By the time I finished my walk around Kronborg, I was tiring of walking in the wind and heavy rain and already getting a little damp; but I was happy about my decision to buy a water-proof jacket and hood before leaving Seattle. (I wished, however, that I had gotten a matching set of pants.) I was staying at a discount hotel away from the Helsingør city center. It was far enough away that in Helsingør I had always taken taxis for the 5-10 minute ride between the train station and my hotel. so I was looking forward to catching a cab back for the night.
First problem: Helsingør is a sleepy little town. I was trying to catch a cab at about dusk when other people were arriving at the train station, so there weren't enough cabs. This entailed waiting in the heavy rain.
Second problem: Despite the fact that Denmark has frequent inclement weather, the Helsingør taxi waiting area is completely without shelter.
Third problem: as I learned, there isn't a clear system to queuing in driving rain.
As I got the the taxi line there were some people already in front of me. Taxis were coming infrequently, with several wet minutes in between cabs. Finally it seemed my turn had come. While I was waiting, a couple of women -- one 50ish, the other much older came. They asked if I was next in line. We waited for a while together and I decided I would give them the cab since I didn't want the elderly woman to spend a lot of time in the cold rain. When the cab came, I insisted that they take it.
There were a couple of problems with this decision:
1) The women were not together
2) Evidently the cab was not mine to give away
As soon as I had made clear to the elder woman to take the cab, a guy came running from the side of the train station. I had seen him there when I came in, but he never was in the line and had let people take cabs before him. So I thought he was waiting for a friend or for his train. This caused some problems, but the old woman finally rode away.
At that point, I had no faith that I would get a taxi in the next half hour. Already being wet and irritated myself, I also didn't want to have some pissed-off Dane bitch at me during that time. So I decided to hike back home. This was complicated, though, because I had never walked to my hotel before. I knew basically how to get there, but I didn't know exactly how to get from the train station to the road that led to my hotel. Also, between the heavy rain, droplets on my glasses, and the dwindling twilight, it was a struggle to read the tourist maps I had or even the small street plaques that mark Danish roads.
There were many minutes of cursing Danes and Europeans and my jeans were completely soaked in the end, but 40 minutes later I got back to my hotel room. I had just washed my only other pair of pants the night before, so I thought my trip to Stockholm might be a little damp the next day. My room did have a radiator, though; so I learned that they work well for drying cotton clothes quickly.
The moral of the story to me: always know my way home.
In my race to cover Norway before my ScanRail pass expired and I had to go to Russia, I wound up having far too little time in Norway, and Oslo got short changed the most. Here are some pictures from my one afternoon and evening there on Thursday September 6 on my way to see the fjords (over the weekend after labor day).
