14
votes
Norway's party buses for school-leavers have become a trend that worries schools and parents alike
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Norway calls time as school-leavers Russ bus partying gets out of hand
- Published
- May 30 2025
- Word count
- 1103 words
Oh man if this ever caught on in north America we're in big trouble. Groups of grads renting busses for several weeks of midnight to morning drunken parties while they get driven around and drink like fish? I cant imagine the mayhem that would ensue.
220,000 pounds is almost 300,000 USD or 400,000 CAD! And these kids are selling toilet paper to raise that? Crazy. But how many kids can you get on a bus? Legally only 50 but if they're standing and dancing, maybe 100? Thats still 3 or 4k per kid to ride a party bus? Somebody's making a killing.
Spring break seems somewhat equivalent to me. I can tell you that living 15 years in Panama City, Florida, the way we really knew that spring break was truly underway each year- and this is not an exaggeration- is the first news report of some drunk young person falling off a balcony and either dying or being seriously injured and having to go to the hospital.
Part of my story of my saddle pulmonary embolism involves being over on the beach side where it's like a half hour from town, and the two hospitals in town had built an ER over on the beach just because it took so long to get young people to the hospital for spring break.
The amount of money people would spend to rent, condos and such for spring break is nowhere near the amount listed in this article with the buses, but really, it was heading in that direction. Although not that massive scale.
I guess Im used to Spring Break in western Canada. Which might have meant going off to the mountains for a last ski of the year at Whistler. Or maybe a night out on the town with friends. Or a road trip. Nothing like what happens in Florida.
The only real problem I have is that I think anytime you get large numbers of young people together - they tend to be new at the freedoms of alcohol and so therefore use it a bit more; they tend to still care about showing off socially, so things can escalate. Everyone wants to be cool and accepted and liked, and this pushes behaviours that they think will make them look cool and be accepted and liked, and really, it's just a matter of maturity.
If we had a better culture of providing spaces where they could have fun and party, but also under some stronger adult influences to help moderate some of the more dangerous and stupid behaviours, it might help.
But I think when things get out of hand like that - like spring break in places, or the bus thing in Norway - it's because when we suddenly have new-found freedoms, we tend to take them too far. Especially when we want social acceptance from peers - trying to show off to fit in.
Seems like it can just escalate hand-over-hand, and that's happened in both cases. So hopefully Norway can rein thigs in a bit and it'll still be fun for them, just not harmful.
I moved to Norway from the US a few months ago right as Russefeiring was in full swing. I can't say I've heard much complaining about the length of time it takes up.
From talking to my fiancee's coworkers, Russefeiring's major criticism of late is that it's not inclusive enough, not that Norwegian kids are doing their best Rumspringa impression and hurting their final exams as the article suggests. Specifically, and in no particular order, their concerns have been around:
These views are those of Norwegian middle aged office workers with children and not other groups of people. I'm sure I'm not hearing the whole conversation given how hard Norwegian newspapers are for me to translate, still.
On a related note, by the end of the month, you can smell those red pants from a block away. I keep thinking of Smells Like Teen Spirit and that time my cat peed on my couch.