adventure at the door

Löfsjö > Stockholm

Friday 1

A lovely start ...

Storm winds on TV news, trees have fallen on the lines, cutting the electric cables, the state railway company cancelled all their trains, the little alternative company which runs the trains to the far north said, both by phone and on their web-site, that, since the track company said the line would be clear by 7 pm, their trains would be running normally; big doubts about whether it was OK to take the train, the awful alternative being to drive myself all night to the airport.

Dagmar packs my bag! - a real life-saver, otherwise I wouldn't have been ready ...

The train stops again before it has even left the station area, I hear the driver telling the conductors on the walkie-talkie that the other train coming up the hill is using up all the electricity ... Dagmar runs up and opens the door so we can talk some more, which I wouldn't have dared to do ...

The conductor wakes me after two hours, the train has only got an hour down the line, I'm to get up to be ready for a taxi to the airport - which is still six hours drive away. I share the journey with a delightful Japanese space-scientist who has been working in Kiruna ... Oddly enough we're getting the same plane to begin with, Lufthansa to Frankfurt.

It's something of a tense journey, because the driver can't ever say how long he will need to get there, and he's sticking to speed limits through the forest with a pernickertiness which feels rather unnecessary and unusual to me ...

But we get the airport at 9 am, perfect timing for our 10.15 flight, though the driver gets lost, and it's me who has to decide that it's OK for us to get out where we are and walk for five minutes instead of driving all the way round again.

The taxi-meter shows nearly 5000:- SKr / 500 USD - good job it was the train company paying! And even sitting up in a taxi all night, it was a lot better than the alternative - driving myself all the way, paying through the nose for parking at the airport, and coming back to a cold car which might not start after 10 days ...