Thanks, I learned bunch from your reply. I didn't actually know that the baggers carried the bags to your car.

Just to clarify some of the points I made earlier which was probably not clear. I did see parking meters, and automatic car washes in most places in the US. I might have given the wrong impression that manual washing was the norm. No, I absolutely did not get that impression.

It was more of a surprise to me that manual carwashing happened at all. Like I have never in my 44 years seen anyone paid to wash cars manually. I remember in some bigger cities in the US, you can see guys coming up to cars and manually cleaning them on the streets. Never seen anything like that here.

People wash their cars themselves here too. Not sure how common it is now anymore, but people sometimes paid to use equipment at the gas station. What you don't see is somebody paying another guy to do it.

There is partly an egalitarian mindset in the Nordics which creates a certain aversion to paying other people to do tasks you could do yourself. Like if you paid a guy to carry your grocceries to the car while you carried nothing I think a lot of Nordic people would feel like a lazy ass.

I pay people to deliver furniture to me, but I don't feel bad about that because it is frequently stuff which is just a bitt too heavy for me to carry with a semi-bad back.

About shopping. Most people actually shop with a car here as well. Trolleys was something I primarily remember from childhood. My mom used one in the 80s I think. For people doing sort of rare biweekly shooping they normally bring grocceries over to their car in a shopping cart.

Those who us who live closer to the groccery store, might just walk over and carry the bag the whole way. If you are not buying a lot, you don't need something like a trolley. Me and my wife are a bit of outliers as we don't drive. That is very rare. We just shop quite frequently so I don't have a lot in the bag.

Sometimes we just order stuff online. We got pretty good online groccery store delivery here. Thing is I kind of like going to the store. So I don't mind physically walking there. Especially during COVID19 it was just good to have a reason to get out of the house. I walk a lot in the woods around where I live, but sometimes I just want to look at stuff which isn't leaves, trees and greens. I am very much a city person even if it isn't very urban where I live.

I used to live right smack in the downtown of Oslo in this large beautiful old building made of massive granite blocks. The walls were so thick you could sit two people in the window sill. It had towers and spires. We actually kind of lived in one of the towers.

It was in a part of Oslo called "Kvadraturen," named after the fact that it is among the few places in Norway with an American style grid pattern of streets. Normally streets are not laid out in a neat pattern. I think it was because it got planned by the Danish king hundreds of years ago after the city had burned down. It has lots of historical buildings. The building we lived in had once been the Norwegian parliament. We could walk past the old city hall from 1600s. And me an my wife used to take sundway walks though the old fortress, Akershus festning. It is very green inside. Lots of parks and greenery with old cannons, dungeons, guard towers etc.

It was awesome, but we couldn't continue living there after we got kids because you cannot get enough space to have kids in such a central location. It only worked because we chose to live in tiny apartment.

Anyway.... sorry for rambling.