I attempted a budget weekend in Europe's most expensive city. Here's what happened
Within 10 minutes of sitting down to my half-price beer at waterside Los Tacos, two separate glossy-locked men passed my lonely table and said hello. No agenda – just a bit of who's-your-football-team small talk, while actually looking me in the eye. The self-consciousness of solo travel was softened and it put a spring in my step for the night ahead.
The Post Office released its annual City Costs Barometer recently and Oslo was rated the most expensive in Europe: £636.20 for a 'short break'. Being a penniless writer, I decided to attempt a fulfilling few days in Oslo – in high-season July – on less than half that budget: just £300. I'd been meaning to kick-start some intermittent fasting anyway – it would be a great excuse to begin.
Flights with Norwegian were £76 return and accommodation at the new Citybox Oslo was £61.20 a night. Self check-in, comfy bed, right in the middle of town – zero complaints. The next non-negotiable was Oslo's wonderful City Pass. £66 for 48 hours gets your free train travel from the airport to the city centre, free boat rides, free access to 30 museums and attractions, and discounted food in certain restaurants.
A woman I met on the clean, quiet, punctual train into town tipped me off that Los Tacos was the place for cheap(er) beers before 9pm. As a nation of lushes, Norway promises financial ruin – if you get change from a tenner you're doing well. So a cool £3.92 for this pilsner was a serious win. What about food? I asked the latter of the two lads in the bar where to get a reasonably priced meal. 'McDonald's or you go hungry,' he said.
I asked him why Oslo was so expensive. 'Well, you pay what things actually cost to do properly,' as if it was blindingly obvious. But what does that mean?
Everyone knows about Norway's oil-made pension pot: at £1.3 trillion – about the same as Australia's GDP – it's the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. The corollary is high wages and pricey services. Combine that with strong unions, high taxes – particularly on the fun stuff – and an allergy to cheap foreign labour, and a £10 Heineken begins to make sense.
The new-ish Edvard Munch museum – all wonky glass and 13 storeys high; you can't miss it – is about 50 metres away and open till 9pm, so I swung by for a post-pint mooch. Three of the five existing versions of The Scream are on show, one at a time. The version you get – they differ a lot – depends on when you arrive.
A whole museum dedicated to one artist feels excessive till you realise his wonderfully macabre oeuvre is more than 1,000 strong. My don't-miss is The Kiss, where two embracing lovers' faces melt into each other. Klimt meets Dalí meets Freud. Indeed, Munch's paintings laid the groundwork for Expressionism and Symbolism, later helping to shape the dream-logic of Surrealism.
I'd left it too late for anything proper for dinner, so I walked over to the vaunted Illegal Burger in Oslo's going-out district. Anywhere else and the cook's hipster livery – snapback baseball cap; black-latex-gloves – would be semaphore for an eye-watering rip-off. And yet his award-winning cheeseburger was £11. 'Perfectly reasonable!' I bleated, remembering the £16 I'd paid for the same thing in Margate the week before. 'Yeah, it feels like the rest of the world is catching up,' he said. 'Norway doesn't feel as expensive anymore.'
I started the next day with a decent filter coffee – available everywhere for about £3, often with free refills – and a kanelboller cinnamon bun. Then it was a short cycle (Oslo Bysykkel; £6.90 for a 72-hour Discover Oslo pass) on near-empty roads to the City Hall. It is home to Oslo's only queue, but free entry and a free tour with an eccentric local make up for it. Home of the Nobel Peace Prize, this paean to Nordic Functionalism is plastered with frescoes that espouse Norway's utopian ideals: a nation choosing to benefit the collective over the individual.
I'd been advised to check out at least one of the fjord's islands, so I hopped one of the free ferries, about 100 metres from the City Hall. Alarmingly quiet with its electric motors, it took me and one other couple aboard about six minutes to dock at Hovedøya. A post-Second World War women's internment camp, it's now home to an artists collective, and happened to be exhibiting their works in what was once a munitions store and prison (free to enter).
Allemannsretten – the 'every man' law that permits people a right to roam in nature – means you can walk, respectfully, over the island in whichever way you please. Be sure to meander around the unfenced ruins of its medieval Cistercian monastery. Founded in 1147 by English monks, it was later burnt down by a pirate keen on claiming the Norwegian throne.
I considered a pit stop in the island's lovely little café, but the best waffles in town are at Haralds Vaffel in Grünerløkka (Oslo's hipster district) so I hopped back on the boat and bike for the 15-minute journey. First timers should try the 'classic': brunost (salty-sweet brown cheese), raspberry jam and sour cream. A most peculiar flavour bomb for £5.10.
The streets here – neatly fringed with pretty bars and twee clothing stores – fizzed lightly with activity and things were beginning to feel like a benevolent Truman Show scenario. 'Where are the discarded poo bags?' I wondered. 'And why do I feel so unsettlingly safe?'
There's a tourist board video titled 'Is it even a city?' that echoes this sentiment. In it, a local lad is mock-criticising Oslo for being 'too available'. 'If you don't have to stand in line for at least a couple of hours is it even worth seeing?' he complains.
I put this to the test at the city's Historical Museum, where I queued for zero minutes to ogle the world's best-preserved Viking sword. It was nice to be able to stay until exactly 5pm (closing time) instead of being passive aggressively shooed to the door at a quarter to. The weekend's best coffee was at nearby Fuglen (£3.45). And lovers of vintage Scandi interiors will swoon.
So, nature, waffles and culture complete – there's only really sauna left and the options abound. I went for fjord-side Salt (£15), 11 minutes away on a bike, where bars, low-fi DJs sets and three different sauna options make for a fun pre-dinner sweat. Sauna can be boring; this wasn't.
Dinner. Let's imagine I had some delicious Japanese-style street food from Salt for £12 and that I didn't go to Madonna (named after Munch's famous painting), where a Michelin-vibe set menu costs £45. Crab-stuffed doughnuts, oysters with jalapeño and trout roe, celeriac with almond, potato galette, lamb shoulder with romesco and a gooseberry tart with buttermilk ice cream. For £45. I had blown my budget, but it was a bargain.
I was served by co-owner Sara Johansson, previously restaurant manager at three‑Michelin‑star Maaemo (tasting menu: £175), round the corner. She and her business partners wanted to offer something akin to the same quality but for a price that her and her friends could afford.
So, did I spend more than £300? Well, maybe a bit. But I'd proven one thing beyond all doubt. One needn't have deep pockets for a perfectly agreeable weekend in Oslo. And it's soothing to know what you are spending is contributing to a system that ultimately creates a clean, functional, safe city. Shouldn't we think just a little bit more like the Norwegians?
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