Tracks

I had a rather uneventful but view-wise lovely trip south from Kramfors in Norrland (or rather Mid-Sweden since it's only half way in my long country), 

I came to Stockholm and was quite taken by the noise, the smells and the crowds, none of it especially nice, and I found the tracks continuing south were gone. Has Stockholm finally decided it can do without the rest of Sweden or what? It turns out they are doing major renewals and improvements to some of the railroad system around Stockholm in order to create a safer, more stable structure so that the trains can be more in time, a big issue in Sweden for many years.

For me that means I have to use local trains in stead of a direct train to where I'm going, making my journey a couple of hours longer. I got to see some of the cities you hardy ever have a reason to visit and I used old, noisy trains I could recognise from my youth time travels. 

There were also delays. Inevitable when there are so many trains involved. In Alvesta, for my last leg of the trip the train I was on was twenty minutes late but the train I was catching was two hours late because of a malfunction somewhere on the line. The train company handled this very well though and found another local train for us so we arrived in Kalmar only an hour later than the original plan. Not bad considering how much that can go wrong during a twelve hour train ride.

Now I'm home for one day, then I go to Denmark to celebrate a relative on her 80th birthday.