After I Lived In Norway

Topic

After I Lived In Norway

Instructions

Discuss the article: After I Lived in Norway

Some years ago, I faced up to the futility of reporting truths about America’s disastrous wars, and so I left Afghanistan for another mountainous country far away. It was the polar opposite of Afghanistan: a peaceful, prosperous land where nearly everybody seemed to enjoy a good life, on the job and in the family.
This is a joint Nation/TomDispatch article and will appear on TomDispatch.com.
It’s true that they didn’t work much–not by American standards, anyway. In the United States, full-time salaried workers supposedly laboring 40 hours a week actually average 49, with almost 20 percent clocking more than 60. These people, on the other hand, worked only about 37 hours a week, when they weren’t away on long paid vacations. At the end of the workday, about four in the afternoon (perhaps three during the summer), they had time to enjoy a hike in the forest, a swim with the kids, or a beer with friends—which helps explain why, unlike so many Americans, they are pleased with their jobs.
Often I was invited to go along. I found it refreshing to hike and ski in a country with no land mines, and to hang out in cafés unlikely to be bombed. Gradually, my war-zone jitters subsided and I settled into the slow, calm, pleasantly uneventful stream of life there.

Answer preview

The article tells about the travels of a journalist and the documentations about his findings. First he talks about working in war torn Afghanistan reporting on war crimes. Then he moves to Norway which is totally different from where he had just left. In Afghanistan, he says that life was always on the edge, were sitting in a café presented the risk of being bombed, or walking on the streets could trigger bombs buried somewhere. In Norway, life was peaceful, there was happiness and fulfillment.

Word count: 313