Ironies

Norway taxes café and restaurant food differently based on whether it’s “eat here” or “take away.”   I often wonder why the ferry system cafes have two different price lists based on this law.  Everyone orders their food for “take away” because it’s much cheaper, but how far can they take it?  It’s a ferry.

It’s not that America doesn’t have its quirks.  There are ironies everywhere in our country, too - like the obscene amount of money we spend on public education, compared to other nations, yet our education outcomes are just “average” and “most resemble Poland’s” according to one study I read.   Another irony is that we continue to bill ourselves as the “land of the free,” yet with the passage of every new law, someone’s freedoms are lost.

Norway’s ironies are easier to laugh at, however.  Like the fact they now have many bank branches that don’t deal in cash - everything is done electronically.  I walked into a bank a few months ago to make a deposit, and the teller kindly pointed me to an ATM machine that was happy to inhale my kroner.  The teller acted like my money was poison and she wouldn’t even touch the stuff.  That was funny, frustrating, and ironic all at the same time.

Another irony is that Norway has now done away with the 50 øre coin, which is half a kroner.  Even though the smallest coin is now a kroner, about 18 cents, the deposit on pop bottles is still two and a half kroner.  My son figured out rather quickly if he buys two bottles of pop, he pays a five kroner deposit, but if he returns just one bottle at time, he gets six kroner back, since they must round up.  He pays roughly 45 cents deposit for each bottle but gets over 63 cents refunded.  When is someone going to figure that one out?

I also think it’s ironic that with Norway’s socialized medical system, it takes such a long time to get in to see a doctor that people are often well by the time their appointment rolls around.  But then again, maybe that’s part of the plan in making them wait so long.

The cost of stamps are also a conundrum. It costs nearly double to buy a stamp in Norway to mail a letter to a Norwegian address, than it costs to buy a stamp in America and mail it internationally to Norway.  Strange economics there.   

I also scratch my head over the fact that the Norwegian government spends two dollars on a stamp to send me a bill for an automatic toll station I drove through that costs just over two dollars for the toll.  Someone needs to do the cost effectiveness on that one.  The ultimate irony would be if they actually did.