Apropos
Being locked in a bus is no fun
Sometimes being a foreigner can be quite humbling, like the day when I found myself in a locked bus at Bergen bus station.
It was another beautiful day in Bergen, and I decided to go on a trip to Ikea. To get there, I needed to catch a bus from the bus station.
Doesn’t seem too complicated, right?
Well, the bus came and everyone stepped off it. Naturally, as a Finnish person, I was very pleased with the lack of other passengers.
I sat happily at the back of the bus, as it drove to the parking area in the station. The driver turned off the engine, and I thought nothing of it.
It was only when he exited the bus that I became a bit worried. In a gut-wrenching sight, I witnessed the driver locking the doors and walking away.
So there I was, alone in a dark bus.
I had no idea what to do. Do I knock on the windows and possibly give a good scare to passers-by? What if no one rescues me and I have to spend the night there?
I had wallowed in my panic for a couple of minutes, when suddenly I was awakened by the most beautiful sound.
The sound of the bus doors opening.
The driver had returned, it was a miracle! I walked towards him and was greeted by a very confused Norwegian man who didn’t speak a word of English.
Luckily, I knew a couple words of Norwegian, and happen to also speak quite a bit of Swedish. So, with a broken mix of the two languages, I tried to explain my situation to him.
– Were you sleeping? he asked.
I said I wasn’t, I just tried to get to Ikea. I told him that I had entered the bus at the bus station and then he had just left.
This is pretty much how it went:
– Jeg trodde att buss går till Ikea. Jeg gick inn här og du gick ut.
The driver stared at me blankly, and at this point I was just as confused as he was.
I don’t know if he fully understood me or not, but after a while I got the impression that I had talked myself out of the situation. I concluded the chat with a phrase that I had used a lot:
– Tusen takk!
Quickly I exited the bus, and believe it or not, eventually managed to get to Ikea.
And from that day onwards, I truly started to pay more attention in my Norwegian classes.
