Gamle Banken

The Jarvis likes bars in which different walks of life collide, for a beer in such a bar can prove educational. Gamle Banken (The Old Bank) is one of Oslo's "brown bars" - a group of cheap, no-frills bars generally patronised by old geezers, so called because of the nicotine that used to stain the walls in these establishments before the smoking ban. It's the closest pub to danskebåten - "the Danish boat", aka the Oslo-Copenhagen ferry - so its clientele includes grizzled regulars, inebriated imbeciles who've either just got off the Copenhagen ferry or are just about to get on it, criminals, working girls who like to greet the long-distance truck drivers coming off the ferry and pool hustlers.