Went on a 3 week long trip to the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark with my girlfriend. The majority of the time was spent in Norway and one night we took a gondola to the top of a mountain to watch some kind of show. I don’t remember if it was a laser show, concert or what, but when it was over, as you can imagine there was a very long line to take the gondola back down. Not liking to wait so long we noticed that there were a number of people heading down the mountain, on foot. So we followed them. What could possibly go wrong? I mean it’s a mountain. . . in town. . . All you have to do is go down and eventually you’ll be back in town, right.
I started to get a little warm, so I took off my leather jacket and carried it in my arms. This is when I found out that even a 5 pound load can get heavy if you carry it long enough. Also, downhill, while easier than up hill, still isn’t easy. It took forever and when we finally spilled out onto the street, we were in a completely unknown area. We’d somehow circled partly around the mountain and come out a different side. All of the people we were following had magically disappeared, like in the movies when the Vietnamese just step off into the forest before the bombs start falling on the soldiers.
We found ourselves standing in what appeared to be a suburban neighborhood. No one on the streets. No cars. No taxis. It was late and there were no busses running as far as we could tell. We had no idea how to get back to where we were staying. We didn’t really speak the language. At that point we just looked at each other and said, “How did we get into this situation?”
In the end we found a bus terminal with a driver sitting in his bus, after his shift. We asked him and he told us which bus was still running and heading our way and that we couldn’t get on at the terminal. The funny thing is when we finally boarded the bus, the driver was one of the passengers.
I had a similar thing happen with a (now ex) wife in Spain. We saw a flamenco show somewhere and stupidly decided NOT to take a taxi back to the hotel but to walk instead. Amazing how much smarter we were after a couple drinks!
As we’re walking in the direction we think we’re supposed to go we see another couple also out walking but they’re Spanish (of course) so we can’t really communicate. Walking along in this sleeping foreign city that has rolled up its sidewalks got a bit intimidating.
We did have to walk quite a ways and eventually found a cab but I was expecting someone to jump us being the dumb and obvious tourists we were.
Went on a 3 week long trip to the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark with my girlfriend. The majority of the time was spent in Norway and one night we took a gondola to the top of a mountain to watch some kind of show. I don’t remember if it was a laser show, concert or what, but when it was over, as you can imagine there was a very long line to take the gondola back down. Not liking to wait so long we noticed that there were a number of people heading down the mountain, on foot. So we followed them. What could possibly go wrong? I mean it’s a mountain. . . in town. . . All you have to do is go down and eventually you’ll be back in town, right.
I started to get a little warm, so I took off my leather jacket and carried it in my arms. This is when I found out that even a 5 pound load can get heavy if you carry it long enough. Also, downhill, while easier than up hill, still isn’t easy. It took forever and when we finally spilled out onto the street, we were in a completely unknown area. We’d somehow circled partly around the mountain and come out a different side. All of the people we were following had magically disappeared, like in the movies when the Vietnamese just step off into the forest before the bombs start falling on the soldiers.
We found ourselves standing in what appeared to be a suburban neighborhood. No one on the streets. No cars. No taxis. It was late and there were no busses running as far as we could tell. We had no idea how to get back to where we were staying. We didn’t really speak the language. At that point we just looked at each other and said, “How did we get into this situation?”
In the end we found a bus terminal with a driver sitting in his bus, after his shift. We asked him and he told us which bus was still running and heading our way and that we couldn’t get on at the terminal. The funny thing is when we finally boarded the bus, the driver was one of the passengers.
I had a similar thing happen with a (now ex) wife in Spain. We saw a flamenco show somewhere and stupidly decided NOT to take a taxi back to the hotel but to walk instead. Amazing how much smarter we were after a couple drinks!
As we’re walking in the direction we think we’re supposed to go we see another couple also out walking but they’re Spanish (of course) so we can’t really communicate. Walking along in this sleeping foreign city that has rolled up its sidewalks got a bit intimidating.
We did have to walk quite a ways and eventually found a cab but I was expecting someone to jump us being the dumb and obvious tourists we were.