Week 1 in Norway: Quarantine Edition

Well, I arrived in Norway on Saturday to a very efficient Covid testing protocol. I retrieved my bags, got my nose swabbed, and left after 15 minutes with my negative test results.

I am benefiting from the new guidance of quarantining for only 3 days. However, on the third day you have to get a PCR test, and it is day 5 and I still don’t have my results.

Thankfully, I can go on walks to get out of the house. Yesterday, I went to the park and walked around the statues. The day before I wandered throughout the city until I got tired and made it home just before it poured. It rains a lot here so far!

Food Options

I am impressed with the amount of food options in this city. Oslo is truly an international city and I can pretty much get any type of food I want here. When I got the Covid test done, the attendant gave me a suggestion on where to get a Philly cheesesteak ALMOST as good as Philly itself. So, I definitely plan to try that.

Food Delivery

Saturday afternoon, I was super tired from the 35 hours of travel leading to my arrival. Since I couldn’t go out, I used an app called Foodora to place a dinner order for delivery. It is very similar to Uber Eats or Door Dash.

I ordered Indian food and it was at my door within 30 minutes. It was piping hot and delicious. The delivery people pick up the food and deliver it on scooters in an insulated bag attached to the back of their scooter.

Another app I haven’t tried yet is Wolt, but I’ll be sure to check it out.

Grocery Delivery

After dinner, I placed an order for grocery delivery Sunday morning. I ordered groceries from Oda, which was convenient, quick, and fresh. On their website it says they have over 7,000 items to choose from. Truly, they did have a lot of choices! It was kind of overwhelming in my exhausted state.

I did pretty well for my first grocery haul, only making a couple small errors, such as ordering two bunches of bananas instead of 2 bananas.

So far, I cooked every meal since Sunday to save money. Also, I’m ready to treat myself when I finally get that green light from my Covid results and I can leave quarantine.

The food here is unbelievably fresh! Even the shredded cheese tastes like it was just grated right before it was delivered. The grapes are crisp and the avocados arrived in perfect condition ready to eat.

I made myself a yummy salmon dinner the first night with actual Norwegian salmon.

General Observations

The people are pretty nice. Literally, every car stops to let you cross the street even if they are the only one there and really you could walk right after they pass. It is very much a bike and pedestrian friendly city.

Interestingly, parallel parking seems to have no rules. Cars are parked on the street facing both directions so I guess it doesn’t matter which side you are on.

I have not seen a single person wearing heels, which is probably because of the cold weather and that you have to walk everywhere.

I passed this discount grocery store called Extra, but upon further examination, I realized that the prices were the same as Oda. So, it might just be easier for me to keep ordering groceries and have it delivered.

They take recycling and trash seriously here. I have to separate my food trash items into a green bag and all of the plastic wrappings into a blue bag. Then, plastic and glass bottles are recycled along with cardboard. Plain shopping bags are for generic trash. I’m getting used to that. I don’t like having the little bags on my counter, but I haven’t figured out what else to do with them yet.

I’m a little scared of my electric bill. The washing machine takes forever and you can’t even fit that much in it to begin with. And the dryer also takes a long time. I think I’m going to start hanging out my clothes. I see a lot of people doing this outside.

Productivity Level

If you have been following along this blogging journey, then you know I like to stay productive and keep up with my to-do lists. Being in quarantine sort of forced me to take some downtime, which turned out to be much needed. I read a lot of books, took walks, and adjusted to the time change.

I had a couple of meetings, but most of my time was for me. I thought about using it to complete some online jobs for extra money to help me with my debt reduction goal, but I decided rest and relaxation was best before things get really busy with travel and work.

My workshops are in review and orientation is not until next week. It’s rare that I get downtime like this!

So, I’ll be sure to pick back up on my time management tips and suggestions for moving toward goals soon!