Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/03/07
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]gee, Helen and I were due to come up that way, perhaps we will go to New Zealand: they are only moderately unfriendly there ;-) On 08/03/2005, at 1:04 AM, Daniel Ridings wrote: > Graham, > Foreigners are not really welcome here. Tolerated, but not welcome. The > fewer, the better. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but I feel I have to since > Scandinavia has tended to have a liberal stamp on it. The various > countries react differently. I suspect that Sweden has the most liberal > refugee policy, Finland the least, Denmark, a small country, has been > over > saturated and Norway is somewhere inbetween. Probably closer to Finland > than anything else. > > Norway does have a lot of public money, oil money. So it can afford to > have civil servants on duty who really don't have to pull much weight. > They can act offended if you show up and expecting them to perform > their > duties. (I've had a run-in with a few of them, so my background > information might be tainted :-) ). It doesn't really matter if they do > anything or not. The country and afford them. The bureaucracy is of > Byzantine proportions. > > So you have these furners. You make them report to the police station > (one > single police station in all of Oslo, the capital city, mind you, not > just > your local station) between 8 and 10? possibly 11. Anyway, at the end > of > the short time frame they close. Doesn't matter that you've been > waiting > there since 8 am, they close. Sorry. Come back tomorrow. > > So all these poor souls start queuing up at around 7 am. This > particular > day it was -15 degrees and the wind was raging off the fjord, the > harbour. > Cold. Very cold. Most of these people come from temperate zones ... > Africa, Pakistan, India etc. 15 degrees is cold for many of them. > > At 8 o'clock ... make that 8:05 if the police really feel like screwing > with you, they unlock the door. Now at that point, you don't retain > your > queue place, but you have to rush to a number machine and get a queue > number. > > Some of these will not get served on today. The one station is Oslo is > not > open long enough to take care of them. > > Maybe they'll get tired of it and decide to move home? > > http://www.rollei-gallery.net/ridings/image-80729.html > > Excuse my cynical humor today. I had a run-in with the customs people > at > the border last night. Norway is a member of Schengen so they're not > allowed to do controls of people, only of goods. I think they're > trying to > drum up business for the train line to Gothenburg they now have but > can't > get to take off (they raised the price 100%) so they're making sure all > other forms of transportation are so miserable to use that people with > opt > for the useless train instead (it's a milk-run. Stops at every farm > between Gothenburg and Oslo). > > Something like that ... > > Daniel > > >> Hi Daniel, >> >> I particularly like these two: >> http://www.rollei-gallery.net/ridings/image-80727.html >> >> http://www.rollei-gallery.net/ridings/image-80728.html >> >> and I am curious about the reference to 'foreigners dose of >> humiliation' >> >> --Graham >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Leica Users Group. >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >> > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > Alastair