For the last three weeks or so, I’ve been living in Oslo, Norway. I’ll be here for a bit, working for a large TLA (three-letter acronym) company. Being a foreigner in Norway, it is perhaps unsurprising that the TLA has just a little bit to do with this fair country’s crown jewels, fish oil and gas.
It has been interesting to note the differences in this experience and the one I had a few years ago when I upped and moved to Germany. I expect the site will take on a bit more of a personal nature, as I log my encounters, adventures and assorted cultural clashes. It’s always sad to leave your ‘home’ city, and the old adage, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” proved correct, both for Brisbane as well as people.
But moving to a foreign city is such a great experience. Hard-going at times, but overall, a really worthwhile thing. I have a theory that the reward/difficulty has a relation with the culture shift between your home and host cities. Moving from say Brisbane to Sydney, not too difficult, nothing radically rewarding. Moving to London, a little more difficult, but essentially the same culture and language, but a little more of a payoff. Moving to Italy, different language, different culture, more of a challenge more of a payoff. Moving to China, completely different language, script, culture – toughest of all, but potentially the most rewarding?
I suppose another parameter in this theory needs to be infrastructure. Moving to a village in remote China where there is no-one within 500 kms who speaks English would undoubtedly be harder than moving to Beijing. Likewise, a country which is immigration friendly has many services which new immigrants can take advantage of, such as native-language publications, specialised support personnel and so on. Here in Oslo for example, there’s the recently established Service Center for Foreign Workers, which streamlines the paperwork very dramatically, even if it usually resembles a Polish plumbers convention. One place to go to fill out all the paperwork needed, very friendly staff, and the imposed order of the ubiquitous Norwegian ‘take a number and sit quietly until its called’ system.
