Really don’t know how I’m feeling about Iceland and the volcanos... Normally I would have been up in the air instead of on the rails through the Norwegian landscape. But I’m kinda liking it!
Eyjafjallajökull . . . A beautiful, yet quite unpronounceable name of a mountain that severely is affecting my life. I should have been in Rome this week, and was stuck in Bergen. I should have gone straight from Rome to Oslo and then to Bergen again by plane, but instead I got up early yesterday morning to take the morning train to Oslo and I’m now back on the train to slowly roll through the landscape back to Bergen again. My plane is supposed to leave about now, but when I saw that all other planes prior to mine had been cancelled I simply didn’t dare to take a chance on the plane. Still don’t know actually if I could have been up in the air now and have landed in Bergen in an hour instead of arriving at the station in 7 hours.
The strange thing though is that I am really enjoying this slower lifestyle. I’m enjoying traveling through the beautiful country I live in (I forget how beautiful it really is). I enjoy sitting down with my laptop enjoying a cup of coffee working my way through Norway in stead of rushing to the airport, through the security control, into the plane, being stuck in my seat for 50 minutes, out of the plane, to the airport express train, 20 minutes on the train, grabbing a taxi to get to a meeting - and then the whole process all over again to get back home.
Going by train from Bergen to Oslo takes 6,5 to 7,5 hours depending on when you travel) while the whole flight experience takes about 3 hours from door to door. The thing though is that when I’m on the train I can actually work, and the rushing-in-and-out experience of flying leaves no time period where you can actually work. And - I do admit - I love the fact that all the tunnels and mountains makes me mostly unreachable while on the train. I actually get to work uninterrupted for a few hours. It almost feels like a holiday!
I promise you that if there had been express trains between Bergen and Oslo taking no longer than about 4 hours and leaving early enough for me to be able to catch a lunch meeting, would have travelled by train instead of by plane. Much more environmentally friendly and much more enjoyable.
Being in the start-up phase, my life is extremely busy and I’m in a constant rush. A certain mountain called Eyjafjallajökull (I still have to copy-paste that name!) suddenly enabled me to live life a bit slower without anyone being able to get frustrated with postponed meetings and changes in travel plans. My kids love the volcano!
On May 11th however, I’m supposed to fly to Iceland on my way to the US. Hoping to make that trip. Will I?
07:58 - On my way to Oslo by train!
No comments:
Post a Comment