I had a sauna today.
To be clear, it wasn’t a “sow-na” like the Americans have. In fact, I think that the Europeans also have a “sow-na”.
No, I had a “sore-na”.
And for the purposes of full transparency, it wasn’t one of those “take off all of your clothes and jump into an icy fjord” kind of saunas. Nope, it was a private sauna – all by myself.
I will explain more about that soon.
We also experienced a couple of minor miracles today.
Today we leave Norway for the last time, and head off to Finland. Rovaniemi, specifically. Right up there in Lapland, in the Artic Circle.
Now I know that I have been saying how cold it has been in Bergen and Oslo, but in Rovaniemi it is very cold. Very, very cold.
Our flight from Oslo airport departed 8.45am this morning, and boarding closed at 8.00am. I think I said yesterday that for this to be a success, we needed to be out of the hotel just after 6.00am to be at the train station for the 6.40am express train to the airport, especially if we were to have any hope of having coffee on the way.
We set the alarm for 5.15am and – as tends to happen – I woke a couple of minutes before that. It seems to happen to me nearly every time I set the alarm, but I’m not confident of my ability to wake at a pre-determined time if I don’t set the alarm.
5.15am should have given us enough time to make ourselves beautiful, depart the hotel, get coffee, and make it onto the 6.40am train. The project manager in me allowed plenty of contingency, just in case.
Anyhow, I was already vertical when the alarm went off, so I shut it off and jumped straight into the shower. We’d already packed and organised our stuff, to minimise the mental effort required this morning.
Showered and beautiful, I handed over the bathroom to MBW, who likewise had her abultions. We finalised our bags, double-checked the room, and went downstairs to check out.
And this is where the first miracle occurred. By the time we were walking out of the hotel, it was still only 5.50am, and we had a real chance of catching the 6.20am train. It was about -4 or -5 degrees when we left the Citybox Oslo hotel, so we were well rugged up against the cold air.
MBW bought coffee and cinnamon rolls for breakfast, while I went over and purchased our train tickets.
We were on the platform and ready to board the train with 10 minutes to spare. The train came in, we got onboard with all of our luggage, and off we went.
Toot, toot!
We are finding it very difficult to wear the right amount of warm clothes to be suitable for both the cold air outside, and the heated buildings. The inside of the train – unfortunately – has a temperature setting somewhere around “tropical north Queensland”, so by the time we were 10 minutes into the 28 minute run to the airport, we were starting to swelter.
MBW started peeling off her jacket, scarf, beanie, gloves, etc, and I did the same.
By the time I’d managed to get my jacket, gloves and scarf off, my long-sleeved tee-shirt was absolutely soaked with sweat.
I was having a private sauna all of my own on the way to the airport, and I simply could not cool off. We arrived at the airport around 6.50am, and I simply bundled up all of my warm clothes, put on my backpack, and bundled our suitcases onto the platform and into the frigid air again …
As I’m sure that you know, the very purpose of persperation is to cool you off, so when the cold air hit my sweaty body, I got the shivers and needed to get back into my warm stuff again in a hurry.
We had checked in to our flights last night, so we only needed to print out our baggage tags, put them on our suitcases, and drop them off at the bag drop area to watch them be whisked away, hopefully onto the same planes that we were boarding.
It’s a funny thing, but in Norway everything is fully automated with virtually no human interaction in any of these tasks. Baggage tags, bag drop, and even through customs and immigration, there are a couple of humans observing the flow of travellers, but nobody is actually doing any of these tasks for you.
We got to the security gate and took off our jackets, beanies, scarves, and gloves again, put all of our stuff (including electronics) into plastic trays, then went through the scanner. MBW sailed straight through, and of course when I went through, the scanner started squealing as though I had a sub-machine gun stuffed down my trousers.
So I got pulled aside for a check.
“What’s that in your pocket”? (My handkerchief).
“What’s that? Take it out of your pocket.” (Loose change)
“Take off your money belt and belt. And your watch”
“Go back through the machine.”
Then I got the pat down. I have to say that I haven’t had another guy be that intimate with me since … well, since never.
What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.
MBW had already collected her carry-on baggage, but of course – as luck would have it – mine was selected for a special check. My bags got the swab test, every pocked opened and inspected, all sorts of stuff pulled out and looked at, then stuffed back in.
Sigh 🙁
Finally the nightmare was over and I was given my stuff and waved on my way. MBW had already got herself dressed again and was ready to roll, but I needed a few minutes to re-organise myself, get dressed, and do a quick that I had everything …
Backpack – check
Sling pack with all of my valuables – check
Jacket, beanie, gloves, and scarf – check, check, check, and …. where’s my bleeping scarf??
So back I go to the over-enthaustic baggage checking friend and my other handsy mate, but none of them had seen my scarf, and frankly neither of them seemed to care. Which left me with the only option to go back out into the baggage drop area, look for my scarf, and run the gauntlet of the security peeps one more time.
Long story short, my scarf was lost, and the only thing that made MBW happy about this whole adventure was that she still had her scarf.
Bugger.
I made it back through the scanners with minimal intimacy from the pat-down guy, although he did want to feel the hood of my hoodie just to make sure I wasn’t carrying drugs or explosives …
… and there it was. My scarf, sitting in a plastic bucket looking very forlorn and waiting to be claimed. Next to an iPad (not mine) which was also sitting in a plastic bucket and waiting to be claimed.
We still had about NOK168 in cash (approx $24), and as it is a bit of an unusual currency (= hard to convert it back to AUD, and unlikely to find anyone who would be needing any), we decided to spend it on some pastries, potato chips and chocolate. Hardly an investment that would make Warren Buffett happy, but we got rid of all but about NOK3.
Before we leave Norway, here is a couple of fun facts.
Firstly, all of the Scandinavian languages are so close, that someone from Norway can speak with someone from Finland, and they can both understand each other.
Yet someone from Bergen (in Norway) cannot speak with someone from Oslo (also in Norway) without a translator, because the dialects are so different.
Go figure.
The second fun fact is that there is a big push to get electric cars in Norway. From the beginning of this year (2025), all busses and taxis must be electric vehicles, and by 2030 ALL vehicles must be EVs. Yet last winter they had some very cold days (-25 degrees or so), and all of the batteries in all of the EVs couldn’t function at those temperatures, so no EVs were on the road for a few days.
Crazy Norwegians.
We got onto our flight to Helisinki with a minimum of fuss and found that the plane was almost empty. It can’t have had more than 20% of the seats occupied … which made it a very comfortable flight without all of the usual pushing and shoving to get on or off.
The flight was uneventful, and only took a bit under an hour.
We landed at Helsinki, gathered up all of our stuff and headed off to find the gate for our next flight to Ronaniemi. That flight was probably two-thirds full, so a little bit more squishy, but not a bad flight after all.
Again, uneventful.
I’ve noticed that all of the foreigners here (ie those who speak the local language) all listen carefully when announcements are made in their language (that I can’t understand), and then all talk away happily over the English translation so that I can’t hear it. Fortunately I’ve heard the safety talk pre-departure so many times, that I really don’t need to hear it in any language any longer.
When we landed in Rovaniemi there was a bit of a snow storm going on, which was both super-exciting, and a bit disappointing at the same time.
Exciting, because we really don’t have a great deal of life experience with snow. We took the kids skiing many years ago to Mt Buller, and they had their snow machines churning out the fake stuff the whole time we were there.
So it was both fun and exciting to exit the airport and stand there having snow cascade all over you.
But the snow was also disappointing, because that level of cloud cover means that our northern lights tour tonight could be a bust.
The tour company told us that there was a 60-70% chance of seeing the lights, but there are no guarantees. (They also told us that last night had the same chances, and they got to see a spectacular light show.)
So we are going regardless, and with any luck we will be posting some photos of the lights in tomorrow night’s blog!
We caught the Airport express bus to the city, and dragged our suitcases through the snow and ice to our apartment. Got ourselves settled, MBW did a couple of loads of washing, and we headed up to the local supermarket to buy some groceries for dinner.
A hot chicken and some potato au gratin (which turned out to be potato and salmon au gratin) and broccoli, and we are feeling human again.
We are being picked up for the northern lights tour at 7.55pm out the front, so I’d better get this posted, have a hot shower and coffee, and get ready to go.
Wish us luck!!
Ciao.