Tuesday 20 October 2015

Continuous power failures and hatred against immigrants in Tromsø / Norway

Let's see if I can publish this post at all tonight since there have been several power failures today, both in the daytime and now at night-time, and at least one of those power failures today lasted for around an hour. Yesterday, we had another power failure lasting for around an hour. And last week, we had two power failures of around the same duration... Or was it the week before? I lost track of it since it happens all the time here in Tromsø / Norway. Sometimes just in the block of houses in which our apartment is located in, sometimes in the entire building and sometimes in the entire neighbourhood including the local grocery store. At the moment, we also have a family visit from Finland. I wonder with what impressions our family visit will return home to Finland. Continuous power failures and hatred against immigrants at the immigration office here in Tromsø / Norway... 

Yes, indeed: Two days ago, on Friday (16th October 2015) at the immigration office which is located at the "Troms politidistrikt" [in English: "Troms Police District"] here in Tromsø / Norway, I experienced the worst encounter in any kind of office in my life so far. Me and my love (who was fortunately with me when it all happened) had two days time to reflect about the whole event. Family, friends and acquaintances both in Norway and abroad (Finland, Sweden, Germany et cetera) have been informed about the event or are getting informed about it at the moment. I will describe the whole event very detailed as soon as I can, as soon as I have the time (and the necessary electricity / internet connection) to do so, but for now I just have the need to get at least something about it off my chest. Neither in Finland (where I have lived the past six years) nor in Germany (where I am originally from) have I EVER faced such an excessive arrogance, ignorance, laziness, unprofessionalism and obvious "I don't give a f***" attitude overall as on Friday at the immigration department of the Troms Police District. And as if all that wasn't shocking enough, we started to realise just afterwards that the "lady" serving us in the office had a quite distinct xenophobic attitude anyway. We still cannot believe what happened and we are still at a loss for words, and I will share all the details with you as soon as I can. 

For now, I just have the need to state that our new life here in Tromsø / Norway is actually quite wonderful, but as wonderful as it is 95% of the time, the other 5% are not just neutral, bad or improvable but seriously catastrophic. Hatred against immigrants at the immigration office is for sure one of the catastrophic conditions here, as well as all the unprofessionalism we have experienced EVERY SINGLE TIME so far when being in an office in Norway, ESPECIALLY at the highly official authorities. The horrible housing market is another catastrophic condition here in Tromsø / Norway. I don't take the continuous power failures into account since I see those as something improvable and definitely not as a "catastrophic condition". Still, it's surprising that they are happening so frequently up here in the city centre of the biggest city in Northern Norway. In one of the richest parts of the world. Well, fortunately, our family visit brought some candles from Finland, so now the family can sit together and talk by candlelight... Cosy! 

EDIT: This post was written on Sunday night around 11 p.m.. It could be published just on Tuesday noon around 11 a.m. as the power failures from Sunday evening seem to have continued all night long, and afterwards there was no electricity at all from at least Monday morning around 9 a.m. until Monday night around 11 p.m., with the internet connection being fixed just several hours later... Another "cosy" evening...


Fortunately, it's not really cold outside yet: No sub-zero temperatures, no snow, no ice. And we still have daylight in the daytime. 

To be continued... 

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