All in 24 hours...

What an introduction to Norwegian time keeping standards we had last week! Grace (my teammate) and I left our 'home' Hald international Centre in Mandal in the wee hours of the morning of 28th September for the long 12 hour-journey to Trondheim. The travel by bus from Mandal to Kristiansand and then, from there, by train to Oslo was uneventful.

We were meant to arrive in Oslo Central Station at 1.58 pm and then have some 19 minutes to catch the train to Trondheim. Well, we arrived 5 minutes late. Trouble was looming as we had 14 minutes to catch the next train. Add to this the fact that we had a lot of luggage with us and we had no idea where to get the next train. I got tense and lost. My team mate, thank God for her, urged me to go to the information desk and ask for directions. 4 minutes remaining now! We took our heavy bags and tried to make our way to track 11 from track 9. We got there just in time to…….not even see the train leaving! This is Norway I tell you. I missed home where I could have caught the next bus there and where I knew what to do in such situations. I also missed the fact that someone would have offered (at a small fee at the very least) to help me with our many, heavy bags. Either way, here we were, in a foreign country, far away from familiar Kenya, trying to make our way home.

How I missed the train!

Well, we composed ourselves and were able to figure out what to do. The choice was between train, bus and Plane. The earliest to leave was the plane so we picked it. Our contact person, Lars Olav Gjora (quite a difficult last name there), enabled us to get the air tickets but still the next flight was to be at 10.30pm so we still had quite some time to wait. We rested a while at the central station but we could not manage a nap as we had a train to catch to the airport. While there, we saw a woman see the train leave while she was running to catch it. I really felt sorry for her.

We took the train to the Oslo airport and unknowingly we sat in the comfort zone, a first class area. The tickets we had purchased were for the common area. The Train conductor seeing the dejected and worn out looks on our faces having dragged our heavy bags up and down allowed us to sit in this area. We alighted at the airport and more was awaiting us. At the check-in place, we realized that my bags were both overweight by far. Luckily for Grace, one of her bags was underweight and the other was overweight so a little balancing did the trick. We therefore had to cancel my flight and had to book a train ticket instead. My contact Person Lars Olav helped a lot here.

Grace was able to catch the flight to Trondheim and was received by Lars Olav. I was very very keen this time round and did not miss my train which was due to pass passing by the Oslo airport at 11.46pm (note the precision of the time) on its way to Trondheim. I was almost the first to hop in and was soon fast asleep. The train conductor even had to wake me up for me to show him my tickets. I only woke up the following morning to the beautiful scenery of Trondheim. That was the craziest 24 hours! 

Happy to be in Trondheim Finally!