New York in my heart, for always

My annual trip to New York this year started in Manhattan, where I met Cindy, a college friend, on the first weekend of September (5-6). We stayed at the Warwick Hotel in midtown, one of our favorite hotels in NYC. As luck would have it, the weather cooperated with our plans, which included a jazz cruise on the Hudson River (leaving from Chelsea Piers) and attending the musical Schmigadoon. The jazz cruise was quite enjoyable, and moving--especially when we drove past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This at a time in the USA when it doesn't seem that immigrants are particularly welcome anymore. I thought about my paternal grandparents who came from Italy in the early 1900s and who made a life for themselves, first in Brooklyn and then in Tarrytown, New York. They never returned to visit Italy, which must have been quite sad for both of them. Cindy and I also got tickets to see the musical Schmigadoon which spoofs on other musicals like Brigadoon and Oklahoma, but that is also quite touching in its own way. I can recommend both the cruise and the musical. 

The following week included visits with my sister Renata and her husband Tim and their new dog--Burrito, as well as visits with good friends Maryann and Gordon from my Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center days, and with Stef, a good friend from childhood. The weekend of September 12-13 was spent with Judy, my good friend from high school, and her two sisters Betty and Joan. We drove up to Hyde Park, NY on Saturday to visit the Culinary Institute of America, where we ate a very good lunch and enjoyed a food tasting event and a tour of the institute. On Sunday, we managed to visit Springwood, Franklin D Roosevelt's summer home on the Hudson River, and Val-Kill, Eleanor Roosevelt's place of business and eventual home located a short distance away from Springwood, across the main road. Both are national historic sites. I've written about FDR's home before in a 2016 post: A New Yorker in Oslo: Making memories--two weeks in the States  Visiting Val-Kill 'completed' the story of the Roosevelts for me. FDR and Eleanor were a good political team; their marriage endured a number of infidelities, but they supported and defended each other and had each other's backs. On Monday, the four of us took a 1.5 hour boat trip on the Hudson River that departed from Kingston, NY. We had lovely weather and managed to see the Esopus lighthouse as well as some Gilded Age estates along the Hudson River. 

I then visited with Jola, another good friend from my Memorial Sloan-Kettering days, and we spent our time together talking, catching up, eating some good lunches and dinners, driving around Tarrytown, and visiting Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, NY, which I have written about before (A New Yorker in Oslo: Two gardens worth visiting--Untermyer Gardens and the New York Botanical Garden). And then I made my way to Jean's house (I call it my second home), where I always end my NY vacations. Jean and I go way back to high school; we have a lot of shared history and are very close friends. Maria, another close friend from childhood, came down for the four days I was there, and we hung out together, eating, talking up a storm (Jean calls it incessant gabbing), and having fun. We've settled on a visit to St. Augustine in Florida for this coming winter's annual trip. St. Augustine has history, culture, and relaxing beaches. Our trips together have become something to which we really look forward. The major consideration is the weather, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that snow and/or bitter cold won't throw any major wrenches into our plans. 

Of course, no trip of mine would be complete without a snafu here or there! This time it was a major circuit break/cut in the cables that control the air traffic control grid for the NYC airports. All flights were cancelled at Newark, La Guardia, JFK, Teterboro, and Philadelphia airports on the afternoon of Monday September 21. My flight back to Oslo on SAS was cancelled, but SAS did manage to rebook me on a later flight (United) to Brussels (they worked quickly and efficiently to rebook me). Their hope was probably that by the time the plane left for Brussels (8:30 pm), that the circuit would have been fixed (it was). But nothing was certain and I booked a hotel room at Newark Airport just in case. A shout out to the Howard Johnson hotel at the airport for kindly refunding my money; they could have been sticklers for the regular routine of not allowing customers to cancel unless it was 24 hours prior to arrival. They made an exception for me and I thank them. 

I'm also glad that I arrived and departed New York when I did. This weekend would have been a messy affair to put it mildly--storm, wind, rain, and flooding. A Nor'easter that traveled up the East Coast of the USA, wreaking a bit of havoc and leaving a real mess in its wake. A lot of rain and flooding as far as I can see from the news reports. There would have been no boat trips and very few outdoor activities had I been there this weekend. So the weather gods were with us earlier in September!

Although traveling can be tiring and sometimes unpredictable, I love it. I love the expectation of new adventures as well as the emotional constancy of visiting with close friends and family. I have said it before but I'll say it again--I am forever grateful for the wonderful friends who grace my life. I will continue to travel until I am no longer able to travel. It would have to be poor health only that would stop me from seeing those I love. In my next post, I'll include some photos of the places we visited on this trip. 

Buying it on Amazon (or how I avoid paying high Norwegian prices)

I thought I’d put in my two cents concerning the discussion about how expensive it is to be a tourist in Norway. There have been a number of recent articles about exactly this topic—how expensive it is to travel in Scandinavia, and especially in Norway—and some of them are pretty funny, at least to me, since I recognize my own reactions (and a bit of shock) to much of what is written in them. Try this recent article, for example http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/24/scandinavia-on-125-a-day/?hpw). Tourists are not the only ones who are shocked at the high cost of living here; I’ve lived here for twenty-two years and I’m still often taken aback at how much things cost. It’s not so much housing prices (which are comparable to Manhattan and other large cities around the world), but it’s other things, like cars, eating out, gasoline, groceries and other necessities. However, a number of low-price supermarkets have sprung up in Oslo in recent years; here you can find some bargains and that’s always a good thing. Prices in Norway for different items can be shocking; you need to take a deep breath at times and stop converting the prices to American dollars if you’re an American expat. Because if you continue to convert, you will realize how much money you are really paying just to live, and it’s not to live extravagantly. For example, if you convert, you will find that you are paying twenty dollars for one, I repeat, one dental floss dispenser at local pharmacies. It doesn’t matter where you are—in the rich or less rich city areas—prices are the same. And the dental floss is not manufactured in Norway, it is imported. It is good old Johnson & Johnson dental floss that you can find on Amazon for a fraction of the Norwegian price. In fact, a package of six dental floss dispensers (100 yards each, more or less the same size as what is available for sale here), costs about twenty dollars on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Reach-Dentotape-Designed-spaced-Unflavored/dp/B003XDVERE/ref=pd_sim_hpc_1). In other words, you’re being suckered if you pay that price for one floss dispenser in this country. So guess who recently ordered dental floss from Amazon. Even if I pay international shipping costs, which are not much, the total price for six dispensers is still much cheaper than what I would pay for one here in Oslo. And so it goes. Take aspirin. Genuine Bayer aspirin (325mg 200 coated tablets) on Amazon costs 9.47 dollars (http://www.amazon.com/Genuine-Bayer-Aspirin-Tablets-Coated/dp/B001LFG0OI/ref=pd_sim_hpc_1); at an online Norwegian pharmacy, I can get a package of 20 aspirin tablets (440 mg) for 7 dollars. It borders on the ridiculous. Of course, healthcare costs are ‘lower’ in this country than in the USA; but wage earners in Norway pay for universal healthcare through their taxes (at present, the sales tax is 25%), as well as taxes on gasoline, liquor, and cigarettes. I don’t have a problem with paying taxes to fund universal healthcare (something Americans should think more about so that healthcare became more accessible to all), but just so the point is made—healthcare is not free in this country by any stretch of the imagination. Nothing in this world comes for free. But it would be nice not to have to pay through the nose for some basic items like dental floss and aspirin. So whenever I am in the USA, I stock up on such things; it’s worth it. Norwegians pay their taxes willingly, but never believe for one second that they don’t want a bargain if they can get one. Those Norwegians who live on the east side of the country save money by shopping for groceries and liquor in Sweden, where prices are much cheaper. And when they travel, they stock up on duty-free items (e.g. liquor and tobacco products) on their return. And duty-free prices are still expensive, just considerably less expensive than the usual prices. 

Why are prices so high? Someone is getting rich, and it’s not the average consumer. But if you take a look at the incomes of the owners of the major supermarket chains in this country, that will shed some light on the matter. They are quite wealthy; in fact, they are some of the wealthiest people in this country. They control the food prices; the farmers who are always being blamed for the high price of food do not. Farmers are subsidized in many countries; it’s a tricky and difficult profession and I don’t begrudge them the subsidies if this is what helps them to live and as long as the subsidies are reasonable. I have a problem with the middlemen—that group of people who bring the consumer goods to us. Again, I don’t mind paying a 15% or 20% markup so that they can make some profit from importing goods for us to buy. I mind when the markup is 300% or 600%. There is no reason other than pure profit that dental floss and aspirin cost the exorbitant prices they do at present. It reminds me of how middlemen have milked my own profession for years and made huge profits. The suppliers of medical research items like antibodies, buffers and other reagents have charged sales tax on items that should have been tax-free because they were being used for research. They also marked up prices for many of these items by 100% or more. So you had an insane markup plus 25% sales tax. Fair? No. They were finally forced to implement the tax-free policy and made it as difficult as possible to implement. It always surprised me that hospitals and research institutions were not more aggressive and adamant about having this tax-free policy enforced many years ago already, considering the financial difficulties many find themselves in at present.