We awoke to the sound of…. Well, to no sound at all, we had a great flat 😁
View from the room
We quickly got ready, packed all our gear, and grabbed some food at the bakery on the way to the port. We decided to make use of our last morning by taking a boat tour into the Fjord, by simply taking the ferry which did a round-trip for about an hour. We arrived at the port a bit early and had our breakfast on a bench overlooking the harbour, a bit cold but somehow magical.
Breakfast view from our bench in the harbour
Next stop was the ticket machine, which decided to be a bit difficult: You could only purchase one ticket on the same credit card… I assume this is to prevent accidental multi-purchases…. sigh… luckily Manja had her card handy too and we managed to get a ticket each. We boarded the ferry and headed straight for the top deck, where we remained for about half the trip. On the way back I couldn’t really feel my toes anymore because of the cold, so we decided to warm up inside. Not long after we go there, a crew member came by and asked if we would mind participating in an emergency drill. Well, sure! So when the test-alarm went off we headed to the front of the ferry and got to put on some pretty cool life-jackets. It amused me to realise that I struggled to put the thing on properly, needing the help of the crew!😅
Luckily we did not have to dive into the freezing water, and just had to wait outside until the captain gave an all-clear. We remained on the ferry just long enough to heat up again before arriving at the Oslo Harbour once more.
We walked back to our station, purchased a standard ticket and caught the train back to the Oslo airport. You can take the express here, but it’s only about 5 minutes faster but €10 per person more expensive…. Feeling savvy we boarded the standard train and saved some money 🧐
We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. Going through security was super modern: Each terminal had a 90degree area supervised by a guard. This area had two levels: One where a computer placed a tray each time one was removed, and directly above one where you could place two trays next to each other and place all your things into. This means that, rather than waiting in line for each person to drop their gear off, one at a time, each counter was sorting out 5 people in the same moment. The trays were moving through the scanners at a steady rate. On the other side of the metal detectors the trays were automatically separated into “All clear” and “need human to check something”. The all-clear queue had all our gear in it, so we pulled our trays off the conveyer belt and took our stuff. Our trays were placed back into a small stack, which was appropriately labeled “Please feed me” in several languages. I would have LOVED to take a photo, but this was not allowed. None the less, I was super impressed with the efficiency of the place, especially compared to Dubai or, even worse, Tegel airport.
Our flight back was totally uneventful. Back in Berlin we got out and saw just how bad Tegel security checks were: The line was about 100 meters past the last official queuing point. Totally insane! We cut through the madness against a flow of people wanting to get into the airport, and eventually got onto the second bus which arrived, because the first was over-full. Even though the first bus was over-full, at least 3 more people squeezed on. Welcome back to Berlin! 😂
We got a seat with no problems, by waiting for the next bus… for 5 minutes.
Once back home we had to drop by a neighbours who was kind enough to accept our deliveries of 2 shelves for the storage unit. We picked them up, transported them by using my bike as a wheelbarrow and pushing them to the storage place.
About 45 minutes later they were all setup and we headed for an early dinner at the local Asian place. The Ban-Mi I had was unfortunately not that great, but the dinner was a lovely way to finish up our weekend. A movie later we dropped into bed😴
