Yesterday I hired a car and drove to Malmö airport to pick up my excess luggage. I was nervous at my first attempt to drive on the other side of the road drive in a foreign country in a huge Volvo V70; so planned my trip carefully. Eniro (the most useful Swedish website I’ve come across) said this was a 380 km round trip that should take just over two hours each way. I was told that Customs would close at noon, so headed off at 7:15 am just to be safe.

What neither Eniro nor I didn’t counted on was my luggage not being at the airport – my yellow receipt clearly stated Malmö Airport (MMX). On arriving at the airport at 9:45 am I asked Information where I could pick up unaccompanied luggage, and was quickly directed to a SAS service desk. Posing the same question SAS got me a rather blank look. My query ended up involving everyone in the SAS service centre. After a series of phone calls, further searches on Eniro, and being given a print out of a map I was sent on my way by 10:15 am.

I hadn’t had a chance to study this part of the journey and my directions were at best vague.If someone tries to use McDonalds as a landmark to make a turn ignore them. There are many McDonalds in Southern Sweden. I know, I think I’ve found most of them. 

I stopped and asked for directions three times. The lady I asked the third time was very kind and told me to follow her and she would take me there. She pulled over and told me to take the third left. On follow this direction I was again lost. After asking in a shop it seems that the lady had got left and right confused so I was quickly back on my way and found the building at the address.

The building didn’t look like the sort of place that I would expect to pick up boxes, but I walked around it to make sure. There was a hobby shop, a leather jacket shop and a couple of other shops unrelated to my cause. I walked into one of the shops and showed me the map and address I got from SAS at Malmö airport – they said I was in the right place, but they didn’t know of any SAS Cargo terminal in the area.

I am conscious of the time now as I have half an hour until Customs closes, so I call up SAS Cargo. They told me to go to the address I just confirmed that I was at and look out for McDonalds, cause they could see it from their office. I described what was around me (including a McDonalds), but the member of staff on the phones did not live in the Malmö area, so was unsure of her way around. We agreed I was lost. She suggested I try to drive to Copenhagen and when I see the McDonalds take the turn off.

Once again I started to drive. This time looking for Copenhagen. After driving for a little while I called my parents as I was getting a little hysterical and they usually have good advice when I am panicking. I now had about 15 minutes to get to Customs, but needed to pick up the paper work from the Cargo place first.

Since 8:00 am I had been hearing radio news through my broken Swedish about flooding and blackouts in Australia. From my previous experience of CNN when in Europe I knew that the summer bushfire season sounded like the country was a raging inferno, so wasn’t too concerned. But my parents home phone rang out. I knew if they were on another call I should get a message, and if they weren’t at home I should get the voicemail. This meant they didn’t have power. It took a couple of attempts, but I got through to one of my parents mobile phones. They were indeed sitting in the dark and Newcastle was flooded. I had hoped they could look at Google Maps and give me so ideas, but their situation prevented too much help other than morale.

Once again I called SAS Cargo and described to the same operator my surroundings. There was a distinctive tower, a stadium, a McDonalds and a supermarket. The lady kindly found my location on Eniro and stayed on the phone to me giving directions like a GPS system to SAS Cargo. I arrived at noon, so would not be able to make customs. But I had already agreed with my parents that in this situation I would look at staying in Malmö the night and see what I could achieve on Sunday.

I went in to see what I could sort out. It ended up the original information I was told about Customs was incorrect and had two hours to get my luggage cleared, but I had been given the wrong information and one of my three boxes had gone missing – all of your boxes have arrived obviously means different things to different people. My heart sank knowing that I would have to repeat the journey, although I hope it will be smoother next time.

I headed off with vague instructions on how to get to Customs. Basically you follow the road to Denmark until you panic and think you are going to end up in Denmark. Luckily there is an emergency I still want to be in Sweden exit. This didn’t match up with my understanding of the directions so stopped at a big Welcome to Malmö map. My desired street was in Q5 on the map, but the street names were a little sparse so I was left gussing which line on the map was for me. But I headed off to that area to see what I could find out. After driving around several new housing estates I decided it must be at the abandoned looking warehouse. Sure enough there was a small door round the back of this isolated and deserted warehouse.

After going in I was first told that they couldn’t help me. My heart sank. I didn’t think I could handle rejection at this stage. Through some broken English and Swedish I managed to work out that I needed to get a queue number from the machine outside (like in delicatessens). It seemed odd as it felt like there was no one in a 500 km radius at this stage, but I guess it has something to do with their internal reporting.

The paperwork was all signed so that I could go back to SAS Cargo and pick up two of my three boxes. And yes I will have to go back to customs to clear my third when it arrives.

I managed to get back on the road away from Copenhagen, but didn’t work out that I needed to take the exit at the first McDonalds until it was too late. Now I was running late enough that I was getting scared that I would miss SAS Cargo’s closing time of 2:00 pm. I took the next turn off hoping that the windy road would give me the option to do some sort of u-turn, But I ended up on another freeway. My attempt at turning around the next time was more successful, and I found the first freeway and saw McDonalds in time to take the exit.

On arriving at SAS Cargo I went back to the office and was told We cannot help you. My watch said 1:30 pm, so I thought I was there in sufficient time. I was at a complete loss as to what was now wrong. Luckily someone else walked in reception and translated this repeated sentence to my questions to you need to go round to Gate 1 to pick up your boxes.

The staff at gate one brought me the two boxes that turned up. I called my parents to let them know that the story had happy twist. And headed off to find Ronneby. After driving around for a while I eventually found a sign to Kalmar, which I knew shared the same highway from Malmö as Ronneby so I was on my merry way.

I soon came to Lund and decided to stop, realising that I was still stressed and hadn’t eaten since 7:00 am. It is a lovely town, especially in the summer. The streets where filled with people and the main town square was the open air fruit and flower market I remembered. I wandered around slowly in an attempt to relax and found some old favourites. Cafe Ariman will no doubt ring a bell for some. I had a late lunch and had my caffeine dose.

But not wanting to get home too late went back on my way after about an hour. I finally made it back to Ronneby at 5:45 pm. Stressed, exhausted, but home.

Although the next box should be in theory much less stressful – I know where to go, how the systems work, that I can get from A to B in Sweden on the other side of the road in a big strange car, and it’s unlikely Australia will be thrashed by some other natural disaster that prevents me from contacting my parents – I think I might stop off in Lund and make a weekend of it.

Archived comments

Posted by Henke 2007-07-28 02:03

Naaw i feel really sorry for u man! The place u where at when u saw tower, stadium, super market and Mc Donalds is called “Jägersro”. The stadium u saw was a horse run contest place and is just called that -Jägersro travbana. The tower was Malmös tv and radio tower. =)

Posted by Laz 2007-06-13 14:03

You mean dodgy Australia Post….? hehe

Posted by Hamish Barney 2007-06-11 02:28

Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have been better off sending your stuff with the post…

Posted by Myles 2007-06-10 23:29

Wow. Just… Wow.
Im not sure why you bothered with hysterical, I would have skipped that and gone straight for homocidal.
Great to hear from you tho Seb! And im glad your parents are ok!