Trip report: to the Nordics! And back.

“Have you visited our lounge before?” “Yes, many times,” I say to the folks at the Emirates Lounge in Brisbane airport. Except I actually haven’t visited the lounge for some time - because it’s been renovated since I came in here. Gone is the rather old-fashioned bling, and instead everything is rather nicer and more modern-feeling. Good. Excepting a lack of power points, and the type of people who fly on Emirates, the lounge is quite nice.

I’ve got quite a set of flights ahead in the next ten days. The first two are with Emirates, via Dubai, to Oslo.

Onto the first plane, BNE-DXB, boarding to a lacklustre cover of The Girl from Ipanema and an awful duet of Quando, Quando, Quando - done by Michael Bublé and Nelly Furtado, the internet tells me. This plane has switched to use Arabic as the #1 language, and English as the #2 - not the usual Emirates way. I’m wondering whether this is a new policy; we’ll find out. I’ve got a “Platinum Phantom” - a spare seat next to me. This is good. Someone asks if they can move forward to the empty bulkhead seat, to be told that they can, but they’ll have to pay $60, so they don’t. We’re given the menu - but, as it happens, given the wrong menu (DXB-BNE rather than BNE-DXB) which was confusing. But the flight was fine; the big screen on the economy bulkhead kept waking me up as it cycles from dark to light. I should give tedious feedback about that if anyone asks. We take off at 9pm, and land at 5.09am in Dubai.

I sit in the always-deserted Emirates First Lounge, which I don’t really like very much, and do some work; then some breakfast.

The sound of Norwegian accents lets me know I’m at the right gate, and we board the 7 hour DXB-OSL flight, to the sounds of a lacklustre cover of The Girl from Ipanema and Katie Melua ruining Black’s “Wonderful Life”. And an awful duet of Quando, Quando, Quando. This plane, a B777-300, doesn’t have a power point at the seat in economy, something I should have remembered (but I have my power bank). Arabic is the first language, English the second.

We land, and while taxiing to the gate I’ve downloaded the Flytorget app and purchased a ticket for the super-fast train from the airport. I’m staying a way out of town at the national football stadium - which is not as grim as it sounds, with a lot of little shops encircling it. It’s easy to get there, with one change onto a subway train (and the purchase of a ticket using the Ruter app).

A day off, later, means a day in Oslo wandering about, thanks to a day ticket on the Ruter app. I see bits of Oslo I’ve seen before, and new bits too - the big castle that overlooks the place. A Facebook message summons an old friend called Jørn, who has the splendid idea of inviting me for beer, which we sample a lot of. I like Oslo. It’s a lovely small city; it feels comfortable, unpretentious, humble. It’s especially good in Autumn.

In the hotel restaurant on my last night (which was surprisingly decent), I’m treated to The Girl from Ipanema.

OSL-ARN

To the airport again, and my travel agent (yes, I use one for complicated trips like this) booked me premium economy on my one-hour flight to Stockholm. SAS used to be in Star Alliance but recently switched to SkyTeam. I discover that I have a Delta account with some miles in it, so I give my Delta details to SAS - at some point in the 2040s I may have enough points to exchange for a US voucher for something. (Delta miles never expire, and chances are that a US voucher will be useful - I’ll not make the mistake of signing up with Turkish Airlines again!)

My SAS ticket gives me lounge access, though it’s not much of a lounge. Breakfast appears to be bread and butter, and a coffee from a machine that promises more than it can deliver, owing to not containing any milk. I do my work and hurry to the plane. As Premium Economy I get a little snack of my choice and a drink of some type. It takes an hour, and I land in Stockholm - to get the Arlanda Express app for a ticket into town, and a hopeful wave of my Apple Watch to pay for the one stop on the subway to get to a very fancy hotel.

Stockholm feels surprisingly different to Oslo. It’s a bigger city with a lot of high buildings.

I get lunch in a fabulous old farmer’s market, now a fancy set of delicatessen food places, with the price tag to match. I end up speaking in the Dramaten, the grand theatre - squinting to see the audience in the dark, while the bright lights shine in my face. It’s easily the largest stage I’ve spoken on.

ARN-LHR

Back to the airport - in a taxi, laid on by the conference. The taxi doesn’t ask me which terminal I’m flying from, and drops me at Terminal 5; it’s a long, long walk to Terminal 2 where I’m actually travelling from. I’m flying British Airways, which - it turns out - blocks the use of VPNs with an error saying that the website is too busy. This wasn’t very helpful. Anyway, because I’m spending just 23 hours 45 minutes, it seems my travel agent has booked this trip as a layover and I get checked into this flight and my next one automatically - causing some confusion as to where I want my bag to go.

BA uses one of the two lounges in ARN, and they’re terribly confused at seeing a Qantas frequent flyer. “Which are you? Platinum or Emerald?” Both, I explain. OneWorld gives you Emerald, while I’m Platinum with Qantas. The Manager is deployed to deal with this confusion. I’m not even sure I’m in the right lounge, because I can’t find the BA logo on the signage anywhere. But I am, and they let me in eventually. It’s a small lounge with not that much food, but at least their coffee machines have milk.

The BA flight lands, impressively, twenty minutes early. I navigate the broken screens in LHR relatively easily (“It’s time to activate Windows” says one, another complaining it’s low on memory) and passport control (I travel with my Aussie passport but enter the country with my UK one) is very quick indeed. I’m on a bus within fifteen minutes, changing bus to get to the hotel, a quick change of clothes, and out again to a fancy award ceremony. Travel in London is so easy; though to be fair, I did live here for 15 years, so I had some experience.

The next morning, it’s one bus then one tube train to Terminal 5 (I’m not arguing with Apple Maps), and the use of First Class check-in - past the milling throng to a small, boutique checkin area where my brow is cooled by a slight breeze wafted by bamboo leaves and I’m offered a cocktail and a massage, with three eager attendants waiting on my needs. No, wait. The slightly grubby-looking first class checkin area has a big queue in it because the luggage belt has broken down. But I’m checked in anyway, and sent through the security area to discover they’re convinced that my legs are prosthetic and made of metal. After lots of gentle touching, I’m allowed to go into the lounge, propelled by my all-natural non-metal legs.

The first lounge is bedlam - massively busy with people wandering about all over the place. I go to my usual spot on the outside balcony (it’s still inside the airport obviously, but outside in the main area), and scan the QR code on the table to order a coffee and a croissant. You can do this if you ignore the obvious subtext on the order screen that “we’ve spent some money on a slightly nicer buffet table and you can go to that if you want but you can also order from here if you really really want to”. I did. The coffee was clearly from a machine, but it was carried to me in some style.

The aeroplane I was on changes - the aircraft was coming from Rome and was delayed by over an hour, but we are now flying on a plane that has just left Manchester. My flight app tells me this, though I guess I’d never have known otherwise. Flying is complicated, isn’t it?

I interview a man about his podcast empire, then do my day job, then go to Wetherspoons for a crafty pint, and get to the gate just as it starts boarding. I seem to have been moved one seat back, to the emergency exit. Nice to see that BA have faith in my ability to evacuate the plane.

We land three minutes early in Copenhagen, which is good news, since I’ve got to find my hotel and then find some business contacts for some beer.

The Scandic hotel I was in deserves a blog post of its own.

Mind, so does what the Danish do to food. Apparently, nothing cannot be improved by a good dusting of licorice, especially, um, dates.

Back to CPH airport. A smooth wander through security was nice, but then a 40 minute queue to get my passport looked at and stamped. I wasn’t expecting that - and both in front and behind me were people who were nervously worrying about missing their flights. I watch the unsatisfactory Queensland election results come in on my phone.

Emirates uses the Eventyr Lounge, which has a queue of slow-moving people waiting to get in. Ahead of me, a family negotiating how much it costs to get in to the lounge, which takes some time - with both desk staff involved in the negotiation; after which one of the staff busies herself with slowly cutting out notices. When I get to the front, I say something like “I’m surprised you’re not both letting people in, it’s quite busy”, and she looks up from her notices and says “Yeah, well, we only have one machine, so…” and shrugs. It’s not a very good lounge, but it’ll do - with enough seating, and a choice of Carlsberg, Tuborg, and a wheat beer.

We get onto the Emirates flight, CPH-DXB, which arrived 32 minutes late. I’ve missed The Girl from Ipanema. I haven’t missed Quando Quando Quando, which dribbles out of the speakers like room-temperature yoghurt. Later, Katie Melua ruins Black’s “Wonderful Life”.

For the announcements, English is first, Arabic is second, though the safety video is Arabic first then English. There’s nothing like consistency, and this is nothing like consistency.

We push back 14 minutes late. We trundle round the foggy airport. But, 28 minutes later, we return to the gate. A passenger needs medical attention, it turns out. Better here than having to divert to somewhere else, I guess. A bloke my age is wheeled out backwards - he looks physically fine, face down, prodding his phone. Then, as is apparently procedure, all the FAs have to go down the entire economy section, asking people to identify their baggage in the overhead lockers (I guess to ensure that the ill passenger hasn’t taken this opportunity to leave anything dodgy on board). That finished, we get given a drink of water or juice.

The good news is that The Girl from Ipanema is not playing again - the aircraft is music-free, just full of young voices asking why we aren’t taking off, and the whine of the air conditioning. An alert from Flighty tells me the plane has just taken off, and is 14 minutes late. TripIt tells me the flight is on time. Neither of these things are true - an edge case, I suppose. The Emirates app correctly says it hasn’t taken off, and gives a new time of 5pm.

The boss FA takes the opportunity to come round with the WP Welcome, to welcome me back and tell me her name, before scuttling away. We sit and wait, blissfully free of Quando, Quando, Quando, while (I assume) the bloke’s luggage is taken off.

After a while, the Captain comes on, and tells us that the baggage has been taken off. That good news is tempered, slightly, with the revelation that we have to wait for the next available slot for takeoff, which is more than thirty minutes away at almost 5.25pm, but, in the event, we push back at exactly 5pm. Flighty duly updates itself, though TripIt is still confidently saying it took off 1hr 25min ago. We successfully take off at 5.10pm.

We arrive 90 minutes late into Dubai, and DXB-BNE leaves from gate C9, which is a long (twenty minute?) walk from where we’re dropped off. It’s a lot of walking. I find the lounge next to C9 with just ten minutes to board all over again; so I treat myself to a wee, and then to a can of American mineral water, aka “Budweiser”, a relatively tasteless but frankly quite refreshing drink that some say is a type of beer. This lounge, at the far end of the airport, used to be “old” Emirates - bling and a horrible smell of cigarettes, since there was a smoking section upstairs. It’s been refurbished, and now feels quite similar to Brisbane’s lounge. That’s nice.

Then onto EK430, bound for Brisbane. I’m treated to a lacklustre cover of The Girl from Ipanema, and Katie Melua ruining Black’s “Wonderful Life”. And an awful duet of Quando, Quando, Quando, which makes me pine for Qantas’s “Spirit of Australia” Pink Floyd-esque guitar strains.

Andi Peters shouts at us, in English with Arabic subtitles, about ICE - including a few sentences added in later with a different microphone used for each (one with quite some fearsome dynamic compression).

This flight has the weirdness of a breakfast first, a full meal later. Otherwise, and ignoring the three children who shriek and shout at each other for the entire 14 hours of the flight, nothing much happens.

And about 90 minutes before we start landing, we’re asked if there’s a doctor on board, “preferably one that speaks French”. The old French guy in question is sitting two seats ahead of me, but I don’t realise because he stands up and goes somewhere else in the plane; and then, occasionally, I can (rather concerningly) hear shouts and angry screams.

As we begin to come into land, the two rows ahead of us are cleared, and he appears, making a fair bit of noise, talking to himself, and gets restrained into his chair. His feet and hands have been bound together with a plastic tie. Three fight attendants hover round him, making notes; his travelling companion appears to sit next to him and appears deeply annoyed at everything rather than exhibiting much concern. I guess it’s a panic attack, rather than a physical condition. They pull a flight attendant forwards to sit directly behind him in the vacated row, just in case.

On landing at 10.40pm, we have to stay seated, and are told to wait on the plane for Australian officials to work out what to do. In the end he agrees to wait until other passengers get off first.

I’m surprised that I haven’t had more medical drama on flights before: I’m certainly taking an awful lot of them. Both of these appear to be mental rather than physical; but it does make me wonder that you really don’t want a medical event on a plane, or while travelling at all really. I trust everyone was OK in the end.