August 11 - our 35th wedding anniversary

Monday, August 11 – It's our 35th wedding anniversary
Today is our 35th wedding anniversary. What could go wrong?
Let me count the ways...We're up at 6:45am. Checkout is between 6:45am and 9:45am. We haven't been able to dial out on our remaining cell phone. Claudia has a new inventory sheet to fill out for the music aboard the ship. Yep – it has new categories so she has to count those. We have breakfast and are able to say our goodbyes to our favorite waiters and our stewardess. They were so great. I think I have enough internet time to send out last minutes emails. While Claudia counts music, I send out the emails with 3 minutes 59 seconds to spare. Sounds like a lot, but it's easy to burn a minute just making an internet connection.
Oops! Our photographs – we haven't picked up our photographs yet (is the photo shop even open??). Fortunately they are. I get them and head off to the reception desk to verify how to dial our cell phone (We have an Oregon phone number dialing from Denmark to Sweden – 3 country codes involved). We need to dial 011 then the country code. Now to get off the ship – done with 5 minutes to spare. Into the taxi and off to store our bags at the hotel by the airport, then to the airport/train station to catch the train.
So far we're squeaking by.
It's 10:10am and we're trying to buy train tickets for the 10:36am train. They do accept credit cards as we do not have hardly any Danish money left – but wait, they need the pin number. In the US, a pin is only needed when getting a cash advance, not a purchase. We try four separate cards, even the emergency one where I set the pin before we left. Nothing works. Great. We're stuck at Copenhagen Airport, and probably can't even buy food. We head over to the Information booth and describe our plight. The attendant tells us “Oh, that will be a big problem for you here.” That's all I need to hear. She suggests we go to the bank around the corner (50 feet away). We do and after showing our passports, we are able to get enough Danish money to get to Sweden and hopefully back. Lord pnly know what the bank fee will be for this. Back to the ticket boot to buy our tickets. Down the escalator and onto the train. I get squeezed by the closing doors, but manage to get them open so we can both get on the train. We grab the closest seats, probably in steerage (we have 1st class seats). I don't even know if we're in the right car. After scurrying back and forth for a while, I find the seats and relax as the train pulls into Malmo. We're in Sweden. I wasn't even aware that we had gone through the tunnel under the strait between Denmark and Sweden. We laugh – another memory for our anniversary.
We still have a train change at Goteborg (and to buy tickets for Alingsas, our final destination). That is still a couple of hours away.
Finally, Goteborg and a change of train. We have 30 minutes until the train arrives. No sweat. We go to the ticket office. They have a “now serving machine” so we pull ticket #288. They're serving #253 and nothing seems to be moving. Apparently, Goteborg is a MAJOR transfer point. I ask Claudia about the train after the one we want – she says it's an hour later. Somehow, we finally get called and get our tickets with 5 minutes to spare.
A couple of hours later we're in Alingsas, and meeting her cousin and uncle. Off to their home in the country (another 30-45 minutes) and a nice Swedish dinner with another cousin and two nieces. After dinner, we do some limited sightseeing as it is getting dark – we see some family graves outside a little church that has existed since the 1200's. The pulpit dates to the 1500's and some writing on the walls goes back to the 1200's. There are even some runes (etched stones) dating back even further. Just amazing..