So, about Norway then...

The house I live in now.
See the snow on the roof??

As promised I am going to show you a few photos of where I live now and what I have done over the past few days. Don't expect too many photos though, there are only two, but I promise there will be more coming up in the next few days/weeks/months. 

So, what did I do from Wednesday onwards? On Wednesday morning I went down to work again where I was to meet a new colleague/union representative. He is actually the person who has found me my new place and was about to do a lot more for me. 

First of all he drove me to the police station where I needed to get my residency permit. I had to wait, since there were two sets of people ahead of me, but once I got to the desk, I soon had my residency permit. In the books I have it says that I need to renew it every five years, but I think recent law changes have resulted in me having a residency permit for life! In other words: I don't have to renew it, unless I leave the country for a period of more than 6 months. 

After I phoned up J, he came and picked me up and drove me to the tax office. It doubles up as a town register as well, so that was two things in one! I applied for my skattekort (tax card) and registered as a new inhabitant in Haugesund. We were then told that the social security number and tax card will take about three weeks. Which causes a few difficulties. I need to give my ssn to my boss for paycheck purposes and I need to give it to the bank in order to be able to open a bank account! So, I will have to wait three weeks before I can open an account. Ah well, I can still use my Dutch account.

From what I can gather, I will have all you can see that
has windows in

Then, yesterday morning the moving lorry from the Netherlands arrived. It should have gone to a storage facility, but it was extremely hard to agree with the storage holder about the time and in the end J stepped in again and suggested a different and free place. So, instead of the storage facility close by, my stuff is now about an hour away in a former bus garage, owned by the company and not doing much. There were a couple of things I didn't leave there though: my tv and my matresses. They are now clogging up my temporary room. Hopefully I will be able to move in tomorrow and then I think my landlord has offered me the use of his van to actually collect the things I want (Christmas stuff for example, clothes, linen, a little food and several more things)

Today I finally got a phone and even though it's only a pre-paid thing, they made an incredible fuss, even wanting to see ID! Ridiculous. Jason Bourne would have been in trouble before he had left the airport!! Anyway. This afternoon I also made an appointment with a doctor. No, nothing serious, I just need a doctor's note that I can drive: he/she will check my eyes and ears, see if I am sane enough (I guess) and then hopefully give me the note. After that I need to go back to the police and get my driver's note, which is an addition to my driver's licence and allows me to drive professionally!

In a nutshell...