The Garbage Master

The rumors are true, Norway is expensive. In the grocery store last night I saw a small bunch of asparagus for close to $10. You get the idea: everything costs a lot.

So naturally, there is a guy in the communist block-style student village I now call home who's forged a living out of the cast-offs of the many students coming and going. He's well known in the student village as being the person who sells virtually everything.

Seeing as how he informed me that one of the bicycles he was trying to sell me he'd fished out of a dumpster, I'll call him the Garbage Master (GM) here. (*)

I followed the GM down a strange rabbit hole of a hallway to a "storage room". Both the hallway and the room were packed full of a wide variety of furnishings, electronics, dishware, and other odds and ends. The overflow of items led to a congestion of the space, narrowing it like plaque filled arteries. This led to a comedic dance of awkwardness when another potential 'customer' wanted to pull out a mattress and try it out on the ground.

I was looking for a wireless router and a bicycle. GM moved a couch and several items to find and dig around in a box which contained not only routers, but loose knives and carving forks. Nearly grabbing the blade of a knife in the process, he told me that of course he'd have to have a friend test the routers first to see if any of them actually worked. Super. (**)

He offered me a look at some garbage-bicycles as well. Most of these were in various states of decay. 5 at time locked together, rusting on both body and chain, tires deflated, some still had locks on them from previous owners. A young student I'd met was trying one out and as she did the chain popped open and fell off the bike.

"Oh you want a bicycle that works?" He asked after I rejected one bicycle after another. Well, yeah, that'd be ideal. I get a text the next day saying if I want the black "bick" he can sell it to me. I did not recall a black bike from the day before; it turns out to be in much better repair than the others (although it still has a flat tire) and to his credit he pumps the tire and let's me try it for an entire day.

I admit I want this bike to work out. It's a cute black women's bicycle with a basket, front and rear lights, and it has fenders to keep the rain off (it rains in Bergen nearly constantly - yes, more than in Seattle). However, the gear shifter is sticky, especially at important moments like riding up Bergen's many hills. Also, it is a heavy bicycle which you brake on the back wheel by reverse pedaling, and on the front via a handbrake. This becomes important as you brake the weighty bike downhill. Let's say neither brake was perfect, but the front handbrake was especially poor. It screamed and squealed before  beginning to slowly reducing your momentum.

Bringing this issues (and a tire which had again deflated) back to him, I proposed he either reduce the cost and I could get them fixed, or he could fix them. "No, no, if I fix I charge more". He knows there's always another student willing to buy a garbage-bicycle.

Well, between that statement and that every interaction with him stretched out into a prolonged argument. "It's good, it's good." No, it's not good if the chain is so rusted through that it breaks. "It only needs oil. It's fine. It's good".  I had had enough.

So I move forward, bipedally for the moment. I'm meeting someone shortly to look at another bicycle. They live in the same block as GM, and I've checked and double-checked their phone number to make sure they don't match... but I'm still slightly concerned.

Fingers crossed. Perhaps this time, I will buy a "bick".

* Just for clarity, I'll mention here GM is not Norwegian, and by and large the Norwegians I've met so far have been sweet, friendly, helpful and excellent at speaking English

** In case you're itching to know, the router, after many days of difficulty and the GM's friend having to take it and work on it at home, seems to be at least semi-functional at the time of this report.