This is sort of related: yesterday I was walking into a store to buy food, and this guy stops me outside, and asks me for 25 kroners (4 bucks). I only had 150, which is barely enough to buy anything at all, so I'm like 'sorry, I have it all on my card'. Amazingly, he kept going, and actually asked me to go inside, take out 25 kroners and then give it to him. What the hell. I tell him I only have 150, and he looks at me as if I'm the worlds biggest dick.
I can't help but hate this kind of begging. Listen, if you're a guy sitting on a corner with a cup, fine. If you're playing music or something cool like that, I may even give you some money if I actually can afford doing so. But don't approach people for money, that's... it really makes me want to punch people. We have a ton of Romanian gypsies over here right now, and I won't speak of the other problems surrounding this, but there's people within their groups that force the less fortunate of them to beg for money. Money the beggars don't even get to keep, it goes directly into the pockets of thugs. It has left this huge stigma on all beggars in Oslo, because these people are probably punished if they don't bring in certain amounts of money. They will come up and harass you for money, you can tell them no, but that doesn't matter. They will shake the cup into your face, they will grab your jacket to make you stay, they will gang up on you and pick your pockets while begging for money.
So yeah, I have a big bias here. But this shit needs to end, yet absolutely nothing is actually happening. These last two months, we've had a crazy surge of robberies, a lot of them cases like this. But this is one city in one country, I don't know if it's the same way in say, Stockholm or whatever.