Norwegian cities and towns - How to use apps and the price structure to your advantage.

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KBleivik
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Norwegian cities and towns - How to use apps and the price structure to your advantage.

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1. Villages, towns or cities.

The difinition of a town and a city may differ from country to country:

Read more at about.com or differencebetween.net were we cite the following:
Cities are more densely populated than towns. Towns, as mentioned earlier, are smaller than cities but bigger than villages. Unlike towns, most cities are the seat of most of a region’s administrative functions, that is to say, most of the important administrative offices are situated in the cities.
The biggest city in Norway, the capital Oslo, is with its 1/2 million inhabitants what many foreigneres would call a village. Since the second largest city, Bergen has about 1/4 million inhabitants that would also have been called a village. Since Oslo is the capital and Bergen the seat of many Western Norway administrative functions we may call both a town or a city. We prefer to call Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Kristiansand and Tromsø cities.

2. Moving in a city in Norway.

The area of some Norwegian cities or towns many be large. But the inner or core city is not big. If you can walk half an hour, you may reach most of the core city in Bergen but not in the smaller measured by the number of inhabitants, Tromsø. Eurostat.eu gives a great spatial view of some Norwegian cities. On this map you clearly see the difference between the core city in some Norwegian cities. The core city of Oslo and Bergen is clearly lesser than of Tromsø. That means that you can reach most of the core city in Oslo and Bergen by walking. If you prefer to move by cycle, it is sometimes possible to hire a cycle that is locked and praked on the street, but is is far from so good as in Copenhagen, the cycling capital of the world (or is it Beijing?).

The underground (T-banen) is fairly good in Oslo. Bergen don't have an underground but a modern "bybane". The bus system is relatively good in both cities as in other Norwegian towns and villages. If you have a smart phone, you can often download an app (on google,no start your search by buss app and let google suggest suggest some before you submit your query) where you can pay your ticket. You will see that you get bus apps for some of the cities. As an example let us see what is available for the Østfold county, the south east region of Norway close to the border of Sweden. I put the following query into a search engine:

buss app østfold

and find this page where we quote:
Mobilletten for Østfold gir inntil 50% rabatt på enkeltbilletter. Tilbudet gjelder kun enkeltbilletter og er tilgjengelig for iPhone og Androide telefoner (ikke Windows Phone). Prisen er kun kr 30,– for voksen og 15,– for barn, ungdom og honnør og gjelder i hele Østfold med fri overgang i 110 minutter.
translated to English by Google translate and edited by me:
Mobilletten Østfold provides up to 50% off single tickets. The offer is only valid on single tickets and is available for iPhone and Android phones (not Windows Phone). The price is only NOK 30, - for adult and NOK 15, - for children, youth and seniors and applies throughout Østfold with a free transfer in 110 minutes.
A remark on seniors. In Norway you are a senior the year you are 67 years, people with disabilities earlier. Then you can by what is called a "honnør billett", but you need to document it if there is a control. I don't know how that is for foreigners. Ask the bus driver. As a general rule it is always more expensive to buy your ticket on the bus and the train. The cheapest is like in most other countries to buy a periode ticket (month, 14 days, a week, day ...). The example above shows that you can get 50% discount if you buy a "mobile" ticket. Let us take an example. This thread is started when I visit my son in Bergen. I am 68 years old, so I can buy a "honnør billett" and I have a corresponding "Honnør" Id card. I have no smartphone, so I went down to the bus station on "Landås torg". Most often you can buy a ticket on a ticket machine (note that it is a fresh good so it has to be used the same day) that will cost NOK 18 for a "honnør ticket" But there is not a ticket machine there. So I went on to the bus and bought a "honnør" (senior) ticket. That costed NOK 25 and I complained to the driver of the bus, that is expensive compared to Østfold where a similar ticket only costs NOK 18. The reason why is that you bought the ticket on the bus said the bus driver. If you had bought the ticket on a ticket machine or at some smaller shops like Narvesen that sells "skyss biletter" or Single ticket "Honnør", that can be used when you need it (not the same day you buy it like a ticket bought on a ticket machine), you would only have to pay NOK 18. That is different on NSB trains and busses in Østfold, I replied. There seniors don't have to pay the extra fee that is paid by younger people. Not so here she replied. But there is no ticket machine on Landås station I replid and not a shop where I know of where you can buy "skyss bilett". My family members that live near by Landås station complain about the same she said. In Bergen center it was not difficult to find a Narvesen kiosk (shop) where I bought a "kyss billett" for my return home and one for the next day to the center (it takes one hour to walk the distance). At my son's home I told the story and was informed that there was a small kiosk close to the bus station where you could buy a "skyss billett". That ticket can also be used on the "bybane". The bus driver seemingly did not know that. Prices are carrieres of information and so are people. Winners stay and loosers pay and so do uninformed people.

3. More about the price structure in Bergen and the price of being uninformed.

The message from the above story is that Smart Phones may save you money and time, since they are excellend tools for navigating in a city and finding places linke "Munch Museet", "Vigelands Museet", "Vigelands Parken" and a specific street address in e.g Oslo. It may cost you money to be uninformed. This post may have saved you more and you may save more if you want to buy Norwegian food, eg. fish if you register on our extra net.

Let us take one more example. I once visited Ukraine and got in talk with a native Ukrinian about IT and the price structure in Ukraine. After having paid NOK 3 for 1/2 liter of good Ukrainian beer, I said that that is rediculous cheap compared to Norway where you may pay from NOK 60 to above NOK 100 for 1/2 liter. He replied that the price structure is very complicated in Ukraine. You may write a PhD about the price structure in Ukraine, he told me. I think he was spot on and I experienced it myself. Use your eyes before you buy there. As always, it is a good rule to get in contact with some local people and ask them.

Back to Norway and Bergen. The famous fish market in Bergen is well known to native Norwegians to require high prices. And foreigners sometimes seem to think that Norway only sell salmon from fish farms that in my opinion is far from the best fish, even if it may have the most delicate look and colour. I always like to visit the Bergen Fish Market when I visit Bergen, but seldom buy fish there. This time I made an exception, since the fish I was looking for uer (image search for the name) was relatively cheap the day of my visit, NOK 129/kg. I was aslo looking for cod roe, but since that is a seasonal product they did not have it at the fish market. So I wen't to my favourite small private shop in "Strandgaten" about 100 m from the fish market and asked if they had cod roe and they did. In addition they sold better looking uer for NOK 110/kg. We are always cheaper than the fish market they said when I told they were NOK 19/kg cheaper than the fish market. Even if I thought that it was cheap on the fish market I could have saved about NOK 30 walking 100 m. At the fish market I aslo got in talk with some foreigners that looked at Norway's ulgiest fish (breiflabb - image searh for it) and they laughed. You shall not laugh I said, it is the best fish on the market, and that day it costed NOK 460 / kg. You may get it cheaper on some supermarkets like Meny, especially on days with specific offers. If you have a smart phone with voice recognintion like iPone's Siri, you can express in Norwegian "meny sletten". Then you find the internet page of the MENY supermarket close to Landås torg. There you can pick their telephone number, call them and ask if they have some special offers in their fish department. Most often they have. In addition most bigger Norwegian supermarkets have their own app that you can download and get the most up to date offers of the day or the week. You can even download an app from the site mattilbud.no and get offers from many different supermarkets. You have an option to click on a specific supermarke, in our example, MENY. But you can also click on categories like fish and find the best offers from different supermarkets. The app revolution is definitely in the front in Norway, so if you are interest in a specific service, you can searh online for a related app or ask (young?) Norwegians about apps for the services you are looking for. If you buy tickets online, either on the teathre, the train, the cinema or on the bus, as a rule you get a discount. A targeted app may even offer you a better discount. Reading this post you have scanned the surface of how a Norwegian uses the price structure to save NOK thousands during a year.

So not only is the pricestructure complicated in Ukraine. It is definitely complex and complicated in Norway. Since I live in eastern Norway, but was born in Haugesdund ("silda byen" - the town of the herring) I know that i is difficult to get fresh enough uer and breiflabb where I live. I fish myself, so I get enough omega fatty acids in Eastern Norway. Byt the way there is an old Norwegian cultural plant, portulakk that per / 100 g has 3 times more omega fatty acids than the average fish.

You have to fish differently in Eastern and Western Norway. If a person from Haugesund read this, (s)he may be surprised to know that I get a lot of fine herring and sea trout in the outer Oslo fjord. If I want to fish fresh water trout that is comparable to sea trout in quality, I would definitely go to my favourite lakes in Western Norway. Mackerel is a much better fish than somebody belives, not the big 2 kg mackerels that I get in Øygarden (the islands outside Bergen - that is great for "graving" - a special foodprocess). They are too big and fat for me. In the outer Oslo fjord most of the mackerels you get are small, esepcially now in the spring and early summer. Below 600 g, we call them "pir" and they are very good cooked, fried and not least smoked. I smoke pir myself.

4. Related links.
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