Might as well, while I have the opportunity..

Bus is booked! :)

Finally.

Berlin to Norrköping.

Yup. Pretty much back to the first iteration of The Plan 🙈

…and they all handed their passports over and 3 fell out..

Having got through the Danish checks I assumed they wouldn’t check again in Sweden.

I was wrong.

The Swedish border controllers were stricter than the Danish, although they didn’t make us take our luggage out of the bus which was nice of them.

After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, and a lot of hi vis people getting on and off the bus inspecting things and talking into their walkietalkies and/or phones, three people were told to get off the bus for unknown (to me) reasons.

I overheard one lady asking why she couldn’t continue on to Malmö, only to get this reply:

“I ask the questions here.”

And that was that. End of conversation.

They were eventually (~40 minutes later) taken to one of the rooms in the building on the right and the bus was allowed to finish the journey in peace.

Danish Corona testing

Just after we drove off the ferry in Denmark, the driver told us to get our passports and Corona certificates ready.

The bus stopped at customs and a couple of men in high vis jackets and gun belts appeared.

They were ‘only’ border control guards, but with their safety vests and guns they were still quite alarming.

‘Everybody out. With their luggage. Standard procedure.’

We all piled out, grumbling about having to pack our drinks and computers (or whatevers) into our bags again.

Once we were all out more high vis men appeared and headed into the bus.

Turns out they weren’t only’ checking passports and negative corona test result or vaccination certificates, they were also searching bags and presumably hidden people.

One of the men reappeared with a stray backpack.

‘Whose is the bag?’

Someone went forward to collect it.

‘I said they should take ALL their luggage with them. Empty the bus!’

Told you they were scary.

Everyone duly queued up and took their hold luggage out of the bus and lined themselves back up on the stripes on the tarmac.

More high vis people appeared. These were wearing army hats and seemed responsible for checking passports and corona test certificates.

Everyone who could prove their innocence was allowed to heave their luggage back into the hold and get back on the bus.

The few untested and unvaccinated people were marched off to be tested while the rest of us waited more or less patiently for them to get their results back.

It’s obviously not even close to what other people have been subjected to.

But.

In my imagination it didn’t take much for one of them to say something like, “Ok, we’re done here. Shoot the one’s without paperwork”

😦

It’s quite unnerving to realise just how much of a terrible activist I’d make.

Given the choice I’d take Danish pastries over Danish security guards any day..

😜

Keeping the busdriver safe..maybe?

At least the English readers get a reason 🙂

Corona spacing

Leaving

I would like to tell you how I was packed and ready to go in almost no time and how I got a full 8 hour sleep in before getting up refreshed and leaving on time with 2 neatly packed baskets.

But that’d be lying.

I wasn’t at all ready for anything and I didn’t sleep and apart from the baskets I also had a backpack and a shopping bag for extra stuff I couldn’t fit in the baskets but didn’t want to leave behind.

But.

Against that, I did pack and change the water in the aquariums and water the balcony and kind of clear up the kitchen* and the sitting room and sweep most of the flat and attempt to open and save my tax return** ..

..and I even showered.

I left later than I wanted to and then had to go back for my helmet. (Which I embarrassingly only noticed I wasn’t wearing because I wasn’t wearing my gloves and my handlebars felt weird.***)

But.

I still got to the bus on time.

See the clock in the background? that proves I was on time 😉

Or at least: I got to the bus before they stopped letting people onto it 🙂

And I wasn’t the last one to arrive.

The lady who arrived while they were hanging my bike on the hooks thanked me for getting her the extra time she needed to be able to catch the bus 🙂

What more can you want?

Yeah.

Ok.

Sleep’s important too.

Zzzzzzzzzzz

* kind of cleared up is basically an extravagant way of saying I emptied the table by piling things closer together on the work surface..

** the tax office loves playing the we’ll-delete-everything-you-haven’t-opened-in-a-while game with me. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose by a few days or, occasionally, minutes. This time I’m destined to lose because I couldn’t find the letter with the new secret code in it.. *sigh*

*** my gloves live in my helmet

I booked a bus trip..

Bus trips sound dire.

I don’t think I’ve ever been on an official one and several people who have have told me how much they enjoyed theirs… and yet they still don’t appeal.

This is not that sort of bus trip.

This is a journey on a bus.

Flixbus offers a bus service directly from Berlin to Malmö and one from Stockholm to Berlin.

Bingo.

🙂

Wheee!!