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The Gloves Trip
The Gloves Trip
The Trip That Solidified I Could Do This!
The Trip That Solidified I Could Do This!
I don't know about you, but I'll do some ridiculous things in the search for a good deal. It all started on a snowy winter day in Brooklyn, New York. I had just gotten back from a bike ride (a bit crazy I admit given the temperature, but I love micro-mobility) when I noticed that the gloves I thought I had put in my coat were no longer there. These gloves weren't special to me in any way, but they served a purpose. Upon my discovery that I'd now have to brave the cold gloveless, I considered my options and began to look online for a new pair. Just as my last pair, all I could find was black or brown and I didn't love the lack of options. Unsatisfied with my own research, I went to Instagram for some targeted ads.
Okay, a short tangent here but it's important I promise! I've always been a big fan of targeted ads on social media. I know enough about economics to accept the fact that advertising is going to happen, so if that is the case then I don't want the ads to be of no relevance to me. I will simply be annoyed by the company, the company will have spent money on the ad and not gotten great roi, and in extreme cases I will now associate that product with a negative experience if I see it too frequently. Sure, narrowcasting has its perks. You get a wide audience for a less expensive cpc, the roas can be great for a wide-appeal product or when it is shown with a large audience event, and it was how advertising worked for decades. That being said, I want an ad to work for me; show me the product I don't know exists but will help me, present me with a smaller company that had a mission I identify with and like the product of. And yes, targeted ads also have their problems, but if you're intentional about it you can get a pretty good return on your investment (your time). That's why I have put a lot of effort into having a finely tuned ad algorithm. All I need to do is look up a product a few times in google or amazon, wait a little bit, and the products come to me.
So, now back to the story. After grabbing some lunch and walking the dog I was watching, I circled back (lol corporate lingo) to Instagram and sure enough I was greeted with ad after ad trying to sell me gloves. Perfect! Since I needed an immediate fix, I ended up getting a pair of gloves from Macy’s. I hopped on the subway and within an hour my hands were warm and the wind was less painful against them. Before I came across the discounted Macy’s gloves though, a more unique pair caught my eye. These gloves weren’t a boring black or brown, or even just a navy blue. No, these gloves were green, orange, red, silver, you name it. The only problem was, they were from Sweden and nowhere in the US carried them. I almost bought some then and there but when I was perusing the website I noticed they had pay in currency options. My corporate job brain took over and I played around with some of the pricing options. Turns out, if you paid in Swedish Krona, you were saving hundreds from the currency conversion of Krona to their US prices (I’m guessing because of VAT, but I never confirmed this). Unfortunately, or I suppose fortunately for the sake of this story and others amusement, you couldn’t pay in Krona and have it shipped abroad. This was a weekend in the winter so I didn’t have much else to do and I ended up looking at alternative options on how to get the gloves and pay in Krona. You can’t rent an address in Sweden with a local phone number, and you can’t get a local phone number without proof of residence (trust me I tried to find someplace like numberbarn where I could but a Swedish number) so it didn’t look very possible. Now that I know there was a way to get the gloves for less I'm certainly not going to pay the US prices so I shelved the thought and bought the cheap, they will do, gloves from Macy’s on sale.
The Journey Begins
The Journey Begins
Fast forward to the end of the summer the following year.
A client of mine cancelled a dog-sitting stay so I was without a place to sleep and less than 30 days to fill it. I had also just gone though some emotional stuff and could use a bit of a vacation. I considered my options for getting a new client by then versus what it would have cost to book a hotel for the same time in the US. Then, I remembered I wasn’t tied down to a place and started to look abroad.
I hadn’t been to Europe yet that year after all, and I had a lot of PTO from work because I have a bad habit of not taking any, so I expanded my Expedia go anywhere search. While looking at places, those gloves popped into my mind again. I’ve got the time available, and I’ll probably be in Europe anyways, so why not, I thought.
I started to plan the trip around this. However, flights from New York to Sweden were pretty expensive and it wouldn’t have made sense economically to go direct. And here comes where the craziness of my frugality can take shape. Not one to be deterred, I looked at flights to Europe, anywhere in Europe. I could just get a train after all, and I’ve always wanted to take a European night train anyways so win-win!
The itinerary that I planned ended up being the following. I was going to fly into Paris from New York, take a train to Amsterdam via Euro rail, take an overnight train to Vienna, catch an opera in Vienna and see some museums, Take another overnight train to Warsaw, fly to Helsinki, take a Ferry to Stockholm, pick of the gloves and see another Opera, fly back to Paris, then head home from Charles de Gaulle. A bit of a sightseeing tour of Europe, a fun story, and I’d come back with some really nice and colorful gloves. I planned and booked everything that day and set the time of the outgoing flight in my calendar.
The Best Laid Plans...
The Best Laid Plans...
Sadly, I got an email from Rail Europe about a week later. Turns out there was some flooding and the overnight route to Warsaw will be closed. Well, shoot. Okay, no worries, I book a flight from Vienna to Helsinki and go from there. A bit of a bummer because now I have to book Poland another time, but it’ll be fine.
I wrap up my current dog-sitting gig and head out to Newark via Penn Station and get there a little earlier than I normally would (read 45 minutes before boarding) because the trip is so time sensitive. Now, you may be thinking that is foreshadowing, and yeah you’re right. The flight is delayed by about an hour and a half so we get into Paris with absolutely no time to spare for my itinerary. Luckily I’ve been here before so I know how to get to gare du Nord. Unluckily, there is a delay on the airport shuttle and I make it to the station just as the train I have a ticket for is leaving. Literally 2 minutes earlier and I would have been able to board. Shoot, now I can’t make it to Amsterdam either. I’ve always wanted to go there, but another time I suppose. Right now I need to put my planning hat on and get to Vienna somehow. After a bit of research I found a train that is heading to Stuttgart. That may not mean anything to you, but the overnight train passes through Stuttgart and by my calculation I’ll get there about 45 minutes before the overnight train stops there.
I got on the train to Stuttgart and and settled in for the train ride. It was going to be a few hours so I went to grab some food and take a minute to relax after the craziness that had just occurred. All was well until about halfway though the train stopped abruptly. According to the conductor, they hit something? The big issues though is that somehow they don’t know what though. Before we can get going they need to search the outside of the train to try and identify what was hit so we’re going to be here for a while. An hour passes and the conductor comes on again but I guess they weren’t able to locate what was hit. Because of that, they now need to bring in the local police to investigate before we can leave. We’re in the middle of nowhere Germany at this point, so that’ll take a while for them to get to us. I pull out my phone to check on the overnight train and, to my surprise, it is also delayed so maybe this will be okay!
It was not.
The police had to come and search the train again, in total we were stuck there for 2 and a half hours. Time to pivot again! After some more research I found a hotel in Stuttgart and then a flight from Stuttgart to Helsinki with a stop in Copenhagen in between. I pull up my credit card’s travel insurance policy, get on with an agent to confirm everything, and then book the new flight. I’ll miss Vienna and the opera, which I can’t cancel, but I’ve got a book and now time to spare so I put some background music on and settle in. I get to Stuttgart at around 10:30 and navigate the public transit (because I’m not paying 30 euros for an uber to a hotel that is a 15 minute transit ride away, and I’ve got Citimapper anyways) and I get to the hotel to catch some shut-eye.
My flight isn’t until 11 so I can sleep in a bit. Luckily I didn’t have jetlag because of the train ride so I was able to get a good amount of sleep. The next morning I got up and look at the how exactly I can get the airport, which turns out to be a pretty straightforward transit ride. Easy! I grab some breakfast and hop on the U6 toward Flughafen/Messe. However, I got on the train going the wrong way because I was a bit groggy, saw Feuerbach and thought it was the same. Whoops! No problem though because I caught it when Citimapper was going the wrong way on the app and was able to transfer back. At the time, it was a bit risky because I didn't know what German airport security would be like. When I got there, it was super easy. No customs because I was going to another Schengen country, so I picked up some Haribo (when in Germany after all) and waited. When it was time for my flight we got taken on a bus to a smaller terminal and what was meeting us there was a private-jet sized plane where we boarded from the tarmac, so that was cool! Not much to tell about the flight except that when you’re in a smaller plane you fly lower at times and it can kind of feel like hydroplaning in the air, a really unique experience. I landed in Copenhagen, picked up some food in the lounge, and and waited for my next flight to Helsinki where my itinerary would be back on track, hoping for no more changes to the already revised plan.
Not foreshadowing this time. I got to Helsinki without a hitch and made it to the city center pretty quickly after. On the train there, I noticed a rollercoaster park and tried to see if I could rearrange my schedule because I love rollercoasters, but sadly it was closed the following day. The park was called Linnanmäki so If you’ve even been, let me know how it was! I got to town a bit early so my it wasn’t quite time to check in to the hotel yet. No worries, this is the sort of thing I know an immediate solution to. I open my hone and book some luggage storage with bounce then I go explore Helsinki for a bit. I picked up some local food and looked for some souvenirs for some friends before getting to the hotel for some rest. I was going to be in Helsinki for most of the day tomorrow, so time for some rest now. When I woke up I went down for some breakfast and was delighted to see so much fresh fruit! I loaded my plate and looked up some local things to do while I waited for my ferry. In the lobby with my was this happy husky and his owner, I made a bit of conversation with them and got some dog hugs before heading back to the city center to get another luggage storage. As soon as I was free from my carry-on, I went straight to the bike-share (like I said I love micro-mobility). I do wish there would be a central bike share though, because the administrative hoops I had to jump though (download an app, sign up for a traveler account, wait for minutes for the website to load on my e-sim data) paired with the colder than expected Helsinki day made it a bit less enjoyable for the moment. But no bother, my schedule was free and I had a city to explore! After a very nice bike ride I went to a McDonalds (hear me out here, local McDonalds are actually really interesting because they have different food options and local dishes). I also ended up buying some gifts for the nephews because in Europe you can buy just the happy meal gift! After that I went to a museum where there was a very touchable rock and bears that I very much wanted to pet (see the instagram story) but I held back. About 1 hour before the ferry’s departure, I took off on the local transit to the terminal. Initially I couldn’t find the ship because all I saw was a massive cruise ship but yeah that was my “ferry”. I get on and go to my stateroom where I have to do a bit of work then I head down to see what’s around. Along with my ticket was an option to purchase meals, which I jumped on. Quite a mix of food and a great deal for the price, watching the Baltic Sea pass by in the morning while I had an eggs benny with local salmon was quite a treat.
I landed in Stockholm and the first thing I saw was a rollercoaster park. I again immediately tried to adjust my schedule to fix some rides in, but it was closed and had some unconventional hours which meant I couldn’t make it work. 0 for 2 on the spontaneous rollercoasters :/
I took a bus into the city and walked to my hotel from there because I had a mission! The gloves were almost mine. I walk from the hotel to the store but when I get there, it isn’t a store… It's an atelier and they don’t accept walk-ins. Am I really going to have completed this entire trip, with the sole purpose of it being these gloves, and come up short because I didn’t plan ahead. That would be a tragic, albeit somewhat poetic, end. I pause, take a deep breath, send an email across to the company hoping that they get back to me, and try to find an alternative. I’m only here one day! What if I can’t get them? I knew from the website that there are some stores that carry the gloves locally, so I looked them up. The first is a hotel, which is right by the water and I passed by on the bus, so I started walking. On the way there I buy some local drinks from what I can only describe as a bodega by the water and walk around the water before ending up at the hotel. I’m not exactly dressed for a 5-star hotel so I do my best to be inconspicuous but I also have to make myself known to ask for the gloves. Even worse, no one there has heard of the gloves. They show me some alternatives, which are nice, but they are not colorful. One other shop in the mall is listed on the website. This might be my last chance! Pretty much the same story here, nothing from this company but they did have gloves. I said thanks and left, thinking to myself that I guess I’ll have to get these if all else fails. I try to distract myself with the city, to great success because Stockholm is a stunning city. It was about lunch time and I walked by a local burger shop which caught my eye because of their cloudberry offering. Absolutely delicious! Not quite as good as huckleberry when it comes to berry variants, but a pleasant discovery that I’ll certainly be having again some time. When I was eating the burger, I got an email for the gloves. They had time today for a viewing! I emailed them back immediately and set a time for about an hour later. I then set off to buy a few dala horses as souvenirs because that is THE Swedish gift, or so I was told. I got a few of the horses as gifts, bought a small one for myself, and was off once again for the gloves. When I got there I was probably visibly excited because I was getting the private storeroom experience and also finally purchasing the gloves. Even better than just paying in Krona to save money from the US prices, the store clerk let me know that their system wasn’t updated for current prices so I was getting the krona price from 2020 which was even less than the website cost. I laughed to myself, appreciating my luck, and ended up buying three pairs! With the gloves in hand, I headed back to the hotel to get ready for my Opera that evening, Carmen.
I got to the opera and seated myself but when the curtain fell I realized my blunder. I was in Sweden and this was a French opera. There were no English supertitles (obviously in hindsight). I did take French in high school so I was able to make do but I felt very ridiculous after the fact because of my assumption that there would be. Sure, Swedish people speak English, but that isn’t their language. Next time I go to the Royal Swedish Opera, or any foreign Opera in fact, I’ll be sure not to think so English-centric. Lesson learned. After the craziness of the trip, I was quite amused by the end of it because it turns out that planes in Sweden play Abba as opposed to random radio music. It’s the little things!
So that’s it, I got my gloves, had quite an adventure, and got to explore some cities as well. It was an absolute blast of a trip and in the end I saved about $500 because of currency arbitrage, $650 after VAT. All in all, 100% worth the trip!
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