I got a fine for 6,500 Kroner. That's £650. For driving at 73kph in a 50kph zone. £650! That's a bigger fine than I would have got for strangling a corgi in Britain.
So ignore that nonsense I wrote last time about social cohesion. Fuck the carrot - who on earth wants a carrot anyway - just watch out for the almighty stick ready to bludgeon your head into the tarmac. And don't even worry about the goo because the slow moving cars will be able to easily drive around.
But also forget everything you think you know about Norwegian efficiency. It's nonsense too. Just because the immigration/police/tax office isn't a grimy shithole doesn't mean information or justice is dispensed with any of the efficiency or equality you might expect from this socialist Nirvana.
Worse, it's dispensed just as lobsidedly as it would be anywhere else in the world - only the absence of shitholiness makes you think it will be fine. Then you're there in that luridly-lit pen for non-Norwegian scum-basins, for the third time in three weeks, waiting those same three hours to be told by the same cross-eyed petty bureaucrat that everything you thought you knew from your conversations last time was nonsense.
"Get in that other queue foreign scum-basin. You won't get what you want in this bread line - not with those papers. This is the line for cooking oil."
"But I need cooking oil as well."
"You'll not get your cooking oil until you can prove you have some bread. Now stand in that queue for bread, and make sure you have enough cooking oil to prove that you can fry it."
So my ID number is still pending. I am officially unofficial, and even less employable than I would be if I had my Number 6.
There are, however, upsides to this country-hopping unbelongingness amongst polities with inefficient bureaucracies. "I'd like to pay my fine," I told the police officer.
"What is your ID number?"
"I don't have one. I'm English."
"Okay. Well we can't pursue this fine then."
"Bye."
Next time: what happens when you rob a bank without an ID number.
