Tuesday, May 29, 2007 3:00 pm

Well, my little multi-country jaunt has begun on quite the interesting note. We all left EBS on Friday afternoon, crammed into the little blue Peugeot bus driven by Werner Rusch, the principal of the school. He drove us down to the Oslo bus station, where we had the great privilege of hanging out for a couple hours while waiting for our bus to leave at about 5pm. Leo and I walked around downtown Oslo for a bit and saw the sights. Then we went and boarded our bus for the 5-hour bus trip to Örebro, a town in central Sweden that is home to just about every Swedish person I’ve met up to now. We arrived at about 9:45pm, and Jonathan, Huldah, Joel, Mikke, Rebecca, and Jonathan’s dad all showed up to pick us up. Joel, Huldah, Rebecca, and Mikke were all up from Malmö, the city in the very southern-most part of Sweden where we went when we first arrived in Europe. They are all working with LifeStyle TV, as well as doing follow-up Bible studies with contacts that came in through the Health Expo we did over Easter weekend.

Anyways, they brought 4 cars to pick us all up in. The two that I will remember the most are the Chrysler minivan and the Nissan Note, which was a rental car. I hopped into the Nissan, everyone else piled into different cars with their luggage, and we headed out. It was just beginning to rain, and that soon became a bit of an irritance. You see, the minivan had some issues, and it just decided to up and die on us. So we got to use the little Nissan to tow the van all the 50 km to Jonathan’s house. What should have been a 25-minute trip took over an hour and a half. We’ll hear more about that little Nissan. When we got to the house, there was some food and some comfy beds waiting for us, both of which I made immediate use of. And that was that for Friday…

We awoke Sabbath morning, and headed off to church. After a bunch of reunions (we got to see Nicklas and Roy, two of the Swedes that were at ARISE, as well as a few other people that we’ve gotten to know), and a nice church service, we had a great potluck. Then the whole group of us waltzed out into downtown Örebro and experienced the culture and the beautiful sunny Sabbath afternoon. There was a nice big park in the middle of the city where we all lay in the sun, played Frisbee, etc. Then we headed back to the church for Roy’s little sister’s birthday party and more good food. After supper we all drove back to Jonathan’s house out in the country. We spent the evening hanging out, laughing, talking, jumping on the trampoline, and just overall having an AWESOME time. We finally crashed a little after 1am, unaware of the excitement that the next day would bring.

Several of us awoke at a quarter to nine to go running, and we headed off down the road at exactly 10am. We ran a good 4 or 5 km, and followed that up with a nice dip in the lake. It was rather chilly, but didn’t hold a candle to Seton Lake on a rainy day in November. After that we had a brunch, sang a bunch of songs for worship, then all piled into the cars to head out on a hike to some “caves”. It turned out that it was just a bunch of HUGE rocks all strewn randomly throughout the forest floor, but they proved quite entertaining. We spent a few hours practicing our mountain goat skills, clambering around inside, above, around, and under all the rocks and trees. Then the excitement began.

Five of us headed back a bit before everyone because we wanted to do a little rally-car driving. You know, slide around a few corners, go a little faster than the rest of the group had gone. The road was a perfect gravel road, and we had some nice drifts going at first. Joel was driving, Mikke was in the front passenger seat, and I was in the back in the middle, with Huldah on my left and Chrissy on my right. We were coming into a corner, and Mikke commented that it was a sharp one and that we should slow down a bit. So slow down Joel did-- but not enough. The corner kept going more than we expected, and he lost control of the car. It skidded back and forth a few times and headed over the edge of the road. There was a clear-cut right at that point in the road, and the shoulder just sloped gradually downhill through a little maze of stumps. We were moving about 60 km/hour when we left the road (about 45 mph), so when the front passenger wheel connected with a stump, the car was flipped into the air, landed upside down on another stump and rolled back over onto the wheels. We bailed immediately and gathered our wits a healthy distance from the pile of wreckage that was no longer much of a car. We assessed our damage and, miraculously, discovered it to be quite minimal, at least as far as we could immediately tell. We flagged the rest of the group down, who then called the emergency crews, and the five of us got to experience an ambulance ride and a hospital stay in Sweden. We spent about 4 hours in the hospital, mostly just waiting for Joel and Mikke to get their x-rays. The hospital wanted to charge us Americans 3500 Swedish kroners (about $500) just to see the doctor, so we passed. As it turned out, basically the injuries were as follows: Joel had a few small cuts on his hand from climbing out the shattered driver’s side window, and a few tiny pieces of glass in the back of his head; Huldah had some bruising and scrapes from the seatbelt, as well as being a little shaken up; Chrissy had some bruises on her knees and side, and was also a bit shaken; Mikke got a tiny piece of glass in his eye that he quickly extricated with no lasting effects, in addition to have some compressed discs in his back. But they didn’t keep him from being out on the trampoline the next day, having a grand old time. I had a cut on the side of my left hand, the source of which remains a mystery to this day. I also had my left foot under the front seat when we flipped, because my legs are so long. I was wearing flip-flops, so the seat really worked the top of my foot over. It is still rather bruised and makes walking pretty interesting and in fact rather painful. But that is totally all right with me, especially as I think about what it could have been. Oh, and all of us had some pretty tight back and neck muscles the next day, particularly Chrissy and Huldah and I, since we were in the back and got the brunt of the roof on our heads. But all in all, things went miraculously well.

We bussed back from Oslo the next day (Monday evening). Our bus left at 4:30, arriving in Oslo at about 9:30. We then hustled over to the train station to take the train to the airport. We found out which train we needed to take, and discovered that it left at 10:20. It was about 10 to 10, so I headed to the food court to grab some grub for supper. The best option appeared to be Burger King, so I mustered up the nerve to spend nearly $11 on a meal. Things are PRICEY there! Once I got back to the rest of the group, we decided to start gathering our stuff and head over to the gate to make sure we were there in time. Alex and Yvette hadn’t appeared from the food court yet, so Ricky stayed behind to wait for them, and the rest of us headed for the gate. We arrived there at about 10:10, and saw that there was a train leaving there headed for the destination that we were looking for (Lillestrom), and it was leaving in about 30 seconds. We got pretty excited right about then, and started booting it down the ramp, figuring that if Ricky and Yvette and Alex didn’t make it then they could just grab the one that left about two hours later. We barely made it aboard, in a flurry of luggage and people. Once aboard, we started to gather our wits and soon realized that we were on the wrong train. There were several trains that all went to Lillestrom, but only one went all the way through to Oslo Lufthavn, the airport and our desired final destination. By coincidence, there had been a train that left from our gate 10 minutes before the one we wanted that was going the same direction we wanted to go, yet wasn’t going all the way. So when we got to Lillestrom, we dashed off the train and down the stairs, and hurried back up to the other gate, where the train we were wanting was to be arriving in about 5 minutes. When it arrived, we boarded quickly, all the while dragging along our luggage. As the train began to accelerate, it dawned on us that we had gotten onto the express train that cost NOK 175 (about $30). We just stood in the little entry area, knowing that the airport was coming up soon, and we just prayed that no one would come by checking tickets. After some cycles through the WC (water closet, better known as the toilet), we FINALLY arrived at the airport. We quickly disembarked, thankful that no nosy ticket-checker had harassed us. But our next obstacle was rudely thrust into our face in the form of a little set of gates that only opened when a ticket for the express train was inserted into them. We didn’t have a ticket for the express train, but we needed to get to the other side of the annoying little flippy thingies that were preventing our advance into the terminal. Right about the time we were getting ready to turn the little annoyances into hurdles and just vault over them, an airport employee showed up and unlocked the gates, motioning for us to pass through, which we did quite rapidly and without further ado.

So we were now in the airport where we were to spend our next 8 or so hours until Scott, Alonna, and Vange showed up the next day. As soon as we found some benches conducive to sleeping, everyone wasted no time in doing just that. I quickly found myself the only one awake, and the duty of watching the luggage and the owners of the luggage fell to me. So I spent the rest of the night pacing around keeping an eye on everything. Some creepy-looking guys came by a few times and stared at the girls, but I just stared at them, and they got nervous and left. Everyone started to wake up at around 3:30 or 4, and I had some time to read my Bible. Scott, Alonna, and Vange showed up at about 6. Alonna dished out bags of trail mix, granola bars, and nuts, as well as little folders with info about the places we were to visit. Our flight was to leave at 7:50, so we all passed through all the processes necessary to getting to the plane. All the proceedings went without excitement, and we were soon on our way through the skies above Europe. Our flight transferred in Munich, where it was POURING rain. We hopped out of the plane on the tarmac and were hustled into busses that took us into the airport. We ran to our next gate, hopped onto another bus and headed out to our connecting flight, again without much excitement. We eventually landed in Milan, Italy at just after noon. After collecting our bags and our wits, and changing some money, we sat down at a little restaurant in the airport and had our first pizza in Italy.

And we are now sitting next to the car rental place, waiting for Scott and Alonna to get everything figured out so we can drive out to Torre Pellicci, in the shadow of the Italian Alps that sheltered the Waldensian people throughout the Middle Ages.

So that is our trip up to now. More to come soon….