April, 1996 (continued): In case you’ve lost track, this was my seminar travel 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
After concluding my second radio seminar day in Helsinki, I flew first to Stockholm and then to Växjö, Sweden.
I arrived late in the evening and went directly to my room at the Cardinal Hotel. The next morning I managed to walk around the town a little before beginning my Air Personality Plus+ seminar.
Växjö is a charming university town of 50,000 people. Lots of bicycles about, lots of residents saying hello as they passed each other in the streets. It felt like I was on the set of an old Mickey Rooney movie.
After my stroll, Hasse Altbark of Radio Kronoberg came by to walk with me to the seminar site: a beautiful movie theater close to the hotel.
If “Altbark” doesn’t strike you as a typical Swedish name, it might be because he created the name himself. He felt his own given name (Johansson, as I recall) was too common, so he had it changed.
I mention this not because it is so rare for someone to change his or her name but, rather, due to the way it’s done in Sweden.
If you want to change your name, first you have to find a name that the Swedish government deems suitable. The government maintains a list of available, unused names just for this purpose. You can try creating your own, but it can’t already be in use by another Swedish citizen and it must be approved by the government.
(Presumably Sweden has done what it must to prevent the horror of citizenry answering to names such as Dweezil and Moonglow.)
After the seminar, I returned to the hotel, packed my bags and then headed back downstairs for a leisurely dinner before catching an evening flight to the next city. When I walked through the lobby on my way to the hotel restaurant, however, the Front Desk manager worriedly approached me.
“Sir,” she said, “you have to check out of your room now.”
“No,” I replied, “I’m not checking out until 6:30. My plane does not leave until 7:45.”
“Yes, but we need the room.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “But when this reservation was made, it was with the understanding that I would not be checking out until after 6:00. Why do you need my room?”
“A convention is just now arriving, and they need every available hotel room.”
“What kind of convention?” I wondered, trying to envision Swedish Shriners or, perhaps, Nordic morticians.
“Nurses. Student nurses, from all over Sweden. Four hundred of them.”
Let me see if I have this straight: Four hundred Swedish student nurses invading the town of Växjö, and not enough hotel rooms for them to sleep in.
I think I’ve seen that movie before.
I, of course, had miles to go before I slept and another seminar to give the following day in another city.
So despite the wild, imaginary temptations that might distract a more ordinary mortal, I didn’t give a second thought to those 400 young, passionate, Swedish student nurses.
And I haven’t thought of them since.
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Stuff like that never happens to me. 🙁
If it did, I might be married to one of them now.
glad that those 400 Swedish Student Nurses have completely left your memory banks, Dan. nary a thought towards them. not a single, solitary one. nope. no sir. by the way – in the history of “Bad Timing,” this is in the top two. (grin)
Yah, I vemember Dan…he never calls, he never writes (sob!) and I never got to give him that SPONGE bath!
Love, “Inga”