One thing that I’ll need when I move to Oslo is a place to stay. The embassy can help find an flat and will support me with 3000 NOK/month for living costs. I have been looking at www.hybel.no to see what prices I can expect and they are quite higher than in Aalborg. A two-room flat is more than 7000 NOK/month and a room in shared flat is from 3500 NOK/month and up. The other day a friend of mine was so kind as to share an article with me, the main point of the article is that there is a lag of housing in Oslo and that this problem will escalate the coming years to a state where a two-room flat in Oslo by 2016 will be 15.000 NOK/month. But it is not all bad news apparently the Norwegians (Danish, Norwegian) have invented a fantastic concept for study flats – flats with a servant… Unfortunately this concept has yet to be introduced in Oslo so I guess I still have to do my own grocery shopping and such. But it might be just the same since I think the price tag of 6900 NOK/month would be a little on the expensive side for me anyway. If you want to read more about the concept you can go to the website of Sorbonne the company behind the concept.
UPDATE: I just read this article today about the housing market in Oslo it is in English and touches on some of the same issues as the Norwegian article: http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/04/18/oslo-becoming-like-manhattan/
I just had a call from The Danish Embassy in Lisbon, but I told them straight away that I already accepted the offer from The Danish Embassy in Oslo. Now I am wondering what they would have asked me and if I could have gotten that internship instead. I am sure I made the right choice but I can’t help still being a bit curious…
There is no doubt that Oslo is going to be an expensive place to live, according to ECA International Oslo was in 2010 the 2nd most expensive city in the world after Tokyo. One way that this can be seen explicitly is when it comes to pizza, if you go and compare www.justeat.dk and www.justeat.no you’ll see that a pizza in Oslo is way more expensive that in Aalborg. If you want to buy a pizza in Aalborg you’ll pay around 55 DKK (7,38 Euro) but in Oslo you have to pay 130 NOK (16,66 Euro) that is more than double! I am happy that I don’t eat pizzas that often, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not in trouble a pint of beer in Oslo is unfortunately suffering from the same problem as the pizzas. On a more serious note I think that it’ll be hard to make ends meet doing my internship, I will of course get my state education grant, and with 3000 NOK (384,54 Euro) per month to help cover living cost The Danish Embassy in Oslo is one of the more generous of its kind. But with living costs so high, no time for a job and me wanting to experience Oslo/Norway something more is needed. I have already applied for a grant from “Internationaliseringspuljen” at Aalborg University which can give my about 5000 DKK (670,47 Euro). But I also need to be looking at other grants and as this story proves it is possible to gain quite a lot of money from that: (A former Danish student who managed to get nearly 100.000 DKK (13.409,38 Euro) from grants during her 5 years as a student). Fortunately I still have 11 month before I am leaving for the internship so hopefully I’ll be able to get some grant money as well.
