What I Learned In Oslo Today

1. I used to always be early, but now I'm afraid of being late.

Being early is a curse in a world where everybody is late. Not only do you waste time waiting for people, you end up being the greeting committee, making small talk, introducing people. Almost no one is on time in L.A., so I've trained myself to...be on time, as opposed to early. But now with so many time-wasters, most especially the smartphone, I'm finding it hard to even be on time. I'm starting to cut it too close, I'm losing track of who is really me. I wanted to take a boat ride around the fjord at 1 and somehow I misjudged the distance and I ended up being only a few minutes early. But they left at about 1:02. Kind of like the movies. Which wait for no one. I was hustling there and thinking "I don't want to be one of those people who complains that the world runs on time."

2. I'm old.

I remember when my father was thrilled when he qualified for the senior discount. Baby boomers are horrified. The worst was in Vail, when the ticket seller at the bus station assumed I was a senior, eek! But I accepted the senior discount at the Nobel Peace Center, when I look in the mirror I know my time is fading.

3. WW1 was a hotbed of poison gas.

We never got to World War I in school, never mind World War II. The teachers just assumed we knew it by osmosis, not realizing even though they'd lived through history, we had not.

I'd heard of mustard gas, but I did not know it was so prevalent, along with other chemical weapons, in the first World War. They agreed not to use them in the future at the Geneva Convention. And this made me feel so good until I realized the U.S. tortures despite the Geneva accords. You want to be a good guy, you want to be able to scold those who are not. Furthermore, America has not eradicated all its chemical weapons yet.

The 2013 Nobel Peace Prize went to OPCW, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. It was only formed in 1997, but has helped effect a vast reduction in chemical weapon stores.

Makes you want to change course and be a do-gooder, because as you age personal achievement loses meaning.

4. Willy Brandt was a winner.

Yes, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. But I did not know he protested Hitler and moved to Norway and even went back to Germany on a fake passport.

Americans, especially Jews, are skeptical of all Germans. But from what I read today, Brandt was truly one of the good guys.

5. Henrik Ibsen trained to be a pharmacist.

It's hard not to take the easy way out. Used to be our parents told us to be doctors or lawyers. Now college graduates go into finance because they want a safety net. But to wake up and decide to follow your heart...everybody talks about it, very few do it. Because it's just too risky, especially in the arts.

6. Henrik Ibsen was the artistic director of the Christiana Theatre and it went bankrupt.

We tend to think of legends on a vertical rise to success, all victory, all the time. When the truth is there are numerous bumps in the road. Ibsen experienced rejection. But this does not mean everybody who experiences failure is destined to be a winner. Perseverance is definitely a component of success, but it's more than that...it's drive, it's vision, it's luck. Which is why the arts are populated by the winners and the sour grapes people. The losers always try to tear down the winners, believing their chance has been stolen, when the truth is the winners are usually special people with special talents. Not that all Top Forty hitmakers are, but is their work truly legendary?

7. You can walk right up to the Royal Palace.

But the guards don't stare directly into space, like at Buckingham Palace.

8. Alcohol is expensive to discourage consumption.

What else are you supposed to do during the long, cold, lonely winter?

But would people drive different cars in the U.S. if gas were more expensive? They do in Europe. Then again, we've got an upper class so wealthy in the U.S. that it doesn't care about gas prices. That's the problem with the ultra-rich, they skew the game for the rest of us. Doubt me? Then try to get a good ticket to a desirable show. Prices are so high because certain people can afford it. You might scrimp and save to see your personal hero for $500-$1000, but there are tons of people who buy these tickets on a whim, who come late and leave early, whose main desire is oftentimes just to be able to say they were there.

9. Architecture inspires pride.

It's not the Sydney Opera House, but the Oslo Opera House is almost as striking, and certainly legendary here. You walk on the roof! People want to feel good about their city, too bad too many people are so rich they build monuments to themselves, like Eli Broad's art museum in L.A. Sure, it's great to have the museum, but are our communities so broke that we cannot build these edifices ourselves? Oh, that's right, we don't want to pay taxes. The common good has gone out the window in the U.S. Taxes are high in Scandinavia. Living is good. And social mobility is even higher.

10. Traveling is about making mistakes.

I couldn't find the right ferry until I saw it pulling out of port.

11. I love to people watch.

Just looking at how people dress, what their bodies are like, is utterly fascinating. There are fewer overweight people in Oslo than even Los Angeles, home of the U.S. super-skinny, but there are homeless people in Oslo, I saw them.

12. The fjord usually freezes, but not this year.

Is it an anomaly or global warming? Everybody is testifying about what a mild winter Oslo experienced, even though I'm cold and it's April (I keep thinking about pulling out my gloves, but no one else does.)

This time of year there's usually ice floating in the fjord, but there was none today.

How weird. I thought the Amsterdam canals would freeze, but that just turned out to be fiction, written by an American in "Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates." So I figured the Norwegian fjords wouldn't freeze either. And that's our world today, we're always making assumptions, and we're always getting it wrong.


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