Expedition

We're traveling with friends (!!) and so we're giving this first Norway post to the inimitable Leslie Buxbaum-Danzig!!

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Greetings from jubilee! After months of anticipation, we – the danzigs -- have joined the expedition. ‘Expedition’? you may wonder? Well, after hours of learning about maritime and sea voyaging and polar missions at Bygdøy museums in Oslo (Bygdøy is a peninsula near the city centre), expedition it is! My task is to write about train travel so I won’t get too diverted by the Fram and Thor Heyerdahl, but indeed I was far more compelled than I thought I’d be by seaworthiness and drifts. And I was reminded that the stories of individuals are just damn interesting. The more general survey of boats at the museum was well … um … I can’t remember … there was a hull.

And that the North Pole explorer Roald Amundsen (which is also the name of our neighborhood high school in Chicago!) included a piano on the Fram to help keep spirits up during the predictable but indefinite periods of being stuck in the ice. A stand up piano in the ship’s dining room! It was beautiful.

“Borders I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.”

- Thor Heyerdahl

But to the subject at hand - train travel. Months ago Jessica, Sheri & I tag-teamed our way through booking the train & ferry between Oslo & Stamsund (yes it turned out to be a 3-woman job). I was the Closer. Train from Oslo to Trondheim, 9 hours to explore Trondheim, night train (with sleeping compartments), arriving Bodo in the am, 6 hours until the ferry to Stamsund (Willa Marie will take over writing about the ferry). Tickets booked, paid for, done & done.

Tuesday night before our train departure, the Danzigs & Thebus O’Donnell’s piled on twin beds at Cochs Pensjonet in Oslo watching the England-Columbia World Cup game. Sheri, Abraham & Silas arrived just in time to watch the nail-biting tie breaker kicks.

A plan was made. We will meet at 8am the next morning to walk 30 minutes to the central train station and have plenty of time to find our train and get coffee before the 9:16am departure. No, wait – let’s meet at 7:50 to make it really easy and relaxed. Jessica is clear she doesn’t want to feel pressured or rushed at the station. 7:50am it is. "Good night."

It never gets dark here and the light makes for some erratic sleeping and early waking. Danzigs are downstairs by 7:35. Adrian is getting his coffee. Leslie (I’m now talking about myself in the 3rd person) has something between a feeling, a memory, a panic – perhaps in part triggered by Sheri’s off-handed barely heard comment the night before that the train was leaving at 8am.

Leslie, with slight trepidation, removes the white folder with travel info from her bag, looks at the ticket and there it is:

Oslo S - Bodø (1 change) 04. Jul 2018 08:02 - 09:16

The train leaves in 27 minutes! And arrives the next day at 9:16am. Sorry Jessica. Looks like we’ll be rushing.

What follows is a mad dash of texting, calling and knocking on doors. The (fab) reception guy joins the mission – calling 3 taxis to the hotel pronto. We are told we might make it but there will be running. Leslie piles in the last taxi – feels it’s her duty. If someone is to not make it … if one among them is to be left in the wilds of Oslo … to fend for herself on the northerly ‘expedition’ to the arctic circle … But no time for self-pity, there’s a train to catch.

Sheri somehow manages to make small talk in the taxi, talking about the unseasonably warm weather. Leslie marvels at her seeming ease in the crisis. Perhaps she should be the one left? But no time for self-doubt. There’s a train to catch. And yes... there is running. And somehow as the train doors are closing, the group of 10 and all their bags tumble into seats (that they are later to find out are not theirs)

No one is left behind. And there’s even free coffee on the train.

- Leslie