I’m barely in Denmark — landed at 10pm, leaving at 8am — so there’s really not much to say. I got a room a 5 minute walk from the airport to try and get as much sleep as possible. And being jetlagged, that wasn’t much.¹

I wanted to visit the Faroe Islands. They’re halfway between Great Britain and Iceland, so I thought I’d catch a flight from London to Tórshavn and afterwards I’d book a flight from Tórshavn to Copenhagen. That’s not an option; at least, that’s not a great option. All the flights from London have a minimum of one stopover, typically in Copenhagen, and they’re rather expensive. That’s not great. There are direct flights from Edinburgh to Tórshavn but, again, the cost is prohibitive. I looked at ferries, but there’s only one which runs² and it takes two days to make the trip. And it’s also twice the cost, one-way, of a roundtrip flight from Copenhagen.³

So I have this weird sort-of layover in Copenhagen.⁴ It’s not as bad as all that; I was going to be in Copenhagen one way or another so it’s not like I’m going out of my way for the flight to this flight to the Faroe Islands. But I really did try to avoid it.

Ever since I read The Ministry for the Future I’ve been dreaming of better transportion options: airships soaring majestically across the polar ice caps, sail-powered clipper ships making a comfortable and leisurely passage across the Atlantic, high-speed trains running direct from Paris to Prague in under three hours. In my dreams they’re all carbon-negative or carbon-neutral. And especially for airships and boats, they’re signficantly slower than current travel options. This is kind of a key point; if I had a week’s vacation to visit the Faroe Islands, there’s no way I’d consider burning two days on a ferry getting there and two days on a ferry getting back. But I might consider it if the WiFi were solid and I could work during the trip.

The line between our professional life and personal life has been increasingly blurred, most recently during the pandemic when everyone who could work from home started doing so. If you can work from home, you can work basically anywhere.⁵ That makes slower, more relaxing, more Earth-friendly transport more possible than ever. All we need are the options.

Next: Tórshavn (FAE) to Copenhagen (CPH)
Prev: London (STN) to Copenhagen (CPH)

Footnotes

¹ My failure to sleep on the flight from New York to London has resulted in a worse-than-usual adjustment period. And since I’ll shortly be at a convention, I’m not all that bothered being on a 3am to 11am sleep schedule. But it’s murder trying to make an 8am flight.

² From Copenhagen to Tórshavn to Reykjavík and back

³ And having gotten seasick on a six-hour ferry I’m incredibly leery about being on the open sea for that long if I’m not on some massive cruise ship to buffer the waves.

⁴ There are no ferries from the UK to Denmark, either, not that I’d brave the North Sea any more than the Atlantic Ocean.

⁵ Network and regulatory framework permitting.