Heading Home

 We spent a couple of days catching up with Pete and some of our other Swedish friends, as well as finalising our bag packing. We were significantly over the baggage limit for our flights, so we ended up posting our two camping backpacks back to Australia, in addition to the one we had sent before Christmas.

Around lunch time on the 12th, we bid farewell to Pete and dragged our 140kg of suitcases and 30kg of backpacks onto the train to Copenhagen.

Of course, when we arrived at the airport station, the escalator was broken and we had to drag all of the bags up quite a steep slope. I had a backpack on front and back and two suitcases, I later calculated that I was lugging 70kg.

Once we got to the top, we loaded our bags into two airport trollies and used them to wheel our bags over to our hotel, which was just across the road. We had planned to then go into Copenhagen for the day, but instead we crashed out, finalised bags and had a visit from Tom's friend.

The next morning we were up for breakfast and then at the airport early to check in for our 8am flight.  We were worried our bags would be over the weight limit, but the undercarriage ones went through without a problem.

We checked out the Lego stores in the airport to collect the special stamps they did and then waited around until our flight to Doha.

The 7 hour flight was pretty uneventful and we landed in Doha, where we did some shopping and waited for our next flight.

The next flight was the long one - 13 hours from Doha to Adelaide. In order to make this flight comfortable, we had paid extra for extended legroom seats, but it was only when we took our seats that we realised these were listed as 'basinet seats' that allowed a baby basinet to be attached to the bulkhead. The family seated behind us had two babies and asked whether we had booked the seats to use the basinet. We had paid around $1,000 to secure the seats so we didn't want to swap but we did end up allowing the family to set up the basinets in front of us. We still had the legroom, but ended up with not being able to watch our screens and every time there was turbulence or the babies stirred, the parents had to pick them up, meaning we didn't really get a chance to try to sleep. Add to that the fact of feeling guilty for not moving, it was not a fun flight.

We arrived in Adelaide at 5pm and by 6:30 we had our bags and hire car and checked into our hotel in Adelaide.

We took a quick walk to pick up dinner and some shopping supplies and then had an early night.

The next morning we headed down to our house with the aim to paint the boys bedrooms and the ceiling of the lounge and hallway. Alana had already purchased the paint for us and had come down to help, so we spent a full day painting before heading back to the hotel for a sleep.

The next day we received both our air freight and stored items (just sea freight and the mailed backpacks to go) and spent some time unpacking and trying to get the house in order.

One of the main issues was we knew that we had a stack of stuff coming from Sweden so didn't want to fully set up the house as we knew we would need to rearrange things again.

The concerns we had about the packing of the stored items were correct - the packers had rushed and the first few boxes were packed perfectly with each plate wrapped neatly, but as they had gotten further into the garage boxes, items were just thrown in boxes:

Luckily there were not too many broken items, but it was a bit disappointing.

Our sea freight arrived on the 18th of Feb and I was able to watch the ship carrying it (the ) pull into harbour on a tracking app:

Norway (27 Dec 24 - 10 Jan 2025) - Day 12-13

 After leaving Lillehammer early in the morning, we headed towards our final Norwegian stop, Veggli.

We were planning to meet out friend, Thomas, and stay at the Veggli cabin that we had visited earlier that year (in June). It would be a good chance to see Thomas again before we had to head back to Australia and a relaxing time before the craziness of finalising the move.

Thomas gave us instructions on which roads to travel in order to avoid the worst of the snow, but not far along the drive we came to a detour which forced us to make a quick decision - and we ended up taking the wrong road. It wasn't too bad at first, the road had snow on it, but was pretty clear, but then we came to a big yellow sign that was written in Norwegian. We had three options - turn around (which would have been about a 2 hour detour), follow the road ahead (which ended in a huge snow bank in about 20m) or turn down the road with the yellow sign.  

I managed to translate a little of the sign, it mentioned something about road closures but it seemed to be only applicable during the night.  Either way we didn't have a lot of choice and the road looked passable.  It was only 25km to the major road...

The previous road, when there was actually other traffic..

The road didn't start off too badly...

but it rapidly got worse. It narrowed to just over the width of a car and there was a big line of snow running down the middle of the road that we had to push through. Chunks of snow were falling from the nearby trees and the snow was whipping up around us.  Kris concentrated on keeping the car from sliding or getting stuck and I quietly prayed to a plethora of gods and goddesses that we didn't get stuck either by sliding into the soft snow on the side of the road, wedged on the snow rise in the centre, or stuck at a slope that our front-wheel drive couldn't get up.

Somehow we made it, big credit goes to Kristine's driving, but the main excitement came when we got to the end of the road and the temperature meter for the car went from reading an outside temp of -23 to -10 to -5 to 0 to 15 and then to 23 degrees.

We quickly pulled over and removed all the snow that was stuck in our makeshift snow plough:

The road did not look too bad in the summer pics on Google Maps:

Once we'd cleared the snow from the front of the car, we finally could relax a little as we headed onto the main road.

We arrived at the Veggli shopping centre where we met Thomas and stopped for a coffee/hot chocolate.

The plant pots showed the amount of snowfall

The Veggli Troll

After getting our shopping and coffees, we followed Thomas up the mountain to the cabin.  After having survived the FV100 snowy road and the smaller roads up the mountain we finally ran into trouble right outside the door of the cabin...

The driveway was mostly full of snow, and Thomas managed to pull in. We stopped on the road just behind him. The driveway to the next cabin was empty and Thomas suggested we could park there, but unfortunately our two wheel drive finally had its first taste of defeat, slipping on the ice and not being able to get traction. Kris tried to back up and use the recovery tracks which we had success with at other times but in the end the car slipped into the softer snow at the side of the road and got stuck.

We tried for a while to get the car back on the road but had no luck.  Fortunately the road was clear enough and closed just past the cabin so we weren't at risk of blocking the road or being hit. In the end, Thomas managed to get in touch with the plough driver for the area and the following day he came past and helped pull us clear.

While we were trying to get the car free, the boys dug a path through to the cabin and the well and we were able to warm up and relax.

Until our phones started buzzing and making an alarm noise that we were in immediate danger.  It was a test of the Norwegian Emergency system:

As always, the scenery at the cabin was amazing and the company was great. We had a relaxing couple of days before heading back to Malmö.

Spot the squirrel

We were out early on the last day and ready for the 9 hour drive to Malmö. At least this was all on snow-free main roads and we made good time.

Tomas spent the night at a friend's house and Cameron, Kris and I stayed with our friend Pete, filling his house will all of our luggage.