Archive for the ‘cost of living’ Category

kebab

Friday, June 6th, 2008

Here are a few pictures from our dinner Thursday night. We decided this seemed like a fun way to spend some time and that it would definitely be tasty. We bought the grill at the Bunnpris next door for about 10 Kroner (2 dollars). These grills are very popular in Norway, as you see many younger people taking them to the beach or anywhere they are not near their standard home weber. For 2 dollars, it comes loaded with charcoal and ready to roll, just drop a match in it.

We marinated the cubed chicken breasts along with the peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes in a packaged marinade that we bought. Karen gets a lot of credit for chopping vegetables and assembling everything onto the skewers while I processed the chicken, washed dishes, and grilled the food.

Interesting notes:

1.65 lbs of chicken costs $19.00 US dollars

regular carton of cherry tomatoes costs $5 USD

package of 1 green pepper, 1 red pepper, and 1 yellow pepper costs about $3.50 USD

Gallon of milk costs about $9.03 USD

The meat and milk are by far the most expensive cost of the meal.

As usual, click the pictures to enlarge them!

Posted in cost of living, food | 6 Comments »

Cost of Living: A Tale of Two Cities

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

A reoccurring category on our website will be cost of living. Before arriving here, we heard that Norway was the most expensive European country to live in or vacation. We had read and heard to expect things to be about three times the cost of US products. After experiencing price shock in England last summer, where everything cost twice as much as in the US, we were braced for the worse.

In reality, things aren’t as expensive as we had estimated. Maybe they are more expensive in areas like Oslo. In general, everything is more expensive than the US, but varies widely. For example, food is maybe 1.5 times more expensive than the US, but alcohol is about 3 – 4x more expensive.

This category will feature the cost of living for anything from food to going to the movies to housing. This is a tale of two cities because we will compare what we paid for the same product in two very different college towns – Houghton, MI and Trondheim, Norway.

We’ll start with beverages.

Most important, of all beverages, are those that contain espresso.

Mocha

Trondheim: $5 – $8
Houghton: $3 – $4

Coca-cola

Trondheim (in restaurants): $7
Houghton: $2

Beer

Trondheim (Dahls – local beer): $12/pint
Houghton: (KBC – local beer): $2.5

Mixed Drinks:

Trondheim: $20 – $30
Houghton: $4 – 10

Milk

Trondheim: $9.32/gallon
Houghton: $3 – $4/gallon

Coffee & Tea

Trondheim: $1.40/cup (at student cafe, a budget friendly place)
Houghton: $1.25- $2.00 (free refills)

Coke at grocery store

Trondheim: $3.50 (1.5L)

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