Today was our last on the Richard With. This afternoon we docked at Bergen, its final port and from where it had started out 22 days ago. I don’t think Robert or I are cut out for cruises.
The living is too easy, the food too good and I felt as if I was in a super-scenic old folks home sitting looking out the window and reading most of the day. So it is good to be stretching our legs in lovely Bergen. The centre around the port seems quite small but when we took a funicular up Mt Fløyen the city was spread out under us.
It is the second largest in Norway with a population of about 270,000. Oslo (and so Bergen also, I suppose) is ranked the third most expensive city to live in after Singapore and Paris. How do Norwegians manage? As a very recent retiree I thought I would investigate. The basic state pension is about £1,400 per month although higher earners get supplements. You need to have lived in Norway for 40 years to get the full pension which is not paid until you are 67. Like the UK, the pension is “pay as you go”. In other words today’s workers are paying today’s pensioners. As the working population shrinks this will create a huge problem in Norway and all over Europe and one that only Norway has addressed. A $860 billion Government Pension Fund consists of revenues from Norway’s oil and gas production. This is not currently used to fund pensions but it is intended that it will do so in the future as the working population falls and the number of pensioners increases. The chart shows its growth in N Kr.
Democracies usually find it difficult to take such a sensible long-term view but Norway has done so; Singapore likewise, although that is another story.
My head may have been in the clouds today but my eyes were looking down. Here is rather a good Bergen manhole cover.
