The last post was a description of my travels, her I’d like to give you a compact list of Do’s and Dont’s traveling to Norway. As my budget is very limited, so I’ll mostly focus on how to save money.

A special chapter at the end of the post is for future riders of the Røldal Freeride Challenge. The organizers are really nice guys, but due to the lack of WIFI up in Norway, there were small communication difficulties.

So: Here we go:

Travel:

If you come by plane, travel with Lufthansa: you get a board-bag (23kg) and an extra luggage (23kg) included. One just has to register the board-bag by phone.

Rental car: We were five persons and squeezed ourselves in rather small rental car, but we had a roof box additionally.

Rental cars are pretty expensive in Norway, 400 – 500€/week is a normal rate.

There one has to carefully balance reasons: a small car uses less gas, but one needs to pay the roof box extra, big car: more expensive, more comfortable for sure, but also uses more gas. Gas is approximately 1,80 € – 2€ by liter (April 2015).

Food: Even if you are traveling by plane: bring you own food:

dried sausages, cheese, pumpernickel(packed bread), chocolates, cereal, müslibars, tea-sachets, salt/pepper/spices (in small portions), pesto, (noodles), some sweet bread topping(honey, nutella…)

additionally recommended: coffee, noodles, polenta, veggies

Only thing you are not allowed to bring to Norway: potatoes. No joke.

Things often have a -50% sticker at the supermarket, salmon and pork is cheap…so if one is flexible with one’s diet, one can live cheap…

Custom laws: https://www.toll.no/en/international/english/

Also important:

Booze:

I would recommend bringing spirits (and maybe wine) from home, while purchasing beer up to the limit you are allowed to bring into Norway at the duty free area in Oslo Airport. All the Norwegians do that, so nothing to be ashamed off.

It is actually quite weird at the first glance, the Norwegians charge into the duty free and fill their bags, and all those businessmen have clinging plastic bags on their trolleys afterwards. But if one experiences the normal prices, one starts to understand.

Airport duty free: 6 x 0,33L = 49 nok ~ 6€

Smuggling booze into bars and do refills is common. If they catch you, you have a problem though…

Note: You can’t buy wine at the supermarket, and one bottle in the winemonopoly starts at about 80 nok ~ 10€. Supermarkets are only allowed to sell alcohol up to 4,7%. The state owned liquor stores have weird opening times.

Customs regarding alcohol and tobacco: https://www.toll.no/en/international/english/shopping-abroad/alcohol-and-tobacco-quotas/

Cash:

Retrieve money straight at the airport, cash machines in smaller villages are either not existing, or in case of a big event, run out of cash a some point.

Accomodation in Røldal:

In Røldal it’s most comfortable to rent one of the small hut on either camping place down in the village of Røldal, they have a kitchen inside, but differ in size and interior(some have toilets and showers shared in another building), cheap accommodation right at the bottom station (up on the mountain)of the ski-resort is Haradalen, not the tidiest, no Wi-Fi, dark rooms, but kitchen and really cheap.

For Riders:

Even if noted different: Event goes from Wednesday night to Sunday(weather day!!!), so if you book your flights back, book them really late on Sunday earliest. Organizers will always try hard to get the event through on Saturday.

From Wednesday on it is possible to purchase a TRAINING SKI-PASS for 190 nok/day (~ 24€) in the ski-resort. It’s good to bring your own key-card from some other event, cause key-cards are charged extra…

During the competition, when you pay nothing to enter the ski-resort, because bib is your ticket, you are not allowed to use the lifts as much as you like, but only for one training run and access to face/face-check. There is no need to try and discuss that with the guys at the lift station, and violating that rule is pretty unfair, as one is causing problems for the organizers.

Links:

Blog: Norway on a budget: http://www.norwayonabudget.com/food-drinks/supermarkets/