April, 1996: I conducted a series of private seminars in Europe. This was my schedule:
April 11: Leave Los Angeles
April 12: Arrive Stockholm, Sweden
April 13: Stockholm (Air Talent Seminar)
April 14: Frankfurt, Germany (Station consulting re: radio promotion)
April 15: Helsinki, Finland (Air Talent Seminar)
April 16: Helsinki (Air Talent Seminar)
April 17: Vaxjo, Sweden (Air Talent Seminar)
April 18: Ostersund, Sweden (Air Talent Seminar)
April 19: Antwerp, Belgium (Commercial Copywriting Seminar, Air Talent Seminar)
April 20: Brussels (Air Talent Seminar)
April 21: Coventry, England (Air Talent Seminar)
April 22: Coventry (Morning Show Tune-Up)
April 23: Return to Los Angeles
April 24: Resume bragging about what a big world traveler I am
My first stop was Stockholm, where I conducted a full-day Air Personality Plus+ seminar for Sveriges Radio and The Radio Academy.
All of my seminars in Sweden were arranged by Anne Chaabane. Prior to this trip, Anne advised me that the taxi fare from Arlanda (Stockholm) airport to the hotel would be 350 SEK. I remembered that price from previous visits and made sure I brought enough Swedish currency with me.
When the taxi arrived at the Hotel Diplomat, the meter read “800 SEK.”
800 SEK??? How could that be?
Well, it turns out that some taxis charge a flat rate of 350 SEK, while others charge whatever they want.
I love Stockholm, but on this trip (as usual) I wouldn’t have any free time to wander the city. I consoled myself with the fact that the weather would be cold and harsh; it doesn’t usually warm up until June. With my luck, however, the day of the seminar turned out to be gorgeous: sunny & warm.
The seminar began at 9:00AM and ended at 4:30…at which time I returned to the airport for a 6:35PM flight to Frankfurt.
I shared the taxi back to the airport with a woman who had flown in from Norway (Radio P3) to attend the seminar. She commented that when she arrived, she naively took the first cab she saw and ended up paying much more than she should have.
“I think I set a new record by paying 730 SEK!” she admitted. “Can you believe how foolish I was to have that much??”
I expressed sympathy for her naivety.
Although both of us checked to insure that we had gotten one of the “correct” taxicabs, when we reached the airport the driver insisted the fare was 400 SEK, not 350.
Then he left me in front of the wrong terminal building, and I had to walk (dragging along my overloaded luggage cart) for 20 minutes to where he should have dropped me off.
This put me at the departure gate much later than I had planned. When I reached the gate, the plane was scheduled to depart in just a few minutes, and the passengers already had boarded. Panicking, I ran up to the gate agent and said, “Hey!”
No, that wasn’t rude of me. “Hey” means “hello” in Swedish. (You say it with an upward lilt at the end of the word, as though it were a question.)
After years of practice, I have reached the point where I can say “Hey” with impressive fluency. This time I said it so perfectly that the gate agent responded in a torrent of Swedish, none of which I understood.
But I managed to board the Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt just before it left.
In An Upcoming Installment: How I almost got arrested at the airport in Dusseldorf, Germany….
