![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/birthday-cake-1-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\nMy birthday then went on normally,\nlike a cool vacation day, with walks to unique places. Luckily I had taken some\n“items” with me that would remind me that I’m having a birthday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you think the adventures ended here?\nNo way! About them… in the next episode, you just have to have a little\npatience, for me to put then down on paper. I don’t work like Netflix, cannot\nhave the entire series at once J.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How much this pandemic has changed our habits… I speak about the good ones now. In my case, the habit of going somewhere in the big world every year, for my birthday. The “big world” for my birthday in 2020 was supposed to be Asia, only the pandemic hit us and right at that time we were all locked in our houses. (You can read here about this and especially about my birthday destinations so far). What I didn’t write then, thinking that maybe the police would come and take me, was that I ran away from home a little, so that I could feel my birthday too. Even for a few minutes! I reached the gate of the Mogosoaia Palace. It seemed to me the closest beautiful place to my house. Of course I wasn’t allowed to go there and even less to enter the palace. From the moment I entered the courtyard of the Palace, I saw some gendarmes and guards of the complex who were a bit shocked to see a living being… I explained to them that it was my birthday, I gave them some good candy, they wished me all the best and\u2026 farewell, so I turned around and left, because they, the poor things, were afraid of being held accountable for letting a fugitive go. A year later, on my birthday in 2021, I got angry about the pandemic and decided to go straight to… Wuhan, China hihi. At that time that was, without a doubt, the safest destination on the planet! I didn’t make it. Neither there, nor in any other corner of Asia, as the restrictions still existed, damn it. Too many unknown aspects for me to travel away from home. So I decided to leave on my birthday in the last moment and I said “Italy”! Not at all simple, considering that Italy was under a red code in the place where I started my birthday vacation \u2013 in Venice. About how… unimaginable, shocking, unbelievably Venice looked under that red code, you can read and see what I posted then. I don’t think you’ll ever see Venice like this again! My birthday caught me in Florence and I enjoyed it as much as I could \u2013 walks without a mask, packed food (because the restaurants were only open for deliveries), the privilege of seeing a mega tourist city without tourists. Okay, and then 2022 came. Things are a bit more relaxed on the planet, so I could dare more than in previous years. I went to one of the places on my wish-list: THE FAROE ISLANDS No worries, I told myself. I am in Europe, even if in the middle of the ocean, somewhere between Scotland, Iceland and Norway. I looked on the MFA website, I saw that the Faroe Islands belong to Denmark, but they ask for a passport, otherwise… nothing. Well, it’s perfect! I put my winter clothes in my suitcase, because it’s still winter there, I stuffed 2 more jars of jam to give them as a gift, plus 2 and a half cartridges of cigarettes that I was going to take to a friend in England (in the EU you can transport up to 4 cartridges, for London I took a risk). Three flights, man. Bucharest-Amsterdam-Copenhagen-Faroe Islands. This was the best and fastest solution for the period I wanted. Who knows I’m afraid of flying, could give me a prize for the courage to take three planes in a row. I fully deserve it! But you know what? I didn’t have time to be afraid. The connections between the flights were so short that I didn’t even have time to panic! INDIRECT FLIGHT KLM informs us that the mask is still mandatory on flights. We all comply. Those with transfers are announced during the first flight what gate to go to as soon as we get off the plane. I’m told I have enough time, not to worry. I have 40 minutes and the gate from which my second flight leaves is close. No shit!? I had to run, and run fast, on the corridors, on stairs going up and down, turning left or right in a hurry, going from one floor to another… I couldn’t remember the Amsterdam airport to be so big. I arrived at the boarding gate with my tongue out, when everyone was already there. The second flight, Amsterdam-Copenhagen, short, just as the transfer: 20 minutes! I started to worry during the second half of the flight, when no stewardess came to me to tell me what gate to go to, how far it is and so on, and so forth\u2026 Two passengers were moved with their hand luggage to the business seats still available. Hm… It was clear to me that they were the ones with a very short connection. They were helped to be closer to the exit, to get off immediately. I look at my watch and realize that the connection time is running out, and we’re not landing yet. I press the button above \u2013 for the first time in my life, since I flew \u2013 I ask the first flight attendant who came to me to tell me how to do it, because I have a very short transfer and I would not want to miss the plane. I get shocked when the woman looks at me with sympathy and says: “I don’t think you’ll catch it.” My blood all got up to my head! Well how can it be??? Why? The airline gives you the tickets knowingly, offering you, as a passenger, guarantee. I’m starting to get agitated, especially since the woman abandoned me. I don’t give up, I go to the front and ask her to move me to the business area (I’m on the 15th row, close to the emergency exit). She shows me that there is no free seat, she shrugs and tells me again: “sorry, there’s nothing I can do”. I get annoyed, especially when I find out that the two in the front have to catch the same plane to Faroe Islands as me. I go back to my seat. I’m thinking of going to every person in rows 1-14 and ask the pretty please to let me pass as soon as we can get off the plane. I even make a sentence in my head, but then I give up the idea. I get so upset that I am treated differently from others in the same situation that I draw the attention of flight attendants to it. I see them talking to each other. The chief of the cabin comes to me and tells me that the only thing she can do is talk to the ground crew and see if the plane can wait for me. The plane takes off in 30 minutes and we’re still up in the air. Not to tell that I have to change the terminal, as I see on the ticket. All my neighbors see that I’m already irritated. I wouldn’t mind spending, on KLM’s money, one night in Copenhagen, but it’s already getting more complicated \u2013 I’m missing my first night’s accommodation, I’m missing my next day’s trip, I’m practically losing from my vacation in the Faroe Islands and I really don’t want that! We’re landing, we’re still moving. And I keep moving in my seat, impatiently… The plane stops just 10 minutes before the next one takes off. I jump out of my chair, open the luggage compartment, pull on a bag and my suitcase and the woman’s next to me coat fall on my head. The woman is sincerely scared. In two seconds I’m with my suitcase and my rumpled coat on the aisle and… make way!!! You’ll be amazed by what I tell you, but with “sorry, please, sorry, I have to catch a flight, sorry, thank you”, absolutely everyone from row 14 down let me through. I didn’t hit anyone, I didn’t step on anyone. The truth is that I didn’t see anyone in a hurry to take their luggage and put it on the aisle, like in our case. Everyone was relaxed. I don’t even know what nonsense I must have said in English, but I got to the door of the plane in less than 10 seconds! World record, for sure J. When the cabin chief saw me, she exclaimed in shock: “Did you make it!?!” How much I wanted to tell her… I asked her on my way out: “what gate??”. At the end of the corridor, a person in a yellow vest was waiting for me. I didn’t get to ask her where the A17 gate I had just found out about was, because she showed me the direction and told me that the plane was waiting for me. I ran like crazy. I saw in front of me the two who had been privileged. They were running too… Luckily the boarding gate was close to the one I had left. (I don’t know how, as on the ticket it was on another terminal!) Arriving there fainting like after a marathon, I see the door closed. People calm me down, check my documents, open the door and… I’m on the plane!!! God, it’s like a victory for me! The ribbon was the only thing missing hihi. The plane is full. Everyone is looking at me. What can I say, I’m such an apparition… The friendly flight attendants immediately put a glass of water under my nose, give me chocolates and, after breathing a little, I realize that I have entered another world. A calm, relaxed world, with a neighbor sitting next to me who starts knitting as we take off, with two people in the back row playing macao or something and with… NO MASK on the horizon. Neither for the passengers, nor for the flight attendants! Yes, no one. I’m on Atlantic Airways, the national airline of the Faroe Islands. Different rules. A different life J. As soon as I catch my breath, my brain starts to think. I wonder how in God’s name could my big suitcase get from the plane I was on, to this? Hm… VAGAR AIRPORT After 3 flights and heart-pumping transfers, here I am, finally, on the land of the Faroe Islands, a destination still undiscovered, with steep cliffs hit by waves, fjords, bird colonies, houses with grass roofs, sheep left free and the list goes on… From over 20 degrees Celsius and sun in Romania, to 0 degrees and snow in the Faroe Islands. Their airport, located on Vagar Island, is like a waiting room in a train station of ours, with 2 boarding gates next to each other, a small bar and a duty free shop where… wow, everyone is rushing! I’ve never seen such a sync when it comes to shopping. “What’s on offer?”, I feel like asking the question in our Romanian DNA. Well, alcohol is given in the first place. That’s what I see the people buying. I don’t know if any passenger, other than me, left the duty free shop for the luggage lane without having bought anything. Are the prices much lower than in the city? (I was about find out later what the trick was, I’ll tell you in the post about the Islands). Suitcases come one by one on the small strip. And one by one, people leave. A dog sniffs each one, hoping to find something suspicious. I’m left alone and my suitcase still doesn’t show up. The luggage lane stops, with some luggage still left on it. Clearly, my suspicion while desperately boarding the No. 3 plane came true: they took me, but not my suitcase… The dog is happy that he has finished his shift. I’m sad that the adventure begins… I ask some people in uniform what to do. Calmly, they send me to a counter where, just as calm, a lady tells me: \u201cOh, it happens…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6659,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1372,562,27,26,611,1366,1362,1363,1371,1364,1361,988,987,1369,1373,610,612,1370,20,1274,1089,1367,1365,609],"class_list":["post-6628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-calatorii","tag-bagaj-pierdut","tag-birthday","tag-calator-singur","tag-calatorii","tag-calatorii-de-ziua-mea","tag-escale","tag-faroe","tag-faroe-islands","tag-faroe-television","tag-feroe","tag-insulele-feroe","tag-intamplari-din-calatorii","tag-intamplari-din-vacanta","tag-kvf","tag-lost-luggage","tag-my-birthday","tag-my-birthday-holidays","tag-televiziunea-din-feroe","tag-travel","tag-travel-blog","tag-travelling","tag-vagar","tag-zbor-cu-escala","tag-ziua-mea","main-post"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"2.12.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["ro","en"],"languages":{"ro":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6628"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6628"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6951,"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6628\/revisions\/6951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danamladin.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}