Oslo vs Trondheim

It's time for another duel between Oslo and Trondheim. Last time, Trondheim won. This time I will focus on the important areas of collective transport and cross country skiing.

Collective transport system:

Subway:
Oslo has a tube. It works so well you think it's a joke. Come on, people, you are public employees, you can't possible get fired, and you practically don't get paid. In theory, presented by every conservative politician from here to Inner Tasmania, you should suck at what you do, so why don't you? What am I not getting here?

Trondheim do not have a tube. The city of Trondheim was buildt in the same way men place themselves in front of a public urinal, with the biggest possible distance to the neighbors. There can be several reasons for such behavior, but since you don't see huge sexual organs on the roofs of all houses in Trondheim, I guess we just are shy people. This means bigger distances and higher costs for collective transport, so we can't afford a tube.

Tram (Trikk):
Oslo has several trams. They work just as well as the tube.

Trondheim used to have tram. Then the politicians bought a lot of trams with the wrong distance between the wheels. This fuck-up blew the tram budget. They should have concluded that local politicians are too expencive, but they concluded that tram was too expensive, and put asfalt in the rails. Then they kept on removing the asfalt and put it back again as the city goverment power shifted. I might have the details wrong, but the fact is that the last fifty years, just mentioning the word tram has made Trondheim politician brains melt and pour out of the ears.

Bus:
Oslo has bus. It works.

Trondheim has bus too. As the historic documentary movie 'Død Snø' proves, there was a lot of nazi zombies in Norway after the war. In the north, the zombies just attacked and killed people, as shown in the documentary. But in Trondheim they were more subtle. They grounded the bus company Trondheim Torturselskap (TT), officially known as Trondheim Trafikkselskap or Team Trafikk, which has poured the most gruesome terror over the locals for decades.

Cross Country skiing:

It's a strange thing about cross country skiing. A lot of people prefer to put vax under the skies and then move in so-called 'classic' or diagonal style. They pay to fuck up the gliding abilities of their skies. You don't see ineffective styles like sax-style high jumping or skijumping with parallell skies anymore, but people still prefer ineffective skiing. It's like if drivers still should prefer T-fords, it's a more expensive way to move slower.

I'm sane(!), so I skate. In the forests of Trondheim, you can skate easy everywhere. The tracks are as wide as american highways.

In the forests of Oslo, the tracks are narrower, the city has officially only one skating track. If you follow it, it means you have to go the same way back. It makes the skier think, I've been here before, I went in the other direction ten minutes ago, and now I just go back, whats the point of this? Who are we mad creatures, whats the point of existense, where is my grandma's gun, and so on. Trust me. You don't want a skier to go philosophical.

Both Trondheim and Oslo has a lot of skitracks. Trondheim uses huge maps and mark tracks in different colors to help people navigate around. Oslo uses few maps and just one color. Instead they use signs. The signs points out the directions and says things like 'Kikut 9', meaning 9 kilometers to Kikut. You move a kilometer, find a 'Kikut 8,5', move another kilometer, find a 'Kikut 9'. Then, a kilometer later, 'Kikut 8', and then another 'Kikut 9'. After fighting for hours in this maze, if you're lucky, you can get it down to 'Kikut 5'. Sooner or later you understand that there is no Kikut, they are just messing with your head. So you change destination to Sognsvann, which you know exists. You find a 'Sognsvann 5'-sign, follow the direction a kilometer, and, perfectly logically, you find the sign with 'Sognsvann 4'. Not equally logically, this sign points in the very direction you came from. You wear skate skies, the tracks are too narrow for you, the signs sends you into nasty deep snow tracks that just leads you back to where you came from, dark clouds gather inside you, you feel the urge for human flesh.

Conclution: Cross country skating in Oslo both makes you doubt in the point of existing and makes you want to murder someone. If they find that the school massacres in Finland, USA and Germany all were committed by kids who once had been skiing in Oslo, I won't be too surprised.

Cross country:
The skitracks in Trondheim are better than in Falun, Lahti, and any other place in the world.
The skitracks in Oslo are better than in Ouagadougou, Mogadishu and Bandar Seri Begawan.

Collective system:
Oslo: Splendid.
Trondheim: I'm not even sure they try.

The final results are 1-1. It's a draw.


Photo from my first skitrip in a decade. I started out as an old donkey thinking he was a race horse. The fun lasted in approximately 1200 meters. Here I am studying fascinating dots dancing on the inside of my eyelashes, wondering how the heck I'm going to get home again.


Both pictures are taken by my brother