An eventful arrival

We skipped the last day of school (which in reality was actually only three hours long, due to Ramadan school hours and early dismissal) and set off early in the morning from Dubai with Emirates as usual. This time we had chosen to fly into Arlanda, and take the train down.

Flight was on time and I had allowed plenty of time between the flight arrival and our Airport Express train into Stockholm Central, as I know how extremely slow the luggage delivery is at Arlanda Airport (a complete disgrace); so there was no stress.
We arrived Stockholm Central and I immediately got a bit apprehensive as I saw that all the trains were displayed with delays on the board. We had plenty of time until our train, but as the departure time approached I realized that our train was going to be no different,. It too got an half an hour delay, then another half an hour, then another...
We were standing out on the platform in the sunshine and were rather peacefully unaware of the chaos that had started to spread inside the central terminal as it turned out ALL trains were suspended, and their departure times kept getting postponed half an hour at a time - thousands and thousands of people were stranded...

I started to talk with a lady standing next to us who was going in the same direction, and when she, initially as a joke, said she considered going to get her car and drive instead - I told her that if she could fit us I would happily share gas costs.
We discussed it for a bit, then made the decision that it had to be now, or it would be too late. Nothing was going to happen with the trains, so at about 6 pm (2 hours after scheduled departure) we jumped in a taxi to her place to regroup, pick up her car and set off on a road trip!

Cecilia turned out to be my age, and really nice, and we had a fantastic road trip together, albeit a bit cramped for the kids among all the luggage, ha ha! We took a McDonalds drive through dinner to save time, and Mormor and Morfar had to drive a little bit further than planned to pick us up, but luckily they happily did that for us.

So we got there a little bit later than planned, but at least we made it in time to celebrate Midsommar the next day - and the start of the summer holiday was saved.

(We did get a text from the train company at 10 pm telling us that our train was canceled, duh. Turned out there had been a work accident on the track earlier that morning, and all traffic was suspended until nearly midnight... Imagine if we had waited around... we would have been stuck in the aftermath which kept going for days...)