybrid-Cayenne. Funny how people think that a Smart car is pretentious, but a two-and-a-half-ton monolith with two motors instead of one, driving four wheels instead of two necessarily isn’t. Just goes to show: what people say they want and what they actually end up buying are two completely separate things… If you really wanted an economical car and you really wanted to go off-road, you’d drive a Suzuki Jimny. Except in Norway you wouldn’t. The taxation, road-tolls and other costs of personal transportation are arranged in such a way, that You’d be severely economically punished for driving the 1.2 liter, 900kg car instead of the 3.0 2-ton German tank of a Porsche. If it wasn’t already, it is coming apparent that you won’t find any sort of mentionable car-culture in Oslo. Except – and this is hard to admit as a pretty dedicated car-guy – bikers. Because bikers are actually - in a lot of ways – the most car-guyish car-guys amongst us. Not that they necessarily like cars, but they love the same ideas that we do.
Let me explain. A car-guy car is something You don’t want to drive from a to b. I mean you could, in theory. But it’s a pain in the ass. If not literally – which it is in many cases – then it is so for your wallet. Or your time consumption and family or significant other. Or from a maintenance perspective. And it is precisely the same deal with motorcycles. And motorcycles are something, that Norway – and even Oslo – surprisingly has!
Somewhere near the central railway station I spot a battle-hardened motorcyclist-type-a-guy basking in the warm Norwegian sun behind a pretty mint Suzuki GSX-R 1000. I don’t know much about bikes, but I do know that this is a bike for the twisty mountain roads and storming out of the corners, rather than cruising along route 66. “You speak English”, I ask and elaborate as the guy nods, “this your bike?” “Yesh it ish”, the motorist says and looks a bit stunned when I ask him to explain Norwegian car culture to me. The bottom line in our conversation is the same, as his answer to my first question: “What car-culture?” As he continues to explain more about the motoring culture – or rather lack thereof – he confirms almost all of my preconceptions about the reasons behind this absence. The high costs, the no-need, the low speed limits, the high volume of speed enforcement and the high price of speeding tickets. Modding cars is not something that you’d like to do either, because it’s tough to get it registered afterwards. “Why would You want to drive a car here?” the motorist sincerely asks, but without knowing, answers his own question with a confession that brings us to the second degree of Norwegian motoring irony; the mountain roads.
He continues to explain to me how there are miles after miles of great hairpin turns with views to die for – just 15 minutes away from the capital city. He tells me that it’s quite common amongst local motorists to meet up there and ride the living hell out of their Suzukis and Hondas and what-nots. And even the police doesn’t bother showing up most of the time. All of this sounds like the makings of a great Top Gear roadster-comparison grand tour – pun partially intended – but no. No S2000’s or Miatas nowhere. The Irony of Norway.
But that’s the beauty of travelling I guess. If You want to see a flock of GT3rs’s going berserk or go and experience the exhilarating fear of death yourself, you go to the Nürburgring – not Oslo. But for beautiful nature, nice walks around a vibrant city and so on Oslo is great place. That’s the beauty – no two places are the same. Except Lahti and Chernobyl i guess.
-Joona
And I’ll tell you something else that’s not typical. The last place I went from airport to the City by train was from JFK to Manhattan. The A train... Immediately I was greeted by a man who first told me to go back to my home country, and then started urinating on the floor right in front of me. The distinct smell of New York public transportation. That hasn’t been the way I’ve been greeted in Oslo’s NSB trains. I’ve been greeted by lots of suits going about their business, a biljette-machine, and a nice, air conditioned and comfortable train car. You get the distinct impression that someone somewhere in NSB headquarters has made an effort, and a financial one as well.
That brings us to the first degree of irony that is a cloud hovering above this crisp and clean Norwegian air. It’s that all this fighting against fossil fuels and towards an electric, “sustainable” tomorrow is funded by – you guessed it – oil. It’s been masked in such a way that without Wikipedia, you wouldn’t even notice. But it’s true.
I know what you’re thinking, I’m not that daft. I know the oil-money has started shifting in to new business ventures and there are signs and plans for the oil production to slow down. But still, I think there is some sort of irony in this green greatness originating from drilling holes in the bottom of the ocean for dead dinosaur bone goop. I don’t for one second think that cutting down on fossil fuel dependency is a bad thing as such. And what good would my opinion do anyway? It’s the way of the world. What I mean is, we all wish we wouldn’t have banged our dumb ex-girlfriends when bumping in to them at a local music festival and under a minute into a discussion finding out that she hasn’t become any smarter than she was ten years ago. Same thing with fossil fuels. Once so gorgeous, but the magnitude of her lack of brain function slowly dawned on us and we decided to shift away from her. The only thing is… After all those years… She still looks kind of hot though.
But back to Oslo. The train takes You straight to the epicenter of modern Oslo, which is right next to the part that used to be modern Oslo, which is right next to the never-was-modern-Oslo. There are a noticeably small number of automobiles, and the ones that you see are i-Miev’s, Leafs, Teslas, Amperas and an odd Hybrid-Cayenne. Funny how people think that a Smart car is pretentious, but a two-and-a-half-ton monolith with two motors instead of one, driving four wheels instead of two necessarily isn’t. Just goes to show: what people say they want and what they actually end up buying are two completely separate things… If you really wanted an economical car and you really wanted to go off-road, you’d drive a Suzuki Jimny. Except in Norway you wouldn’t. The taxation, road-tolls and other costs of personal transportation are arranged in such a way, that You’d be severely economically punished for driving the 1.2 liter, 900kg car instead of the 3.0 2-ton German tank of a Porsche. If it wasn’t already, it is coming apparent that you won’t find any sort of mentionable car-culture in Oslo. Except – and this is hard to admit as a pretty dedicated car-guy – bikers. Because bikers are actually - in a lot of ways – the most car-guyish car-guys amongst us. Not that they necessarily like cars, but they love the same ideas that we do.
Let me explain. A car-guy car is something You don’t want to drive from a to b. I mean you could, in theory. But it’s a pain in the ass. If not literally – which it is in many cases – then it is so for your wallet. Or your time consumption and family or significant other. Or from a maintenance perspective. And it is precisely the same deal with motorcycles. And motorcycles are something, that Norway – and even Oslo – surprisingly has!
Somewhere near the central railway station I spot a battle-hardened motorcyclist-type-a-guy basking in the warm Norwegian sun behind a pretty mint Suzuki GSX-R 1000. I don’t know much about bikes, but I do know that this is a bike for the twisty mountain roads and storming out of the corners, rather than cruising along route 66. “You speak English”, I ask and elaborate as the guy nods, “this your bike?” “Yesh it ish”, the motorist says and looks a bit stunned when I ask him to explain Norwegian car culture to me. The bottom line in our conversation is the same, as his answer to my first question: “What car-culture?” As he continues to explain more about the motoring culture – or rather lack thereof – he confirms almost all of my preconceptions about the reasons behind this absence. The high costs, the no-need, the low speed limits, the high volume of speed enforcement and the high price of speeding tickets. Modding cars is not something that you’d like to do either, because it’s tough to get it registered afterwards. “Why would You want to drive a car here?” the motorist sincerely asks, but without knowing, answers his own question with a confession that brings us to the second degree of Norwegian motoring irony; the mountain roads.
He continues to explain to me how there are miles after miles of great hairpin turns with views to die for – just 15 minutes away from the capital city. He tells me that it’s quite common amongst local motorists to meet up there and ride the living hell out of their Suzukis and Hondas and what-nots. And even the police doesn’t bother showing up most of the time. All of this sounds like the makings of a great Top Gear roadster-comparison grand tour – pun partially intended – but no. No S2000’s or Miatas nowhere. The Irony of Norway.
But that’s the beauty of travelling I guess. If You want to see a flock of GT3rs’s going berserk or go and experience the exhilarating fear of death yourself, you go to the Nürburgring – not Oslo. But for beautiful nature, nice walks around a vibrant city and so on Oslo is great place. That’s the beauty – no two places are the same. Except Lahti and Chernobyl i guess.
-Joona
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