A seat mate to remember

You never know when one of those odd skills you have acquired is going to help you make a connection with someone. Like speaking Norwegian. I tried to learn the language, to speak with the natives, but I hardly needed to use it even in Norway. On a flight to Munich from Los Angeles? I had my brain prepared to listen for single words in German I might understand and then Italian for my final destination. 

I’ve flown the LAX to Munich route many times. I prefer flying direct to Europe and then finding my flight to the next city from there. Once I’m in Europe, if the worst happens – cancelled flight, weather – I can take a train. Munich is central, and flights leave for anywhere in the world from there.

This time my sister noticed that the equipment on this route was the A380. I’d taken the A380 to Frankfurt (and Singapore) but not to Munich. I didn’t even look at the model as I had taken the flight so many times. I splurged and bought the Economy fare which included a checked bag and the seat of my choice on the upper level next to a window. 

I decided to bring on board a single bag – one bag, no personal item – my toiletries, camera, journal and a few extra clothes fit in my wheelie carry-on bag. My documents fit in the pockets of my jacket. Reaching my seat was easy to do – I walked straight to the back of the plane and up the stairs. 

My wheelie bag I bought specifically to fit under the seat in front of me. In this plane, the configuration of the seats didn’t allow for the bag to fit under the seat. I heaved my single small bag upward into an overhead bin on the side opposite my row of seats, filled a bin to the side of my seat by the window with my book, some chocolate and my computer, and hoped I didn’t have a seat mate for my nearly 12-hour flight.

I watched as a passenger, with a pile of coats, jammed his large carry-on into the overhead bin on the side opposite us, and slammed the door shut. Chiuso. The bins directly over our heads fit only pocketbooks from another era.

“Kevin,” I heard when my seat mate stuck out his hand and introduced himself, brushing his dark straight hair out of his eyes. 

“Janice,” I said. “Are you flying home or are you from Los Angeles?”

“I’m living in Los Angeles, but I’m from Sweden.”

Not a Swedish name, Kevin. Not a Swedish looking man either. He was dark and short, longish black hair, dark-rimmed glasses – the opposite of a tall, angular Swedish Viking. Immigrant parents? Chances are he wouldn’t have spoken to me either if he had been Viking Swedish. 

“Jewish and Romanian,” he said, when I asked. 

“I lived in Norway for a little over seven years,” I said. “Bergen.”

Not Sweden, but close enough.

“You can’t miss that place,” he said.

I laughed. “OK, OK, I don’t miss Bergen so much, but I do miss my friends there. And summer, summers were special.”

Kevin was living in Los Angeles, working in the entertainment industry. A cinematographer. Making documentaries. Making advertisements. 

“Making snow in Palm Springs in August,” he said. “Over 40C and we’re making a Christmas ad.”

I laughed.

“Say something in Norwegian,” Kevin asked. My phone number in Norway was the first thing that came to my mind, which today is still easier for me to repeat in Norwegian than in English. 

Out loud I said, “I was a scientist at the university in Bergen. Brain tumors, I studied human brain tumors.” 

“Yes, I tried for seven years to learn  the language, but I never became fluent. People told me they didn’t have time to speak Norwegian with me. Or that my Norwegian wasn’t very good.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Sounds like people in Scandinavia. Is there a cure for cancer?”

“Immunotherapy. The immune response is possibly the only evidence that cancer can be cured. That or early detection.”

Now it was out. I was a scientist. A biologist even.

“I was tested over 300 times for Covid-19 for work and was never positive. Not once. Even the one time the other 19 people I was working with were all positive, I was negative. I wanted to be positive for Covid-19 at least once since I had to get tested so often.”

 “Science wants to study people like you,” I said.

The plane was boarded and we taxied to our position on the runway. Facing west. About to do a flyover of the Pacific Ocean before turning east and north for our route over North America. I told him I had this thing about timing the take-off of the A380. I had to time it.

“Is it different than other planes?”

“No, but this one is like the size of a small building, and yet it leaves the ground in less than a minute.” 

I didn’t start the timer on my phone the instant the engines engaged. The final time was a few seconds short. I laughed, at myself, but timing take-off was a ritual for me, a scientific phenomenon I never got used to.

He complained about drivers in Los Angeles.

“People are high in Los Angeles. That’s their problem,” I said. “Is dope legal in Sweden?”

“Absolutely not,” Kevin said. “But now when I smell pot, I know I am home.”

What an expat will remember of one of our beloved American cities. Like me remembering the first time I smelled pinekjøtt in a grocery store in Bergen.

By the time the flight attendant reached us for dinner, we had no choice to make. One of the negatives of choosing to sit at the back of the plane. The remaining dinners were chicken with rice. At least the choice was not something fishy or creamy. Creamy (or burritos) I can’t do, not at 40,000 feet. 

Kevin not too long after dinner convinced me to drink wine on the flight, something I never do on my own. I’m a believer in remaining hydrated in flight. And I don’t like to have to get up to use the toilet too many times during a long haul flight. I took white wine, telling him that red gives me headaches. I felt like a teenager sneaking into a bar with a fake ID. 

I told him I had the dream of opening a restaurant, a simple one. “I just need a machine for pasta and one for gelato. Maybe different kinds of sauce each day, or seasonal sauces, and one gelato flavor each month.”

“I’d love that restaurant,” he said.

“Of course, because you’re European,” I said.

 “What does the word dwelling mean?” he asked.

“It’s a general term for a place of residence. A place you live in. A house, an apartment, an igloo. Maybe it’s more of a real estate term. You wouldn’t say I live in a dwelling in Hermosa Beach. But in a real estate ad, you might say single family dwelling.”

He was a cinematographer, living in a dwelling in Silver Lake. I asked if he had thought about making his own movie, short film, or whatever. 

“Yes,” he said, “but the parts are not all together yet. I haven’t mastered all the skills necessary to make my own film.”

A chance connection with the movie industry to pick up my story. Did I tell him I wrote a book? Nope.

Even though he’d been born in Sweden, he had felt different growing up, and as a kid, he didn’t want to feel different. His parents told him to tell the other kids that his ancestors included a Swedish grandmother or grandfather. Or a grand uncle.

“Do you want to hold hands?” Kevin asked, after several hours of silliness.

My seat mate slipped his hand into mine and our heads fell together in the only configuration that’s comfortable in Economy. I wondered how many times the flight attendants saw people connect on their routes. If people were obvious. When it was breakfast time, we broke apart to probe what it was that had been served to us.

“This has to stop. This food tastes like nothing. Maybe they could add a little salt,” my seat mate said.

I didn’t disagree with him. And left untouched whatever the presumed organic matter was in my plate. I forced myself to eat the yogurt, as it had been hours since I’d eaten anything and had many more to go. The yogurt had the opposite problem. It was way too sweet. I’m not sure it really was yogurt. It looked more like pink opaque jelly, and that none of it could be organic. Anthony Bourdain’s strategy of eating nothing until he arrived at his destination seemed the only logical solution. He wanted to be hungry, ready to eat when his feet touched the ground.

The plane landed in Munich a few minutes early. At the gate, Kevin stood up immediately in the plane and left without saying good bye. The bubble at 40,000 feet had popped. He was on his way to Mallorca for four days of filming, filming someone he couldn’t talk about – not yet – and then home for a few days in Stockholm. Too short for his circadian rhythm to readjust to the time zone he’d been born in. 

I was beginning my trip for a month overseas. The first step was completed. I had several more to go before my day would come to an end. But so far, getting out of the house had been good for me.

Books…

Norwegian Lessons in Indonesia (2023) 

postcards to me (2022)

An Accidental Artist: Discovering Creativity through Scuba Diving (2018)

Art for sale at AnemoneWatch on Square