Travel-karma
Jan. 7th, 2011 01:04 pmAll that absence of bad luck that you fellow NYE-revelers in Chicago had after the festivities, it ended up on us, that is Hulda, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thette and me.
We visitedthette's parents in Boden, and arrived on NYE with the sleeper train a little over two hours behind schedule. Given all the transportation hijinxes, especially on the trains, that went on in Sweden during Christmas, that was hardly noteworthy or stress-inducing.
The journey back, however. Last year, we ran into a moose, had a broken-down engine, and encounted some other travel hazard, making us five hours late into Stockholm, a scrambled connection there, and a long round-about over southern Sweden via various connections that were given us.
This year, we got the auspicious start that the train was one hour late from Kiruna. After that, it went pretty well until about 4 am. Between Långsele and Bräcke (which is about as middle-of-nowhere you can get by train in Sweden) the power was broken. We were stuck there for almost six hours, but luckily we still had power for heating and so on (it was -20 degrees outside). We arrived in Stockholm seven and a half hours late at 5.30 pm.
After some misunderstandings and poor communication, we got tickets for a new connection in Stockholm, and that train ran into a major signalling error north of Norrköping, reducing it from a march speed of around 180 kilometers per hour to maybe 30. So when we got to Alvesta at 10.25 pm, we had missed our connection from there to Värnamo as well.
By then, we declared defeat.thette took the offered bus to Värnamo with a very much reduced baggage, since she was to work today, but Hulda and I overnighted with my parents (who live just outside Alvesta).
thette and me.We visited
thette's parents in Boden, and arrived on NYE with the sleeper train a little over two hours behind schedule. Given all the transportation hijinxes, especially on the trains, that went on in Sweden during Christmas, that was hardly noteworthy or stress-inducing.The journey back, however. Last year, we ran into a moose, had a broken-down engine, and encounted some other travel hazard, making us five hours late into Stockholm, a scrambled connection there, and a long round-about over southern Sweden via various connections that were given us.
This year, we got the auspicious start that the train was one hour late from Kiruna. After that, it went pretty well until about 4 am. Between Långsele and Bräcke (which is about as middle-of-nowhere you can get by train in Sweden) the power was broken. We were stuck there for almost six hours, but luckily we still had power for heating and so on (it was -20 degrees outside). We arrived in Stockholm seven and a half hours late at 5.30 pm.
After some misunderstandings and poor communication, we got tickets for a new connection in Stockholm, and that train ran into a major signalling error north of Norrköping, reducing it from a march speed of around 180 kilometers per hour to maybe 30. So when we got to Alvesta at 10.25 pm, we had missed our connection from there to Värnamo as well.
By then, we declared defeat.
thette took the offered bus to Värnamo with a very much reduced baggage, since she was to work today, but Hulda and I overnighted with my parents (who live just outside Alvesta).
