Repeated calls to the city to send a crew over to the Parliament proved pointless: city officials said they didn't have the capacity to pluck up garbage that accumulated during a warm weekend in the capital.
With just hours to go before the former US president was set to make a whirlwind visit to Norway's Parliament, the administrators themselves saw little choice. A meeting of department heads was broken up, they all grabbed plastic bags and did the job themselves.
"Oslo is on the verge of becoming Europe's most trashy capital," muttered Hans Brattestå, the director of the Parliament who didn't hide his disgust at the litter Oslo residents drop all over.
Brattestå said he didn't blame city officials for not sending a trash collection crew.. It's the citizens of Oslo who are the problem, he said, after filling five garbage bags with empty soda bottles, hot dog wrappers and other trash.
"It's not certain Clinton would even have noticed the trash, but this has to do with how a city presents itself when receiving guests," Brattestå fumed. "This is just awful. It's not how it's supposed to be."
Residents of Oslo's neighborhoods also live with a growing trash problem caused by local litterbugs, and get little help from the city, which only cleans the streets once a year.
Aftenposten Interactive English Desk
Nina Berglund/NTB
