A response to "I'm moving to Denmark"Dear Vice,
I'm moving (back home) to Fredrikstad!
Copenhagen might have a kebab shop called Kebabistan, but Oslo, the most expensive capital of the world, has one-upped its Scandinavian friend and launched Niga Kebab & Grill. This place is like a block away from Oslo Town Hall and it stands as a collective, "We don't fucking care whether you're from Somalia or Turkey. To us you're all the same; non-western immigrants!" This is a bad city to be poor and hungry in…Situated only an hour south of Oslo is my hometown Fredrikstad. Going here is the easiest way to escape arrogant Oslo pricks, but still close enough to the big city if you'd ever feel like ethnic food. Fredrikstad is home to apr. 70 000 people and has seen some heavy machine industries emerge in the past century, leaving the town's architecture less than flattering, and the town pretty much consists of three types of people.1. The people who love it with all their hearts. They are born and raised in Fredrikstad and hate the neighbouring town Sarpsborg (15km away and birthplace to the soon to be legendary band JR Ewing) almost as much as they hate the Sparta Sarpsborg ice hockey team. They're super unpretentious and live off the joy that the local football team gives them. Their yearly trip to Spain or Greece and the five few weeks of the year when the thermometer raises above the 20 degree centigrade mark. And of course their fortnightly visit to the Swedish border, where they purchase b-grade chicken meats and Coca Cola cans by the tray. They're friendly and love to share their town with visitors – unless of course you're brown and moving there, in which case you are trespassing.2. These are the wannabe snobby/posh people. This is the worst kind of young people, and they exist in every small city that is still somewhat close to a bigger city. Oslo sets the fashion tone, and these kids wear Chuck Taylors (only the real trendsetters though – the pack is still a year or two away), Polo Ralph Lauren shirts with their collars popped, Nudie jeans and Lindeberg belts, all at the same time. It's like a ten-years-too-late indie rock kids/people without money pretending that their rich/cheap, knock-off, bridge-and-tunnel potpourri. Obviously these "cool" kids love Robbie Williams and Nelly Furtado.3. The final group of Fredrikstad inhabitants is that typical subculture that also exists in small towns around the planet. It is comprised of the selected few that would fit some of the common psycho graphical traits of a Vice reader, if only the magazine would ever make its way into that town. Easily the only genuinely interesting people in the town, they normally leave Fredrikstad by the age of 19, so they're hard to spot. However, you wouldn't move to Amsterdam for the skiing, and you sure as hell wouldn't move to Fredrikstad for its cultural superiority.So why would anyone reading this move to Fredrikstad then? To sober up would be a good excuse, considering that a cold one in a bar would rob you of around €8. But that plan is shot to hell, since the locals, as most Norwegians, have found a way of working around the high bar prices. If you just manage to down enough booze to shame a ship full of sailors before you leave the house the buzz will fade so slowly you'll only have to buy one beer or two for the rest of the night. Of course that never works, because you always overshoot your target and end up passing out in the line to the club. So instead of sobering up, you would probably end up becoming even more of drunk here than you normally are.But for those of you who are sick of hearing about Vandal Supremes, Helmut Lang and Ratatat, Fredrikstad is a place where you can escape and fit right in to the joy of unpretentious and easy living. Unless you're an immigrant of non-western descent of course.Sincerely,
Sigurd Tvete
I'm moving (back home) to Fredrikstad!
Copenhagen might have a kebab shop called Kebabistan, but Oslo, the most expensive capital of the world, has one-upped its Scandinavian friend and launched Niga Kebab & Grill. This place is like a block away from Oslo Town Hall and it stands as a collective, "We don't fucking care whether you're from Somalia or Turkey. To us you're all the same; non-western immigrants!" This is a bad city to be poor and hungry in…
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Sigurd Tvete