Norwegian Stories, Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 you can find in Jokes thread......)
This is a story about a fine day, this happened to me in the late eighties as I was working for a banking services company in Bergen, Norway.
For months, I had been looking forward to the annual DECUS symposium in Stavanger (DECUS = Digital Equipment Corporation User Society, Stavanger = Norway’s third largest city located 25 minutes by plane south of Bergen).
I was early up this morning, a thing that certainly never had been a habit of mine, but kind of worrying, I felt like this was not going to be a very good day.
I was going to the airport, and to get there I had to catch the bus which left a 10 minutes walk from where I lived at the top of the City Hill of Bergen. Before I left, I just had to make sure that I had everything; The bags were all there, the plane tickets, Yes, fine, and I was off. After walking for a few minutes I realized that I had to go to an ATM, just so that I had some money for the Taxi in Stavanger, and to make sure that I had some Cash. At that same instance I remembered the last thing I did before I locked the door, I left the wallet at the drawer in the entrance. At that time I was pretty angry with myself, how is it possible to be this stupid, that’s just ridiculous.
I got back to the apartment, and quite right, the wallet was exactly where I expected it to be. Looking at the watch, I now knew that there was no way that I could get to the bus stop in time, I had to catch the next bus, hoping that I still would get to the airport in time.
I got to the bus stop, catching the airport bus that left 15 minutes later, and I now knew that I was in a hurry.
To my surprise, the traffic was very smooth this morning, that’s a change, in fact the bus arrived at the airport with still 18 minutes to go, and I got to the gate with 15 minutes to go. I presented the boarding pass at the gate and I was breathing a lot easier now that I realized that I didn’t miss the plane. However, now I was in for the surprise of the year, the guy at the gate said that I couldn’t enter the plane, because the policies said that I had to be there at least 15 minutes before departure, and now it’s only 14½ minutes to departure. I tried to tell this guy that all the doors were open, the plane was there, and the entry door to the plane was still open, but no. There was no way that this guy was letting me into the plane, after all, I was 30 seconds too late. I don’t think that I ever had been this angry before, and I told this guy pretty clear what place he was going too, and that was not heaven.
I just had to wait for the next plane that left an hour later, Well ,well, well, back to the check-in to get a new boarding pass. I wonder what had happened to my luggage, No one was able to find out anything about this, but they told me that it was going to be OK. I was in such a state of mind that I didn’t really care about that now.
I got on the next plane to Stavanger, and now I was feeling better, it couldn’t get any worse now.
Everything was going fine now, I had a comfortable trip to Stavanger, and I now just wanted to get my luggage and get the hell away from here. As I approached the conveyor belt, I saw all the other passengers getting their luggage, but of course, my luggage is always last out of the plane. The minutes were ticking and I was already late for the DECUS symposium, and I just wanted to scream out loud “Where the H…. is my luggage” Suddenly the conveyor belt stopped. Oh no, I thought, that’s a bad sign!!!!!! I approached the service desk and told them that my luggage didn’t seem to be on the plane. I filled out a number of forms and they promised to get back to me at the hotel where I was staying.
I could do without the luggage for a while, but I could not go to the Gala dinner this evening with jeans and a T shirt.
Now I just needed to go to the ATM to get some money. I approached the ATM and entered the card into the slot, and as I was about to enter the PIN code when the display showed: “The ATM card has been retained, please contact your bank”. Well, my bank is in Bergen, and there’s nothing I can do about that here. By all luck I had anther ATM card from the same bank, I frantically, shivering entered it into the slot just to get the message: “The ATM card has been retained, please contact your bank”.
Now, this was getting serious. I was in another city, with almost no money, no luggage, to late for the event that I was going to….
I just had to run for a Taxi, coz I wouldn’t want to miss some of the major events coming up this morning at the DECUS symposium. I got to the hotel, and there they told me that everything had been postponed for a few hours because of a late incoming flight from Oslo.
Because all my cards had been retained by the ATM, I had to borrow some money from a guy that I have never seen before or later, for that matter. But after that, everything turned out alright. My luggage arrived later that day via Heathrow / London, and I could attend to the Gala dinner appropriately dressed.
At a later stage it got to my attention that my bank had invalidated all the ATM cards in order to make sure that all the customers were upgrading their ATM cards to smartcards, and they did that without notifying their customers. That’s the reason why I was stranded in another city without any money and in a state of shock. It should be no surprise to you that I immediately changed bank after this incident. That’s when I learnt the lesson: Don’t trust any bank…
