Which Way to Norway?

Bus. Feet. Bus. Train. Bus. Plane. Bus. Train.

7 am wake up call from my alarm clock.

Finished drying my laundry from the night before. Shower. Start packing. Finish packing. Out the door just after 9am. Caught the 9:09 bus right outside my building and took it to Berliner Platz. Walked from there to Marktplatz, searching for an internet café along the way (or anywhere with a printer, really).

Found one.
Opens at 10:30am.
Scheiße.

Arrived at Marktplatz. Spotted an internet café with open doors.

Kann ich hier Sachen vom Internet ausdrücken?
:: Ja.
OK. Gut.
:: Nummer fünf bitte.

Printed off my online tickets for Ryanair. Decided to also print off the confirmation email for my train in Norway, even though the email said it wasn’t a valid ticket, and all you needed was the confirmation number and phone number, both of which I’d stored in my Handy, to print the necessary ticket from a machine at the station.
Good decision.

6 minutes, 2 printed pages: €1,10.

Walked outside. Saw none of the buses I could take to the Bahnhof had arrived at Marktplatz yet. Headed for a bakery with a walk-up service counter. I needed breakfast.

Waited behind a lady apparently buying bread to feed the five-thousand. Saw one of my potential buses pull up. Sometimes buses sit for as long as five minutes at Marktplatz to adjust their schedules. Is this one of those buses, or should I ditch this bakery and hurry for that bus? I decided to play it safe and jogged across Marktplatz to catch the bus. Good decision. The bus took off as soon as I was on board.

Got to the Bahnhof with about 20 minutes to spare. My train to Frankfurt doesn’t leave until 09:53. I used my time to spend less than €2 on a Croissant and Bretzel. Take that McDonalds. In retrospect, it vaguely reminds me of World War II. (The clip is 5 minutes, but WWII is only the first 1:30)

I caught my free 42-minute train to Frankfurt Hbf. Free with my student ID. …well, “free” courtesy of €70-80 of the €180,95 student fee I paid upon my arrival here in Gießen. And Hbf: that’s Hauptbahnhof. As in: main train station. As in: not the airport. I wasn’t trying to get to Frankfurt International. My €37 Ryanair flight departs from Frankfurt Hahn, which really isn’t in Frankfurt at all. …in fact it’s not even in Hessen.

After twenty minutes, two trips outside, and asking the service desk where the heck I’m supposed to find this bus, I finally found it. I had just under ten minutes to spare. And then it was an hour and a half bus ride to Frankfurt Hahn.

I checked in online before I even left Gießen. With my printed online ticket, I attempted to make my way thru security. The first guy manning the entrance to the queue let me right though. But the second security guard standing at the metal detector looked at my ticket and shook his head. He knew the rule is dumb, but played by it anyway. With “Check and Go” (online check in), you have to be from the EU or one of the other Schengen countries (which explains why I initially couldn’t select “USA” where it asked for the country of the passport to check in. But I found a way around that..).

So because I had a US passport, I had to go back to the check-in desk, pay the extra €4 check-in fee, and then back to security with my “real” boarding pass. …as if the first one was fake. Eventually, I boarded my 14:10 flight to Oslo Torp.

…Which isn’t Olso at all. Sandefjord, actually. Just over an hour south of Oslo by train. But I knew that beforehand. What I didn’t know was that the Sandefjord Torp Flughaven train station wasn’t actually connected to the Sandefjord Torp Flughaven. My plane arrived 15 minutes early, so it gave me time to figure out where I needed to go and how I was supposed to get there. It was only 10 minutes to 16:00. My train didn’t leave until 16:40.

There’s a free shuttle bus to take passengers from the airport to the train station. …I’m gonna stop calling it that though. It wasn’t a station. In fact, there wasn’t even a building there. There was just a covered bench. A single bench. Like a bus stop.

…So there’s a free bus to take passengers to the train stop. But there’re two different buses. One for the northbound side and one for the southbound side. At 16:18, I found the shuttle bus.

The southbound shuttle bus.

After a short conversation with the bus driver (in perfect English mind you – it seems most Norwegians are more fluent in English than I am), I found out the bus for the northbound side leaves at 16:33. …:33???? My train leaves at :40!! How is that ever going to give me enough time to get to the station, print out my ticket, and catch the train? I decided to grab one of these taxis instead. …at least I tried to. The driver I approached was actually about to refuse my money. He explained to me that he can’t drive the same way the buses can – he has to go all the way around the airport, which would take about 10 minutes. It only takes the buses three. On top of that, the 10 minute taxi fare would be about 200 NOK, or roughly $40. The shuttle bus is free. I explained to him I would feel much more comfortable if I got there with 5 extra minutes, figuring that would give me enough time to get my ticket. …That’s when I found out it’s not a real station.

Norwegian refusing money: there’s no place to print off a ticket. It’s a small station in the middle of no where. There’s nothing there. You’ll make the train in time. That’s why they have the buses – it works perfectly.

So it does. I hopped on the bus once it showed up at 16:31. Left the airport at 16:33. Arrived at Sandefjord Torp Flughaven “Station” at 16:36. Train showed up at 16:39. Showed the conductor my email confirmation (that I “didn’t need to print out”) and asked how I get my ticket. He explained to me that there’s no where here to print off or pick up a ticket (thanks, I already figured that one out), and that the email confirmation would suffice. So I hopped on the train at 16:40 and immediately departed for Ringebu.

Just under two hours after leaving the bench (I really wish I’d snapped a picture, but the perfect Norwegian scheduling doesn’t account for dumb American tourist photographers), the train passed the real Oslo airport (50 km north of Olso), and I thought to myself, “It would have only been 3.5 hours to Tim’s if I’d flown in here…”

One stop, or 50 minutes, after Lillehammer, I met Tim at Ringebu. Current time: 21:45.

Just over 5 hours since leaving the bench, and a mere 13 hours after leaving my front door.