How hard can it be to get from Stockholm to Oslo and back?

For those of you who did not instantly see the obvious connection between below zero temperatures and cutting Ethan’s hair for the first time in the video below; let me lay it out for you: It is cold in Stockholm right now. Really cold.

It started snowing last Friday, or Thursday evening really, and it just kept snowing and snowing. Early Friday morning when I woke up and got ready to head out for work, it had snowed quite a bit and was pretty nippy outside. I had a meeting scheduled in Oslo, Norway on Friday afternoon so my colleague and I had agreed to meet up at 7.15am in Stockholm city to take the air coach out to the airport together.

Just by looking out the window I kinda saw where this day was headed so I packed an extra pair of socks as my ankle-high black business leather shoes wouldn’t do me much good when trekking through a feet of snow. I headed out the front door and down the stair and my feet just disappeared! Great start. Then I made my way over to the bus stop where I waited for a bit with a few other people before this guy (who looked like a full-on mountaineer) walked past and told people that all the busses in the county were cancelled due to the weather. Great. So, my fellow passengers and I started walking like lemmings down the road to hopefully make it to the train on time at least. We only made it to the next bus stop before a bus came and picked us up after all and took us to the commuter train station. Phew!

The commuter train was delayed of course but I had kind of expected it would be. Luckily it showed up after just a few minutes and I was on my way, thinking nothing could stop me now. Well, it could. Signal errors and frozen whatevers made the train go really slow and stop every 50 meters. Finally, and slightly delayed, I made it to the bus terminal in Stockholm city where we boarded the air coach.

At the airport, we jumped through the normal hoops of airport security procedures and then quickly headed over to our gate where we soon found out that our flight was delayed as well. Great again. At first it was delayed for just an hour, then it went up to three hours which would mean that we would fly out at noon and our meeting in Oslo city was at 2pm. From having lots of time and good margins, we were suddenly very tight for time and felt we may or may not make it to the meeting. At 11.30am we got to board our flight and obviously thought it would take off shortly after. But no! Once everyone had boarded, the aircraft had to queue up for de-icing as they’d been on the ground in the cold weather for so long. At this point we realized that this was going to take a fair bit of time and that we would most likely miss our meeting but as we had already boarded the flight and were sitting on the tarmac, there was no way they were going to let us get off.

At 1pm we finally took off and by this point, with a 50 minute flight and a 1 hour bus ride to Oslo city, common sense told us we would not make our 2pm meeting. The good thing is that the flight between Stockholm and Oslo is very quick… In fact; it was so quick so the flight attendants only had time to serve their complimentary cups of coffee and tea between seat rows 1-14 and 19-32. We were sitting in row 17. At this point we were just laughing at our misery and knew that this whole trip would be a tremendous waste of company money and that there was no point for me to even leave the airport as the flight back departed at 5pm. My colleague stayed on till the Saturday so for the next part of this miserable journey , I was flying solo:

The flight home was delayed of course. When I, tired and a bit grumpy, landed in Stockholm again, Shaena had used her cool public transport iPhone app to find me a quicker way home by public transport. That was all well and good and would have worked out really well if it wasn’t for a freakin’ truck that was blocking the freakin’ train tracks(!) for the train that I was supposed to take as a first leg on my alternate route home. Unbelievable! So, I hopped on the air coach back to Stockholm city, which was a pretty smooth ride to be honest, and then walked across the street to the central station where I hoped to catch the commuter train back to Kallhäll. It was delayed of course. Just before 9pm I was back at Kallhäll station hoping that the buses would be running again at least so I wouldn’t have to walk the last bit home. It was not looking very hopeful. Buses were driving by but all their signs said ‘Out of service’ so finally I just took a taxi the last little bit.

To sum up; here’s my daytrip to Oslo in brief:

Left home at 6.630am --> Waited --> No bus --> Walked --> Bus --> Waited some more --> Commuter train that stopped everywhere --> Waited --> Air coach --> Waited --> Waited some more --> Boarded flight --> Sat on tarmac --> Realized the meeting was now definitely not going to happen --> Still had to fly to Norway as we had already boarded the flight --> Did not get a complimentary cup of coffee on the flight --> Expensive cup of coffee at the Oslo airport --> Waited --> Boarded flight home --> Truck on train tracks so alternate quicker route home was a no go --> Waited --> Air coach --> Waited --> Commuter train to Kallhäll --> Waited -->
Taxi --> Home after 9pm.

This guy thought it was pretty cold outside yesterday as well: