Denmark: How Not To Fly Internationally

[Composed on 8/9 - 8/10]

Goddag dear Reader! That's 'hello' in Danish. Here I am, sitting on events that finally inspire me to write again! I'm recounting my adventures day by day (hopefully I'll have the time!) here in Aarhus, Denmark while I study wind energy technology for two weeks.

PRELUDE: 5 PLANES, 6 AIRPORTS

To begin, I'll take you on my unlikely, costly, exhausting, and exhilarating journey to the land of Vikings and $4 sodas.

I was spending time with friends in a house boat on Lake Powell (as some of you well knew) up until the 8th of August. The first leg of my journey began with a 5.5 hour drive by van, accompanied by Micki and Mike, from Bullfrog Marina to Page, AZ, starting around 4pm. Page is a small tourist town on the southern end of Lake Powell, adjacent to the Glenn Canyon Dam. I had assumed I would be able to either sleep in the airport terminal or spend some money on a hotel room. Unfortunately, early August is peak tourist season (the Lake Powell crowd) and none of the twenty some-odd hotels in the city had vacancies, not even the international hostel was full! The proprietor of "LuLu's Sleep Ezze" 8-bedroom motel did not answer the 10:30pm phone call, so we assumed "LuLu" was indisposed with one of her "clients," a tasteless string of jokes followed, and we all felt better about ourselves...except for a lack of place to stay for me. Micki and Mike graciously spent the night with me in the back of the van we took, sleeping on the floor with one sleeping bag and an old blanket between all of us. Fortunately, the temperature never got low enough for us to really need the sleeping bag. Unfortunately, the bag and blanket did little to disguise the metal seat attachments and thin carpet of the van floor. All in all, a big thanks to Wal-Mart for having their parking lots as 24-hour public campgrounds!

At 4:45am, we groggily shipped me to the recently-opened Page Municipal Airport terminal, said our pre-dawn farewells, and I checked in, getting my first real news from the wall-mounted television in the small 1-room building. The morning headlines: "Russia invades Georgia," "American tourist stabbed to death in Beijing," and "John Edwards admits to affair with campaign employee while wife had cancer." Fox News' motto is now 'We report, you decide.' Well, I decided my trip to Europe was looking more and more appealing by the minute, the scrolling alert bar on the tv screen bottom seemed to usher me into the lone security line, and 21-seat cruiser I eventually settled into, for my first flight.

I landed in Phoenix about an hour later, still shaking the turbulence off from that small aircraft.
I had to be in Denmark, ready for busing to a small rural campus called Fuglsøcentret (thanks to Google for the ø (say 'eu' like the French word bleu)) by 6pm local time. My flights all jumped around the U.S., from Phoenix to Philadelphia to Chicago. For each of these flights I had to hurry between the gates and through security to make the next connection. I got good excerice, but not a lot of food or water. Phoenix has a nice airport. Philadelphia has a so-so airport. Chicago ... when I reached this final stateside airport, my story got even wilder.

When I got off the plane from Philadelphia into Chicago, the directions to the next gate were so bad. Since it was already 9pm (I got in an hour late because of a delay), there weren't many employees around to ask for help. All the information desks were closed. O'Hare is a terrible airport, all narrow, widely-spaced terminals with long walkways or trains to get between them (as many of you well know). In my case, I needed to traverse the entire length of the airport grounds by elevated train to reach the international terminal. I eventually found a security guard and got directions to the train. But I didn't pick up on the lone sign for "international terminal" in the train depot soon enough and so missed the first train. By the time I got to the international terminal, I had 30 minutes till take-off. The one remaining ticket seller at the check-in counter gave me some light-hearted crap (I think, he had an interesting accent) for being so late, and then asked me if I knew how to run, because I was probably going to miss my flight. But, after flying all day long from Page, AZ (after sleeping in the van with no bag or blanket) through Phoenix, Philadelphia, and Chicago, I was NOT going to miss this flight. I nearly had a panic attack in the security lane, because I cleared the line with 10 minutes till take-off, and the lady in front of me (from Turkey I saw on her passport) was giving the TSA people a bit of a hard time, adding to my delay. Actually, I really felt the TSA people were giving her a hard time, because she spoke almost no english and couldn't easily remove the jewelry on her wrist when they asked her to, for the metal detector. I felt bad, but still panicky, and I ended up running full tilt down the remaining 200 yards of corridor to my gate (seriously, that terminal is LONG). They were starting the boarding announcements when I climbed on, and one of the stewardesses noticed my exasperated and out-of-breath appearance, and gave me a glass of water (very good service on Scandinavian Air). Yah, so that's it for background, now, onto the ocean-crossing!

CH 1 - MY BUTT HURTS:
As with my flight to China/Mongolia last summer, when you are tall like me and sit in an airplane that long, you don't feel good afterwards (or during). I did get up to stretch after the first couple hours, but I was trying to sleep some, so I wouldn't be totally off-whack when I got to Denmark. They served dinner and drinks about an hour and half into the flight, and I caught the last 40 minutes of '10,000 B.C'. on the inflight movie selection. I now know why the tax on this flight was over 50 % of the ticket price: the service is phenomenal. Seriously, fly SAS if you go to Europe. The stewards/stewardesses were all really nice, multilingual, and attentive. I got a free set of headphones (U.S. Airways charges for them (my flight to Philadelphia)) and over a dozen movies to pick from, as well as comedians, news, sports, and music. There are even video games, and a piece of your armrest detaches to become an impromptu Nintendo NES-style controller. The only bummer was, of course, the sleeping part. The blanket and pillow were not so good, and I got maybe 2 hours total sleep during the 8 hour flight. I drifted in and out for a bunch of it. The really incredible part of the overseas flight was my neighbor. Out of all the people on that enormous AirBus, I get paired with a third-generation Norwegian from Iowa who spends a good deal of time in Denmark and other parts of Europe on business, and he gave me a bunch of tips on getting around in Denmark, where to exchange currency, how the food is, and what to expect culturally. He also holds an undergraduate degree in Physics (not sure if it was B.S. or B.A. ...?) like me, and his work is engineering-related. Plus, he's worked with Mines alumni over the years (he appeared to be in his forties/fifties). We didn't share personal information, but it was fun chatting and learning about where I was headed. Yeah, so I got into Copenhagen without incident, learned my way around the vastness of its airport, finally found out how to get my boarding pass (I had to 'take a number' like in those deli shops or the DMV). The ticket counter lady was so surprised I didn't have any checked baggage (actually, nearly every ticket counter person was surprised). The keyboards here have some extra buttons for Danish characters like Æ Ø Å (got those from Google). Like in O'Hare, it was a LONG walk/run to my next flight, but Copenhagen's airport is WAY nicer than Chicago's. I reached my gate with 10 minutes till take-off again (a really really long walk, no train/bus available) and boarded a small plane of about 60 seats I think, bound for Arhus.

CH 2 - SMALL WORLD:
The ride took less than half an hour, and the views from the window seat were really neat (when there weren't clouds in the way). I landed safely at around 3:15 pm local time and found the Arhus airport to be as small as Copenhagen's was big, only about 200 yards long total, and very nice, clean, and quiet. There was a group of guys lounging in the waiting area outside the baggage claim, all with different accents, but I did recognize one of their faces as belonging to a Mines student. I found out they were all going to the Wind Program, so I sat down with them. I met Joonas (Yoo-nas) from Finland, Christian from Germany, Marco from Italy, Zack from Texas (Mines), and Pablo from the Canary Islands (Spain). Quite the diverse group. Joonas taught us a card game to pass the three hours till the bus arrived to pick us up. Anyway, at about 6 pm, a man from the summer school program walked up to our group in the waiting area and introduced himself. He checked our names off on a list and we got on a bus waiting outside.

CH 3 - FUGLSØCENTRET:
That's the name of the place I'm staying at (I still haven't caught on to the pronunciation, a lot of Danish is slurred together it seems (e.g. the common last name Jørgensen is pronounced "Yousen" and the 'ou' part is blended into a short 'uhh' kind of noise)). As it looks right now, Fuglsø Centret is like a small college campus, or boarding school, or maybe retreat/recreation center. There are dormitory-style rooms (I got put in the room with Zack, so no big culture clash) in separate buildings from the main event center. We're way out in the country, about an hour from Arhus city. The countryside is very beautiful here. It reminds me a lot of pictures I've seen of rural England, and even parts of Colorado, although it's much greener and wetter here. The landscape is pretty flat and the campus is about 1/4 mile from the ocean (I think it's the ocean, Arhus sits very close to it on the map, and the water out front looks really really big). Well, so after arriving, we got room assignments, keys, signed in, met the staff, and headed off to our rooms. I took my first real shower in over a week, sorted out my stuff (they gave each of us a bunch of free swag, books, binders, shirts, lanyards, even a backpack and an i-Pod knock-off music player, apparently the wind energy business pays well). That's about when I sat down to e-mail you guys the first time! I found out I didn't bring an adapter for my wall-charger to go with the different European socket set-up, but Zack did bring one, so I was able to rejuice my Mac). The opening ceremony was a short presentation by the staff about the summer school's purpose, our expectations, and a brief lecture from a professor of engineering at the sponsoring university (Engineering College of Arhus). He told us we'll be traveling there tomorrow morning to make use of some of the lab facilities for our first project/lecture. We then adjourned to a room with tables and benches, topped with sandwhiches, wine, and beer. I made more introductions with the 34 students present and chatted about different cultures, countries, and customs. Now full, and even more tired, I finally finish typing this long long LONG e-mail.

CONCLUSION:
It's 10:30 pm here now, and I'm off to bed finally, after some teeth-brushing. I have to be up for breakfast at 7:30 am and then a prompt departure at 8. That's something I've been told by some of the other students here: the Danish expect precise punctuality and professionalism, so I musn't be late.