Andi and I shared the same flight back to Berlin and spent a night in Oslo at the place of — let me get this straight — “the brother of a friend of his girl friend”, who neither of us had met before. After realising, though, that going into Oslo meant a two-hour train ride in from Plone Solutions offices and a two hour bus ride back out to Torp Airport the next day I began to doubt, whether it would be worth the effort. Fortunately, our host Karsten turned out to be a really good tour guide who even drove us in his car out (and up!) to the Holmenkollen and back into town explaining everything on the way. I don’t think it would have been possible to see and learn about more of Oslo in such short time. And except for the numerous and humongous pot holes and steep prices Oslo seems to be really an altogether agreeable city. Somehow Oslo present itself to my mind as a mixture between (of all places!) Stuttgart and Seattle…

And finally — if for no other reason than to demonstrate the astuteness of this author’s observational faculties — it seems that the Norwegians are really into expectation management: not only do the signs for the toilets at the central bus terminal include the distance in meters but the pedestrian traffic lights outside the station count down the seconds remaining until switching to red ;-)