Floating thru the Fjords

On the Flam railway
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Following the advice of Rick Steves and every other guidebook writer found in Barnes and Noble, Brian and I decided to book the daylong "Norway in a Nutshell" tour thru the Sognefjord via train, boat, and bus.

We started by leaving Oslo on a 5 hour 1st class train (not because we are big spenders but because we are over the age of 26, and therefore forced to buy a 1st class railpass which costs about 2x as much as 2nd class.  Yes, we are bitter about it) train thru the Norwegian countryside.  After that we transferred to the famous Flam railway, a 20km long ride that drops 864 meters in one hour as you pass thru mountains and gushing waterfalls.  Once we arrived at the bottom in Flam, we boarded a large boat with what appeared to be half the population of Japan, eagerly anticipating our 2 hour ride.

Annes Travel Rule # 137 - ALWAYS double check the dates of your tickets

A cute village along the way
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Unfortunately weather wasn't on our side.  In the "nutshell" brochures you see bright blue sky, with t-shirt clad tourists snapping pictures of the scenery.  Our trip was freezing, windy, and rainy.  In fact the crew made us leave the top deck of the boat towards the end of the trip due to chairs blowing all about in the wind.  The scenery was beautiful, nonetheless, but looked suspiciously like Milford Sound in New Zealand, but with cute little villages along the way.

See? No blue sky or sun. Just lots of wet and freezing tourists
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After the 2 hour boat ride everyone boarded busses for a 1 hour ride straight up a mountain thru 13 hairpin curves to a town called Voss where we would catch the return train to Oslo.  In an effort to save money on an overpriced hotel room in Oslo, we had a bright idea when booking this trip -- take the midnight train to Oslo, try to sleep sitting upright, and arrive in Oslo at 6:30am, thus saving approximately $150 on a hotel.

As we waited for our return train, I glanced at our tickets and immediately went into a panic - the ticket agent have us tickets to Oslo for the wrong day - the day PRIOR.  Ordinarily this would not be a big deal, we could just hop on the train anyway.  But this particular train is ONLY by reservation and in high tourist season (now) is nearly always sold out days in advance.  Panic, panic, panic.  If all the trains were booked we would miss our flight to Berlin.  We ran to a hotel and used their phone to call the train company, where immediately the customer service agent could see the ticket agent's mistake.  He informed us that there were only 2 spots left on the train in a sleeper cabin.  He had to call the train conductor to ask for permission to give us the seats, since the train was already in transit.  Luck was on our side because the conductor said yes.  WHEW!  Disaster averted.  Not only did we get on the train, we were upgraded to a private sleeper cabin ($120 value) and were able to get a semi-decent night of sleep.

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Anne's Travel Rule # 137 -  ALWAYS double check the dates of your tickets before leaving the ticket agent window!

Anne