Wonderful Copenhagen

We're off to see the in-laws tomorrow for our niece's confirmation on Friday. Apparently confirmations are a very big deal and an opportunity for teenagers to make copious amounts of cash. It seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with religion or spirituality. From my high atheist horse I disapprove of such shenanigans but am going along with the effort and expense of the three-day trip and hotel in Copenhagen out of cultural interest and a desire for marital harmony. In return I've been promised a trip to Tivoli. Not for me you understand, for the little children.

Copenhagen is like Oslo's hipper, trendier, more sophisticated cousin. I spy at least an hour snatched in some shopping environs on my weekend horizon, after I've trudged around Tivoli of course. And I will feel obliged to indulge in some genuine Danish pastries which really do taste a thousand times better in Denmark than anywhere else I've been in the world.

Hytte Life

 

Spending the weekend in a ‘hytte’ (cabin) is as common for Norwegians as Sunday shopping is for Irish people. So far though, we’ve only managed one weekend away from Oslo in four and a half hours. Until the weekend just gone by. 

Now, my version of a cabin is a brand-new or recently-renovated house complete with dishwasher and flatscreen TV but I do know people with cabins that don’t have running water or toilets. Yes, people actually drive for hours every weekend to get away from the trappings of modern life such as flushing toilets and showers. Well, not me. Ever.

We went to a tiny settlement of only a few houses - where people live all-year-round, miles and miles from civilization and shopping -  at the innermost point of Mauranger fjord. It was so stunningly beautiful that I didn’t mind that it rained all day Saturday, even though only a few miles away we could see the sun shining. It seemed we had hit upon a micro-climate.

Luckily the satellite dish meant that the kids had many more television channels to watch than they have at home. It was a bit strange, driving for almost six hours each way, over snowy mountains, within spitting distance of glaciers, to the edge of civilisation in fact, to watch Sky News. 

We were the first ever family to stay in the hytte we rented since the previous occupants died in the 1950s. They were a pair of blind sisters. Can you imagine, living right on the edge of a fjord and not being able to see it? 

That toilet charge thing - again

OMG! I actually thought he was joking but according to the morning's Irish Times, Michael O'Leary is serious about the proposal to charge passengers to use on-board toilets. He proposes that customers use their credit cards to swipe access to the toilets.

'.. if the airline was prevented from charging passengers on the way in to the toilet, it would impose the charge when they were on the way out. It would also impose soiling charges where appropriate,' the Irish times quotes O' Leary. 

Soiling charges! Oh pleeease! Does that mean a toilet inspection would be included in the price of a pee or poo, or would the customer have to pay for that too?! 

Would parents be allowed to take young children to the toilet, or would that incur a double charge? Even Harrods lets pregnant women use their toilets for free; would Ryanair do the same (with a doctor's certificate, of course (heavy sarcasm)).

Do you think he'll start distributing free coffee and delaying flights once passengers have boarded to increase his toilet-usage revenue? Will toilet paper be included in the tariff? 

So many questions, mostly tongue-in-cheek because you know, I STILL think this must be a joke. Only, I'm not really laughing. 

Either that, or O' Leary has genuinely, once and for all, lost the plot. 

Then again, a few years back, people probably thought the same about the prospect of being charged for taking luggage on holidays.

Need to spend a pound?

According to the Telegraph, Ryanair boss, Micheal O' Leary is thinking of charging passengers to use the on-board loos. He might be joking; then again, he might not be. 

You can imagine it, can't you? You go to buy your ticket online and you're given the option:

                 PRIORITY ON-BOARD PEE - £1. 

(If you do not avail of this option, you will be faced with a £5 charge in the event that you cannot keep your legs crossed until we land.)

Oh yes, I can see it now. Two lines in the aisle. One line for people waving their priority peeing vouchers, the other weighing up the option of flushing £5 down the loo or peeing in their pants, while vowing next time to pay up-front just in case.

We fly SAS to Dublin anyway, as they give us a 100 kg luggage (i.e. shoe) allowance with our tickets so it works out cheaper, even without paying to pee. With my tiny bladder, it would be a no-brainer.

A touch of Hollywood in Dublin

In front of the Pav at Trinity College Dublin, where many a Guinness-filled evening began (when I was young enough to be able to cope with the after effects).

A little retail therapy on Grafton Street

Last night we took my parents out for dinner to thank them for babysitting the children while we were in Dublin - more of which later - and they drank us under the table in the bar afterwards so we're both feeling lousy today, playing ping-pong with responsibility for the children. It's enough to make me give up alcohol for a least a few days. Uggh.

Anyway we had three days and three nights in a five-star hotel in Dublin last week to celebrate Mr Nomad's 40th birthday. The last time we had a few nights away without children either in utero or ex utero was eight years ago when we took my parents from Singapore to Bali to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. We had such a great time that, despite a very poor fertility prognosis, Caoilin was conceived and we've hardly gone anywhere without her since.

But wrench ourselves away from our parental responsiblities we did, and oh was it wonderful. For three days I washed no one's teeth but my own (ditto bum wiping). I walked along city streets, in no hurry anywhere, with only my handboag to watch over. I ate buffet breakfasts at my leisure, reading the paper, only getting up from my seat to serve myself as opposed to others. You get the drift. We also fraternised with celebrities - kinda.

When we queued up to get into 'The Dark Knight', we were forced to stand along the red carpet and watch Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider schmooze with their fans before the premier of their latest movie which is, I suspect, as ridiculous as its title - something about Zohan. There were some Irish celebrities there too (apparently) but having been in exile for so long I didn't recognise them; thanks to a couple of Batman fans in the queue I discovered that they were television presenters and the like. Hardly very impressive.

Burly bouncers informed us that we could go into the cinema building until the talent had left the building. The talent! Oh it was so Hollywood on O'Connell Street last wednesday night (except for the downpour which greeted us when our movie was over which was very, very Irish).

There's lots more to be said about our romantic (and retail) escape but it's my turn to tend to the children so it'll have to wait. Roll on bedtime - mine and theirs.

Momondo

I was recently approached by the editor of airline search engine Momondo.com to write some first-person articles on Oslo. The site was voted by CNN and ABC TV as the best flight search engine in the world. They've just uploaded my first article (together with a 2006 photo of Caoilin hanging out in a statue in Vigeland's Park). It's hard to get work as a journalist in Norway because of language contraints so it's nice when, sometimes, the work comes to you.

Now, after that little bit of very un-Irish self-promotion, I'm definitely off on my holidays. Ciao!

Kilkenny-bound

If someone had told me 20 years ago that my destination of choice for summer holidays would be Kilkenny, I’d have told them to sod off. No way! I mean I knew that I wouldn’t be living in the town of my birth when I ‘grew up’, but I didn’t anticipate that I’d become so attached to it in my, er, prime. But here we are, finally, about to head off to the sometimes sunny south-east of Ireland (as the temperature hits 30 here in Oslo) for our fourth consecutive summer trip.
So here's to three weeks of shopping in decent supermarkets; this is particularily ironic given that I wasn't in fact ever allowed to set foot in a supermarket in Kilkenny until my father sold his grocery store when I was in my early twenties (someone might have seen me and inferred from my presence that a supermarket was better than Leahy's Minimarket - or something like that!).
More important than quality retail experiences, is seeing my parents (free babysitting), cheap booze, cheaper everything, reading loads of lovely newspapers, and catching up with many old friends. The kids love to rediscover their toys – Santa usually visits them in Kilkenny, while the retired grocer always puts Santa to shame with his generosity.
Of course, looking back I realise that I wasn't running away from Kilkenny, but from my dad's darn business, which I loathed beyond reason. That shop defined my relationship to everything; family, friends, aquaintances, myself and my home town.
But that's a story for another day (or memoir :-))
Here's to dry weather, and if the thermometer hits 20 or above, that'll be a bonus.

The Poxy Pox

We were meant to go to Ireland for four weeks this Friday and the girls have been counting down the days with as much excitement as if we were going to Disney Land, God forbid. I've had the pre-travel highlights and hair cut done, had started the usual clothes and ridiculoulsy impractical shoes selection process for my usual jaunts down Kilkenny High Street (as if anyone cares what I wear other than me, but still I can't help myself dressing up in case I meet someone/anyone I knew twenty years ago), and the washing machine is doing overtime on the kids' stuff. The car was hired at Dublin airport, my mother had been dispatched a shopping list for essentials required on arrival, and I was dreaming of submerging myself in some decent newspapers this coming weekend. And now we can't go, this week at least.

Regular readers will know that my elder daughter came down with shingles two weeks ago, and that this meant that her little brother, who unlike his sisters, hadn't been vaccinated, might get chicken pox. Well, he has. Big time.

So I can slow down on the packing because after several hours of phone calls and internet surfing, I have re-booked flights for tomorrow week, when the little man should no longer be contagious. I have cancelled and re-hired the car; just reducing the number of days on the booking upped the price with Avis for some reason, and I've left a message on my mother's voice-mail breaking the news. Thankfully, our travel insurance should cover the cost of the lost flights minus an excess on each of our tickets, and I managed to book a car with a cheaper company for longer.

I still have to make an appointment for the patient to see a doctor, to fill out our insurance claim form and write a letter permitting him to fly on July 24th. I think I'll leave that for another day though. But hey, no rush on the packing, the washing machine can breathe a temporary sigh of relief, and I might now have time to return my library books before we leave.

Shame the little man has blisters on his scrotum though. I now understand why vaccination makes sense.