Oslo - Not an Auspicious Beginning

It was an eight hour train ride from Copenhagen to Oslo. A massive bridge connects Copenhagen to Sweden. We had a brief layover in Sweden, which we didn't realize we were going to have. It was good to get out into the sunshine and walk around, but we didn't have any Swedish currency. Remember pay toilets? After blustery Copenhagen, a couple hours in the sunshine to break up the trip was welcome.

One of the many picturesque train stations

We arrived in Olso around 6 pm and were too tired to try and figure out transit, so decided to take a taxi to our hotel. Our driver didn't really speak any English, but that's OK, we had the name and address we could just hand him. Easy peasy, right? 

The driver put the address into his GPS. All seemed well. Then we got to a residential section. He did a couple circles. Stopped and talked to a pedestrian. Called the phone number on the paper-no idea what the conversation was, being all in Norwegian, but it wasn't helpful. No hotel.

Turns out we booked an Air B&B without realizing it. There was no wifi at the train stations or on the the trains, so we did not get the check in information. We found the apartment building. To put it mildly, it was not inviting. There was a very steep, rutted dirt road that the driver wouldn't even go up.

There was a heap of broken furniture, suitcases and household items under a tree by the front door. The building was shabby and reeked of cigarettes. Our taxi driver (bless him) knocked on doors and had conversations with people in Norwegian until he found someone who knew what was going on.

A neighbour knew how to access the key from the lock box and let us in. In the meantime, the driver went back down to the car to help Janis with the bags - thank goodness for packing light! Neighbour and I looked through the apartment and realized it hadn't been cleaned after the last guest. He didn't know a lot of English, but enough to direct us to the closest market for groceries and he would fix it.

By this time it's well after 7 and we have to trudge up the hill to buy something for supper that we can make with our limited kitchen facilities. We decided salad and sandwiches were our best bet. And we had to buy our own toilet paper. And there was no coffee maker.

View of Norway from the train

The advertising claimed that it was a two bedroom apartment with laundry facilities, kitchen, a double bed, a single bed and a sofa bed. It was a studio apartment with a hot plate and a toaster oven. It did have a washer - that took about 90 minutes to wash a load and sounded like construction equipment. No dryer. There was one double bed and a sofa. Not a sofa bed, just a sofa. The helpful neighbour only gave us one clean set of sheets. 

I'm going to be honest. At this point, I just sat down and cried. I have learned a valuable lesson about booking rooms online. Tom read the reviews and study the pictures more carefully. Not only to read between the lines on the descriptions, but also to pay more attention to location. 

It has been 30 years since I used transit regularly. I was seriously out of practice reading schedules and maps. While you can't always guarantee quality of accommodations, easier access makes a huge difference in enjoying your stay if you aren't renting a vehicle or willing to pay for taxis.

In the past 30 years, something else has changed about transit. Especially in Scandinavian countries, everything has gone high tech. They want you to download an app for everything. In Norway, paying on the bus wasn't even an option. Unfortunately, our credit cards did not like us paying for things on overseas apps. We had no issue using them in person, we just couldn't book or pay for anything online once we were here. Going to have to look into that, other tourists didn't have the same problem. I'm also having technical difficulties on my phone - it won't let me download any apps at all!

It doesn't help when all the names are unfamiliar, and rather difficult to pronounce. Finding the bus stops was the easy part. Knowing if you are on the right side of the street so you are going the right way is a little more tricky. Taking pictures of the stops and names really helps.

Some cities have a multiday pass, some have a card you can preload with money. Some you can pay on board, some you can't. The first thing we did when getting to a new city is find out how the transit worked! Edinburgh was, by far, the easiest. You could buy a day pass from the driver and were good to go! We also found bus drivers to be extremely helpful about telling us when to get off - our online instructions weren't always the best route. Other passengers were also very gracious with their assistance. Our first bus in Edinburgh didn't have a functioning display to tell you which stop was coming up next. No fewer than four people let us know "The next stop is yours!"

One of our mantras on this trip has been "The kindness of strangers!"