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I've been to Norway a few times for work, and I confess that at no time did I see hordes of drunken students with noses in textbooks, nor murderous doctors with acid.

Rather, I found it to be a starkly beautiful, quiet place. The town I visited was Bergen, along the coast. I travelled there in spring and summer, so I valued that the heavy curtains in my hotel room blocked out light so I could sleep. I was served salmon with every meal, including odd toothpaste-style tubes of salmon spread at breakfast and lunch. The electrical current in the hotel caused my travel hairdryer to melt slightly. (The hairdryer still works though.)

The oddest part -- aside from my halting interactions with my Norwegian colleagues, who spoke English perfectly and yet seemed unable to understand my views on our company and ideal business strategy, just as I couldn't figure out how they thought the business should run, all of which led to my eventually burning out and resigning and dropping out of the dotcom world altogether, not that I'm bitter or anything -- the oddest part of Norway, as I was saying, was that the are no Norwegian restaurants. I wanted to try authentic, local food, but all my colleagues could offer was Italian, Chinese, German, Mexican, American.... Even when pressed, they couldn't name any traditional or regional dishes.

But, they all liked beer and I did too. So we had a company party at a high-end pizza joint, toasted a new spirit of cross-cultural collaboration, and went back to work the next morning to continue chipping away at the company's shareholder value.