Meeting Your Trip in FINSE

This page offers help (concrete or informational) on reaching your trip. Topics include...

1. Where you Join Your Trip (see immediately below)
2. Our “Access Packages,” designed to help you to do so.
3. Suggestions on how to time your trip to the trip, whether you are having us arrange your travel, or doing it yourself.
4. Service information regarding train travel to your trip start location.
5. Suggested pre-trip visits, especially when these are not geographically obvious, but are rendered economical and convenient by direct rail connections.
6. Hopefully helpful hints for those setting up their own travel to the trip.

If you wish to arrange some or all of your travel through us, please tell us what by means of this response questionnaire, designed to collect all the information we need to be able to book your travel.


1. WHERE and WHEN Do You Join Your Trip?

Your trip assembles in a small mountain town called Finse, 4.5 hours west of Oslo by train (or 2.5 east of Bergen). Dinner at our Finse lodge is included in the trip price.

We will send you details of meeting time and place with your final itinerary.

If you wish to make your own way to the trip (in other words, not to set up your travel arrangements through us), a couple of hints on getting there are offered at the bottom of this page.


2. Our ACCESS PACKAGES
as of January 6, 2009

The closest intercontinental airport is Oslo Gardermoen, with direct service to North America. It will generally be necessary to make a connection within Europe if flying to another continent.

There are actually two Oslo airports. The main one, Gardermoen, 20 minutes from the city center by fast train, and a smaller one called “Torp.” Torp is quite a ways from town (more than an hour by bus), but the train to Bergen actually passes close by, 30 minutes after leaving Oslo, and can pick you up on its way if you land there.

Our “Access Package” includes a ticket from downtown Oslo, or from Drammen (near Torp). We do not offer a London-specific Access Package for this trip, but if you are interested in making this (long) trip by train, we will be happy to set it up....

Base (Starting) Access Package Price: 47€.
To see what this means in your currency, look here: http://www.bluemarble.org/CurrencyConv.html

Availability is usually pretty good until about 45 days prior to trip start (payment received by us), and seats may still be available on less notice. But this is a capacity-restricted fare code, and a given train may sell out at any point. If your selected train is full, we will offer you the choice of an alternate with the discount fare, or the originally-selected train at full fare. There is no alternate way to get to Finse, which does not have a road.

Included:

• Daylight train tickets to Finse from Oslo or Bergen.
  Tickets not refundable or exchangeable once ordered.
• Seat reservations. All trains on these routes require seat reservations.
  
• A printed schedule / itinerary, highlighting any connections.
• Our “Route Sheet to the Trip,” helping you through your journey.
  

Options Offered at an Extra Cost (subject to availability)
Prices are in addition to the “Base” Access Package Price. For a general discussion of train upgrades, see here. Topics include the relative comfort of first versus second class, and different types of accommodation available on overnight trains.

• Tickets from Stockholm or Copenhagen: +129€ 2nd cl. (+89€ discount rate). From Stockholm only: 159€ / 109€ 1st cl. (upgrade only applies Stockholm - Oslo).
  Prices are valid for daylight trains, add 15€ for a couchette on the overnight train. Sleeping car upgrades available.
• Higher fare code tickets which are exchangeable locally on a space-available basis and for a nominal fee paid directly to the railway. +20€.
  Exchangeable tickets may be used on an alternate train on a space-available basis, but a new reservation must be made, at additional cost (12€).
• “Komfort” class tickets, +19€.
  This is not really “1st class.” It is a special car which, as far as we can tell, offers a thermos of free coffee, and a plug for your ipod. But maybe it is less crowded, or something....
  

3. TIMING Your Trip

If we may influence your thinking on the topic of timing.... Finse is interesting, though we aren’t exactly sure why we think so. A big hotel at the foot of a glacier, and not much else.

But there is great hiking from the hotel’s back door, and the hotel itself has a nice mountain lodge feel to it. If you have the flexibility to do so, try to schedule your arrival in time to go for an evening walk. Or even just to hang around the lodge watching people who are more active than you will ever be come and go.


4. Service Information
Schedules are approximate – exact timetables can be consulted at
http://www.raileurope.com/us/rail/point_to_point/triprequest.htm.
Best trains are mentioned. Others are slower or have multiple connections.

• From Oslo. The trip’s coordinator will usually take a train departing Oslo at 8a (arriving Finse a bit after noon). Other trains depart Oslo at 10a and 4p (4-4.5 hour trip).
  It may help you decide which train you can catch to know that trains from Oslo airport run into Oslo’s Sentral station (from which trains to Finse depart) every 10 minutes; trip time is 25 minutes.
• From Bergen. Trains at 8a, 10:30a, and 4p. Trip time is 2.5 hours.
  
• From Stockholm or Copenhagen. 7-hour (from Stockholm) or 8-hour (from Copenhagen) trip, 8a and noon trains. Overnight sleeper services also available, connecting into the 8a departure for Finse.

5. Suggested PRE-TRIP VISITS

We offer hotels in expensive Oslo, a pleasant pension (2* in our vernacular), inexpensive by local standards, or a business quality hotel in the center of the commercial district. Prices vary with room size and type, but range from 46€ to 110€ / room, weekend rates.


6. Hints on TRAVELLING INDEPENDENTLY to the Trip
Guests subscribing to an “Access Package” need not read this section.

See also “Timing Your Trip” and “Service Information,” above, as either of these may additionally help.

We gladly provide travel consulting (schedule or routing information) concerning pre-trip individual travel. In particular, we have invested a great deal to become railway experts. Our service fees are reasonable: a 20€ charge for all but the most complex projects – or the most simple (for instance, only a 10€ charge applies if the service is limited to the preparation of a routine rail ticket). You will generally find them well-justified by the time they will save you in research, standing on line, overpaying for your tickets, or all three.

But, for some, this type of research is fun. So, here are some hints, intended to start off hardened “do-it-yourselfers.”

Trains. Schedules for all routes can be consulted on this web site:
http://www.raileurope.com/us/rail/point_to_point/triprequest.htm

You are not getting to Finse without riding a train: there are no roads, and definitely no airport. It is the culminating point on the Oslo - Bergen main line, though, and so has several trains a day from each city.

Planes. Bergen is the closest airport, but has no intercontinental service, and limited service from outside Scandinavia. And anyway, flying into Oslo allows you to ride up into the mountains with other Marbles.
Ryanair serves a bizarre little airport an hour from Oslo (“Torp”), but which is more-or-less on the train’s route out of town.


If you wish to arrange some or all of your travel through us, please tell us what by means of this response questionnaire, designed to collect all the information we need to be able to book your travel.