Oslo and Helsinki: What A Silly Plan

We woke up bright and early on Tuesday and made our way to the train station after less than 24 hours in Stockholm.  For some reason I thought the train to Oslo was only 3 hours and was looking forward to doing some exploring but the journey actually took 6 hours and even though we left at 8:30am we pulled into Oslo just as the sun was setting.

We checked into our hostel and decided to go for a wander even though it was dark. We walked for about an hour and didn’t really see anything noteworthy except maybe a church or two and the opera house. If the sun was still up or if it had been warmer I probably would have been keen to continue exploring but it was dark and frigidly cold. I was wearing several layers so most of my body was warm but didn’t have a scarf so my face was left open to the elements. I felt like my face was going to fall off. It was so cold it was burning so we stopped by a grocery store to pick up some supplies for dinner and headed back to the hostel.

The next day was much of the same, we woke up and headed to the airport for our flight to Helsinki, which was delayed, so once again by the time we reached our destination the sun had already set.

Our hostel was about a twenty-minute walk from town so after we checked into the hostel we called it a night. We woke up early this morning to explore but it was still dark so again we didn’t see much.

I’m currently sitting in the Helsinki airport waiting for my flight to New York and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed with how the past few days turned out. When we first started booking things I had wanted to spend about a week in Norway. Only a day or two in Oslo and the rest exploring fjords and driving down the Atlantic Highway (Google it, it’s pretty gnarly), but the more research I did the less feasible it seemed. Norway is crazy expensive and a lot of the things I wanted to do are not accessible after September so we changed our plan.

I kind of wanted to spend more time in Helsinki as well. Several years ago I lived in a city in Canada that has a large Finnish population and during that time I found that they are very kind, and often very attractive people. I wanted to visit the place where my friends’ ancestors came from but in the end flights were cheaper if we only stayed for a day.

I was silly for thinking one day in any country would be enough to see major landmarks, meet people, or try to absorb any amount of culture at all, especially during winter when the sun sets around 3pm. If I could do it over again I would reduce the number of countries I visited and spend more time in each place.  Luckily the crazy part of the trip is over and we are starting to slow down now. There are still a few places that we are only spending two or three days in but I’ll take that over 20 hours any day.

I guess the positive I can take away from this experience is I learned something and that’s never a bad thing. Okay, I should go hop on my plane but I will be back soon with some fun stories (hopefully) to tell.