Keeping up with the Kids

My photo

Guys, my niece took me to a concert at the 930 Club in DC, and it was SO FUN! The group that was playing, clipping., is one we both like. When she saw they were here in DC, she invited me. And bought the tickets!

I was a bit nervous about going. I mean, besides probably being the oldest person there, I knew we would be standing on a sticky floor in a packed crowd for at least three hours. Plus, the club is in the heart of Occupied DC. I am a person of immense privilege from a (currently) untargeted demographic, but my niece is not.

It was terrific! We went late, at 9:30, to miss most of the opening acts. We lucked into street parking a short block from the club. I was dressed in black pants and a black tee, foolishly thinking I'd fit in. I had on my lucky red sneakers, which probably weren't the best choice, not the most comfortable shoes I own. We passed through a metal scanner, had our hands stamped after showing ID for alcohol (me too), and moved into the big room. An opening act, a solo guy doing something between rap and spoken word poetry, was doing a nice job. My niece, with me in tow by the hand, wormed her way into the center of the mass of standing folks. We had room to move, a bit, it wasn't an actual crush. I was pleasantly surprised to feel fresh air on my face - they have an extraordinary ventilation system! Not like my day, when you had to wash your hair and all your clothes after a night out in the smoke.

The main act we were there to see, clipping., is "experimental hip-hop", according to the internet. They have some very high-concept pieces and even whole albums. One of the albums won a Hugo award, which is a science fiction thing!  There are two guys doing tech things to make noises and visuals on a screen behind them, a woman on keyboards with an absolutely exquisite, rich voice, and Daveed Diggs rapping faster than I can vibrate my tongue. 

From the second they took the stage, I was swept up in the music. I spent the 90 minutes of their set bouncing, sometimes shouting, dancing in place. At some point, my boy's girlfriend joined us. Rumor has it she was invited to hang with the band afterwards, since she's a rockstar and all. Four times, my smart watch warned me that it was too noisy, that ear damage was a possibility. And, more amusingly, my smart watch asked me if I was doing an elliptical machine workout and did I want to record it? I guess the way I dance in place is similar to the elliptical. At any rate, my watch credited me with 8,000 steps for my bouncing.

But by the end, I was very tired. When it was over, my niece and I shuffled out with the crowd, and I was incredibly stiff, and felt all my age. It was after midnight in a happening part of downtown DC, and everything was subdued. We saw police cars (DC, and unmarked but with colored lights going) in every direction, though they just seemed to be there, nothing in particular was happening. Girlfriend said the nightlife was completely dead compared to normal. 

We skedaddled back to the car, and passed another half dozen sites of flashing blue-and-red lights on the way home. Again, we couldn't observe anything in particular, just noted they were there. And we were thankful we weren't the ones they were looking for. But the glow from the concert itself remained! I'd caffeined up in advance, and was still wired when I got home, so it was a very late night and slow morning.

Here's a link to a video from clipping. at a show in Boston last week, to give you a taste. Warning, lyrics NSFW.

Scandanavia: Miscellaneous

A "sketch" rendering of one of my photos

 I'm not quite ready to let it go yet! I want to capture just some little notes, as much for me as for you.

• The whole of my travels, I never once used cash. In fact, I never even used a credit card! Norway is the most cashless society on earth, and Sweden is not far behind. Everybody had a "tap" terminal, and I just used my Apple watch! I had brought dollars, Euros, and UK pounds, because I had them. But Tap Tap Tap worked just fine. Once I was on the boat and off onto little islands, I didn't even bring a wallet or ID. I had my phone, with pictures of ID, and my watch to tap. Using the watch meant I didn't need to dig into a purse or pocket, opening an opportunity to drop something or to get pick-pocketed. 
• I have been doing Duolingo Norwegian for a couple of years now. They recently added a "Duolingo Score" (something they've had for major languages for a while). I'm up to 46, which they say corresponds to the EU language evaluation score (CEFR) of "A2". I don't think I'll ever be able to have a conversation in Norwegian (I sometimes don't keep up in English, especially if it's with an accent) but I found I could read signs and notices. 
• Because I wanted to read more Norwegian, I went on a quest for a Norwegian-language sailing magazine. Those of you in publishing probably already know this - but magazines are very hard to find! I went into a couple of book stores, and they told me to look for a kiosk, with newspapers and magazines. They suggested the train station. I never went back to the train station, but I did finally score a (Norwegian language) sailing magazine at the (Swedish) airport! It's so fun - mostly pictures, and many borrowed words, so I can puzzle it out fairly well. 
• I didn't buy any Norwegian hard-copy books, because I love how reading a foreign language on a kindle allows easy translation / word lookup. I thought it would be rude to consult the book store employees for suggestions to buy elsewhere, so I browsed around a bit to get ideas for author names.
• I found reading Swedish signs was a step more difficult than the Norwegian ones. And, I discovered a vitally important vocabulary fact: The Swedish word for "ice cream" is different from the Norwegian word! The Norwegians call it "is krem" or just "is", but the Swedes borrowed from the French and call it "glace". 
• The travel itself was pretty good: 
  -I had booked economy and then requested a business class upgrade for a couple of hundred dollars and many frequent flyer points, which I have from multiple trips to California this year. This also gave me access to lounges at Dulles and Frankfurt. The first flight left DC late, and I had time to check out the posh lounge - free food and drink, none of which I wanted or needed. After takeoff, I immediately turned my seat in my little cubicle into a lie-flat bed. They gave us the same pillow and blanket as coach, and then added a bigger fluffy pillow (with cotton pillow case) and a duvet! I settled in, buckling the seat belt over the duvet, and got a solid four hours of actual sleep, not just dozing! Really worth it!
  - When I was awake, I actually found it hard to adjust the fancy seat to a comfortable position. It was big, and I needed to rest my feet on my carry-on. But the privacy and direct access to the aisle to go pee was nice.
  - The food was excellent and plentiful.
  - The flight got to Frankfurt an hour late - and had been scheduled for a tight 90-minute connection to Oslo! I was very nervous, but they had set up a special van for the half-dozen of us connecting there. We had our own little immigration booth to process us, and walked right on the plane as the rest of the passengers were just clearing the jetway. I suspected, and it turned out, that my bags wouldn't make it. But I got constant texts from Lufthansa with the bag status, and it joined me just a day late.
  - Oslo airport was very very nice. Gothenburg was also nice, but smaller. I had five hours in Frankfurt on the way back. That airport is HUGE. I treated myself to a nice sit-down lunch at a German restaurant (sausage and sauerkraut) and walked for a while, and spent a few hours in the business class lounge. Again, free food and drink (only got water) and many quiet places to sit with power to charge devices. The lounge also had showers!
  - Business class on the way home was nice enough. Good food, including an ice cream sundae custom-made from a cart. But for a day-time flight, not worth a lot of extra money. I watched silly TV on my ipad for a few hours, feeling very unambitious.
• Funny thing: at 2 am on my first night in Oslo, I happened to be awake (jetlag) and my phone rang and it was middle boy! He was in Australia! He had borrowed a suitcase from me, and it was lost. He couldn't remember what it looked like! I was still waiting for my bag at that point and thought it was an amusing coincidence, and also marveled at the connectivity that was allowing us to have that conversation between points as far away from each other as is possible on this planet.
• I had read about an app that provided guidance on sleep/wake/coffee/ light in order to minimize jet lag, "Timeshifter". It gives you one free trial trip, so I figured why not? You load in your flights, and a couple of basic questions about your life style (owl or lark? do you drink caffeine?) and it gives you a timeline and alerts on your phone. It wasn't revolutionary, and it had some flaws, but the most basic message I got was, when going to Europe, bright light and caffeine first thing in the morning. When coming home, it's more important to have bright light in the early evening, when your body is getting ready for European bedtime. That last point had not been obvious to me, and I implemented it with some success at staying awake in my first evenings home. 

• 

  My Boox

  
  I had treated myself to a new piece of technology before the trip, and it proved very useful. I love my Kindle reader - e-ink, easy to read in bright and dim light alike, and long battery life - but as I try to wean myself off of Amazon, I chafed at this lovely device being tethered to the brand. I discovered there are "Brand X" e-readers out there, running on the Android operating system. I bought a little Boox reader. It's slightly bigger than my phone, way smaller than the kindle, supremely pocket-able. I was able to load onto it all of my e-book and audio-book apps, and downloaded many things to listen to or read onto it. Think of this device as like the old ipod Touch, except in black and white e-ink. It uses wifi and bluetooth, but lacks any chip to connect to cell phone bands. While I can load all those book apps onto the phone or ipad, the reading experience is not nearly as good as the black-and-white low glare screen of the Boox. And it spares the phone battery while traveling. I am pleased with this totally unnecessary but useful purchase!

Scandanavia: The Voyage

 

At the harbor in Oslo

I boarded the ship the evening of the fourth night I was in Oslo. I handed my bags to the crew aboard, and was quickly introduced to my roommate (a German woman in her late 40s with hair a brighter shade of red than mine), and she quickly agreed to take the top bunk. (Thank goodness, I'm not sure I would have been able to get up there!) Each cabin had its own tiny bathroom with toilet, sink, and shower.

We had an introductory dinner, met all the passengers and crew, and spent the night at the dock there in Oslo. This is the same ship I was on last year in Scotland, but all of the crew (including the Captain) were new to me. There was a full set of passengers - 12 - and 10 crew, including Captain, two Mates, Engineer, Cook, and five deck hands. The crew hailed from Germany, England, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands. The passengers were four couples all 60+ in age, a family of four (mother, father, a boy and girl 18 and 20), and my roommate and me. One couple were English, one couple were Americans living permanently in Berlin, and all the rest were Germans. But everyone spoke English, and most of the ship's business was conducted in English.

Early the next morning, I was one of the first up, grabbing coffee, and watching the quiet early morning Oslo harbor. I was struck throughout the trip how quiet and not busy early mornings were - I got up around 6:30 or 7, but I didn't see much of anyone in town or on the water until closer to 9. Ship's breakfast was at 8, and people came trickling in slowly. Breakfast was always European breakfast: hot and cold cereal, yogurt, cold meats and cheeses, excellent bread (not toast) baked on board, and fruit salad. 

Our track

We began what would be our usual pattern: the Captain briefed us on plans for the day, we left the dock around 9, and sailed south until mid- to late- afternoon. In contrast to Scotland, this sailing area was well set up with plenty of dock space even for a big ship like us, so we were tied up to shore every night. (In contrast, in Scotland we were mostly anchored out, and had to dinghy ashore. This was both physically difficult - climbing down and up the ship's side and the dockside - and logistically constraining - meeting a scheduled dropoff and pickup. Dockside was much nicer!) The overall plan was to sail south, out the long Oslo fjord and along the Norwegian and Swedish coast, in and around the many islands, to Gothenburg, Sweden. It was about 200 miles, and a four-hour train ride, but we were taking eight nights to make our leisure cruise.

 The first night, we stopped at an island in Oslo fjord, Oscarborg. This little island was in the middle of a narrow part of the fjord, and thus strategically controlled the seaward approach to Oslo. It was an important military site throughout history. When Germany made a surprise attack on Denmark and Norway in April 1940, the cannon battery on the island fired on and sunk one of the largest German warships. This slowed the Nazi advance, and allowed the government and the king to escape north and eventually to Britain. As a result, Norway never surrendered. So this site is pretty much the most important Norwegian WWII battle site. I toured the fortress with my roommate, read all the placards, and wondered how all the Germans thought about this now.

At Oscarborg Island, 
where the Nazi ship was sunk.

 

Many, if not most, Norwegian and Swedish families have summer houses at the seaside, or in the mountains or forests. Some of these are tiny houses with maybe 10 square feet of yard, some are much bigger.  The coast we were traveling was thronged with these houses, painted white or red. Everywhere were flowers - 18 hours of daylight really helps the annual plants to grow vigorously! There was corresponding infrastructure on the islands, from nice big marinas to ferries, some for people-only and some carrying cars. The islands we stopped at (never the mainland until the last night) ranged from tiny with no cars to much larger, with traffic. They were all rocky and for the most part only sparsely forested. There were sheep and cows as well as houses and people. Every island we stopped at (except one) had at least one little cafe that sold ice cream and beer (probably other things, but these were the things I paid attention to!)

The narrow chasm I failed to climb

One of the bigger and busier islands we stopped at had an Ingrid Bergman park and display. Bergman's daughter, Isabella Rossellini, is my pretend friend and neighbor. Her Instagram featured a post just a couple of weeks before about her trip to the family summer house on a tiny island reached from this bigger island we were at. Just missed her! This island also featured a high stone ridge behind the harbor, reachable by climbing up rocks through a narrow chasm that at one point had rocks wedged in the top over you. This was where a famous movie scene had been filmed, all the crew mentioned it. I started up this climb, and realized that I was only able to crawl over the rocks, no semblance of walking. I only went part way up and then backed down, which was harder than continuing up. I was chagrined to realize that not only was there a more gentle way back down from the top, there was even a wooden staircase all the way up! But I never got to the top.

Another night, we tied up directly to a stone cliff face - no dock! These islands are adapted for this - there were iron spikes driven into the rock we could tie the ship to. And, there is essentially no tide in this area, so tying up is much less complicated than if we needed to keep adjusting. There were several other boats in the cove on the island, and one house and some cows. But most of it was rock with small heathers and other plants. We climbed around, played with wildlife in the tide pools, found comfy rocks to sit or lie on, and ended the evening with a shoreside barbecue and sea shanty sing. 

Tied directly to the rocks!

We sailed and motored through this archipelago, sometimes through very narrow passages. During the days, we moved around on deck, watched the ship work, chatted, watched the scenery, and read books. We were invited to pull on ropes. Some passengers also took a turn at the wheel, and a couple went up the mast or out on the bowsprit, accompanied by crew. The passages were very smooth, except for a couple of times. One day took us out a very narrow passage into an open seaway, where the Skagerrak Channel between Norway and Denmark meets the Kattegat Channel, between Sweden and Denmark. The water was very confused, not just waves from one direction, and the wind was fierce. Several people got sick, but I am lucky in that regard. However, I sat outside, hanging on for dear life as the ship staggered about irregularly, and kept my eyes on the horizon. You never know when the luck might run out! We were only in the big water for a few hours before finding sheltered water behind more islands. Another afternoon we encountered a lot of wind and some big waves for a couple of hours, but all the waves were from one direction and the ship rode through them much more smoothly.

Overall, a great time! 

Here are several more pictures:

Passengers and crew leaving Oslo

 

Sailing down the fjord!

Just one of the islands was really wooded.
It had a campground and bathing beaches
and working farms with cows and sheep

 

Island barbecue

Tidepool friend

Summer houses and the rocky ridge above

Another day aboard

Under sail, no engine, through narrow passages!

Rob, the intrepid English sea dog (passenger)
assisting the crew

The crew furling the sails

More narrow going

Looking down (photo by Rob who went up)
It really is narrow!
We are using the engine here!

The same place, looking forward from deck

In the narrow spots, it was hard to look away!

Swedish holiday houses

A new development of holiday houses?

And more holiday houses

One of the cutest islands

Who needs a yard?

We were usually the big dog in harbor
People would bring their kids to see us

Even more narrow going

Coming into Gothenburg
All over!

Scandanavian Holiday: Part 1

TL;DR: It was fabulous. Oslo is my favorite city I've visited on my own, the weather and sailing were fabulous, there was terrific company on the ship, the food was amazing, and my body stood up to the challenge. I arrived home to air you could cut with a knife, bone tired and covered with bruises but only one injury that will take another few weeks to clear up, a garden looking like a jungle, a deluge of vegetables requiring harvest, and a bunch of chores and projects I had successfully convinced myself could wait until my return but which now feel very overdue.

I want to capture what happened while it's still relatively fresh, but "productivity" and "responsibility" are tugging at me. Squeezing out a few moments, I'm going to start until the clock strikes, and post what I have so far, hoping to come back before too long.

 

PROLOGUE:

Five days before I was to leave I got sick - probably food poisoning. Very very sick, very very unpleasant and messy, totally debilitating. For 48 hours I moved only between my bed and the bathroom, with heroic efforts to get to the backyard door and let the dogs out. Through it all I kept a countdown to the trip - I certainly couldn't travel if things didn't clear up. It left me shaky and weak. Luckily I had done major laundry just before getting sick (and I didn't wear any traveling clothes while down for the count) so packing didn't require a lot of work. The most major thing I didn't do was go for a pedicure - my toes went to Norway unadorned. The day I left, I was five pounds lighter than the day I got sick, but I was clearly a long way along my recovery. Just cautious in what I was going to eat. Also very aware of restroom availability, in case of emergency, but it never was required, thank goodness.

THE TRIP AND OSLO

 I arrived in Oslo Friday afternoon, although my bag did not. Because I'd figured I'd be somewhat dazed and weak upon arrival, I'd planned on a taxi to the hotel. But when I didn't have my luggage, just my carry-on shoulder bag, I decided to try out the train. $6.50 instead of $80! I had to walk a few blocks, but the hotel room was ready and I was able to collapse. I thanked my mother for her rules of travel: always pack a change of clothes in your carry-on. I only had underwear, but it was great to be able to change. Lufthansa was tracking my suitcase and sending me regular updates, so I wasn't worried, just resigned. After freshening up, I ventured out. 

I had studied maps of Oslo and planned out several things to do. But immediately, I realized my mental scale was off. Oslo is so much smaller than I had been thinking! When I stepped out of the hotel, I looked to my right and saw the harbor. I had been thinking it was much farther away. Instead, everything was right there.

I spent the next few days walking, taking the tram, walking and looking more, and sitting at sidewalk cafes eating fish soup and drinking beer. Only one museum. The weather was in the 90s! I went back to the hotel in the middle of the day each day, and then sallied forth again. The Norwegians apparently eat dinner earlier than any other country in Europe (like, 5:30 pm!) and so I got by on the hotel breakfast, a mid day snack, and late afternoon dinner at a cafe. One day I had 19,000 steps! and 16,000 another! Way to go, body, carrying me along!

Norway has decorative manhole covers.
This photo is one of a series from other visits.

Oslo has a small river, complete with waterfalls, flowing through it
I took a tram up the hill, and followed the river back downtown.

Showing I'm in Norway

Many spots around the harbor people were swimming.

In a fun modern development area, public art.
I like the way this motorcycle moose echos the other photo.

The waterfront has been entirely rebuilt in the last 20 years.

The one museum I went into - the Museum of the Resistance.
I read a lot of adventure stories in my youth. The reality was grimmer.

These two notes in particular hit me different right now.