Flights to Norway (Wednesday/Thursday, Day 1)

OK, if someone had told me it would take me 26 hours to get to Norway, I'd have laughed at them. Now, I'd cry. ;)

While waiting in the Salt Lake International Airport for our first flight, I tried to call T-Mobile to have them add international service to my phone for the trip, but the woman I tried to speak with had a very heavy African-American accent, her mic as too close to her mouth so the sound was horrible, and her cell phone kept cutting out. I finally gave up and would try again during our 2 hour layover in Denver or Newark, NJ.

We made our flight from Salt Lake to Denver just fine, Randi and I were on the same plane instead of two different flights as we had thought.

When we arrived, we went straight over to our connecting flight's gate, and saw that they had bumped up the departure time by 50 minutes, and never told us! We walked up to the gate just as they were finishing boarding.

I sat on a window seat on my row, and another large guy sat on the aisle seat, and said "I hope someone skinny sits between us." A beautiful, young, skinny woman was just coming down the aisle (as I was silently hoping it was her), and she said that the seat must be hers. The other guy was chatting her up a lot, but I did glean that her name was Marianne, from Ireland, married (no kids), a photographer / author who had just published a book that I didn't hear the title of, but "chatter-mouth" translated into Spanish as "The Large Cockroaches"(?) Randi would later claim that I snuck in five minutes sleep, but I'm sure I was dreaming of her so I wouldn't have gotten much rest anyway. ;)

Once on board, the pilot informed us that due to the bad weather on the east coast of the USA, we had been re-routed over Canada. After we waited in line on the tarmac for about 30 minutes, the pilot let us know that they were lined up on the wrong runway, and it would take another 15 minutes to get over to the line for the correct runway!

We finally took off and headed for Newark, NJ (via Canada somehow). As we arrived about 50 minutes late -- the exact same time as our layover. "Chatter-mouth" was about to burst a blood vessel that he may miss his connecting flight to Albany, NY. For crying-out-loud, I'm sure there are more than one flight to Albany, and if nothing else, he could take a train or even a cab, but Randi and I are about to miss possibly the ONLY flight to Norway for the day or even the week!

Well, we checked at the gate if our flight had left, and they had just closed the door and wouldn't hold the plane for us. So, we went over to Customer Service (aka Newark's own Hell on Earth) to re-book our flight -- hopefully we could get an international flight to Europe, then catch any of a number of connecting flights in the morning. As we waited in line with about 50 other people, we're hearing our options get diminished as Spanish flights are being canceled. More and more flights are getting canceled as Customer Service has two or thee agents and 7 or 8 empty terminals, and one guy was actually pulled from the desk to lift boxes for a pregnant co-worker who was in no rush to leave. If she'd have stayed one more minute, I'd have demanded that she get someone in charge to help out here.

Well, we finally got to an agent after nearly an hour, and after two phone calls and assistance from the agent next to her, and the two of them arguing with a man who left his wallet in a bar and I heard them overhead page him to come to Customer Service, she finally re-booked our flight to Oslo through Amsterdam, Holland, and made sure our bags would be on the flight.

We went over to our gate, and got on board the flight to Amsterdam, which was already three-and-a-half hours behind schedule, and took off.

They had individual per view movies, with several that I had not yet seen, so I tried to sneak in 3 movies during the 6.5 hour flight. We arrived in Amsterdam as our connecting flight to Oslo took off, so we went to SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) Customer Service, and she did exactly what the SLOW woman in Newark had to do, but in less than TWO MINUTES! (not to mention that she's Dutch and had to communicate with me in English!)

Well, we had a few hours before our flight, so we got lunch -- some sort of Italian sandwich at a Mediterranean Shop, and bought some souvenirs before boarding our flight to Oslo. (Later, I wished I hadn't gotten the sandwich -- whew boy!)

The flight was quick and I caught a quick nap or two, before we landed in Oslo. We had to chase down our luggage (it apparently arrived on the earlier flight that we missed.) I stopped in Customs to see if they would stamp my passport to show that I actually visited Norway, but they do not do it here -- only the police would stamp it. Randi's daughters, Siw and Linn, picked us up at the airport and drove us to Randi's nice home in Brumunddal. It was nice making the trip by car this time -- the earth berms surrounding the train tracks made it difficult to see the landscape during my first trip here. I fell asleep in the car before we got to Brumunddal, so I'm not really sure if that's where they live or not! ;)

They showed me around their nice home, and the nice room I get to have with a double bed with two down pillows and thick down comforters. Their shower has a radio, colored lights, hand-held shower as well as over-head rain shower and full body shower heads (although the last two aren't currently working.)

We had an awesome chocolate lava cake with creamy Norwegian ice cream for dessert. :)

Randi and I taught Siw and Linn how to play the Phase 10 card game using two regular decks of cards, which we cut short to go to bed.