Who's Ready For Some Waiting Sausages?
This is a travel story, sure.
But this is a story about much, much more.
This is a story about cuisine.
This is a story about creativity.
This is a story about culture.
This...
This is a story about the deep, undying love the Norwegian people have for hot dogs.
Yes, hot dogs. The humble tubesteak holds a place of devoted adoration in the hearts of Norwegians from Stavanger to Svalbard. It's truly remarkable to see the extent to which a nation will unanimously rally around a grilled frankfurter.
In the US we have the turn dog, we have the 4th of July frank, we have the ballpark dog. But the waiting sausage is a level of hot dog innovation that only the culinary minds of the Norseland could conjure.
If you ask any Norwegian if they've ever heard of "waiting sausages" they'll look at you like you've asked if they've ever heard of Santa Claus (who hails from the town of Drøbek just outside of Oslo by the way).
The waiting sausage is a proud Norwegian tradition that accompanies any gathering of gourmands 'round a barbeque pit. While an open flame licks the underside of the main course, the grillmaster chars a few dogs on the side to serve as a Nordic hors d'œuvre.
The waiting sausage: a dog while you wait. Strålende!
Norwegians take hot dog innovation one step further and dispense with the dry, protuberant hot dog bun and wrap their dogs in lompe, a traditional thin potato pancake resembling a tortilla. Atop the dog comes ketchup, mustard, and crispy onions. After my first pølse med lompe I have to say that my stateside compatriots and I are losing the hot dog innovation war. As the progenitors of the modern dog, we've become complacent and allowed Norway to surpass us in frankfurter technology.
Throughout his reign Alexander the Great often adopted foreign customs into the tradition of his own empire. I'm not one to claim I'm better than Alexander the Great so in my first decree as Andrew the Alright I will take a scrap of papyrus from Alexander's scroll and introduce the waiting sausage and lompe hot dog blanket to My Fellow Americans.
I have a feeling I'm going to be pretty popular at my next BBQ.
Oh Shit or: How I Learned to Stop Adulting and Lose My Phone
I'm halfway up the up escalator at Raleigh-Durham airport when I realize I've done it again. I've dispossessed myself of my phone out of pure stupidity. I quickly about face and sprint back down the up-escalator in the hopes that Dani hasn't driven away yet.
Dani agreed to chauffer me to the airport in exchange for the use of my car while I'm gone (but mostly because she's a good person with Midwest sensibilities). I see her just as I bound through one set of sliding doors & she through another, passing each other like the spinning bookcase scene from Young Frankenstein. She's halfway to the escalator before she hears my shouts echo through the terminal. She spins around and we exchange wide eyed looks of relief.
"You went into the terminal and your music kept playing and I was like 'damn, your bluetooth range is great! Then looked down and saw your phone.'"
"Thank you so much Dani. I am a moron."
Catastrophe averted, my situation improves considerably when the American Airlines kiosk offers me a seat in first class for \$45. That's a damn good deal, I'll take that deal. I am on holiday after all.
The flight to JFK is quick and easy, but not too quick to forego a few Goose Island IPAs of course. Upon arrival my bag is the very first off the conveyor - everything's turnin' up Toy!!
I drop my bags at cousin Michael's place in Crown Heights then hop on the 4 express train to Brooklyn Heights. It's a half mile of easy strollin' through a beautiful May evening to the Brooklyn Promenade overlooking lower Manhattan.
On the 'nade, 'neath the nighttime glow of my favorite stone tower hybrid cable stayed/suspension bridge, I finally meet Michael's boyfriend Shane, who I've just missed on my last couple trips to the city. Rounding out the gang is another cousin, Brett, who is visiting from Baltimore, and his girlfriend Cat. We stroll along the promenade then duck into The Binc for a round of cocktails. I order up a Reykjavik 101, which seems like the most Viking of all the offerings. Aquavit assumes a starring role in the concoction, a Scandinavian neutral-grain or potato based liquor often flavored with caraway seeds. The drink is crisp, fresh, and deceptively boozy.
After we finish our drinks an unspoken conversation occurs over a few weary glances between my compadres that say are you tired as shit too? Ok me too. Shane has work in the morning so he & Michael dip out while the three remaining engineers talk shop. We flag the bartender down to pay our tabs & he informs us that Shane payed for everybody. What a fuckin' guy. I knew I'd like Shane.
Manhattan Moseyin
The next day I catch up on some much needed sleep before packing my rucksack and heading into Manhattan. I found a coffee shop in Greenwich Village called Oslo that sounds like the most apropos establishment considering the destination on my boarding pass for tonight's flight.
I take the A-C to Washington Square and hoof it a few blocks to Oslo only to find a tiny storefront with a line out the door. Seeing as I planned to work this morning we can say that's less than ideal. I continue to aimlessly ramble until I stumble upon Hungry Ghost Coffee with ample space at the bar. I bang out a couple hours of caffeine fueled work at the Ghost before relocating to the stately confines of the Jefferson Market Library.
Completed in 1877, this High Victorian Gothic jewel serves as the perfect locale to finish out my work week. Originally built as the Third Judicial District Courthouse, the court adjudicated on the activities of the The Tederloin, Manhattan's entertainment and red light district of the era. It would come as no surprise, then, that the nation's first night court was established here. The beautiful brick-arched basement where I stopped to use the loo, was then used as a holding area for prisoners as they awaited their judgement.
By 1945 the court had relocated and the structure fell into disrepair. Despite being voted as one of the top ten most beautiful buildings in the US by a panel of architects in 1885, the slugheads down in City Hall in the 1950s decided it was an antiquated eyesore. Thankfully a group of Greenwich Village community leaders and residents (including E.E. Cummings) successfully lobbied to preserve the building. In 1961 the New York Public Library agreed to convert the building into a library, one of the first adaptive reuse projects in the US and an early win for the historic preservation movement.
As a whimsically fun bow to wrap up this digression, in 1996 "Ol' Jeff" - the bell atop the building's distinctive bell tower - was restored and returned to service after sitting dormant for 135 years. These days Ol' Jeff rings every hour on the hour from 9 AM to 10 PM. Good on ya Ol' Jeff.
After wrapping up my work I strolled over to A Salt and Battery, a British fish & chips joint, AKA a "chippy", featured on a recent episode of Gastropod. I'm treated to a marvelous helping of flaky cod blanketed in a light, crispy breading that's not too greasy. A proper chippy, A Salt and Battery, that is.
The next few hours are spent wandering around the Village, Chelsea Market, and the High Line. I'm strolling through Hudson Yards when Brett texts me and says that he & Cat are headed to Sir John's Bar & Grill on 33rd. I'm only a long par 5 away so I saunter down there for some cold sodas before my flight. We down a few pints of Radeberger from Deutschland, a delightfully refreshing pilsner that I'm chagrined to have since learned that it's the favorite beer of Russian manbaby shitheel Vlad Putin. Yikes.
Along with the suds we order a flatbread, quesadilla, and buffalo chicken fingers. When the food arrives we look around for a hidden camera because each offering is comedically tiny. The flatbread is scant larger than a half dollar, the quesadilla was made for ants, and the chicken fingers were certainly modeled after the fingers of that orange lady who used to be president. At least the pints are \$5. So we got that goin' for us, which is nice.
At a quarter to 8 Brett & Cat scoot across the street for their Empire State Building tour and I shuffle over to the 3 train back to Mikey's. I deflate my bed, take a shower, and pack up the last of my belongings before hailing an Uber to JFK for my midnight flight to Oslo.
He's leeeeeeavin'
On that midnight flight to Osloooooooo
Said he's goin' back
To a simpler place in time
I would have much preferred an early morning flight that puts me in Oslo in the evening, seeing as I am wholly incapable of sleeping on planes. But when you book a \$400 trans-Atlantic flight you can't be too choosy.
I arrive to the airport and quickly learn that Norse Atlantic Airlines does not specialize in logistics. Greeting me at JFK Terminal 7 is a distended queue that wraps around a hallway and stretches farther than the eye can see. This should be fun.
About an hour:15 later I'm finally able to drop off my bags, at which point I have the pleasure of waiting in another line. The TSA check takes around 30 minutes, making my time from car to gate just over 2 hours. By this point it's been around 4 hours since my last beer and the buzz I was hoping to help me sleep on the flight is slowly turning into a hangover.
I arrive at the gate just as boarding is supposed to begin, but sit around for another 45 minutes waiting on who knows what. When our flight actually starts to board a horde of bozos for the Norse flight to Paris in the adjacent gate that has not started boarding begin to form an atherosclerosic queue for no apparent reason other than to test my nerves. Something about Norse Atlantic makes people lose any shred of common sense or personal space. A Norwegian saying that I later learned that could have been of good use here is smøre seg selv med tålmodighet, which roughy translates to "slather yourself with patience." I could use some SPF 100 patience right now.
I finally step foot on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and gleefully plop into my exit row seat that seems unnecessarily spacious. For this I won't complain. We then proceeded to sit at the gate for half an hour waiting on.... something. The captain apologizes for the delay then finally retreats from our stall and begins the slowest taxi I've ever experienced.
Once we eventually got airborne it was half past 1. Big oof. Despite my dangerously depleted energy reserves, the flight is 7 hours of fidgeting, tossing, squirming. I might have gotten 2 hours of sleep. But I had plenty of legroom and easy access to the lav so it could have been worse.
As we're nearing our destination I peek out of the deluxe oversized window of the Dreamliner to a view of snow capped mountains extending to the horizon. I feel a rush of adrenaline that washes away my zombie-like exhaustion. After the mountains comes a pastoral quilt of farmland spread across gently rolling hills. Before I know it we're on the ground at Oslo Gardermoen Lufthavn running on fumes.
The process through passport control is a breeze then the overlords of disorder at Norse Atlantic decide to take one last jab at my sanity. As I reach baggage claim I see a few carousels displaying arrivals from, we'll just say, reputable airlines. I can't find my flight on the screens so I wander around until I encounter an auxiliary baggage wing. What I find is a scene from a disaster movie. Throngs of travelers are huddled in befuddled masses of confusion and despair. Twisting through the sea of humanity like a steel anaconda is the 100 yard long belt of the broken down baggage carousel.
Along the entire length of the conveyance unclaimed suitcases are piled high like the clearance racks of a Ross Dress for Less. I set off down the serpentine beltway in the optimistic hopes that the great mechanized beast disgorged my portmanteau before it met its unfortunate demise. I shoulder may way through the crowds the entire length of the carousel until 10 yards from the end I finally see my cranberry Tumi case.
Praise be to Thor!
I snag my bag and make a quick pit stop at a vending machine to calm my rumbling stomach. I haven't checked the exchange rate so when the price of 45 NOK flashes across the screen I mindlessly tap my card on the reader. I don't care if it's \$2 or \$200 I just need something to eat. The proud owner of a Kvikk Lunsj candy bar I dart towards the Flytoget train bound for downtown Oslo.
3,700 miles, 6 timezones, and 1 ocean later I've made it at last. My Norwegian adventure awaits...