How to experience an adventure in Norway

1. Book a trip by bus where you have to change buses as often as possible and the transfer time is less than 5 minutes.
2. Speak the local language poorly and choose bus drivers who understand little English.
3. Choose the worst seat on the bus. There should be an alcoholic man sitting in front of you who needs to go to the toilet every 10 minutes. Behind you, there should be someone who can still make phone calls with friends at 2 am, of course using the hands-free speaker.
4. Underestimate the amount of snow and its impact on walking time.
5. Travel to places where there is bad weather and the flight may be canceled and where the train has to stop longer due to too much snow.

All this happened to me this weekend.
On Friday morning, I started in Dale to visit other volunteers in Vinstra, Eastern Norway. The first two transfers went great, but in Skei, I got off at the wrong stop (I had asked the bus driver... and there were only two stops there...) and since I only had 2 minutes to transfer, the connecting bus drove away right in front of me. I ran into the gas station, but there was no taxi available to follow it. And none of the truckers were going in that direction either. So, we looked for the next connection: The next bus was at 9:20 pm, so I waited 11 hours at the gas station. In the meantime, I knitted a hat, fortunately I brought my knitting with me.

In the afternoon, I also visited the village located in the region where Nikolai Astrup lived, which is also super beautiful.

When my bus arrived, I just wanted to sleep, but a man sitting diagonally across from me was making noise the whole time and went to the toilet every 10 minutes to smoke secretly. When the bus emptied at one stop, I moved to another seat. Just as I had fallen asleep, the man behind me started talking loudly on the phone with his friend. All this happened at 2 o'clock in the morning and of course he was almost deaf, so it was very loud.

When I arrived in Otta shortly before 3 o'clock, I had the waiting room all to myself, so I sat by the window and watched the snowflakes, of course, sleep was out of question.

In the train to Vinstra, I also talked to a woman who was a teacher in Flekke, 10 minutes away from Dale. And at 3:20 am I finally arrived in Vinstra. A volunteer picked me up by car and I immediately fell asleep on the sofa. Because of one minute, I turned 8 hours of travel time into 19 hours.

But then came the good part of the trip:
Together with the volunteers from Vinstra, I had breakfast. After that, we drove to Lillehammer with the car they are allowed to use on weekends. After comparing several parking garages and finally parking, we walked to the train station where we met the other volunteers. Together, we took a shuttle bus to the World Cup, where we were invited to a party by drunken Norwegians and received a beer as a gift. After dusting off free hats, we watched the start of a cross-country ski race. Later, we also went to ski jumping and in the end back to the finish line of another cross-country race. It is noteworthy that hardly anyone was at the ski jumping event, compared to the cross-country race. Norwegians are simply better at cross-country skiing... or so they think. Because the first place was always Norwegian.

After that, we visited the small Christmas market in Lillehammer and drove home.

There, we made pizzas and talked before walking to a bar. At 11 pm, a country band started playing. It wasn't good, but loud. That's why we had to shout in each other's ears when we wanted to talk.
At 1:30 am, we went back to the house because the others wanted to go skiing on Sunday.

In the morning, we had breakfast together again, the others left, and I waited a little in the apartment until it was time to walk to the train station. In doing so, I underestimated the snow (it had been snowing all night), so I had to run in some parts, but I caught the train to Oslo. On the way, we stopped for 5 minutes because there was too much snow and some flights were canceled due to bad weather...

When I had already checked in, I saw how the runway was being cleared all the time and there was a storm in Førde and Dale.

During the journey, there were several turbulences, which wasn't very funny for me, as I have a bit of a fear of flying and the plane was relatively small. My seat neighbor's face was interesting during that time :)

Luckily, my flight was only delayed by 45 minutes, but because of the bad weather, no one would pick me up from the airport in Førde, so I had to wait another hour for the bus. When the bus arrived, the bus driver told me that they were waiting for a delayed plane, which meant that I would miss my connecting bus.

Since no one could still pick me up, I walked about a kilometer on a dark road through the forest (of course with the flashlight on my phone turned on). At the main road, I waited for the bus and hailed it there because there was no bus stop in sight. At 9:45 pm, I finally arrived home and fell asleep immediately.

I went to school completely sleepy in the morning, I didn't have time for breakfast. During the break, 2 minutes before class started, I was told that I had to teach the class, which also happened to be the last one before the big exam. As it turned out, the teacher had sent me an SMS to the school phone on Friday, but by then I was already on my way and on Monday morning, I didn't check my phone anymore. So, I introduced the cases without any material and preparation. In the meantime, I ate an apple that I got from the cafeteria as breakfast.

Since the woman who manages the cafeteria is currently in Japan, I had to work with the other cafeteria employee, with whom I can only speak Norwegian, as he doesn't understand English, but surprisingly it went pretty well. During the lunch break, I made paper hearts with a strange web pattern and I will continue doing that with the students on Thursday.

So, my Advent season is not quiet and calm :)

P.S. When I told people at school my story, they just said that flight delays and train transfers are normal, "that's just Norway!", they said casually.