Norwegian Welcome Wagon

Thursday, September 6, I had an early reveille to catch a 6:30 am train west to Oslo, Norway. Two trains and roughly seven hours later, I arrived in the Oslo central station. As I got off the train, I was starting and stopping a little adjusting my luggage for the walk to my hotel. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that a blond, burly guy seemed to be paying a little too much attention to me and to be halting with me. Since it was a crowded public place and was midday, I decided to just keep watch and see what happened.

After a minute or so, I got my bags into a comfortable configuration and started to head toward the end of the train platform for the exit. In a few steps, blond #1 motioned to another guy in front of me who stepped in front of me and started speaking to in English. Although both guys were in civilian dress and were acting somewhat shifty, they claimed to be Norwegian customs agents. To protect their true identities, I'll refer to them by their codenames: Crockett (the guy in front of me) and Tubbs (the first guy I saw tracking me). They pulled small plastic photo id badges from under their sweaters, which looked about as impressive as the membership cards Costco can print out in a few minutes. Crockett asked if I was English and I told them that I was American.

"Customs" to me means "we want to search your possessions thoroughly", so I expressed my skepticism and thanked them for showing ID but told Crockett as a foreigner I didn't know what Norwegian official IDs should look like. Since they weren't in uniform, I said I wanted to comply with Norway's regulations, but I preferred to go to the official customs office in the station and talk to properly credentialed officials in uniform. Crockett said we could do that but that approach would likely take a 2-3 hours. Crockett mentioned that he had on bullet-proof armor and he thumped something hard underneath his sweater. For all I could tell it might be sports equipment. At this point, there was no way I was going to let these two do anything with my possessions without a lot more proof. I apologized and said perhaps I should call my embassy and see what we could do to straighten things out.

About this time, Tubbs lost interest and went off somewhere else. Crockett said that getting my embassy involved was a little premature and (for the first time) mentioned that he only wanted to ask me a few questions. I said I had no problems answering questions, but that if they wanted to search my possessions, we'd have to go somewhere official. He asked me a few general questions about where I came from, how long I was going to be in Norway, and what my general plans were. I told him I was only there for a few days and was going to see the fjords over the weekend. He seemed satisfied and wished me a pleasant journey. I apologized for any misunderstanding and set off for my hotel.

If only these guys had been this careful with Quisling....