Right now, I'm sitting at the Skopje Airport cafe waiting to check in for my flight. Fortunately, there are power sockets in the cafe by the long tables available to charge my phone. Macedonia, in particular, Skopje is an interesting country and city to visit.
In my short tour of Skopje, I'm the only Chinese, and possibly Asian tourist around. So when touring tourist attractions where I stand out significantly, I sometimes become one of the attractions. Haha!
Luckily, I have gotten used to it, having been to coutries such as the Baltic states and Chile, where Asian tourists are far and few between. I will talk about my Skopje tour in a separate post.
I wanted to talk about my flight connections in Oslo yesterday. Originally, I booked my SAS flight from Longyearbyen to Oslo Gardermoen, scheduled to land at 0525.
Then I booked another separate ticket from Oslo Torp to Skopje, Macedonia, scheduled to depart at 0945 same day.
Now, on paper, I have about 4 hours 20 minutes between the flights. Looks comfortable to me. However, in reality, things always turn out differently, due to murphy's law.
My SAS flight from Longyearbyen to Oslo was delayed by ~40 minutes due to late inbound aircraft. As time wasn't made up in the air, I only landed at ~0605.
Now, there is a R11 train connection between the two airports, departing at 0613 from Oslo Gardermoen airport. In the end, the baggage claim took about ~20 minutes and I missed that train. The next train was due to depart at 0713, arriving at Oslo Torp station at 0912. Now, my wizzair flight to Skopje is schedule to depart at 0945. Reaching the airport ~30 minutes before the flight is never a good idea.
Nevertheless, I still took up the challenge and took the 0713 train. In my mind, I had already prepared for my missed connection, possibly my first missed connection ever since I started travelling. Haha !
The train arrived on time at Torp station, where the shuttle bus was already waiting at the platform to whisk passengers to the airport in 5 minutes. By the time I reached Torp airport, it was ~0917. Check-in counters for the wizzair flight had already closed.
Fortunately, I had checked in online and had the mobile boarding pass in the wizzair app. So, I hurried to security with hardly any queues. Oslo Torp airport is a fairly small airport and easy to navigate. Though the passage through the duty free shop took up some time. Soon I reached the passport control again with hardly any queue. Then I proceeded to reach the gate counter.
The gate agent was not familiar with the Singaporean passport and so had to check for my visa requirement (if any) to Skopje.
Fortunately, the Singaporean passport is ranked the top passport in the world in terms of visa free entry to many countries. That includes Macedonia.
With that, and with no baggage weigh, I proceeded to board the wizzair plane by walking out of the terminal building, on the tarmac, and onto the plane.
Yup, I made it. A blessing in disguise. I'm very thankful for the circumstances that made it possible. The punctuality of the Oslo train, the shuttle bus to Torp airport, short queues at Torp airport.😀
Probably, in future, I will certainly leave more time for my connecting flights.
