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  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by adam86shadow View Post
    Norway in Winter? Fuck that
    Our Winters are awesome!

    Quote Originally Posted by Tozza View Post
    Born and raised Norway, I haven't seen snow since 1996, and on christmas eve we had 10 degrees celsius!
    You must be living in a very special part of Norway then.. there's snow where I live every year. xD
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  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ktperry View Post
    So hey guys, me and a mate of mine have decided to move into Norway. It seems there are alot of people from the Scandinavian countries in this forum so i've decided to give a shot and ask a couple of questions.

    1. Is it hard to find a place to live? Should we start looking from here?
    2. Is it hard to find a job? We can pretty much work everything at the start, until we learn the language properly.

    Any websites with additional info are welcome.
    Thanks.
    1) Depends on your spending limit. Cities are expensive, towns are quite manageable.
    2) Again this would depend on your field / positions acceptable to you. Most employers in IT, Economics, Infrastructure and Oil require a certain degree and in these days experienced applicants are always preferred. (Oil and general engineering is in a major decline so there's pretty much nothing available)

    Frankly most immigrants find work in the service branch or construction, and a lot of them have to open their own practice / store / restaurant in order to do so.

    Side-note on the degree bit, sadly we're seeing a lot of people with great education being rejected because they need their degree approved, which in many cases simply won't happen with foreign degrees. I'd definitely do some research in that area before even considering anything.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Ktperry View Post
    We're looking to become truck drivers as a start, from my understanding from various forums, its a must to know swedish if we wanna be truck drivers, correct?
    If you're considering domestic transport then I'm not sure, but from previous summer jobs before I got my degree I dealt a lot with paperwork for international truck drivers who didn't speak a single word of norwegian.
    Last edited by thilicen; 2015-12-28 at 12:28 PM.

  3. #23
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Ktperry View Post
    So hey guys, me and a mate of mine have decided to move into Norway. It seems there are alot of people from the Scandinavian countries in this forum so i've decided to give a shot and ask a couple of questions.

    1. Is it hard to find a place to live? Should we start looking from here?
    2. Is it hard to find a job? We can pretty much work everything at the start, until we learn the language properly.

    Any websites with additional info are welcome.
    Thanks.
    I'm not an expert of Norway, but I would imagine that if you can behave well (unlike certain immigrant groups that-shall-not-be-named) and have at least some kind of higher education, you shouldn't face much problems in any Western country. Just like any rational people, Scandinavians in general accept anyone who's honest, tries his/her best to adapt and isn't deliberately causing problems.

  4. #24
    No idea where the OP is form, but Western immigrants are treated extremely different than muslim/eastern immigrants in Denmark, I could imagine it's the same in Norway.

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Tozza View Post
    Born and raised Norway, I haven't seen snow since 1996, and on christmas eve we had 10 degrees celsius!
    wtf, 10C on christmas eve I can understand, but not seen snow since '96? Where do you live?!
    "You disgust me"- Grandma

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sleepysnik View Post
    wtf, 10C on christmas eve I can understand, but not seen snow since '96? Where do you live?!
    Coastline in the south-west possibly.

    The coastline are quite frequently out of snow, even quite far north.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Ktperry View Post
    So hey guys, me and a mate of mine have decided to move into Norway. It seems there are alot of people from the Scandinavian countries in this forum so i've decided to give a shot and ask a couple of questions.

    1. Is it hard to find a place to live? Should we start looking from here?
    2. Is it hard to find a job? We can pretty much work everything at the start, until we learn the language properly.

    Any websites with additional info are welcome.
    Thanks.
    1. Is it hard to find a place to live? Should we start looking from here?
    Living in norway is expensive as heck, as the oil industry has been driving up prices in Norway for the better part of the last 50 years. The wages are nice but be prepared to spend them money you earn. Everything costs crazy amount of money. A standard hotel room is 700-1200 NOK / night. A big mac with fries will cost you 60-70 NOK. A dinner out is easily 200-300 NOK per person, without drinks. A servicable one-man apartment is usually 7000-15000 NOK / month for rental, but it's not terribly hard to find one. We have a website (finn.no) that everyone is using for these kinds of things. Buying a place in a city is from about 2 million NOK and up, and you're not going to get a mortgage unless you can pay at least 15% of what you are buying upfront, and have a stable job. Expect to burn at least 200 NOK / day in just living expenses like food, clothes, bus fares etc even if you are playing it very conservatively.

    I wouldn't remotely recommend moving to Norway without getting a job first. You probably cannot afford it, and there is another really good reason in #3.

    2. Is it hard to find a job? We can pretty much work everything at the start, until we learn the language properly.
    Very hard or very easy depending on your outlook in life.

    High quality jobs have a million applications to them, and unless you have extreme qualifications (anything less than a master's degree won't do), a recommendation, or similar you won't even get to the job interview stage. Everbody in Norway want a job like this, and the ones that don't usually study hard to be able to get one. Which means that unless you have an extraordinary skillset to offer, they will likely hire someone who knows norwegian already.

    Low quality jobs like cleaning and similar are paid very bad by Norwegian standards, and are almost never full time jobs. So while you will get the minimum pay, and the minimum pay is going to pay for your food, it's super hard to get by on one source of income like that alone - you need a full time job to survive with Norway's cost of living. It's not very hard to find a job like this, but it's hard to find five such jobs that give you a full wage but do not overlap. Also, part-time jobs do not count towards a work visa. Most Norwegians also tend to shun these kinds of jobs, and would rather run on unemployment benefits than have a job like this. (You won't be legible for unemployment benefits by just moving to the country, it takes quite a bit more than that).

    The sad truth is that it is really hard to get a decent job in Norway if you're not headhunted for a job or already know Norwegian. And it's really hard to survive on a shitty job.

    3. The question you didn't ask.
    There is a lot of bureaucracy involved with moving to Norway. In fact, it's darned hard to meet the immigration requirements. There is a government agency for immigration (UDI), and their job is pretty much to deny immigration to anyone trying that doesn't already have a job offer, need to live in Norway for family reasons, or are seeking asylum. The work visa is for people who have a job offer. A family visa is for people who need to live in norway for family reasons. Refugee asylum is a third option but probably won't apply for anyone that has internet access already. There are other options, like a student visa for foreign exchange students, but you need to talk to UDI to see what fits your situation.

    To get a job, you need a personal number (norwegian equivalent of the US social security number). To get that number, you need a residence permit, which you won't get unless your visa situation is in order. With one, you can also get a bank account etc. Without one, your options are super limited; you can't even rent an apartment without a bank account. I would at the very least have a personal number before attempting to move to Norway. But once you do, there should not be much to stop you.

    Even if you have a work visa in order, the government agency is going to make a mess for you. Residential and work Permits that must be applied for every year. Lots of bureaucratic mess. I'd say these guys are downright hostile to their "customers", and I'd be hard pressed to find anyone disagreeing. They will believe everything you say to them is a lie (and statistically, for good reason).

    And even if you handle all that, there's still the fact that it gets super cold and super dark in the winter time. Winter Depression is a thing in Norway, the days are short - and if you move sufficiently far up north, non-existent. In my workplace I have had plenty of colleagues that just couldn't stand it and left the country for that reason alone. Also, Norwegians. People say we're super anti-social. There may be something to that. As they saying goes: In a bus with two passengers in norway, the two passengers will sit in the opposite end of the bus, trying really hard to pretend they are the only one in the bus. On the upside, everyone in Norway knows english, you will never have a problem being understood. I still think learning the language is useful for understanding the country you live in, but it's somewhat optional if you already have a job that want you for your skills. It's a tremendous asset if you don't.

    Any websites with additional info are welcome.
    http://www.udi.no/en/
    http://www.nyinorge.no/en/
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vnPulWpi78
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  8. #28
    Housing will be very expensive in the big cities/outside of them. It will be a bit easier if you're 2 to share the rent.
    I lived and worked outside Oslo, in my family's home. I had about 140 NOK/hour (cleaning), and I wouldn't be able to pay rent and other expenses myself if I rented in the same area.



    I think you'll be treated differently depending on where you're from (in Europe). UK? Oh jolly good, we'll love you. Lithuanian? Fuck off.

    Norwegians are xenophobic, though we don't want to admit it. Anything Eastern European is bad, for instance. I don't know where you're from, but I can tell you this:
    My Bulgarian husband has a master's degree and 5 years experience in the same job, and a production manager. He went to one of the few places in Norway that works with what he was doing, and was declined. They didn't even want to look at his CV. I think that he been from Germany or UK, the attitude would have been completely different. Sad, really.

    You mentioned truck driving. I'm not sure, but I don't think you need much Norwegian for this job. However, road signs are almost never in English, which isn't helpful, like "alternative way for trucks over 40 tons".

    You can also consider being a bus driver, as many young Norwegians don't want to. It's expensive to get a bus driver's lisence, and also it's probably "below" them. My stepdad works in a bus company, and mainly you have young foreign men (from Poland, Somalia, whereever, really) and old Norwegian lads.

    The dream about Norway is not impossible, but it will be difficult.

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