The Twenty-Four Hour Road To Hell

Friday, August 25, 2006

11:30 a.m. Take a shower and prepare bags – there will of course be no hot running water in Hell so take your time and enjoy.

Where the Hell is Hell?

1:08 p.m. Catch the Train from Rovaniemi, Finland to Kemi.

Enjoy the chat with the precious youngsters on their way to Christian camp. You won’t be seeing any more of those, well then again, Hell may be full of them.

2:29 p.m. Arrive Kemi train station. Wander around for ten minutes looking for Kemi bus station.

3:10 p.m. Catch the bus from Kemi to Tornio.

2:45 p.m. Arrive Tornio. Appreciate the 25 minutes you just gained because of the time change. Now you’ll have 25 less minutes in Hell – like that matters in Eternity.

2:50 p.m. Decide between sitting in the Tornio café/bus station/package center to wait two hours for the bus to Haparanda, Sweden or walk the 15 minutes it takes to get there. Hmmm….

3:00 p.m. Cross the border into Sweden

3:05 p.m. Arrive at the Haparanda Bus Station moments before the thunderstorm. Appreciate what may be your last moment of good timing.

4:10 p.m. Board the bus to Lulea. Strike up conversation with three young people from Hungary backpacking across Scandinavia. Enjoy the new friendships, they may be your last.

6:35 p.m. Arrive in Lulea. Enjoy your last meal – hamburger and French fries at a little stand by the train station with your new Hungarian friends.

If you ever make it out of Hell, you now have friends to visit in Budapest.

8:00 p.m. Take a walk with your new friends through Lulea. Realize there are some places in the world worse than Hell.

9:10 p.m. Board the train to Bracke. Enjoy your last few minutes visiting with your new friends.

9:27 p.m. Part with new friends with hugs and promises to visit.

11:00 p.m. Sleep…. Kindof.

4:43 a.m. Wake up with a start. The train has stopped. Where the HELL am I?! Scramble to get off; realize it is only 4:43 am. Go back to sleep.

5:43 a.m. Repeat. This time get your ass off the train.

5:45 a.m. Take pictures of the one stoplight town of Bracke, Sweden. Why not? This is surely a place you will never see again.

6:17 a.m. Board the train to Storlien (a few minutes late). Thank God there is a bistro car. Oh wait, you’re going to Hell. You don’t have to thank him anymore.

Chant. “Coffee. Coffee. Coffee.”

6:25 a.m. Thank the kind man who gave you the coffee when you didn’t have any Swedish crowns. Maybe this is heaven? No, the coffee sucks. Coffee wouldn’t suck in heaven.

8:00 a.m. Wonder exactly how big the forest is that you have been in since Finland and whether the fog that has surrounded the train since you woke up will ever lift.

8:30 a.m. Whine to no one in particular, “Are we in Hell, yet?” Hear a faint echo – “about half way…”

8:56 a.m. Watch in amazement as the train drives through what is literally a wall where the fog ends and the day begins.

Marvel at the wall of fog behind as you emerge into rolling landscape, green with evergreens, bordering a crystal blue lake, with perfectly painted quaint ski-village like houses,

beneath a cloudless Carolina Tarheel blue sky. Damn it is beautiful here.

9:04 a.m. Laugh at the sentence, “Are we in Are,” because that is where you are.

10:02 a.m. Arrive in Storlien (a few minutes late).

10:28 a.m. Board the train for Trondheim, Norway (a few minutes late).

11:28 a.m. WELCOME TO HELL

See you when you get here!