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There are so many things that are different here, a few of which are:   

They use roundabouts instead of intersections.  The only time I saw a stop light was for pedestrian crossings.  Which, by the way, is also very different.  Pedestrians and bicycles are king here.  You MUST stop your car if it looks like someone is even thinking about crossing the road.  For this reason, the speed limits are quite low all around the area.

They have these nice trails built near the roads which people actually use to get places.  In the States, bike trails are mostly nice places to exercise.  These people use them to get to work and back.  People either ride a bike or use roller blades along with these poles similar to ski poles.  It's very cool if you think about it.  It's a safe and efficient way to get back and forth to work and your exercise does not have to be a separate chore.  Of course, if I tried this in Houston I would get run over the first day.

The Norwegian culture seems to be much more focused on the quality of life than in the States.  The tax and government system works well in allowing everyone to have a great chance at a good life - in that college and medical expenses are free - but it also discourages people from trying to get rich.  The taxes are set up so that it is very hard to make a lot of money.  So, there is not that much differentiation between people with different types of jobs.  The up side of this is that you don't get so many people slaving away at the office on nights and weekends, trying to get ahead.  Instead they leave at quitting time and go do things with their children.  

When I compare this attitude to the general attitude in the U.S., it seems to me that more people are focused on money in the U.S. than on quality of life.  If you think about it, in the States we spend a lot of time and effort trying to get more money.  Then we spend our free time trying to spend that money on things that will impress our friends and neighbors.  It's silly.

Getting back to my 'quality of life' tirade, I wanted to make the point that the shops in Norway all close very early.  Most shops close at 6pm and almost everything is closed on Sunday.  This is because the people want to be with their families instead of working in stores.  This also keeps shopping from being a hobby like we see at home.  

Which brings me to another difference - conservation vs. waste.  The theme of Norway seems to be "take as much as you need" where in America it's "take as much as you can".  Here, the cars are no bigger than what they just have to be.  I never see a personal vehicle larger than a Honda CRV, which in the U.S. is considered a very small vehicle.   The portions in restaurants are actually meal sized.  I mean normal human meal sized, not "trucker" meal sizes. Also when you go to the grocery store, everything is in small packages.  I rarely saw a "family pack" and definitely nothing that was "Sam's sized".  

They conserve on lights as well.  Lights in the parking garage and in stairwells are set to a motion detector.  If no one is in there, they go off.  What a neat idea.  It would never work in the States though, someone would say the lights came on too slowly and it caused them to fall so they would sue for 10 million and win.  Too bad.  Everyone also has to sort their garbage into three groups:  food and other "compostables" in one bin, paper-based items in another, and everything else in a third.  The bins aren't very big and they don't come around to collect them that often so it encourages people not to throw away so much.  Also, by separating out the food they can make compost out of it or feed it to hogs (that's what they do with the food waste from the company cafeteria!)

Oh, here's a neat one.  The showers and washing machines actually let you select a temperature.  Then in the shower there is separate dial which lets you select how much water pressure you want.  I love this.  I set the temperature the first day and I have not had to touch it since. 

Bread is another interesting difference.  I tried to buy a loaf in the 7-11.  For starters, they don't have any that's pre-sliced.  It is all baked on the premises (at a 7-11, bizarre isn't it??!!)   When I asked for a loaf of bread the clerk asked if I wanted finished or not finished bread.  I had to get another customer to help explain to me what she meant.  Some of the loaves are only baked half-way, then you can take them home and finish them yourself.  I opted for the one that was all done.  Everyone who knows me will understand that I would have managed to ruin it if I tried to finish it myself!

All of the units of measurement are different here.  I spend huge amounts of time doing math in my head.  I am converting Norwegian Kroner to American Dollars, kilometers to miles, meters to feet, kilograms to pounds, liters to gallons, 24 hour time (they use the 24 hour clock here) to AM/PM, and the time difference between Norway and Houston.  Whew!  Thank goodness for my iPAQ and it's Unit Converter!! 

They have seat heaters in the car.  I had never heard of this one before, but turned it on by accident and then started thinking that the car seat was wet.  I thought it would be really neat on a chilly morning, but I find that I don't like the warm seat.  I can't get over the feeling that it's wet so I couldn't stand it. 

They tell me that most Norwegians only eat one hot meal per day.  They seem to put cold cuts, fish, or shimp on bread for both breakfast and lunch, then have a hot meal in the evenings.  Except that the company cafeteria has a nice hot meal for only 20 Kroner ($2 to us Americans) so many people eat the warm lunch here at work as well.  But they also have all the fish and shrimp salad and things to put on bread if you prefer.  

Which reminds me of waffles.  Over here, waffles are a snack and they eat them with jelly and sometimes sour cream.  They had waffles available in the hotel at all times - except breakfast!  I talked to Terja Flaat about this and he said when his family was in the United States they sat down in a restaurant for breakfast and said, "They eat waffles for breakfast??!!"  I thought that was funny.

Another difference is in the public restrooms.  Every single public restroom I used had full, solid doors on each stall.  You can't even call them stalls if they have doors I guess, but I don't know what else to call them.  I don't understand this because the flimsy metal partial doors that are used all over the States have to be much cheaper.  Maybe personal privacy is very important in Norway.  Or perhaps they don't just like other people to see their feet while they are doing their business!!  

The Other Side of the Coin

OK, so those are the good things.  You know there have to be some downsides or else there would be much more than 4 million people in that country!  The most notable drawback is the weather.  I was very lucky to get a month of warmth and sun.  From what I've been told, most of the time the weather is very gray, rainy, foggy, cold or some combination of these conditions.  Plus, in the winter time the days are very short - sometimes the sun doesn't rise until around 9 am and is already setting by 4 or 5 pm.  These things would be very depressing to me.

The speed limits are painfully slow to an American.  There are so many reasons that you may have to stop at any moment that they have to keep the speed limits low, but it can be excruciating for someone used to Houston driving.  The bus stops are set off the road so that the buses actually get out of the way when they stop.  That's a great thing.  One of the most dangerous things about driving in Houston is when you get near a bus, with all the cars trying desperately to dart around the bus before it stops again.  However, when the buses in Norway are ready to get back on the road, they just go.  You have to be watching them very closely as you drive by or else you'll take a bus to the side of your tiny Norwegian car.  

Then they have this strange rule about giving way to cars on the right.  This only applies to non-yellow diamond roads, which are the main roads marked by (you guessed it) yellow diamond signs.  So when you're not on one of these main roads, you have to be watching for any cars which are approaching the road on the right.  Say you are about 50 yards from an intersection, if a car is approaching that intersection on your right, they don't even slow down - they just pull out right in front of you.  The hardest part of this for me was being the one to pull out.  I drove people crazy by making them come to a complete stop to let me on the road.  I was fighting 16 years of driving experience in which we do not just pull out right in front of oncoming traffic.  I would hesitate until I could see them applying their brakes, then I'd pull out in my little 4 cylinder Fiesta and take off at a blinding speed which would then cause them to have to slow down even more.  The other drivers really loved me in Norway.  

One thing that I missed a lot was the loss of convenience.  In the States, we don't even realize how spoiled we are, but absolutely everything  is set up for the convenience of the consumer.  If I want to buy a pair of socks, a burrito, a CD, and a new kitchen sink at 2:00 in the morning, I can get that here with no problem.  We have so many stores that are open late or open all the time that we can get almost anything at almost any time. I don't think this is necessarily bad for the employees.  There are lots of people who are night people, want to work more than one job, or maybe they go to school during the day and need to work at night.  Having these all-night shops provides more opportunities for jobs than if everything closed at four (*$^%*!) o'clock in the afternoon.  And drive-up windows?  The ultimate in convenience.  I never saw them in Norway.  Not to say there aren't any, but I sure didn't notice them.

Speaking of drive-ups, they have a lot to learn about that technology.  There are lots of toll stations where you have to pay to drive into Stavanger.  They are the most poorly designed stations imaginable.  First of all, there are all these funny rules regarding the time of day.  Certain times it's free, other times it's 5 kroner, other times it's 10.  Are there large signs explaining this before you get to a toll booth?  NO!  You have to be all the way up at the pay station before you see the sign posting the rules.   Are there large, easy to read signs displaying whether you have to stop at all?  NO!  Heaven help you if you don't memorize the time table on your first trip because you'll have to pull off again just to find out if you need to pay.  They have signs which say Open/Closed (in Norwegian, of course) with lights which I think are supposed to be shining on one or the other to indicate whether you have to stop.  However, when the sun is shining you cannot tell whether there is a light shining on either of them. Very helpful.  

Tired of the toll station complaints?  But wait, there's more!  If you are unlucky enough not to have one of the ez-tag devices which mount on your windshield, you have to pull off the road and put money in the machine.  First of all, it doesn't give change.  I can understand that, it would be a lot of work to keep them stocked with the proper coins I'm sure.  But the real kicker about these boxes is that they are mounted straight up on a pole which is protected by a curb.  Not a bent pole which extends the machine closer to the car's driver, no, that would be too  easy.  Instead you have to either stretch half-way out of your car window (which is fun in the rain, let me assure you) or open the door and step part-way out in order to reach the coin slot.   Then there's the whole receipt issue.  If you know you will be going through another toll station within the next hour, you can press a button to request a receipt.  Then at the next toll station you can feed in the receipt to get a "pass" on the second toll. Does the receipt land in a contained area where you can get hold of it?   NO, it gets spit out of a slot and is immediately blown away by the wind.  This happened to me once (and I rarely asked for a receipt) and saw it happen to three other people during my one month of driving in Norway.  Haven't they ever seen the receipt machines on a gasoline pump?  The receipt comes out in a little recessed area where it will stay until you are ready to pick it up.  None of this, "On your mark, get set, grab the receipt!!"  Maybe they want to improve our reflexes while we are paying our tolls.  

So enough about that.  Let's talk about credit cards.  You have a VISA card, right?  We all have them because they work everywhere.  I have used my VISA card without incident in Mexico, the Caribbean, China, Hong Kong, Turkey, even Canada.  However, I try to use the card in Norway and get a very hostile, "Don't you have a Norwegian credit card??" from the clerk.  My VISA card was accepted in only about 1/3 of the places I tried to use it.  In all the other places I got a rude clerk or a message from the card reading machine saying "Invalid Card Type".   Luckily for me, my ATM card worked.  I also felt lucky that the Mini Banks (Norwegian for ATM) had the option to display the text in English, otherwise who knows what I'd have done with my money.   

Then there's laundry.  You have to dedicate a significant portion of your life to doing laundry.  I can do three entire loads (folded and put away) in the time it took for my Norwegian washing machine to finish washing one load.  I'm told they get your clothes much cleaner and are much more gentle, but who cares??!!!  Who wants to do laundry for 3 hours at a time?   And the dryers only got hot, and I mean McDonald's coffee (before the lawsuit) hot.  They didn't actually remove any moisture from the clothes, they just baked them.  I would usually give up after an hour and hang all my things around the apartment to air dry.  What a giant pain in the tushy. 

So there you have it, the weather, the toll booths, the non-VISA acceptance, and the slow washer/dryers are the reasons Norway isn't overrun by people.