Even though I got back from my trip to the North Atlantic over a month ago, I have just now gotten around to blogging about it! Sorry about that! I’ll make it extremely in depth to make up for the lack! : )
I first heard about this trip last year in my natural disasters class taught by Professor Fielding. He did most of his graduate work in the Faroe Islands so he decided to lead a summer class there. I was immensely interested so I applied and was accepted! We had a pre-departure meeting in May where I met a few of the other students, no one I had previously met, and discussed the logistics of the trip. I spent the entire summer getting my winter gear together and buying a few new (and necessary!) items like a sleeping bag liner to use as a sheet since most hotels in Iceland don’t provide them. I briefly talked to a fellow student, Tracy, before the trip about planning but I went on the trip not knowing a soul!
There was one professor (Russell), one teaching assistant/PhD student (JD), two graduate students, and eight undergraduates. Most of us were geography or environmental science majors, but a few were in journalism.
Flight Day:
I typically print out my boarding passes before arriving at the airport, but my strange scandinavian airlines didn’t allow that, so I had to arrive at Cincinnati’s airport earlier than usual to check in and have them print my passes. After a very nice agent opened her line and invited me to be the first (consequently letting me cut the line of about 100 people), I found out that the airlines do not let me print consecutive passes and I would have to leave security at each of my layovers (Chicago and Amsterdam) to print the next boarding pass. So annoying! My flight to Chicago was uneventful and very short. O’Hare is HORRIBLE. Nothing is marked and despite my good sense of direction and asking two separate employees where to go, I still got lost and took the tram in the wrong direction. Not a good start to the trip.
My flight to Amsterdam was extremely long. I, of course, had the middle seat. I tried to finish my reading for the class on the way over, but the dutch woman next to me was intent on practicing her English on me. I didn’t get a wink of sleep. I swear I spent 5 of the 7 hours just sitting there, staring at the flight information. FINALLY we arrived in Amsterdam. I was expecting to see a huge city, but it was just farmland. I should have expected that the airport would be far from the city, but the scenery was beautiful. Very european. The Amsterdam airport was also confusing. The flight promoted “easy transfer” kiosks but I didn’t see them anywhere. I felt like I had to walk 3 miles across the airport to get to my next gate. It reeked of body odor, too. Unpleasant. There was a cute restaurant with teacups as booths and a very upscale sushi place. The atmosphere of the airport was enjoyable but the smell was not.
Next, I had to fly to Aalborg, Denmark. The only thing I remember from the flight is everyone speaking in Danish and I just smiled and took social cues to make it appear as if I wasn’t foreign. I arrived at the Aalborg airport. It had 3 gates total and absolutely no security. Actually, I might have missed the turn for security, because as I was walking, a worker yelled after me down the hall in Danish and I just smiled and gestured that I wasn’t turning around. Our group was to meet at the Cafe Nord. I had looked up the location of the restaurant before arriving, but it turns out I didn’t need to. It was the ONLY restaurant and the airport was deserted.
I found Tracy, Becky, and Emily in a cafe and we introduced ourselves to each other. Tracy told me the airline lost her luggage and it was still in America. After consulting Russell’s email with everyone’s flight arrival times, we realized we had about 3 or 4 hours to spare before the others arrived, so we slept like lazy Americans, sprawled out on the couches in the middle of the cafe (which no one else was in). I remember that my couch was in the sun so sleeping was quite warm, but having not slept in a total of 30 something hours, it was welcomed. There were also horseflies in the cafe that would frequently bite and wake us up.
After the rest of the group showed up, we proceeded to the rental cars and then to Hirtshals where we spent the night before getting on the ferry (although it was more of a cruise ship) to go to Torshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands. We had a nice dinner at a local place. I ordered the plaice which was really good but difficult to scrape between all of the little bones to get the meat out.
We played on the beach a bit before heading back to the hostel. There was minor drama when part of the group went to explore the lighthouse and didn’t invite the rest of us, but it is pretty difficult to organize a group of 10 people. I knew cliques would form and that is just a fact of life.
After I watched a movie with Tracy, everyone decided it was time for bed. We were all quite jet lagged so we went to bed early, especially for the 7am wake up call.
