I zealously took up the study of driving theory in Norwegian. Many times we bought tests on the computer. I solve, I solve… and the result is 50% correct answers. What to do? What to do? I drag it out… I do not dare go to sit the exam. And one can sit it any day. You arrive, photograph yourself in a booth, pay 600 kroner (60 euros) and go into a computer classroom; they give you 1.5 hours for 45 questions. Of them it is permissible to make 7 mistakes.

I consider that I somehow “dragged out” the preparation for the exam, kept hesitating, and of course it is better to go and try and gain experience sitting this “ill-fated” theory! In the end I “over-studied” to such a degree that, not having passed on the first attempt (I made 11 mistakes), I finished the test in 37 minutes of the allotted 1.5 hours and….. remembered all 45 questions! (I am surprised at myself!). Of course not the formulation of the question, but the topics.

Coming home, I opened the textbook and with a pencil marked the road signs and pictures that had come up for me. The next time I had to go to sit it not earlier than in two weeks. And I successfully passed on the second attempt, making only four mistakes. That is the feeling of complete happiness!

We press on. My husband called the courses and arranged a meeting with an instructor. I met him. An elderly strict man with a car. I look…., and he has a car with a manual gearbox, and I had already practised on an “automatic,” and I said at once that I would not start. And he suddenly began to insist: “You will learn on a manual!” I say: “No, sorry!” and got out of the car.

A week later I got another instructor, a girl of 30, a Norwegian, completely “wordless,” i.e. taciturn and without emotions, but in a good new electric car of the Nissan make. This Nissan is made for monkeys! (of course, in a good sense). Driving such a car is a pleasure!

But I suspect that expensive operation resulted, and after two lessons my instructress arrived in a Peugeot. I had to get used to it, because I had to sit the exam in this same car. The instructor explained to me (of course not in my favour) that lessons need to be conducted for 1.5 hours, and that came to a round sum of 1340 kroner (130 euros). However…. (as always I thought together with the hero Kisa Vorobyaninov from “The Twelve Chairs”)

To be continued….