Goodbye to Sweden

It was time to say good-bye to Stockholm and hello to Oslo. Breakfast, then we Uber 10 minutes to Stockholm's Central Station – not to be confused with Stockholm's Centralen Station, which is where local, inter-urban trolleys and buses are located.

We already had our Eurail tickets reserved. Now the goal was to find our train to Oslo.

Stockholm's Central Station is a breeze, and once inside we knew exactly where to find our 10:46 am train. The simplicity of the station's boarding process was nothing like the mayhem of Paris or Madrid. For a city this size, that was impressive.

Soon we're rolling smoothly through the dense Swedish countryside at 100 miles an hour, already seeing the first signs of autumn color.

Our train took us almost directly west across southern Sweden and Norway, making little more than the sound of a whisper as it slid so smoothly through the land it was as though the train was running on a single continuous rail.

Halfway through the trip, the sun disappeared, and rain began to fall. Norway's landscape specializes in thick forests and large bodies of water. The train slowed and the tracks took us left and right through miles and miles of stalwart pine hugging hillocks of igneous rock that would be suddenly interrupted by a lake that would in turn disappear behind pine forest again.

Hello to Norway

Five hours after boarding in Stockholm, we had arrived, but before finding our hotel we needed to arrange seats for our next train, the one we planned to board for Bergen in three days.

One of the less appealing aspects of traveling through Europe using Eurail's Global Pass is that you almost always have to find a human ticket agent to arrange guaranteed seats at each location (I do plan to write a piece explaining train travel in Europe.) I decided to do that now while we were still at the station.

Unlike Stockholm, the Oslo's train terminal is immense and rambling with multiple arms and levels; a mash up of New York's Grand Central and old Penn Stations with thousands of travelers scurrying, wandering or paralyzed as they attempt to find wherever it is they hope to go. Restaurants of all kinds lined the immense corridors intercepted by elevators, escalators, stairs everywhere reminiscent of M.C. Escher's mind-bending prints where stairwells and passages intersect at impossible angles.

In the midst of this madness, I suggested to Cyn she stand with our bags while I searched out an agent. I wandered up and over and around through the masses, finding plenty of ways to board or debark trains, and no end of kiosks where I could buy non-Eurail tickets, but not a human agent that could help with our seat reservations. Finally, across the crush of human heads, I spied one in a nook, and once I made it to her, she was all grace and charm -- tall, dark-haired with flashing teeth. She seemed to understand our predicament perfectly. I showed her the Eurail passes on my phone and inside of five minutes our reservations were in hand.

By this time – famished, and now fighting a cold, we found one of the millions of restaurants in the terminal, gulped down a couple of sandwiches and made for the Hotel Thon Terminus—only a half mile away; another one of Cyn's perfect choices. Home sweet home. At least for the next three nights, with explorations of Oslo to follow.

Photos: a final good-bye to one of Europe's prettiest cities and hello to another more modern Norwegian gem. Unfortunately I seem to have no pictures from the train that took us between the two.

Stockholm Recommendations

Our time in Stockholm was too brief, but we’re happy to share some recommendations below. You can see more recommendations from all of Scandinavia here.