Flight

We left Dublin on Friday 4 March at 12 o’clock.  I say we because my parents came with me.  I had booked a trip to Oslo for my mother for Christmas to see the Nordic Ski Jumping World Championships (more about that later) but that was before I found out that I had a job in Norway!  It just so happened that the trip coincided perfectly with my planned start date. 

Our SAS plane was lovely and clean, spacious and comfortable.  Boarding commenced on time.  There was no queue to get on the plane, and it was fully boarded ten minutes in advance of take off.  You gotta love the Scandinavians!  We got a free newspaper each – ok it was in Norwegian – but still!!  I tried to read the newspaper to brush up on my language.  Again, the pictures helped quite a bit, but I was able to make out pretty much what had happened with the crew of the Beserk ship that went missing on its way to the South Pole, and with the Nordic Ski World Championships.  I tested my understanding on the Norwegians over the weekend and I think I did pretty well!!

The plane journey was made all the more exciting by the radically different landscape that appeared as soon as we approached the Norwegian coast.  Literally everything was white.  Mountains, valley, trees, everything.  All of the lakes (I’m not sure if they were fjords) and rivers were also frozen.  It looked spectacular!

Landing in Oslo Gardemoen was also very pleasant.  Nothing beats the ‘Flytoget’ train that leaves roughly every ten minutes for central Oslo and beyond to Drammen.  I in my ignorance thought ‘Flytoget’ was a bit of an akward name and that the Norwegians could have come up with something better in their own language.  This was until I discovered that ‘Flytoget’ does not mean ‘Fly to Get’ in English but ‘Fly’ as in ‘Flight’ and ‘Toget’ as in ‘Train’!  It’s the little things….