Oslo Spring Cleaning
April 24th, 2006
The city of Oslo cleans its streets every spring. I’ve never seen this in any other city I’ve lived in–it’s quite amazing. And most likely friggin’ expensive.
This is how it works: The Road Services put up temporary “parking forbidden between timeX and timeY” signs. If your car is not removed at the designated time, they will kindly do it for you. (Not really, it is towed and you have to pay something like 2000NOK to get it back). Then, one street at the time, cleaning machines remove every trace of dirt, sand and gravel.
This phenomenon took me by surprise last year. I hit the street one morning, not quite awake. But that quickly changed when I saw that the street I lived on was completely empty! It’s kind of hard to explain if you can’t see it, so this year I took som pictures. This is what the street normally looks like and this is what it looked like during the cleaning.
I’m quite happy about the spring cleaning. Especially because one of my neglegted hobbies is in-line skating (skating on a dirty street is no fun). The ‘blades have been waiting in my closet after being brought to Norway (too) late last summer. This year, I’m not wasting my chance.
Entry Filed under: Oslo
1 Comment
1. patricia johansen | May 13th, 2006 at 8:46 am
I have been trying to find your street cleaning department on the web, I lost a white jacket in your park near the corner of Karl Johansg and Rosenkrantz gate- we had lunch in the park then walked to the little cubicle selling postcards - a young british street cleaner was talking to us, at this stage I had not noticed my jacket missing, my daughter said she thought he had something white on his cart. Is it possible to give me an email address of the cleaning department. I lost this jacket on 11th of May. It had a zippered front, collar and two small ties in front. I really would like to have someone contact me on email address . Thank you