This piece (http://crookedtimber.org/2017/10/23/working-to-rule/) by Maria (Farrell?) is a long and very insightful read about the emotional impact on immigrants from the Brexit debacle – and more generally, about the nastiness of reducing immigrants (or, for that matter, any foreigner) to a number and a category.
Anyone who thinks being an immigrant, even a deluxe EU three million-type immigrant, is easy, should try it. We compete on equal terms with all comers, but with no social or economic safety net and, for many, hustling like mad in second and third languages. No dole, no network of couches to sleep on, no contacts and no introductions; qualifications from institutions you’ve never heard of, references from employers you aren’t sure are real but can’t be bothered to check, acting as daily fodder for stereotypical jokes we laugh off to show we’re one of you. You don’t hear us complaining about it because it’s just part of the deal. But when the terms of the deal change, and you tell us we’re social welfare parasites who are also, somehow, taking all the jobs and are the reason the country is failing, then the deal is probably dead.
How anyone can think shutting yourself off from the world and fantasise about going back to a nonexistent 1960s idyll is in any way beneficial is beyond me. And this nastiness is not limited to Britain or Trump’s USA, far from it, Norway has its share of little people with big fears as well.
To get new ideas, increase the variety of sources, expose yourself to new experiences, and embrace that which you cannot understand.
Yesterday I got an email from an old friend and former colleague who is visiting Norway and wondering what to see and do. His is not the first email of that kind – and it dawned on me that the rational and productive thing to do (well, it is early Sunday morning and I am still undercaffeinated) is to write this up as a blog post. (Did the same thing for my Norwegian friends asking me about what to do in Boston.) So – what would I recommend if you should find yourself in Oslo during the summer, with some time to look around?
First of all, you need to understand a few basic things about Norway. Norway has lots to recommend it, but we are mainly about nature – while Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and some of the other cities are nice, they are a bit like a one-star Michelin restaurant – worthy of a stop, but not destinations in themselves. To appreciate Norway, you need to appreciate nature and natural beauty – and be willing to put in some effort to see it. On that note:
So: If you are going to Norway, pack good shoes, rain gear, basically the light hiking setup. You may not need it, but you certainly won’t regret packing it. As the saying goes here, there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. And we mean it.
Oslo
Caveat: I like to list things that are (arguably, somewhat) unique to Oslo. We have nice cafes and tolerably good museums (such as the National Gallery), but those you will find in any capital in Europe. Most people who come here do it for a short visit – and you want to stay away from that which is mostly for the tourists and not different from anywhere else in Europe. So, here is where I take my (mostly) American friends:
The Vigeland park (or Frogner park). This is the world’s largest sculpture park dedicated to one artist, Gustav Vigeland. And, as every American says who has been there – they are all naked! Vigeland was a pupil of Rodin and the sheer size and rather playful humor of the place is enjoyable and a sure hit with the kids. (My favorite: The little girl who, unseen by her parents, is picking up a snake. See if you can find it.) One of Oslo’s city symbols is “Sinnataggen”, a little boy having a tantrum. This is also where people in Oslo go to relax and hang out if the weather is good, so you might see some locals.
The Holmenkollen ski jump, especially if we can throw in a little walk in the woods. The ski jump is impressive in itself (though ski jumping is no longer the enormous draw it used to be for Norwegians) and you get an excellent view of Oslo. There is a zip line if you feel adventurous. But, to really have a Norwegian experience in the sense of doing something the locals like, walk from Frognerseteren to Tryvannsstua (pictured, about 3 km) or Skjennungstua (5 km, view, delightful pastries) to get a sense of Oslomarka. Oslo is 63% protected forest, with gravel roads, paths and (in winter) hundreds of kilometers of prepared ski tracks. Heavily used by the citizens of Oslo and surrounding municipalities.
The Munch museum, a bit run down, will probably move to a new building in 2018/19 [closed for moving to new location 2019] but the paintings are, of course, worth seeing.
The Viking Ship museum. The museum itself is crowded and due for an update, but it is the only place in the world, as far as I know, where you can see a complete, real Viking ship. Worth the trip. If you are feeling energetic, there are lots of other museums (at the Bygdøy peninsula, take a boat there from the City Hall). I have taken people to the Folk Museum a lot – mainly because two of my daughters have had summer jobs there and can provide an inside perspective – but it requires a deeper interest in folklore and rural history than most people have (but if you go there, make sure to sample the Hardangerlefse, cooked over open fire. Carbs galore.) There is the Fram and Kon-Tiki museum, as well, though I haven’t been for many years. Plus Huk, a nice beach, if you feel like a dip.
The Ekebergparken sculpture park, a relatively new sculpture park donated by property investor and man-about-town Christian Ringnes. The park itself is more of a lightly edited forest than an art installation, but it works well, and the collection (themed as an homage to women) is very good. And the view of the city is excellent – this is, quite literally, where The Scream was painted. (There is a metal frame at one point where you can take photos recreating the painting yourself. Including screaming.)
Explore the fjord – Oslo is built around the fjord, and if you can get on a boat – even just taking a summer ferry out to some of the islands – by all means do it. (I live on an island, perhaps I am a bit partial here.) In later years, the city has tried to make the shoreline available for walking (a project called Fjordbyen) and it works rather well. The high point, of course, is walking on the roof of the Oslo Opera House, but the Akershus Fort and just hanging out slowly sipping a cold (and expensive) drink while ogling the historical boats you find here and there is nice, too.
Explore Oslo by bike or foot. The urban bike project is pretty good, you download an app to your smartphone and check out and in bikes from many places. Best path: Along Akerselva. Grünerløkka (partially along the river) is the “bohemian” (well, gentrified) district, Frogner is more upscale, Grønland for immigrant food and culture, and Gamlebyen for history.
Eat at a restaurant. Food is somewhat expensive, drinks horribly expensive, but the quality is very high. My personal favorite is Kampen Bistro, a semi-hidden neighborhood restaurant/community house with a semi-fixed menu and the world’s best cheese platter. But you will find lots of good food and a constantly changing set of restaurants – Google for a list. (Alternatively: My friend Bill Schiano once spent most of a day walking from bakery to bakery all over town, a very happy man.)
If you want to say you have seen something not many Norwegians have seen: The Emanuel Vigeland mausoleum, created by Gustav Vigeland’s, well, rather eccentric brother. Opening hours are complicated, but if you have been there, you have definitely seen more of Oslo than most people.
Norway outside Oslo
Well, now it gets difficult. There are, literally, hundreds of web pages devoted to Norwegian tourist spots, from Prekestolen to Trolltunga to Hurtigruten to Flåmsbanen to whatever. They are all fantastic, but since you can read about them in lots of detail there and also plan your route via visitnorway.com and other sites, I will stay away from the obvious choices, and, again, go for something a bit more hidden and for the local (though not very hidden.)
Extremely important warning: In addition to the weather and clothing issue mentioned above, Norwegian culture is fundamentally built on the principle that you, yourself, and nobody else, is responsible for being knowledgeable and physically capable of doing whatever you set out doing. Norwegians do not believe in protecting people against their own stupidity. (And forget about suing anyone, you’ll be laughed out of court.)
Norwegians are quite cynical about this. Do not expect there to be signposts and security fences in the mountains or along the fjords – but if there are, obey them religiously, because they denote real dangers, not risks of lawsuits. Every year, some tourist will fall off Trolltunga or Vøringsfossen, step too close to a calving glacier or drown in a fjord because they did not have the wits, skills or equipment necessary. That is considered to be the tourists’ fault. At Svalbard, tourists are referred to as “Bamsemums” (a popular foam-bear-covered-in-chocolate candy) because of their propensity to end up as polar bear lunch, on account of going where they are not supposed to without a gun. Something of the same spirit prevails in most of Norway, though in some places (such as Trolltunga), the local authorities are thinking about fencing things in a bit, mostly because it is so expensive to haul the bodies out.
Yes, I am exaggerating a bit. But not much.
With that out of the way: The best way to see Norway is to amble around (preferably in an electric car), stop whenever you feel like it, and (thanks to the Viking-age freedom to roam) go for a walk in your hiking shoes. Norway is all about nature, and there is so much of it that practically anything is worth seeing. That being said: The south coast is mellow and sunny and idyllic, the west coast is spectacular with deep fjords and high mountains, the North (north from Trondheim, that is) goes from New Zealand fjords to Alaskan tundra. The Eastern forests offer opportunities for canoeing and fishing, if you are into that. The mountains in the middle have peaks and glaciers and mountain huts, managed by the truly wonderful Norwegian Tourist Association. Explore at your leisure, spend time, and above all, do not feel forced to see the famous sites, when you can find something almost as good quite close.
I have never been to Geiranger, for instance. (But I haven’t seen Star Wars either.)
As for recommendations, here is a fairly random list of things I like:
Mountaineering is great, but where to go if you don’t have much time? Some suggestions from Jotunheimen (but there are thousands of others):
Knutshø (pictured, steeper than it may look) is dramatic, close to the road, has fantastic views, and there are not many people there. Perfect one-day walk: Park the car and do it, walk along the ridge, return along the lake on south side. Great view of Besseggen.
If you want to get above 2000 meters, try Rasletind.
The Rosendal Barony is breathtakingly beautiful, as is the view. Not far away (south of Odda there is a path up to Buarbreen, a part of Folgefonna, nice walk to a glacier.)
If you don’t fancy walking, taking the boat from Gjendesheim to Gjendebu and back is worth it. While reading Three in Norway by two of them.
Solvorn is a sleepy little hamlet with a fantastic little family hotel called Walaker. From there, you can drive to Veitastrond and Tungastølen (damaged in heavy weather in 2011, will hopefully reappear with fantastic new architecture) and walk in to Austerdalsisen (fantastic glacier views, while they are still there.)
While I am at it – the Glacier Museum in Fjærland is worth a visit. As well as the nearby glacier (mind your step.)
Ålesund is a beautiful little coastal city which burned in 1904 and was rebuilt in Art Noveau style. Many Norwegian cities were architecturally brutalized in the sixties and later, but Ålesund has kept its style.
Trondheim is nice – and Baklandet Skydstation has been named the best cafe in the world several times. I love it. And it is close to the only bike lift I know of. Trondheim is a university town – primarily the technical university, Norway’s MIT.
Bergen is nice – the whole city – perhaps with an exception for the fish market, which has transmogrified from local and lively market to a canned tourist experience the last few years. Will probably be fixed. Take a tram or cable car to the surrounding hilltops*.
The south coast has lots of beautiful little towns with white-painted “skipper” houses. I like them all – Lillesand, Grimstad, Arendal, Tvedestrand, Risør, Kragerø – but if you somehow can get to Lyngør, it is absolute perfection in summer.
Tromsø has nightlife and nature and the most active local patriots in Norway. And that is saying a lot.
Svolvær and Lofoten and the other Hurtigruten things are fantastic, of course, don’t misunderstand me, but they tend to fill up.
Fishing is, apparently, fantastic. (I don’t fish myself…)
A few notes:
You cannot see the northern lights in the summer. Sorry.
Nor the midnight sun in the winter.
Norway is expensive and service is friendly but overstretched (we have near wage equality and employees are very expensive…). Do not expect fawning service, even at fancy hotels.
Norwegians are rather reserved and have a fairly expansive sense of personal space. When the other people at the bus stop are keeping their distance to you, it has nothing to do with you. It’s them. (See The Social Guidebook to Norway for further information).
And that is that. Comments welcome. More to follow as I remember things.
PS: Found this video with Morten Rustad’s 10 favorite places in Norway. I spent much of my summers as a boy in Valdres and Jotunheimen and agree with him. But note also: Solitude and challenge is a plus, crowds a minus, for the quintessential Norwegian tourist/explorer:
*No, not mountains. I Norway, any mountain with trees on top is a hill, no matter how steep or tall.
I am just back from teaching a four-day module (called IT management and eBusiness, though I might change that title somewhat) at the BI-Fudan MBA program.
This is just about the 15th time I teach in China, all of it in cooperation with Fudan University, which gives me some cause to reflect on how teaching in China has changed – all seen from my rather narrow perspective, of course, but still. Just as the Shanghai Bund view has changed (the pictures are from 1990 to 2010) so have the participants, contents and business environment of my courses.
The students have changed: In 2004, the age range and English proficiency of the students varied much more. About two thirds of the class had rather rudimentary English skills, I had to simplify the language, and the Chinese co-teacher spent a lot of time explaining concepts and partially translating what I did. This is not any longer – gone are the days when Chinese students would sit quietly and avoid your gaze. Now they participate more or less like students anywhere in the world. English skills still vary, but not any more than they do in any European country. The co-teacher (this time the very capable Dr. Wei Xueqi, left of me in the picture) still has one hour of Chinese teaching every day after I am done, but spends more time discussing and less time translating.
The course has changed: I used to lecture much more, focus more on basic concepts and methods. Now I use cases (five in this course, plus one for the in-class exam) and the students analyze and present, challenging each others’ conclusions. I now basically use the same teaching method (heavy on case teaching) in this course as I do in any other course at a M.Sc. or MBA level I teach.
The business environment of Shanghai and China has changed. In 2004, China’s business environment was firmly divided into FDI (foreign direct investment) and SOE (state owned enterprises) and the management culture, measures and methods were very different. Copying was rampant and you sometimes felt as if you were introducing capitalism to an audience where a sizable portion of the students were unsure whether it was a good idea. Not so any more: The students now all have experience with international business, frequently with much more experience than my Norwegian students, particularly when it comes to production and industrial planning. A larger and larger portion of the class works in service industries and in online enterprises, something which I have reflected in choice of cases and examples.
I used to go to China because it was different and therefore interesting. Now I go there because it is interesting – but not so different. At least not in the classroom.
I am just back from a very fruitful trip to Boston, visiting friends, meeting various colleagues and business acquaintances, even giving presentations.
One problem when you are abroad is how to stay connected: I am used to checking email, messages, and do various surfing on my iPhone, or to use it to get an Internet connection via 3G or 4G. If you do that with a Norwegian (or any non-US) SIM card in USA, you will experience a very nasty sticker shock – I have heard of people being charged literally hundreds of dollars per day just because they forgot to turn off “data roaming” on their cell phones.
Anyway – here is a great solution which we stumbled upon when renting a car at Hertz. I ordered the car with GPS, and we were given a little bag which turned out to contain a Samsung Note with TravelTab. The GPS was excellent, clear and crisp and very good at choosing a fast route around traffic.
But the real boon came with we investigated the device a bit further and found that it a) could make telephone calls (standard price per minute for a call from your foreign cell phone is up to $2 per minute) and, best of all, a WiFi spot. Turn it on, and we had flawless WiFi (for up to 5 devices) in the car as we were bouncing down the highway (the car was a GMC Terrain, quite a contrast from the Tesla I have gotten used to.)
The price for the TravelTab was, I think, around $10/day, definitely worth it for the WiFi alone. Highly recommended!
I have always recommended my friends to finish their trips to Boston by a) checking into Logan at least 3 hours before the plane leaves, b) trek over to terminal C (from the international terminal E), and c) feast on excellent seafood at Legal Seafood at that very terminal.
After having spent a great two weeks in Boston, we set this script in motion, only to find that Legal Seafood, unfortunately, has moved their restaurant to terminal B – inside security. We morosely trotted back to terminal E, to see whether it was possible to find something good to eat there.
Well, what is there is essentially a tourist scam: Durgin Park, a “Yankee cooking” restaurant, featuring overpriced food ($26.95 for a tiny lobster roll, a sip of chowder, and some fries. I mean, what? For those prices I could go to Oslo and eat.) After standing in line for 20 minutes and waiting at the table for 20 minutes, a friendly but extremely overworked waitress served our food, which was adequate (we avoided the seafood, had steak, chicken salad, those kinds of things.) The bill came to 83 and change for a two chicken salads and a rudimentary steak, and three draft beers. For that kind of money I would eat lobster and have wine at Legal. Add to this that the restaurant was head-achingly noisy.
The problem here is that the crappy service at terminal E leaves customers with a bad memory as they leave Boston. Next time, we will pack food or eat at a restaurant before check-in (or, even better, check in four hours early and go to Legal Harborside). The trouble with airport restaurants is that you have a captive audience. Terminal E is understaffed, overcrowded, noisy and just tiresome. The WiFi is some ad-supported junk that just doesn’t work.
One positive experience: The wine bar Vino Volo, which is relatively (and that is relatively) quiet, prices are airport high but not insane, the staff is friendly and the WiFi really works. So, get your food before you come to the airport, and send yourself off to Europe with a nice Malbec.
As for Durgin Park – well, it is a tourist trap in Boston, and it is close to extortion at Logan. Truly something whoever is in charge of the customer experience at Logan needs to do something about. How about throwing them out and offering the concession to Legal Seafood?
I am currently back in Boston, have visited my friends at MIT and will go to a reunion at HBS tomorrow. The weather has been great and it is just fun to visit old friends again.
And yesterday I had to take the 77 bus (Arlington Heights) from Harvard Square’s underground bus stop, an area seemingly designed to put people off public transportation. The MBTA uses old diesel buses (I think they literally are the same ones I took in the early nineties as a grad student, at least they don’t seem to have upgraded the technology) and the noise level is fantastic.
So, as I was waiting for the bus, I decided to try out my newly acquired earbuds, plugged them into my iPhone, turned on Spotify and selected Steely Dan’s Babylon Sisters. The noise instantly disappeared, and Steely Dan’s perfectly engineered music sounded not unlike it would in a perfect environment.
And here is the catch: When the bus finally arrived, I looked at it driving up and for a fleeting second thought “Hey – they made them electrical now!” Then, of course, better judgement prevailed, but as a testament to the noise cancelling qualities of the earbuds, it says something.
New England has just had a snowstorm, predicted to be of historic proportions, but eventually ending up, as always, as nothing much, except a staggeringly incompetent number of people (400,000 or so in Massachusetts alone) losing power. As a Norwegian currently in Oslo (but with nine winters in Boston (Arlington and Brookline)): New England snowstorms, despite their ferocity, are not aberrations of nature but a failure to prepare a systemic level.
It is just snow. Not a lot (well, a lot, but for a short time, as illustrated by the photo.) It shows up fast, and leaves again equally fast. It doesn’t stay the whole winter, from November until March, as it does here in the south (get it – south!) of Norway.
The fact that New England panics every time there is a flurry is due to lack of preparedness at the infrastructure level. In most of Norway power and telephone lines are underground, it is illegal not to have snow tires on your car after December 1st or thereabouts (if you drive in the snow with regular tires and go in the ditch, you are fined quite severely) and during my own and my children’s school days we have never had a snow day or any other interruption due to the weather (and we have plenty of weather). In Norway you cannot get a driver’s license without passing a driving-on-slick-surface course. The Oslo subway (or buses – what kind of drivers to you have?) has never been closed due to snow. I have never been to the store to stock up on batteries and water. (I have been to the gas station to buy gas for the snow blower ahead of a storm, though.) Our airport does not close down for snow, though there can be delays. In New England, there are public service announcements (from Thomas Menino’s office) saying “When clearing motor vehicles, remove snow around the muffler/exhaust system before starting the car”. How stupid can you get?
I just can’t get used to the New England oh-my-God-here-it-comes-again-flip-to-channel-5 attitude. I attribute this to lack of far-sightedness in planning – rather than taking the cost of modernizing the power grid and change the telephone lines to fiber all around, incrementalism wins. (Then again, I have found myself being the only driver (in a VW Vanagon with worn tires) on the 128, and the only person coming in to work (in a Chevy Caprice).) Instead of driving responsibly you salt the roads until they are white and dogs can’t go out due to the pain the salt inflicts on their paws. Instead of having a public works division outfitted to fix things with proper equipment you resort to an army of contractors with F-250s barging out to power-plow 2 inches of wet snow that will disappear at 9am the next day anyway, just to get paid.
I drove (with wife and three kids) from Florida to MA during the blizzard of 96, which closed down NY and NJ. In Georgia, we saw 200 cars in the ditch, including an 18-wheeler cab-up in a tree. It looked like an 8-year old had emptied out his toy car crate. On an Interstate in North Carolina I saw a police cruiser (who had tried to cross from one direction to the other via those little police-only paths) nosed into and completely buried a six-foot pile, the blue lights forlornly spinning through the snow. Driving around Richmond, I saw people pass me doing 75 in their Cherokees on the highway, only to see them buried in a drift two miles later. In Washington (Metro population 5.6m, number of snowplows: 1) I drove around (in a Dodge Caravan with a not very advanced AWD system) a Chevy Suburban spinning on all four wheels as the owner moronically pumped the gas pedal. (Incidentally, the only institution open was the Norwegian embassy, whose employees arrived on cross-country skis.) When we got to the NJ border, we were stopped, as the turnpike was closed. I stupidly tried to argue with the cop that I was Norwegian, had 4WD, and was a former instructor in 4WD driving in the Norwegian army, that driving in the snow was easy if you went slowly and gently. He was, needless to say, not swayed. We spent the night in a motel.
Why doesn’t New England harden the grid and communications systems, put winter tires on school buses, mandate winter tires in snowy conditions, and just get rid of this stupid idea of snow days? It is winter, it happens almost every year. It is just something to get used to, minimize the consequences of and then get on with a productive life.
On the other hand, most Americans work way too much, so perhaps it is just nature’s way of giving you a much-needed break. In the meantime, you are providing quite the entertainment at Norwegian TV, for which I suppose I should be thankful.
Update Feb. 13: Somewhat related, here is an infographic (from Curtis Whaley via Boingboing) on how to walk on ice. Put on your tailcoats and waddle away…:
Today I am in Barcelona, to give a talk. the plane was very crowded, so little sleep, and consequently, jet lag city. Then it is nice to listen to something relaxed and drawn out – such as this Bruce Springsteen concert clip, from 2009:
Or, even better, this jazzy version of “The River”:
One of the pleasures of living in Boston and having a dance-interested daughter is that you get to see Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Highly recommended.
(This post is irregularly updated – a Norwegian version is also available.)
I have lived in the Boston area for about eight years altogether, not counting frequent shorter visits. Since there are many universities and conferences in that part of the world, I am often asked by colleagues and others what they should do when they are in Boston. This is a list of my personal recommendations. Note that these are my personal favorites – your mileage may vary.
I will start at Harvard Square, not really Boston but in neighboring Cambridge. The Square is in the middle of the constantly expanding Harvard Campus and is one of my favorite places – though, as a slew of critics like to point out, it has become less personal and more mall-like over the years. I agree, but still like it.
Before bookstores go the way of video rentals: Take a deep dive into The Harvard COOP Bookstore (the large and “official” university bookstore) or the Harvard Bookstore (my favorite, an independent bookstore with great selection, competent staff and a great used book basement) Spend time browsing (nobody will bother you) and wearing down your credit card.
Amble around the Harvard Yard, and, if you want to see what an unlimited lawn care budget can do, the Harvard Business School.
Have a burger at Mr. Bartley’s Gourmet Burger Cottage (right next to the Harvard Bookstore.) No alcohol, but great lemonade, crispy onion rings and a huge selection of excellent burgers. Cash only, noise level can be high. If you are alone, ask for a seat in front of the kitchen – great entertainment! Have a frappe for dessert, if you can manage.
Buy Harvard paraphernalia for the kids and people back home at the COOP (cheap and good by Norwegian standards)
Have a coffee at Peet’s Coffee (worn locales but good coffee) at Brattle Square. This is the place to bring your newly purchased stacks of books and dig into them without feeling awkward.
Bring a bunch of friends and have a Tex-Mex dinner with much shouting and joking at the Border Cafe (which, unfortunately, have stopped serving John Steinbeck’s favorite Bohemia beer). The bar here is also good, try a Marguerita as an aperitif. No reservations, expect some wait.
You can take the T (i.e, tube or underground) to MIT/Kendall Square, where you can
(nerd alert!) visit the MIT Press bookstore (not to be confused with MIT’s branch of the COOP, which is on the other side of the street.) MIT Press Bookstore is tiny and on the right side of the street when you look towards Boston, at Kendall Square. (Not that the MIT Coop is bad, that’s where you get your MIT souvenirs).
Take a tour of MIT (in my opinion, MIT’s tours are better than Harvard’s) – they are free and start at 11am and 3pm every day. MIT has lots of history, the tour includes strobe light demonstrations and many tales of student hacks. The architecture is also interesting – pictured is the Stata Center.
In Boston proper, you could
Start at the Mass General T stop and amble along Charles Street, with interesting stores and nice little coffee houses. Eventually, you will get to the Boston Public Garden, where you can admire the duckling sculptures and, in the summer, take a ride on a Swan boat. At the other end of the park you will find …
…Newbury Street, Boston’s place for upscale shopping and showing off. Brand stores, of course, but on a Saturday this is where you see the beautiful people (many of them rich Eurotrash students from BU) ritzing down the street. Have a drink at Joe’s Bar (a chain restaurant, but the location is great.) If you want to do more shopping, swing south to Copley Place. If not, continue the amble down to the end of Newbury street and have a beer at The Other Side, a really great brewpub/café.
Stay away from Cheers, a bar that from the outside looks like the TV series. There are plenty of nice bars (especially Irish-looking pubs) down around Quincy Market – but be warned, this place is the 7th most visited tourist attraction in the USA and prices and milieu reflect it.
Have dinner in North End, the Italian district. Lots of good restaurants along Hannover Street and in the side streets. (My favorite is Gennaro’s at North Square). Cannoli for dessert is obligatory!
Have seafood at the Union Oyster House, USA’s second oldest continuously operating restaurant. It is regarded as a bit of a tourist trap by the locals, but it has been a huge hit with anyone from abroad I have taken there.
If you can get tickets, Boston has good teams in the four main US sports: Basket (Celtics), baseball (Red Sox at legendary Fenway Park), football (New England Patriots) and ice hockey (Boston Bruins).
If you can get someone to lend you a bicycle, bike up and down the Charles River, past MIT, Harvard and Boston University.
Walk around and explore – Boston is a city of culture, with interesting stores and restaurants. A car is not necessary. It is very safe – there are a few dodgy areas, but they are out of the tourists’ way, for the most part.
Outside Boston (mostly requires a car, easily rented):
Visit Concord, have lunch at the Concord Inn and take a walk around Walden Pond (Where Thoreau wrote his book). Or rent a canoe at the South Bridge Boathouse and go for a paddle on the Concord River (fantastic in the Fall, with colors you can only see in New England.)
Go to Marblehead for an ice cream, a stroll along the harbor, and some seafood.
If you have a short weekend or a long day, drive (or take the fast ferry) to Cape Cod, visit Provincetown (“P-town”, if you want to sound local) at the tip of the peninsula. P-town is also the gay capital of eastern US, and sitting at a cafe and watching all the gay couples walking up and down the main street on a Sunday can be quite entertaining – hetero middle-aged couples sometimes dress alike, but gay middle-aged couples take it to a new level. And the tower (pictured) is actually quite fun to climb.
If shopping is your thing, drive to Wrentham Village outlet mall– designer clothing, shoes and sports equipment at very low prices, 45 minutes from Boston. My trick is to position myself in the bar at Ruby Tuesday after I am done (they have big screens with sports) and take the job at keeper of the goods the family/entourage bring in.
If you have an oval weekend: Go to Marthas Vineyard or Nantucket. Needs a bit of planning, and can be expensive in the tourist season. But great.
Most flights to Europe leave in the afternoon or evening. Check in three hours before the flight leaves (hence, no lines). Check-in is in terminal E, the international terminal. Then go to terminal C (long walk through corridors) and have a great seafood dinner at Legal Seafood, the best seafood chain restaurant in the USA. I recommend the lobster bake (a full lobster dinner with clams, chowder, chorizo) – but the signature dish is really the clam chowder (pronounced “chowdah”) which is great as an appetizer.
There are, of course, lots of other things to do and see, but these are some of the things I particularly like. I have deliberately not mentioned the most common tourist things (such as the Freedom Trail, the Constitution, etc.), mostly because, well, I’d rather do the things mentioned here.
One of the joys of living in Boston is the seafood, which is deliciously and not too expensively (at least by Norwegian standards) available lots of places.
This picture is from today’s dinner with the MIT CISR team, shot by my eminent colleague Martin Mocker, and, I think, accurately conveys the splendor of the “lobster bake” and my appreciation of it. A “lobster bake” is a traditional New England lobster dinner with a delicious cup of “clam chowdah” as an appetizer and a plate of littlenecks, clams, chorizo (to give the sweet seafood a little contrast), corn on the cob and, of course, a medium-sized lobster.
Note – Legal is no longer available at terminal C! Your best bet is probably to eat somewhere outside the airport… This picture is from the Legal Seafood in Kendall Square – but the most convenient location for lobster, for me at least, is the Legal Seafood restaurant in terminal C at Logan airport. Since the flights to Europe normally leave at 8-8:30 pm, my preferred way to fly is was to check in early, walk over to Terminal C, and feast on inexpensive seafood and decent local beer or a dry white wine. This frees you from the need to eat airline food and puts you in a calm and collected and rather sleepy frame of mind before taking off.
(or, why BBC should put their material on Youtube).
The future of TV is on the net. Too bad the leading TV producers don’t understand it.
This year I am living in the US, without a TV. So far I have not missed it – we have Netflix for movies and Youtube for music and clips. Having to chose your programming yourself means zero hours channelsurfing on the sofa, and a delightful lack of background noise from breakfast TV shows and similar junk.
But – what to watch when you want a little fun? For my youngest daughter (she is here in Boston to take a year of US high school) and I Friday nights have been spent in front of our nice 23 inch monitor, wathing Never Mind the Buzzcocks, a great, wild, satirical quiz show about pop music. And when I want to relax by myself, there is the unsurpassable QI, a [deeply intelligent/self-indulgingly moronic] quiz show with a pop science bent. Or I can watch some of BBCs great series, such as Stephen Fry’s programs about the English language.
Which brings me to a sad point: The channel NickFromFulham, who (assuming there is a Nick and he is from Fulham) has put up all these videos, was recently shut down from Youtube. Where should we go now for our witty and intelligent entertainment? You see, almost none of the stuff that BBC produces is viewable outside the UK, except in short snippets, on DVDs, or on the anemic BBC America channel, for which we would have to get a TV, and then put up with programs that are both delayed and also watered down in terms of swearwords, sexual and scatological references and much of the Britishness that makes Britain both British and bearable.
The funny thing is, of course, that if it wasn’t for Youtube’s technical capability and NickfromFulham’s diligent uploading and characterization, I wouldn’t know much about QI and nothing about Buzzcocks. Which makes me wonder a) what else is out there, not just in BBCland but in many TV stations around the world, and b) why the heck doesn’t BBC (and NRK, its Norwegian state-funded equivalent and all others) put their stuff out in digital format?
To the first point: I gave a talk to NRK in June, about disruption in the media industries and so on. As part of the discussion of how to strategize for the future, I urged them to fill up available spots in their many channels with stuff like QI – quality shows that have a very local appeal, but in an increasingly global world will have global appeal without sacrificing quality. When you treat your viewers as intelligent, they will act intelligently. To quote David Foster Wallace, in his his brilliant essay E Unibus Pluram:
TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.
The point being – with infinite channel capacity, you can attract a large audience, in many countries, by not pandering to the lowest common denominator. (The fact that QI is one of BBC’s most watched programs shows that the common denominator may, in fact, not be so low after all.)
The future of TV is on the net – but in order to attract people to the net, you have to release your best stuff, and gradually become the source and context of quality entertainment rather than a prison of old business models. And incidentally, slamming the door in the face of your biggest fans is not the way to go about it.
As for us? Well, my daughter is 17 and an accomplished net surfer. She can easily find and download the next episode of Buzzcocks from one of many pirate sites. Not that I like it, but what can I do? (Well, IP spoofing and going to BBC’s web site in the UK itself would be another option.) Or I can watch something else, which, of course, lowers the commercial value of all those actors and comedians participating in the things I would like to see.
Incidentally, here is one of the most watched Norwegian skits on Youtube. Let’s see if you understand it, even if it is in Norwegian (with subtitles):
This is an slight update of something I wrote in 2006, adding a few points and incorporating some of the (very good) comments from back then. [Notes: Small updates April 25, 2014. Some of the examples are getting a bit long in the tooth (incidentally, another expression that doesn’t travel well.)]
Here are some pointers for US management speakers wanting to avoid the most obvious pitfalls when visiting Scandinavia (or even Europe in general), in no particular order:
Don’t blindly use big-name US companies (Walmart, General Motors, General Electric) as examples without explaining who they are. Outside top management echelons, consulting companies and business schools faculties, most people will only know their brand names (incidentally, for GM in Scandinavia, that is largely Opel, in the UK, Vauxhall) and not the companies themselves. Some well known US companies frequently used as management examples (Nordstrom, Verizon, Comcast, Best Buy, AT&T, USAA, Sears, Netflix) do not operate outside the US, at least not with their normal brand names and standard business processes.)
Never use the US mobile telecommunications industry as an example of something good or advanced (or, at least, be very careful). Mobile communications in Scandinavia (and Europe) generally outshines the US mobile phone industry – you can essentially get into your car in Northern Norway and drive to Rome while continually being on your cellphone. Try that in the US. (This comparison isn’t fair (and the difference is shrinking), there are many pockets of innovation in the US cellphone industry, but most people will judge the industry in terms of connectivity and coverage when they go to the US themselves.)
Be very careful about using banking examples – US banking is seen as very backward by Europeans, because of the continued use of paper checks, something that disappeared in the 1980s and 90s in Europe. In reality, the US banking industry probably leads the world in technical innovations, but services between banks are not nearly as integrated as in Europe – and therefore are seen as backward. Plus, European banks have a wider range of services in the payment area – services that credit card companies and PayPal do in the US.
The same goes for airlines and trains – most Europeans don’t understand that the US railroad industry – in my opinion second to none in the world – transports goods, not people. And Europeans certainly don’t like US airlines. Not that most Americans do, either. (Yes, I know much of this has to do with government subsidies and lack of competition. But impressions are formed from actual use.)
Be careful that you don’t talk about Europe as a single country like the USA. There is much more variation between countries in Europe than between states in the US – language, history, culture, attitudes, economics, etc. Check each country on Wikipedia (particularly economics if you are speaking to a business audience) and make sure you know which country you’re in (and where your audience is from..)
Don’t refer to going to church (for example, refer to someone as “we belong to the same church” or similar). In Scandinavia less than 10% of the population goes to church regularly, and religion is a very personal thing. Openly referring to church will make many in the audience think you belong to some strange cult.
In general, Europeans are less inhibited in the off-color joke department than Americans – not that it takes much – but there is considerable geographical variation. However, this apparent frivolity comes with subtle pitfalls: If you tell something that can be construed as demeaning to women, for instance, it will fall very flat even in an all-male audience. The telling of off-color jokes should not be attempted unless you really know your audience (or if you possess an English accent more pronounced than Stephen Fry’s.)
In general, Scandinavian business people are less formally dressed than Americans during daytime, but they dress up (or keep their business suits) for dinner. Quite the opposite from the US, so don’t change into jeans for that after-work bash. Unless you work in software, which is thoroughly Americanized. (This is changing – if in doubt, ask. Precede it with an “In the US we do this, what’s the custom here?”)
No US-only sports metaphors! (Which, incidentally, for most US speakers will mean no sports metaphors.) Though Europeans know what American football, baseball and basketball is (especially basketball, NBA has quite a following via cable and Internet), don’t rely on them to know them well enough to understand individual terms such as touch-down, loaded bases or rebound (though they might understand “slam-dunk” from context.) So, unless you are thoroughly familiar with soccer, handball, cricket (UK only) or – in Scandinavia – cross-country skiing, ski jumping or biathlon, don’t use sports metaphors. They simply are not used as much in Europe as in the USA.
Be careful about Star Trek and Star Wars and various references associated with US TV series – they may be known, but check that first (and this is changing). In the UK, the sci-fi cultural peg of choice is Dr. Who. Good luck to you.
Some opinions seen as merely “conservative” in the US are considered fascistic or simply crazy in most of Europe. The “right to carry arms”, anti-abortionist sentiments, or religiously based politics is viewed with distaste, if not horror, by most Europeans. Mentioning that you are a member of the NRA will (for those in the audience who knows what that is) position you as a person with a frighteningly loose grip on reality. (Nevertheless, some countries in Europe have more gun ownership than in the USA, but we are talking perceptions here.)
Never suggest union-busting or de-unionization or trying to stop people from forming unions as a strategy. It is illegal, against the culture, and against anything considered good management by almost every Scandinavian manager. In most companies in Scandinavia, relations with unions are cordial, collaborative and valued.
By the same token, saying that you should fire large groups of people (or, indeed, individuals) very often just isn’t practical advice. In most of Europe, you formally cannot fire people unless they are doing something seriously illegal or are underperforming by a really large margin. Moreover, you have to follow a lot of very time-consuming, legalistic procedures before you can get there. You simply have to work with people to a much larger degree. (And you may think it is stupid and limiting, but that is the way it is.)
Be a bit careful about naming prominent people as “friends” and referring to them by their first names. In Scandinavia, “friend” implies a fairly high level of intimacy, usually reserved for the private sphere – and then, you probably wouldn’t refer to them in a management speech. “Warren Buffett is a friend of mine, and…” or “As Steve Ballmer said the last time we met…” will tend to make you look boastful and leave people unimpressed – unless you can show that your conversation has made them change their behavior and that you really have influence.
The terms “corporate”, “company”, “enterprise”, “division” and SBU have fairly precise definitions in the US. Not so in Europe. Most Europeans do not understand the difference between Vice Presidents and Directors – as a consequence, most people called Directors (on their English-language business card) in Europe are actually VPs. The guy with the title “Director” might just be CEO. Or just a director.
Don’t expect to score points by mentioning your distant Norwegian ancestry (or even worse, Swedish when in Norway – ref. the Europe-is-not-one-country bullet). For some reason, this does not build much “common ground” with Norwegians. You can score points on your Nordic ancestry if you manage to be specific and show some actual knowledge, but the “my great grandfather migrated from Wormland, and it feels great to be back…” will just make you look out of touch.
The following concepts are not understood by most Norwegians: Gallons, feet, miles, mph, degrees Fahrenheit, Thanksgiving, the distinction between “state” and “federal”, TiVo, “right on red”. “Leverage” is a rather peculiar word: It has no good definition in Scandinavian languages (and it took me years to understand it and use it properly). The same with “ubiquitous” – so if you say “ubiquitous leverage”, nobody will have any idea what you are talking about. Not even you, methinks.
And there you are. All this being said, you will probably be fine even if you break a few of these. We are after all, quite forgiving and will refrain from complaining. Instead, you’ll just be branded an American, and your opinions and suggestions filtered a bit…
(For suggestions or comments, well, that’s what the comment field is about!)
I am back in Shanghai, teaching a four day MBA module, with the same limitations of Internet access as the last time (though it seems they have gotten around to blocking Google Video by now). It is raining, I am 7 hours jet lagged, but there is consolation in having sampled W. Brian Arthur’s beautifully written The Nature of Technology on the way down. (More to come on that later, I will make at least portions of it compulsory reading for my Technology Strategy students..)
Oh well, back to research reports (of the administrative kind) and course preparation…
Currently I am sleepless in a hotel in Shanghai, where I am teaching a four-day module on IT and technology management at the NSM-Fudan MBA program the Fudan University School of Business. I do this about twice a year.
Every time I am here, I try to figure out what websites are blocked by the "great Internet wall". It differs from time to time, and between the hotel and the university. Currently, I cannot get to
Youtube (but Google Video is available, can’t show Youtube videos, though)
Twitter
Facebook (but Gmail works fine)
Bloglines
various blogs, including anything from Blogger.com og Blogspot.com
bit.ly and other redirectors/URL shorteners
On the other hand, Wikipedia is available, as are all the big news services. It seems self-publishing is seen as more dangerous than anything hewing to a more traditional process. Or, rather, sites where you can self-publish in Chinese, outside of China.
I am writing this from a business class seat between Frankfurt and Shanghai, which I cannot, in all fairness, describe as an altogether frightful experience, in between good red wine, awful whisky (unfinished), reading Alfred Chandler’s very enjoyable Strategy and Structure (I am teaching a session on it mid-January) and Nassim Taleb’s equally enjoyable The Black Swan at the same time.
Another thing they have in business class is movies – a terrifyingly bland selection, which led me to choose Love Actually, something of a family tradition. Only, this was is the airplane version, which is edited for offensive content. This turns out to be most of the interesting dialogue and quite a lot of the story. Not only is all of the glorious swearing (and lots of other colorful language) missing, but one of the subplots (involving two stand-in actors performing an ornate sex scene on a film set while conducting a very bashful courtship.) Not to mention that even "complicated" words are edited out, and whole scenes missing.
I think this kind of ham-fisted sanitization is a particular problem for English comedies – they enjoy their swearing and sexual innuendos and perform them with panache and inventiveness. The watered-down and sensibility-tested version just doesn’t wash at all.
(Incidentally, in the screenplay to Four weddings and a funeral, Richard Curtis talks about how having to shoot the airline version of his comedies brought even more swearing into the world, as the director invariably had to be reminded after finally completing a long series of takes of a complicated scene that they now had to do it all over again for the airline version.)
Which leads me to think – I have watched a lot of movies on airplanes (my main source, come to think of it) – what have I missed? Perhaps all those bland comedies and dramas actually were a lot better than I thought?
Since everyone else has an opinion on this, I’ll make it brief: Three ways to vastly improve the US economy:
Federal gas tax. The fuel-efficiency rules recently put in place will spawn lots of innovation into ways to get around them (engine upgrade kits, anyone?). A federal gas tax is easy to apply, forces all automakers to do something with their engines, reduces the demand for transportation (hence, stimulates local production) and reduces dependence on foreign oil and foreign loans.
Federal calorie tax, to apply not just to sugar-sweetened drinks (again, something that encourages all kinds of fiddling), but to any high-caloric, non-nutritional food substance, including high-fructose corn syrup. America is dangerously overweight, and one reason is that good food is expensive and junk food is not only cheap, but in many cases subsidized. Taxing to reduce the consumption of obviously bad and unnecessary stuff makes all kinds of sense. I am less certain whether it makes sense to subsidize the good stuff – too much bureaucracy, and too many discussions.
Encourage house-buying immigrants. Granting VISAs to a million families or two, provided they buy a house, should be a much needed shot in the arm. The USA is not even close to being overpopulated, and a fresh new crop of resourceful immigrants is just what the doctor might order. Get to it.
There, that was easy. The rest is a small matter of implementation, which I will leave as an exercise for the reader.
And, as Piet Hein said, if you take humor only for laughter and seriousness only seriously, you have misunderstood both….
While I am in the States, my family sends me orders for various items they would like me to bring back. Since I have three daughters and a rather dishy wife, that means shopping in places such as Abercrombie & Fitch, which are mall rat havens with pounding music, posters of meticulously depilated underage models artfully grabbing their crotches, and clusters of of sweet young things standing around staring into space, occasionally shouting “What?”. My standard approach is to bring a netbook or some printouts and convince one of these creatures to go get the stuff for me.
Usually this works out to everyone’s satisfaction, but not today. I found myself in the Abercrombie & Fitch store next to Faneuil Hall in Boston, looking for a specific top (pictured) in a specific size. The store had only one left, which they refused to sell to me. When I asked why, the salesperson (and, eventually, the store manager) explained to me that it was the last one in the store and belonged to the “Visual Team”, apparently an organizational entity with immense powers. They did offer to check whether it would be available in another store. The idea that they sell me their piece and get a new one from another store apparently did not occur to them.
A few years ago this would have occasioned some rather sarcastic attempts by yours truly to explain the lack of basic business instinct in this policy, but with advancing years I have come to understand that discussing anything with “managers” (who manage without authority, an interesting concept) is like hunting dairy cows with a scoped rifle, to steal a phrase from P. J. O’Rourke. So I shook my head and left.
As for the store policy, I just can’t get it: There is a recession, and retail is suffering along with everyone else. Abercrombie’s revenues are stagnating and their stock is down there with the rest of the market. And here I am, a customer wanting to buy a product they have, and rather than sell it to me they instead saddle me down with their own bureaucracy.
Someone once said that in all companies, we start out working for the customer and end up working for the CFO. In Abercrombie they work for the Visual Team – it clearly is more important how the store looks than whether any sales take place there. I don’t get it. But then again, I am just a lowly business school professor who thought selling stuff was what stores did.
I must be getting old. And sadly lacking in the depilation department.
The 
The 
The 
Explore the fjord – Oslo is built around the fjord, and if you can get on a boat – even just taking a summer ferry out to some of the islands – by all means do it. (I live on an island, perhaps I am a bit partial here.) In later years, the city has tried to make the shoreline available for walking (a project called 
Explore Oslo by bike or foot. The 
Extremely important warning: In addition to the weather and clothing issue mentioned above, Norwegian culture is fundamentally built on the principle that you, yourself, and nobody else, is responsible for being knowledgeable and physically capable of doing whatever you set out doing. Norwegians do not believe in protecting people against their own stupidity. (And forget about suing anyone, you’ll be laughed out of court.)
Mountaineering is great, but where to go if you don’t have much time? Some suggestions from Jotunheimen (but there are thousands of others):
Norwegians are rather reserved and have a fairly expansive sense of personal space. When the other people at the bus stop are keeping their distance to you, it has nothing to do with you. It’s them. (See The 
This is just about the 15th time I teach in China, all of it in cooperation with Fudan University, which gives me some cause to reflect on how teaching in China has changed – all seen from my rather narrow perspective, of course, but still. Just as the Shanghai Bund view has changed (the pictures are from 1990 to 2010) so have the participants, contents and business environment of my courses.
But the real boon came with we investigated the device a bit further and found that it a) could make telephone calls (standard price per minute for a call from your foreign cell phone is up to $2 per minute) and, best of all, a WiFi spot. Turn it on, and we had flawless WiFi (for up to 5 devices) in the car as we were bouncing down the highway (the car was a GMC Terrain, quite a contrast from the 
(or, rather, earbuds) which are rather impressive. I already have the 
and love them for air travel, but the earbuds can be used in many more circumstances.
New England has just had a snowstorm, predicted to be of historic proportions, but eventually ending up, as always, as nothing much, except a staggeringly incompetent number of people (400,000 or so in Massachusetts alone) losing power. As a Norwegian currently in Oslo (but with nine winters in Boston (Arlington and Brookline)): New England snowstorms, despite their ferocity, are not aberrations of nature but a failure to prepare a systemic level. 
The fact that New England panics every time there is a flurry is due to lack of preparedness at the infrastructure level. In most of Norway power and telephone lines are underground, it is illegal not to have snow tires on your car after December 1st or thereabouts (if you drive in the snow with regular tires and go in the ditch, you are fined quite severely) and during my own and my children’s school days we have never had a snow day or any other interruption due to the weather (and we have plenty of weather). In Norway you cannot get a driver’s license without passing a driving-on-slick-surface course. The Oslo subway (or buses – what kind of drivers to you have?) has never been closed due to snow. I have never been to the store to stock up on batteries and water. (I have been to the gas station to buy gas for the snow blower ahead of a storm, though.) Our airport does not close down for snow, though there can be delays. In New England, there are public service announcements (from Thomas Menino’s office) saying “When clearing motor vehicles, remove snow around the muffler/exhaust system before starting the car”. How stupid can you get? 
I just can’t get used to the New England oh-my-God-here-it-comes-again-flip-to-channel-5 attitude. I attribute this to lack of far-sightedness in planning – rather than taking the cost of modernizing the power grid and change the telephone lines to fiber all around, incrementalism wins. (Then again, I have found myself being the only driver (in a VW Vanagon with worn tires) on the 128, and the only person coming in to work (in a Chevy Caprice).) Instead of driving responsibly you salt the roads until they are white and dogs can’t go out due to the pain the salt inflicts on their paws. Instead of having a public works division outfitted to fix things with proper equipment you resort to an army of contractors with F-250s barging out to power-plow 2 inches of wet snow that will disappear at 9am the next day anyway, just to get paid. 
Visit the “
(nerd alert!) visit the 
…
Lastly, my favorite way to end my stay in Boston [NOTE: 
Applied Abstractions 