Sunday - day 5

Nick ended up missing the hike and wanted to make up for it by going somewhere Sunday. I wanted to go to Nolsoy at some point so we agreed to meet at 10:00 to catch a ferry to Nolsoy. The only problem was, we didn’t actually know what the ferry schedule was and there was a mini hurricane going on. I missed the bus down to the harbor and took the 40 minute walk down in the wind and rain, regretting the decision to go. I met up with Nick and he still seemed up to going. We found the schedule and found that we had just missed the ferry and that the next one wasn’t until 1:00.

On Sunday, nothing in Tórshavn is open. We were hungry and needed some shelter against the wind. The lounge of the Hotel Hafnia was open so we warmed up inside and used their internet. We went up to the restaurant there for lunch. It’s pretty fancy and expensive, although the food was delicious. There was a family there all dressed up and two of them were wearing the national costume. The service was kind of slow though and we ended up staying there until past 1:00. Outside the window though, you could see the howling wind thrashing the trees and the rain go by horizontally. I wasn’t in any hurry to catch any ferry.

We just went home afterwards and of course, around 2:00 it cleared up and there was beautiful sunny, blue sky. I spent the rest of the day reading.

Kirkjubøur – day 4

If you’re ever in the Faroe Islands and have the chance to hike from Tórshavn to Kirkjubøur, do it. It’s a relatively easy hike with a steep hike getting up, but there is a trail, and it flattens out at the top as you go the long way over. Everywhere you look it’s just like the pictures of the green, windswept Faroese mountains and it sure is windy. It drizzled a little bit but it was mostly just wind, and sometimes the kind of wind that if you lean into it, it will hold you up. The view is amazing from everywhere and you can see the two islands Hestur and Koltur, the horse and the colt. We had lunch at the top of the mountain (facing away from the wind) and the continued to Kirkjubøur.

Kirkjubøur beats Tórshavn in cuteness by far. There are probably only 15-20 houses and all of them have the traditional look of black, tarred wood, white, red, or green trim and half have turfed roofs with the medieval church, cathedral and rotstovan down the street surrounded by steep mountain sides, cliffs and ocean. You just can’t properly get it on film.

We were given a tour starting with a brief history of the church, then the rotstovan and then the cathedral. The church has a new interior and roof, but the thick stone walls are from the 1100’s. The cathedral lies in partial ruin from a landslide and time. It was thought that it was simply never finished, but most people agree now that it was finished but then wrecked. As far as European cathedrals go, it’s very tiny, but then again what use would the Faroes have for something so large? It still feels big in comparison and looks much bigger in person than in pictures. Unfortunately for us, it’s partially covered in an attempt to dry it out to try and save the mortar holding it together. It’s supposed to be uncovered next year. We caught the bus back to Tórshavn rather than hike all the way back.

Thursday and Friday – day 2+3

Thursday was the first day of the institute. I thought it would only be 30 minutes from the house but it was more like 45 and I ended up being a few minutes late. We started with a lecture on Faroese youth today and then had our first language lessons. From a school years worth of watching Sjónvarp Førorya I’ve gotten a relatively good grasp of how to pronounce written Faroese words. I know a lot of people were struggling with it. All ð’s are silent (unless pronounced as y or v) and g in the middle of a word is silent (unless pronounced as y or v) and several different letter combinations are pronounced the same. It’s as bad as English except they had the chance to spell it fonetikly but decided to base spelling off of etymology. Written Icelandic and Faroese look very similar but are pronounced completely different.

The classes aren’t very hard. A lot of the history they talked about in the lectures I already knew about. Each class is 45 minutes long and they give us a 15 minute break in between. (Just like Umass except you don’t have anywhere to walk to so it’s really just a coffee break.) We go for lunch at 11:45 and comeback at 1:00. There are usually lectures until 2:45. After class on Thursday, Turið gave us a walking tour around Tórshavn. We walked all around the harbor, Tinganes and the old houses. The houses are really tiny and are mostly black with white/red trim and have grass roofs. They’re really cute. When I have my own house, I will paint it black and put grass on the roof.

On Friday we started off with the normal language lessons from 8:00 till 11:45 and then had a lecture on ballads after lunch. After school, someone suggested we go out for pizza at around 7:00. I ended up leaving the school at 4:30 and wandered around wasting time. It’s too far to be worth going home. Tórshavn is really cute, but it’s still pretty small and doesn’t offer much in the way of wasting time. I ran into Aaron, one of the other students (which happens anytime you walk around Tórshavn,) and I hung out with him until we ran into Jerry, who’s a film studies professor and is part of the institute too. He’s renting on of the old houses from Turið’s sister as he’s staying for 2 months and has his wife and baby with him. He invited us to his house for a cup of tea. It’s a tiny little house just big enough for three people. It’s hard to imagine 10 people living in a house that size back in the old days.

We sat around and talked for a good hour and went to the pizza place, but it was closed and there was a note on the door to “team Faroese” saying they went to pizza 67. It was good pizza. It came in personal sizes of 9” and 12”. You can tell where everyone’s from when you have pizza. Everyone uses a knife and fork except for the Americans, and everyone has they’re own style of holding it. When we finished it was still early and we went to Café Natúr again. It was about 11:45 when I headed home and the busses stop at 11:00. Hurray for walking home in the rain. I was wearing my new coat though and it really is rain-proof.

Faroe Islands, day 1

I easily slept until noon eventually made breakfrast and studied a map of torshavn. Where I'm staying isn't actually in Torshavn, but just north in Hoyvík. It's about a 45 minute walk, or a 15 minute busride to the school. The buses only run every half hour from 6:30am to 11:30pm on weekdays and only once an hour from 7:00am to 5:30pm on weekends.

The university was hosting a dinner for us at 5:30pm, but I left the house around 1:30 to walk around and explore Tórshavn. The first part of my walk is through these small pathways around this sort of park like area. The pathways are public, but the land around it is people's yards. Every house I've seen with a large yard has at least a couple sheep or maybe horses. One house has a chicken coup. It's really beautiful to walk through. It really does look like the pictures. I pass the Nordic House and the SMS mall on the way. just past SMS is where the downtown/shopping area of Tórshavn is.

I went to FK first, which is a grocery market, to buy some food for the next day. I wandered some more and found where the school was but I still had an hour and a half before I needed to be there. I walked down to the harbor and down tinganes and saw all the red government buildings. There's and old fort at the edge of the harbor that I wanted to go see but I didn't think I'd have enough time.

There are several shops selling Faroese knit wear that I passed by but I decieded to go into one of them called 'sirri.' I ended up buying a coat there. I'll probably go back for a hat too. Turns out they're well known for their crafts.

Once I had finished my shopping it was time to go back to the school. I had a backpack full of stuff as well as the bag with my coat in it that was fun to carry around all day. I got there a little early and I met these two Italian guys who were there for the institute as well. They're both PHD students in Art history and study scandinavian languages for fun. (They ended up having to leave early because one of their professors randomly decided to have an exam in August.) Slowly everyone else got there and we all went inside and upstairs and Turið gave us an overview of what we would be doing and then we went to the bigger room an sat down for dinner.



The dinner was nice, we had fish potatoes and salad. We all talked for a few hours and then decided to go to Café Natúr (which is really more of a pub then a cafe). It turned out to be "pub quiz" night, and they asked trivia questions and what ever table won got a free pitcher of beer. The questions were all in Faroese of course and we called ourselves "Team English." We did get on of the waitresses to translate for us and we got 4 out of 11 right. Not too bad. I ended up going home around 11:30 and dragged all my stuff back with me.

Iceland

(I'm afraid I won't have pictures for a little while because I'm waiting on a power converter. I'm writing this on the school computer and there is not slot for my camera's memory card.)

You know what they say about ending up on the plane next to the screaming child. That was me. The poor kid just wouldn't stop crying and screaming. It was an overnight flight (9:30pm leave, 6:30am arrival (+4 hours) and luckily he fell asleep soon, but for the last half hour he was at it again. I only got about 2 or 3 hours of sleep. As we took of there was a lightning storm in the distance. It was cool to see from the plane. The whole cloud lights up and you can see the bolts go through it.

I got to Keflavík at 6:30 and they only had two passport control stations open so there was a long wait to get through the airport. I was hoping I could take the bus from the airport to the Blue Lagoon, but that had left at 7:00 and I had just missed it. I just took the bus to Reykjavik.

The landscape of Iceland really is something else. There are large fields of black, basalt rocks covered in thick mosses with mountains in the distance. Hardly any trees are growing anywhere except for Reykjavik, which looks like it was built in between a forest. There is construction going on everywhere is seems. The land looks so rugged and wild but people have been living there for a thousand years. In a way, Reykjavik is sort of ugly with all its weather worn sheet metal, but at the same time all of the houses are really interesting. Everyone is completely different from the one next to it and most are painted with bright colors.

At about 8:30am I got to the BSÍ station with no real plan in mind. There were some tourist flyers in the back of the bus seat and one of them was tours offered by the bus company. Most of them were leaving at nine so I decided to go on the "golden circle" tour. It was 8 hours long and brought me back in time to go to the airport. It went to Hveragerði greenhouse village, Kerið volcanic crater, Gullfoss waterfall, Geysir hot spring area, and Þingvellir National Park. Now a bus tour is probably the epitome of "tourist," but I only had the day and it was probably the best way to see some of sites. There were two buses. One with the tour in English and the other in German. The German one was less crowded so I got on that one. They both eventually filled completely up. Our guide ended up doing both German and English, but I found his German easier to understand.

The stop in Hveragerði was really more of a bathroom stop with a large Duty Free shop but we were only there 10 minutes or so. Kerið was neat to see. As the name would suggest, it was a large volcanic crater, with a lake at the bottom with very blue-green water and red and black rocks all around. You have to watch your step, it's a long way down.

Gullfoss was very cool to see. It was sort of like a smaller Niagara falls in a smaller Grand Canyon. The canyon was very long and very deep. There were only a few ropes guarding you against falling directly into the waterfall but other than that you could walk right up to the edge.

Geysir went off every 10 minutes or so. There were a few larger springs and several smaller ones, all with warning signs about the water temperature being around the boiling point. (That didn't stop a few kids though from sticking their fingers in.) There was steam blowing around everywhere and smelled like sulfur whenever you walked through it. There was also a pathway up to the top of this hill. I went about halfway up but it was very muddy. I still have some Iceland stuck in my shoes...

The Þingveller National Park is where the Icelandic 'Þing' takes place. The area is on where the North Atlantic Ridge is tearing Iceland apart. There are a few large faults with large cliffs and other small ones running along the ground creating little holes in the ground.

I got back to the bus station around 4:30. I tried talking to one of the bus drivers there if there were any buses to the domestic airport. He told me no, but said he would take me anyways. I had assumed the building across a bit from the station was the airport, seeing as it said Icelandair and had small planes in front of it, but it turns out I was wrong. I tried going in the Iceland air door but the people coming out said they were closed. Closed? Turns out the airport I was looking for was near there but too far away to walk. Luckily there was a taxi there. I cut it close with the ride fare. I only had 1255isk left and it cost me 1210. (~60krona to the dollar.)

The domestic airport is extremely tiny. There's only two check in desks, a small snack place, and 4 terminals. We had to walk out to our plane. It was a small one but still had 6 seats across. The landing was a little turbulent and there was one little drop that had a lot of people gasp. The islands were shrouded in the usual impenetrable fog and you couldn't see anything till you were on the ground. We landed at about 11:20pm

It took awhile for the bus to Tórshavn to leave. It was dark and raining out but I could still see the outlines of the mountains and everything is really just like in the pictures. At the bus station, my host Asvør was supposed to meet me there. I didn't see her but I waited for awhile and she came. She said she was there before and I wasn't there so she thought maybe I had taken a taxi but when I still wasn't there by midnight she decided to come back. I finally got to bed at around 2:00am after two full days of almost no sleep.

I pretty much have the bottom floor with a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. Asvør only has a slow, expensive dial up system but I can use the internet at the school for as long as I want.