Call Me at 4, Please! No Trip to Norway Necessary

On Friday, my friend Barbara, just back from a trip to Scandinavia, sent an e-mail suggesting we get together around 4 pm for wine or coffee so she could tell me about her trip.

A destination at 4 pm!

I was so eager to get out of the house, I could have listened to her describe the lettuce her crisper.

Yes, yes, I wrote back.  Where?

She suggested a place a short drive from our houses. She brought her iPad and showed me pictures from her trip, and I told her about goings-on at the Berkeley Food Pantry, where we both volunteer.  I was home by 5:30.

Out in the world talking about the world!  I felt practically cosmopolitan.

I don't know if this is the Plague of Retirees or what, but if I've been home all day, I start to get depressed at 4 pm.  I'm here alone, the day's winding down, and I have a tendency to look back on the day and decide that I haven't done all that much, and then I extrapolate to Life, and how much have I done,  the hour is late, and blah, blah, blah.  Not good.

But meeting up with a pal for one-on-one time, even if it's just an hour, is a sure antidote.

So, if you're at loose ends around 4 pm on a weekday,  give me a call.  I may be out getting an allergy shot, or a glaucoma check--medical-maintenance stuff that's the other plague of retirees--but we could go the next day or the day after that.  Your choice where we meet.  Recent travel not required.

* * * * *

Some highlights from Barbara's trip--and keep in mind that she's very much a roll-with-the-punches, it's- all-an-adventure optimist.

She and her husband left Amsterdam on a cruise ship with 1600 people, 900 of whom were Dutch.  It turns out the Dutch like to smoke, and they were disinclined to stick to the smoking areas of the ship.  Also, if they discovered that you didn't speak Dutch, they turned away, done.

Barbara saw this as culturally interesting and funny, although she didn't like the smoke, but I thought how maddening it would be and  how I'd get cranky and might  be compelled to pitch my shoes across the room by the last day.  (In our cabin of course; nothing publicly violent.)

Norway has "one of the most undulatory coastlines in the world, measuring an astonishing 63,000 miles long," per the New York Times.  "By comparison, the entire coast of the United States is 95,471..."

They cruised three fjords, sometimes five hours one-way up a fjord, and found it to be as beautiful as we've heard.  Gorgeous.  Then the ship would stop, and Barbara and her husband would hike in the hills about whatever town.  They could see the ship below and use that as a landmark, so they could just wander.

The village of Reine, in the Lofoten Islands (New York Times photo)

They flew on Norwegian Air, a budget airline now flying out of Oakland Airport.  There were a few peculiarities:  passengers had to order their meal when they bought the tickets or they had to pay for the food onboard.  Not even water was complimentary.  You used the touchscreen on the back of the seat in front of you to order food and drinks, and then the flight attendants, all of whom were Thai, brought whatever you ordered.  For a price.

Did anyone see the article on Norway in Sunday's New York Times travel section?  Informative and well-written, I thought.  The author thought reindeer meat was delicious, but even Barbara declined to try it; ditto, creamed herring at breakfast (or any time).  But she put up with a baby in the seat in front of her for 10-1/2 hours and was sympathetic with the parents, more than I could have done.