You know you’ve been too long in Norway when…

• You associate warm rice porridge with Saturday and xmas eve.
   
• It seems sensible that the age limit at Oslo night clubs is 23 or 25.
   
• You find yourself debating the politics of Jens Stoltenberg.
   
• You think there are no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.
   
• It seems nice to spend a week in a small wooden cottage up in the mountains, with no running water and no electricity.
   
• You think cross-country skiing is the only real skiing.
   
• You know at least five different words describing different kinds of snow.
   
• The first thing you do on entering a bank/post office/pharmacy etc. is look for the queue number machine.
   
• You accept that you will have to queue to take a queue number.
   
• A sharp intake of breath has become part of your active vocabulary.
   
• You associate Friday afternoon with a trip to Vinmonopolet (State wine monopoly).
   
• You think nothing of paying NOK 65 (US$ 13) for a bottle of ‘cheap’ wine at Vinmonopolet.
   
• Your native language has seriously deteriorated: you “eat medicine” and “go and lay yourself”.
   
• You rummage through your plastic bottles collection to see which ones you should keep to take to the store and which can be sacrificed to the recycle center.
   
• It’s acceptable to eat lunch at 11am and dinner at 3pm.
   
• Your front door step is beginning to resemble a shoe shop.
   
• When a stranger on the street smiles at you, you assume that:
  1. he is drunk;
      
  2. he is insane;
      
  3. he is American;
      
  4. he is all of the above.
      
• The reason you take the ferry to Denmark is:
  1. duty free vodka
      
  2. duty free beer
      
  3. to party
      
• Silence is fun. (!!!)
   
• The only reason for getting of the boat in Copenhagen is to eat pizza.
   
• It no longer seems excessive to spend NOK 500 (US$ 80!) on alcohol in a single night.
   
• You care who wins the “Hvem fanger sommerens største fisk” contest.
   
• Your old habit of being “fashionably late” is no longer acceptable.
   
• You know that “religious holiday” means “let’s get pissed”.
   
• You enjoy the taste of lutefisk.
   
• You use mmmm as a conversation filler.
   
• An outside temperature of 9C is mild (in mid June).
   
• You wear sandals with socks.
   
• You have only two facial expressions, smiling or blank.
   
• You think riding a racing bike in the snow is a perfectly sensible thing to do (with or without snow tires).
   

Written by persons unknown, in a previous millennium.