Mom and I flew to Oslo yesterday and today, hence the complicated meal plan. Our flight took off early Sunday afternoon from SFO, where we killed time with brunch at Andale--Mom had yummy chili verde and I had a pretty good burrito carne asada.
We flew Lufthansa to Frankfurt, and I am trying to figure out how it is that American airlines are all going bankrupt and can't afford to give us meals or drinks, but Lufthansa can provide two decent hot meals and lots of wine and booze on basically the same ticket pricing structure. Dinner was pretty decent--I had pasta with mushrooms and marinara, and Mom had some kind of chicken rice dish. We both got edible rolls, okay salad with good dressing, and a tiny triangle of chocolate cake with whipped cream and a strawberry. There were good Ritter chocolates available in the galley overnight when I went up to get us drinks. For breakfast we had another good roll, an omelet that wasn't great (when are eggs ever good in an airplane?) but was at least a lot better than some of the eggs I've had in United Business lately, and fruit salad just like every other airplane fruit salad: red grapes and pieces of underripe melon; oh, well. But still--two hot meals and plenty of free alcohol, on a route that United would have given us one hot meal, one disgusting breakfast snack, and drinks for $5.
We had lunch in the Senator Lounge at Frankfurt airport, which has a pretty nice buffet, including Frankfurters, chicken meatballs and Shanghai noodles, a funky tuna salad, some beautiful Christmas breads that I didn't try, some serviceable minestrone (perfectly good but not a knockout like some German airport lounge soups I've had), olives, After lunch I enjoyed a campari-gin-bitter lemon and some Jelly Bellies. I wish we could buy bitter lemon in the States. Maybe I can figure out how to make it, now that I've got a CO2 tank and am not afraid to use it.
The unhappy part of our stay in Frankfurt was that my new AT&T mobile account didn't seem to include international roaming after all--the guy I talked to when I switched said I was all set, but that turned out not to be the case. This wouldn't be that big a deal, except that I needed to check my email and voicemail right away to find out whether I had an appointment with a natural horn or not. It turns out I didn't. But what I had to go through to get AT&T to fix things is absurd. Since my phone didn't work, I couldn't use it to call them. I can't remember the last time I saw a pay phone anywhere, so that meant I had to buy an hour of wifi and $10 of Skype credit so that I could use Skype and wifi to phone home, whereupon I reached an agent who said I'd have to call back after 7am Eastern when a certain department opened up--which was when we were boarding our flight to Oslo. In the end I couldn't get it all straightened out until we got to the hotel, where I connected on the free wifi and again used Skype to call AT&T. Naturally just as we were getting things working, the call dropped and I had to call in AGAIN and finally got things working--and got the news that it's $1.29 a minute for anything, including receiving but not answering calls, receiving voicemails, or actually receiving or placing calls. It's highway robbery. Of course, when getting or missing a call means getting or missing a gig that pays $100ish or more, it's worth it, and calculations like that are why wireless companies get away with charging so darned much. Argh!
Back to food, it was a good thing we ate in the airport, because SAS charged for everything on the connection to Oslo, with prices starting around three euros for coffee or soda. We were happy to pass.
We landed in Oslo at 3:45, collected our bags, got cash and airport express tickets, and were in downtown Oslo by 4:30. Our first order of business was to pick up our train tickets, which was only partially successful. Now that I've got email access again, though, I've got the various confirmation numbers I'll need to get the rest of them. After that we searched out a vinmonopolet (literally "wine monopoly"--other than weak beer, all alcohol in Norway is sold by the state) and picked up some provisions for our hotel room so that we'll be equipped to cope with any jet lag, and as I type this Mom and I are enjoying a lovely, fruity juleakevitt by Linie. Since we were tired and only vaguely hungry, we ate supper in "Erwin's spiseri" right in the same food court.
So for our first Norwegian meal, Mom had "husets kremefisksuppe" or the house special cream fish soup, which we both thought was quite yummy. I had the "julelunsj tallerken" or "Christmas lunch plate" (I think) of gravet laks and sweet mustard sauce (yum), pickled herring (ick), a slice of ham, a slice of brie, a pile of the most iodine-y bay shrimp I've had in a long time, bread and butter, and a mound of--of all things--Waldorf salad. The Waldorf salad was good but I think it's the first time I've had Waldorf salad since I was in the hospital with pneumonia during second grade. Somehow I remember eating a lot of Waldorf salad in that hospital, and for me it's a dish lost to time. It's kind of a perfect Norwegian salad, though--white, bland, sweet, and everything from a can. "Except the apples," Mom pointed out, but I can't say that I found any apples in there. I washed it all down with a pretty good juleøl (dark Christmas ale) by Ringnes.
After dinner, we walked the rest of the way to our hotel, which isn't fancy but seems decent enough and has free wifi.
In electronics sadness, somehow I managed to erase everything from my iPod before we left, so I couldn't do language immersion learning by zoning out to Norwegian podcasts during the long flights as I'd hoped. Not exactly tragic, but how on earth did I do that, and how will I make sure I never do that again? Fortunately we had decent movies on the long flight: "Happy Go Lucky," a diverting but pointless Mike Leigh film (someone please enlighten me if there was a plot) and "Nanny Diaries," which wasn't as good as the book but was entertaining enough.
I'm still a little stuck on the Sunday NYT crossword but I'm not ready to give up and seek help from Rex Parker's blog yet.
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