Train travel in scandinavia
Sunday, 16. December 2007, 02:23:32
I just came home from a short trip to Sweden to visit some colleagues.
Since buying tickets for the swedish railways in Norway is somewhat difficult, we got a helping hand from Sweden.
The tickets were bought in Linköping on Monday, and sent by mail to Oslo.
Unfortunately they didn't make it by the time we left, but being able to predict that we had scanned copies sent to us as PDFs by e-mail.
This turned out to be no problem for SJ (Swedish Railways), who took us on our way from Oslo to Stockholm. We had verifyable seat reservations after all.
On our way back, we took a slightly different route, which took us to Gothenburg on the X2000. Nice train with Wifi and power outlets! - After all, the landscape wasn't that interesting
Anyway, I digress. Gothenburg was a place for a short break before boarding the train to Oslo. This was the last of five different trains we had on our trip which, but the first one not operated by SJ. This was NSB, the Norwegian State Railways.
Apparently, the NSB train conductor did not like our "fake" tickets, and he was having a bad day.
After some discussion, and a lecture on the ticket system works, he decided to give us a break and let us travel without buying new tickets.
I that wouldn't have happened if there weren't seven of us with these scanned tickets.
Anyway, I probably have a stack of fresh, yet obsolete tickets waiting for me in my mailbox tomorrow...
When is the digital world going to catch up with NSB?
Since buying tickets for the swedish railways in Norway is somewhat difficult, we got a helping hand from Sweden.
The tickets were bought in Linköping on Monday, and sent by mail to Oslo.
Unfortunately they didn't make it by the time we left, but being able to predict that we had scanned copies sent to us as PDFs by e-mail.
This turned out to be no problem for SJ (Swedish Railways), who took us on our way from Oslo to Stockholm. We had verifyable seat reservations after all.
On our way back, we took a slightly different route, which took us to Gothenburg on the X2000. Nice train with Wifi and power outlets! - After all, the landscape wasn't that interesting
Anyway, I digress. Gothenburg was a place for a short break before boarding the train to Oslo. This was the last of five different trains we had on our trip which, but the first one not operated by SJ. This was NSB, the Norwegian State Railways.
Apparently, the NSB train conductor did not like our "fake" tickets, and he was having a bad day.
After some discussion, and a lecture on the ticket system works, he decided to give us a break and let us travel without buying new tickets.
I that wouldn't have happened if there weren't seven of us with these scanned tickets.
Anyway, I probably have a stack of fresh, yet obsolete tickets waiting for me in my mailbox tomorrow...
When is the digital world going to catch up with NSB?
