This morning I got up rather early to catch a dawn train to Oslo, Norway. Yep, Oslo. I had wanted to go to Helsinki, Finland too while on this trip, but one of the stops I made yesterday was at a ship lines ticket agency and it turns out that by ship Helsinki was sixteen hours. So a sixteen hour trip there helped me to realize that my original Scandinavian travel plans were a bit too ambitious, the distances were greater than I had figured. I did not have enough time to take the trip I wanted. I had originally hoped to travel over to Helsinki and reboard the trains, making a trip up through Finland, back into Sweden and then over to Norway and approach Oslo from the northern interior of the country. Ambitious yes – well thought out, no. But that’s OK, because this plan was flexible to begin with. So I simply dropped the Finland portion of the trip and headed on into Norway.
The morning train was an early one, about 6:40 with travel time of a total of five hours. I had to change trains in Hallsberg to continue on to Oslo. Somehow this train became late; there was one stop we made where the train had to back up and switch tracks. Not sure what happened there, but we were on the wrong track for a while, and when that happened I guess it threw the schedule off some and the train was then late getting into Hallsberg. So I missed the originally scheduled connecting train. But that’s the good thing about the rail service in this part of the world; another train will always be along shortly. I had about a two hour wait for the next train to Oslo – time to explore this small city.
Of course it was raining, as it had been on me during most of this trip, and I was in Hallsberg earlier than most of the shops opened. I walked around nonetheless. I did find a few places open: a book store, a small curio shop, a coffee shop – YEAH! Cappuccino please. By the time I finished my hot, refreshing pick-me-up the local mall had opened. I walked around in there for a while, checking out the wares of the merchants.
After a short while of seeing much of what Hallsberg had to offer I made my way back to the train station. Still with about thirty minutes to wait I just sat there, watching people make their way in and out of the station. I mentioned in a previous posting that I like to watch people, notice their characteristics. Often I get ideas for characters I may use in stories this way. So utilizing my natural curiosity about people I spent the remaining time watching my fellow travelers.
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