Dave's Travel Journals
Grace Under Pressure
Stockholm, Sweden: August 12, 2000
By Dave Fox
I had this vision when I left on this trip of zapping out nightly reports
from my hotel room now that I own this nifty Pocketmail gadget. But I'm
repeating the same route for the 8th time in three years, and it's hard
not to be redundant. I'm in Stockholm again, catching the Finnish party
boat tomorrow.
My last tour had a couple of unpleasant adventures: A new bridge between
Denmark and Sweden opened July 2, which meant a change in train schedules.
Rather than boarding the Copenhagen-Stockholm night train in Copenhagen
and having the entire train loaded onto a ferry at the coast, you must
now take a local train over the bridge to Malmö, Sweden, and then
switch to the night train.
I convinced our Danish bus driver to drive us across the bridge and drop
us off in Malmö so we could have dinner there rather than Copenhagen
and see an extra city.
We arrived, found a place to store our bags, and scattered for dinner.
I had never been to Malmö before. It's a beautiful city, smaller
and more mellow than Copenhagen, with wonderful 16th century Dutch architecture.
I told the group our night train would leave at 11:37 p.m., that they
should meet back at the train station at 11:00, and that if anyone wanted
to join me for a pre-departure happy hour, they could meet me in the station
bar at 10. At 10:15 I started giving out bunk reservation tickets to the
few people in the bar. One of them noticed the train was scheduled to
leave at 10:55, not 11:37... and I had told everyone to meet me at 11.
(The train from Copenhagen to Malmö left at 9:37, and I had had the
:37 part stuck in my brain.)
Being the professional tour guide that I am, trained in handling all sorts
of crises, I used my best judgement in handling the situation. First I
panicked. Then I swore. Then I stared stupified at the tickets for a moment.
Then I screamed. Then I swore again. Missing an overnight train is not
a good thing to do on this tour.
When I was done swearing, I began sprinting up and down the streets of
Malmö, thinking it had to be nothing worse than a nasty dream I would
soon wake up from. I was very happy I had started jogging again just a
few weeks earlier.
Miraculously, I found everyone and we made the train. The only thing I
really did wrong was admit it was my fault.
In Bergen, the second to last night of the tour, I came down with a nasty
flu/strep thing... chills, fever, unable to sit up in bed, hypochondriacal
fears of being dead by morning and missing the farewell dinner. I did
not die, however, which was a good thing because dinner was tasty the
next night.
After a week of antibiotics and Tylenol, I am again my usual healthy,
cranky self.
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