Where exactly am I?!?

So today was my first day I planned to travel via trian. I set my alarm early so I could get up plenty early to catch my 8:23 train to Oslo. Sounds like a good plan right (I sure thought so).

Well things went downhill from the start, first I slept through my alarm and woke up to find that my train would be leaving in about 40 mins. I quickly threw my stuff into my bag, got dressed, grabed some food to go from the hostels breakfast cafe and sped over to the station in Copenhagen. Well I made it in time, but it turns out that the timetable I have is no longer 100% acurate (not really a huge surprise to me) and that there was no train leaving at 8:23 for Oslo. instead the ticket officer gave me an itinerary to get to Oslo only slightly later than what I had planned on. The catch was it was not direct and I would change trains three times. Well I figure as a 21 year old adult I should be able to deal with this, so I decide to give it a try.

My first train went great and I made it to my first change with lots of time to spare. So I found the gate for my next train sat down and waited. unfotunately this is where it all went wrong. Due to the fact that a train was partially blocking my gate it turns out my train was further down, indeed I saw my train, I just did not realize it was mine. I am quite sure that the station made an announcement but it was a smaller Swedish town so it was only in Swedish which does me no good. As soon as the train left (without me), and my gate showed a new destination I instantly realized my mistake.

So armed with a map of Sweden and a Eurail pass I started to create my own route to Oslo! Lucky Eurail does not have me creating their itineraries, because I turned out to be very inefficient.

To make a long story short (very long story actually), after ending up in many different Swedish Train stations I finally had to face reality in Karlstad Sweden (which is actually a very nice town), I was not destined to make it to Oslo today. So turned on my nokia and looked up the map of Karlstad Sweden and began going from hotel to hotel in order to find the cheapest place to stay (no hostels here).

So here I am in a best western in sweden enjoying my very own room and complimentry email! (Only for about $90, not bad considering my predicament). Tomorrow will be take II as I again try and reach Oslo, there is a train leaving here at 11:30 tnat goes straight to Oslo, and I plan to be on it!