Just kidding, though I did have a string of bad luck through here. Let's see, first of all, Kelley and I slept for a good portion of the 8 hour drive from Oslo to Copenhagen. Oh, and did I mention that we only paid for a ticket to Malmö, because that's where I needed to stop? Yeah, well we woke up as they were unloading for Malmö and I told Kelley to get off but she thought we weren't there yet and stalled for so long that the bus started again. So we had to go into Copenhagen, which was farther away from where I needed to go, but more convenient for her. When we got to Copenhagen, Kelley activated her Eurail pass and got on a train to France... I think. We split up in the station so I'm not 100% sure, but she did give me some kroner for a train back to Malmö. The lady gave me a ticket for Ystad instead though (because I said I needed to get on a ferry to Germany) so I went there, and found out that Ystad was actually past Trellebourg (the town with the flipping ferry). So after I got to Ystad, I waited for two hours for a bus to Trellebourg and I got lucky because the buses credit card machine wasn't working so I got to ride for free! So spice.
When I got to Trellebourg I went to the Scandlines building to try to buy a pass onto the ferry that goes to Rostock, Germany. It was closed, even though the hours of operation were posted and it wasn't supposed to be closed yet. So I decided I would try to hitch a ride with one of the cars getting on the ferry. After about 2 hours of standing in the rain a semi driver picked me up and we drove to the semi truck loading area. He went into the office to get his ticket and paperwork while I waited outside. He didn't speak of word of English (though he was really nice) but I understood enough of his German to find out that he couldn't take me after all. Inside they told him that they charged by the person now instead by the vehicle so I walked back into town and by now the Scandlines building was open. I paid 185 NOK for a ticket (about 25 Euro) and had to sit and wait for 6 freaking hours for the next ferry at 11pm.
I fell asleep for 2 or 3 hours on one of their waiting benches, heh. When I woke up, the building was full of other passengers and their bags and it was about an hour until the bus to the ferry would come. Well, it came right when the ticket lady said it would and I asked the driver if it was going to the Rostock ferry. He said yes and drove us onto the ferry.
I don't know why I put that picture on here, it sucks and doesn't show anything useful...
Well, after sitting in the cafeteria area of that ferry for 3 and a half hours, it announced that it would shortly be landing in Sassnitz. I asked the guy at the information desk if Rostock was next and he said that the ferry wasn't going to Rostock and that after it landed, it wasn't going anywhere again until morning. Fuck. I was really mad; plus the guy at the info desk (and the lady in the duty-free shop on the boat) was a jerk.
My set up on board.
I got off at Sassnitz (because I had to...) and followed the crowd of other passengers to- a parking lot. Yeah. That's all there was. No bus station, no train station, no rental cars, no other ferries, nothing but personally owned vehicles. Also, there were no hotels, hostels, B&Bs or even church doorways to sleep in and the security guard for Scandlines was locking the doors behind us. I asked him how to get to the nearest bus station and he gave me poor directions in broken English. I blame myself for not speaking better German on that one, but still. It was totally lame. So he left and then I was stuck at this stupid ferry, with the only other building nearby being a factory or unloading dock or something for all the semi trucks. This is about a fourth of a kilometer up the road.
Turn down your speakers for this, it's pretty much all wind-static.
After recording that little gem, I walked about 3 kilometers to the (only?) stoplight nearby and looked at my map and the street signs. Apparently I was still about 8 kilometers away from Sassnitz and there were no visible street lights anywhere nearby, just the lights on the now distant ferry dock and factory street thing. It was pretty scary. I didn't know if I should go back to the ferry and wait until morning or try to walk to Sassnitz but the thought of sleeping in the freezing cold, light rain was not appealing at all.
So, at 2:30 in the morning, on an island in the Baltic Sea, on January 6th, I walked for 5 miles through a pitch black National Park to get to a train station where trains only arrive and depart once per hour from 5am to 11pm.
It was pretty scary. But I convinced myself that there probably weren't any roving packs of carnivorous animals since it was an island and all. It took me about 2 hours total since I took a really long time making up my mind about which way to go when I got to the stop light, I went about half a mile down one road because it looked like there were lights closer-ish in the distance (reflecting off the clouds?) but I changed my mind and turned a 180 back towards Sassnitz.
So yeah, I made it to their tiny little train station just as a train was leaving for Rostock, convenient, right? Too bad I missed it by about 30 seconds. So I had to wait another hour and 15 minutes in the cold with my sleeping bag around my shoulders for the next train. But after the initial aggravation of finding out I had been on the wrong boat, I was surprisingly, to myself, not unhappy about the situation. I should have been tired and really mad or something but mostly I was thinking about how it was an adventure. Now it kinda seems boring, but oh well. I got on a train to Stralsund at 6:09am on Friday, and there are trains to Rostock from there, so it worked out.
And here's my progress so far:
No comments:
Post a Comment