From Here to There

So lest you think this is easy, here's the leaving Copenhagen run-down . . . 

Twenty minute walk to the train station, pulling fifty pounds of luggage over cobbled streets.

Ten minute struggle with the ticket machine - helpfully translated into English, to no avail - with a one kroner assist from a very nice local woman.  I had 71 of the required 72 kroners.  The machines take Visa - but we don't have a pin number for ours - and they don't take AmEx - which doesn't require a pin.  We could have overcome this whole pin obstacle by standing in a long line at the ticket counter.

Ten minute train ride to the airport, hoping we're going the right direction.  

THE most brutally efficient security apparatus at an airport that I've ever seen.  Strangely enough, we don't have to show our passports all day along, except to the clerk at a 7-11 where I buy a couple of $50 sandwiches with my pin-less Visa card which he apparently found disturbing.  Maybe the state police would have tracked me down if I welshed on my sandwich debt.

One hour flight to Oslo in an exit row.  I threw in the towel on pre-selecting our seats and was rewarded for my sloth with the best seat in the section.

Twenty minute extremely high speed train into the city which cost about $50.  It took some time figuring out the ticket machine as we ate our $50 sandwiches standing up.  There were no seats at the airport which was very weird.

Ah, then the hang-up.  An attendant directs us to the #12 tram, our tickets secured at another 7-11.  The 7-11s are everywhere.  They are, for some reason, ubiquitous in Scandinavia.  We're almost there!  The old #12 stops literally right outside the station.  We stand there for a bit, watching #12 trams go by in the wrong direction, before noticing that our tram no longer stops at this spot.

Thirty minutes later, hot, bedraggled, frustrated, we find the tram stop, somewhat discombobulated.  Every one I ask for help is eager to speak English and most helpful even when they don't know shit about anything.  They're SO good looking, though, that I don't mind asking.  I'm a committed heterosexual of long-standing but some of these guys are tempting me.

Thirty minute standing outside the huge wooden door of our apartment before receiving a note that the key is at a nearby Shell gas station.  On Frognervein Street.  We try to imagine walking over to a gas station in Ventura, staffed by a rotating collection of minimum-wage, teen aged clerks, and giving them a key to our house.

Six hours door to door.  An event.