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!