Traveling

For my trip to Denmark, I flew out of Baltimore, Maryland, had one layover in Newark, New Jersey, another in Frankfurt, Germany, arrived in Hamburg, Germany, before taking a two hour shuttle ride north to Nordborg, Denmark.  I knew it would be a long trip, so I planned to sleep while we flew over the Atlantic.

That was the plan, anyway.

For whatever reason, I was unable to sleep the whole flight.  Once I arrived in Hamburg, it was morning (Denmark and Germany are in the same time zone), so to avoid having my jet-lag be exacerbated, I stayed awake until about 8:30 that evening.  Taking into account that I had to wake up early to so Ian could drop me off before he had to be at work, I was awake for 35 hours straight.  That's a record for me, and one that I hope I never break.

The hotel I stayed at offered minimal accommodations.  This was the bed I slept on:

Two twin beds, which I was expecting from the description on the hotel's website.  What you can't see from the picture is that the blanket that's laid across the top is not folded over, it's laid sideways.  The blankets that were provided were barely as wide as the bed.  That means that if you roll over in the night, you'll end up uncovered.  Luckily there was another source of heat:

For the uninitiated, that's a radiator, a device that pumps hot water into a zigzag of pipes.  The heat from the pipes radiates into the room, hence the name.  This is a common source of heat in Denmark, despite being inefficient and outdated.

A closer look at the controls. Something looks familiar...

The bathroom was also not what I expected:

In case it's not clear from the picture, the shower was just a drain in the floor.  To be fair, the floor on the shower side of the curtain drops down by about an inch, but it was still weird not having more of a barrier.

Even with the strangeness of the hotel, it was still a nice enough place to stay, though the wifi was spotty.

Going back to the beginning of the trip, while I was waiting for my first plane in Baltimore, I mostly spent my time reading a book.  Once it was time to line up to board the plane, I noticed that the woman who had been sitting next to me gathered up her stuff at the same time I did.  I looked at her and politely asked, "Going to Newark?"  She was, and we ended up having a very nice conversation for the ten minutes it took for us to board the plane.  She was headed home to Los Angeles after visiting friends in Baltimore.  When I told her where I was going and what I did for a living, she was genuinely interested and asked a lot of questions.  I hadn't expected to have such a nice exchange with a stranger, but I'm glad that I spoke up.

Once I found my seat, I asked the older woman sitting next to me if Newark was her final destination.  It wasn't; she was headed to Oslo, Norway to visit her daughter.  I thought that it was kind of amazing that we, two random people, were both headed to Scandinavia.  We ended up talking the whole of the admittedly short flight.  She was worried that she would miss her connecting flight due to a delay from Baltimore; when we arrived I wished her luck and went to find the gate I needed for my connecting flight.  When I sat down after finding the right gate, my flight neighbor walked up to me to let me know that her connecting flight had been delayed as well and she wasn't going to miss it.  Apparently I had made enough of an impression that she sought me out so that I wouldn't worry.

The trip was long, but I got to visit Europe for the first time and I brightened the day of two strangers that I'll probably never see again.  I'd say that's worth the fatigue.