“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” -Anthony Bourdain
As I tenderly poke at my bruised arm, like the glutton for punishment that I am, I scrunch my nose in annoyance as I think of Anthony Bourdain's famous travel quote. In this case, my ability to relate to his quote is physical rather than emotional, and the tale is a little too recent to look back upon and giggle about it.
After Tivoli I navigated myself (with the help of my new SIM card and Google) over to a tour of the canals, and spent another hour or so baking in the sun on a long, flat tourist boat. Even amongst all the novel sights and excitement of being in a beautiful new place, the sun and the gentle rocking of the boat nearly managed to put me to sleep several times.
A little more than 24 hours after I arrived in Iceland I took the bus back to the airport for my flight to Denmark. I’d had a full night of sleep in a comfortable, non-airplane seat bed, and I was ready and wishing for more adventures. I just wish I had been more specific in that I wanted the adventures to wait to start until after I’d settled myself comfortably in in Copenhagen. My flight was delayed about an hour…no big deal. Then, Icelandair announced that due to the recalls on the Boeing 737s, part of their fleet was benched and so we would be flying on planes rented from some Spanish airline I’ve never heard of before. The plane seats were so small and the rows close together, that even I, (5’3” on a good day, and with short little legs) could sit fully back in my chair and still touch my knees to the seat in front of me. A little too cozy for my liking, but not the end of the world. Adding a little to the irritation was the fact that these rental planes did not have the entertainment systems/screens on the back of each seat, so I was unexpectedly low on options of things to keep me busy for the three hour ride. All together, not off to a great start. I was, however, excited to be heading to Denmark, and not overly worried about being a little uncomfortable for a couple of hours. I snuggled into the tight space and prepared to make the most out of the experience.
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| Tight quarters |
This summer marks my 10th visit to Iceland, so I’ve come and gone from the International airport in Keflavik plenty of times, and the domestic airport in Reykjavik several times as well. The view when leaving Keflavik and heading west toward the States isn’t much to see after the first few minutes. The land is quickly left in the dust, and then it is seemingly endless ocean and clouds. When heading east, you get the chance to see Reykjavik from above, and depending on cloud cover, good chunks of the rest of the country. On this flight, through the low hanging clouds over the Snæfellsnes Peninsula I glimpsed Snæfellsjökull there on the point, its icy white cap making it stand out from the mountain range it punctuates. I got a great view of the sprawl of Reykjavík and surrounding suburbs, all blending into one another. I spotted Tjörnin, and a few other of my favorite places to stroll around the city. A large ship floated far out in the bay, looking minute from my vantage point. We headed further inland and clouds began to interrupt the view. I’ve been lucky enough to see the land below on domestic flights to East Iceland on other visits, so I didn’t mind the cloud cover much. During the clear patches I looked below and wondered how many of the farms are ones I have driven past on various road trips along the South coast.
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| Reykjavik from above |
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| Icelandic countryside from above |
The shining glaciers and snow capped mountains below stood out in sharp contrast to the rivers and lakes that varied in color from nearly black, to blue-green, to reddish brown. The clouds took over almost completely as we passed above Vatnajökull, the largest of the Icelandic glaciers. We were gaining altitude and it became impossible to distinguish the white of the glacier from the white of the clouds.
In my effort to take pictures of the cool views below (for your benefit, dear readers) my phone slipped from my fingers and became a victim of the dreaded crack between the seat and the wall of the plane. The lady behind me tried to help recover it, but there was no room for either of us to get down to ground level and dig around for it without unseating all of our closely packed neighbors. My phone would have to wait to be rescued until we landed. This turned out to be a much bigger problem than I realized at that time. Read on, and you’ll see what I mean.
The book I had started while waiting at the gate was a bit on the depressing side, so instead of whiling away my time reading I clicked into a brainless app on my iPod touch (yes, I still have one of these for music, and it’s a good thing too, since my phone took a dive) called Ballz, and I spent far too long breaking my way through layers of numbered blocks with ever an increasing number of digital green balls. When my iPod battery died I switched back and forth between staring out the window and staring longingly at the mysterious void where my phone had disappeared. I thought of all the pictures I could have been taking or stupid games I could have been playing.
We landed around 10:20PM, Copenhagen time. Denmark is two hours ahead of Iceland. I had to wait for everyone in my row and the row behind me to get out of my way before I could search for my phone properly. I literally tore the seat cushion off my my chair and several others, thinking it had gotten jammed in the frame somewhere, but it was nowhere to be found. I searched along the floor and felt a pit form in my stomach. There, along the edge, where the dirty airplane carpeting met the dirty plastic wall panels was A GAP. A phone sized gap. With horror, I realized that my phone hadn’t just fallen under my seat. It had fallen INTO the airplane. I flagged down a stewardess as the last of the passengers scurried off the plane, their luggage and phones safely in their hands. I was the moron that had lost my phone inside the walls of the plane. How does that even happen? How does my phone fall into the one crack on the whole airplane large enough to consume a device that size?
To make a long, sweaty, and embarrassing story a little shorter, 8 airline staff, 3 phone calls to uselessly far away airline mechanics, and 40 minutes later, I zipped my phone into my backpack and marched off the plane as fast as I could.
The longer version:
My right arm is now bruised from stem to stern from reaching past the wall panel and groping around for my phone amongst the pipes and god knows what else inside the walls of the plane. But I got my phone. For anyone who has flown Delta lately, (this was Icelandair, but this story is relevant) in their safety video they show a cartoon passenger dropping their phone and the narrator politely requests that should this happen that you ask an attendant for assistance. Well, I asked for assistance, but it didn’t do much good. In the 40 minutes it took me to get frustrated enough to slide down onto the floor between the rows of seats and get the phone myself, 8 other staff (with good intentions, I’m sure) came over to offer flashlights, call someone, or peek down and tell me they couldn’t see the phone, or tell me to write down my name and phone number so that once they got back to Iceland a mechanic could retrieve my phone and call me. I explained the flaw in this logic several times with increasing irritation.
I headed for baggage claim, starving, dripping with sweat, and very ready to just sit on a quiet, cool train on the way to my friend Steinar’s apartment. He would be away in Sweden for a birthday party for most of the time I’m in Copenhagen and had kindly offered to let me couch surf. I managed to miss the train I was supposed to take (it was full and then the doors slammed shut before I could wedge my way on!) and then misunderstand the train schedule so thoroughly that I end up giving up and taking a cab. Now that I’ve been here for a whole two days I have a much improved understanding of the train and bus system and like to think I would be able to figure it out if the same situation came up again. It was well after midnight before I arrived at the apartment. Steinar is a hero and welcomed me with a 5 star quality dinner of gnocchi, prosciutto, and a big glass of wine. I’ve never been so glad to see someone (and a glass of wine) in my life.
On Friday morning, my host had long since gone to work when I arose from my cozy couch bed. I hadn’t been able to buy a Copenhagen Card the night before due to my delay getting off the plane. The Copenhagen card is a tourist attraction pass for a whole bunch of site seeing sorts of things. Once you’ve bought one it includes admission to many of the museums and castles and other tours around the Copenhagen area, along with all transportation for the duration of the pass. My first act of morning #1 in Denmark was acquiring one of those cards, as well as a SIM card for my phone so I could have data to navigate and calling/texting to communicate more easily with the few people I know in Denmark. My Icelandic SIM card doesn’t work in Denmark, which I found out the hard way when I was trying to look up the train schedule at the airport the night before. Like I’ve been saying, it was a difficult journey.
My luck started to turn around, because I was able to get the SIM card and Copenhagen Card with relative ease near the main train station. High on those successes, I walked across the street to Tivoli to put my tourist pass to work. I spent a couple of hours wandering around the little amusement park and gardens, admiring the beauty and quirkiness and wishing like hell that I had put on a thicker layer of sunscreen. The sun was beating down on my pale skin and I could almost feel the sizzle on the tip of my nose and my chest. I was expecting Icelandic temperatures here in Denmark, not a heatwave. Whoops.
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| Tivoli |
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| Tivoli |
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| A little Danish decor |
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| Canal views |
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| Fancy ship out in one of the canals |
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| Christiansborg |
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| One of the Queen's tapestries at Christiansborg |
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| Christiansborg Dining Hall. Apparently they have way more friends than I do. |
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| I call shotgun. |
Creepy thing on a motion sensor, scared the living
daylights out of me in the castle kitchens.
I had plans for dinner to meet with the sister (Liz) of one of my closest high school pals (Cassie). Liz and her husband Tom are now living in Copenhagen with their young son, Martin. They had sweetly invited me over to their place for dinner, which meant I had to find my way there. The first bus I took started to bring me in the complete opposite direction from where I needed to go. It only took me about three stops to realize that it was going the wrong way though, so I’m calling it a win. I did have to call Liz and verify the correct bus route so I didn’t make another error. I made it to their apartment only 20 minutes late and we had a delicious dinner and great evening of conversation, and playing with sweet little Martin. It was very cool to get their perspective on their recent move to Denmark and how it has gone as they have been adapting to living in a different country.
This entry is already far too long, so I won’t add today’s events quite yet. That will have to wait another day or two. Spoiler alert, I saw more castles.
