On Route To Norway

Well we certainly are more than a bit jaded but in one piece and hanging out in Switzerland for a while before carrying on to Norway. The trip here couldn’t have gone better as far as not being screwed over with excess luggage and the fact that we did not have a return ticket. For those who have travelled long distances you will know that spending 27 hours on 4 different planes almost continuously is about as far from fun as you can get but add that your not sure whether or not you will have to spend $1400 on a return ticket you would not use as well as potentially getting stung because you are trying to take an over-size/over-weight kayak with you really adds that little bit of extra hell to whole thing. My biggest fear was that at some point on route (say Auckland or LA) they were going to tell us that we couldn’t get on the plane without a return ticket but there would be no time to buy one!!! Turned out that in actual fact no one cared as long as we could show them we were leaving their country and then when we got to Zurich (Switzerland) the guy at the desk took one look at me, looked at the front page of my passport and said “have a good day” – didn’t even get so much as a stamp (a little disappointing). I though he might have asked me how long we were planning on staying for or why I was there for but apparent Switzerland don’t care. Turns Germany doesn’t care either… On the drive to our friends place we crossed into Germany and then back into Switzerland again. I woke up to find us at the boarder control checkpoint with the women waving us through. Apparently you don’t even have to be conscious to be allowed in to Germany!!

Chilling at Zurich airport

And luggage wise I must have been over by at least 10 kg and that is if you ignore my three pieces of carry on which weighed about 15 kg instead of the seven you are allowed but it didn’t even cost a bean. Even London’s great Heathrow airport didn’t mess with us despite being handed a golden opportunity – we had to change terminals. Well they had to go a make Heathrow big didn’t they… no problem for normal people but when catching a train is your only way of getting to the next terminal you can see the problem a kayak presents. We turned up at the train and both looked at each other with a sort of “we’re going to have to be cheeky to pull this off” grin. The reality... no cheek required. A guy working around the area took it as a personal challenge to get us to where we needed to be… 10mins latter we were sitting in the first class section of the train after storing our boats into a special cabin they normally wouldn’t let people use - Stoked!!!!

We that's us for now... Tschau