I forgot to mention that a few days ago I had gotten the
infamous flu vaccine, so of course a couple of days ago I came up with the flu L So the long flight from Oakland to London
Gatwick was pretty wretched, and when we landed in London, at midday, I was
tired and grumpy. For a moment I thought I could spend the 5 hours of layover I
had by making a quick dash to London, but I found that the city is 50 km away,
and the trip there would take half hour in and half hour back. I have been in London before, so I gave
it a pass and decided to enjoy the beautiful day my simply walking around the
green areas that surround the airport. Yes, well, that took about one hour
because there is not much you can walk before coming to a freeway, so I turned
around and sat in the terminal nursing my cold.
Finally, after another delay we took off at 7 pm and two
hours later I arrived at Oslo airport at 10 pm (Norway is one hour ahead of London ). The immigration formalities were
brief, and in perhaps half an hour I was out in the arrivals hall, planning my
next step. First I got 5,000 Kronen out of the ATM (8.25 Kronen = US$ 1), and
then stopped by the bus counter to see if there was a bus that could bring me
close to my hotel. Yes, Bus 11 comes close, so I should go outside and ask the
conductor to drop me off near the Central Station. It turns out that the
conductor was a happy fellow who immediately identified my accent as being
Latino, and after I confirmed his shrewd guess he switched to Spanish and
proceeded to tell me how he was Peruvian, had been an officer in the Peruvian
army, and had fled Peru as a political refugee when El Sendero Luminoso started
targeting officers in their guerilla strikes. With the enjoyable conversation
the 60 km between airport and city went by very rapidly, and my new friend even
went out of his way to drop me off right on front of my hotel. Life was
perfect!
Or not, because I spend a wretched night with my raging flu.
No comments:
Post a Comment