It was a shame to have to get up early this morning to catch a flight to Stavanger as it must be the first night in a week where we haven’t been woken by a passing russebusser. For the uninitiated, the russ are the Norwegian students about to leave school who for the three weeks or so leading up to National Day are given free reign to rampage across the city. Some of there are activities are benign (for example, the younger kids enjoy collecting the imaginative "calling cards" that the russ hand out) but, fuelled by their first real exposure to large amounts of alcohol, other aspects are less pleasant.
Part of the russ tradition is to buy a van or, in the well-to-do area in which we live, a bus, have it decorated, fit the largest light and sound system you can afford, and pay a driver to tour the city streets at night. We seem to have been visited by one or more buses most nights in the past week. Whether this is because we are a convenient stopping point en-route to one of the many gathering grounds up at Tryvann or, as someone suggested, that we have a particularly disliked teacher living nearby. Fortunately the bursts of music are generally short lived and only on one occasion has Emma woken and then not gone back to sleep.
Other than the fact that most Norwegians seem to just accept this as a fact of life, the part that I really don’t understand is that this all takes place before their exams! Anyway, glad it’s all over now and also that I was only in Stavanger for the day as the airport is now set to close due to the Avinor strike.