Sunday, August 11, 2024
My travel adventure began yesterday afternoon. NCSU colleague, Jeff, drove from his mountain home and arrived at our house just as the U.S. men’s basketball team won an Olympic gold medal by beating the strong French team. Shortly afterwards, around 6 pm, Jane drove us to RDU. The check-in and passage through security went remarkably smoothly. Jeff and I had plenty of time before our IcelandAir flight departure and so enjoyed delicious tomato and cheese sandwiches with nuts that Jane had prepared for us. They tasted great with Lone Rider brews. Then, we met four other collegues at the departure gate.
The 6.25-hour-long flight from Copenhagen to Reykjavik was uneventful. I skipped dinner and managed a few intermittent sleep sessions. We arrived at Keflavik Airport with only a one-hour layover before the next leg to Copenhagen. Miraculously, despite long lines, we made it through EU security and boarded ontime. Our group of six was divided between two KEF-CPH flights that departed 15 minutes apart. I managed to get some more sleep on this 3.5-hour leg.
Departing Iceland
Approaching Denmark
Our group of six reconvened at CPH. We then collectively managed, via kiosk, to purchase train tickets to get us part of the way to the conference hotel in Kerteminde. The 1.5-hour train trip had many stops and took us westward across Zealand Island, then under the Great Belt Strait via a tunnel to Nyborg on the island of Funen. We had general seating tickets and needed to relocate (with our luggage) several times as fellow passengers boarded and claimed reserved seats. Upon arriving at our stop, we all converged at the nearest exit door but, to our dismay, it wouldn’t open and the train continued along its westward journey.
A kind train attendant noticed our distress and said the stop had been shortened because our train was behind schedule. She assured us that we could exit at the next stop, Odense, and take the bus from there to Kerteminde. So, we disembarked at Odense only to find that the nearby bus station was closed on Sunday. After managing to decipher the bus schedule, we found the bus we needed to take parked at its platform and learned that we could buy tickets directly from the driver. Fortunately, I had taken a minimal amount of Danish kroner out of an ATM machine at CPH and used that to purchase our tickets. The 45-minute bus ride was comfortable and wound through nice rural areas with a lot of stops in quaint towns.
Eventually, we disembarked in Kerteminde and rolled our luggage down the streets a few blocks to the Tornøes Hotel. After a quick check-in for the hotel and conference and settling into my room (#20), I took a quick stroll through the town before our agreed upon 6 pm dinner meeting time. Kerteminde is a small attractive coastal town with a population of about 6,000. The weather was fine and the clean town with pleasant water views was just the relaxing remedy I needed after the exhausting trip.
Tornøes Hotel
—— Kerteminde ——
We decided to eat dinner outside at the hotel. Over dinner, we socialized with other conference attendees that had arrived from NC and learned that a couple of our university colleagues won’t arrive until tomorrow because Air France had canceled all departures from RDU (presumably related to the Olympics). After dinner, we had beers with the Danish hosts and socialized in the conference room before heading to our rooms for some much needed sleep.
Dining alfresco at the Tornøes Hotel