Escaping Iceland

It was cold at the unmarked bus stop. Just below freezing. And that was before taking the wind chill into account. We’d been standing on the curb for just over half an hour – per the instructions of our airport shuttle bus company. My daughter had busied herself with making designs in the snow: a heart, a smiley face, her initials. But now her hands had gone numb, and she wanted to go back inside the hotel. I explained to her how we had to be visible on the sidewalk for the bus driver. He wouldn’t wait for us to come out of the hotel hauling all our suitcases across the snow-laden parking lot. We had to just be ready to board the bus as soon as he pulled up. If we missed our bus, we would not make it to the airport on time and we would miss our flight out of Iceland. She’d been homesick for awhile at this point, so she did her best to distract herself from her freezing fingers and toes. I was trying my best to put on a brave face, but the truth was the waterproof boots I’d bought in Spain were not insulated and, though dry, my toes had turned to icicles long ago. I began to think if the bus was much later, we’d be forced to hail one of the taxis and pay the exorbitant fee (well over $100) for the ride to the airport that was about 45 minutes outside of Reykjavik.

Just as I was turning to my husband to voice such a plan, we saw our bus round the corner and head up our street. Unfortunately, it did not stop in front of us. It continued until it came to the intersection at the other end of the street before it stopped. I threw up my arms and waved as it passed us. When it did  stop and open it’s doors, we each grabbed our suitcases and hauled them as quickly as possible along the snowy sidewalk rushing as fast as we could toward the bus. Speed was not on our side. The doors closed as I was only 5 feet away from them. I waved and yelled repeatedly and was trying to catch the driver’s eye, but I was still too far back for him to see. One of the passengers must have seen us and told him. He finally looked back and reopened the doors.

Conflicting emotions of relief and annoyance warred inside me. I decided to focus on the relief. I (we) were relieved to get out of the freezing cold and relieved to be on our way to the airport. We piled our luggage on top of the other bags already there and took our seats. We passed a pleasant journey over the bleak landscape of snow-dusted lava fields, thawing out as we went.

Once at the airport, we knew the drill. Scan your boarding pass at a self-service check-in kiosk. Attach the baggage tags once they print out. Load your checked baggage onto the conveyor belt one at a time so the weight can be checked. Use the scanning gun to scan the bag’s tag, and repeat with the other bags.

Here is where we encountered our first problem. The scanner wouldn’t scan the digital boarding passes I’d saved on my phone. Thinking it might just be a problem with the machine, we moved to another open kiosk. Same problem. I went searching for a human. I found one a little ways away from the kiosks and explained my problem. She kindly suggested I select the “manually check in” option on the machine. Back I went to the kiosk. This time I had to scan our passports instead of the boarding pass. Which meant I had to dig the passports out of the RFID oversized wallet I keep them in in my backpack. Once scanned, I was able to move through the process of checking in (even though I had already done so online the night before). Then the machine told me to scan each passenger’s passport. I scanned mine first, but it said it couldn’t match the passport to any of the passengers. “What?!”

I tried rescanning each passport multiple times only to get the same kind of error message. I decided to exit the process and start again. After much fighting with the machine, I was finally able to coax our three luggage tags out of it, which hubby deftly attached. The kiosk offered to print our boarding passes. Normally I prefer to use mobile boarding passes, but since scanning them had presented an issue already, I decided that a printed one would be a safer option. Only one boarding pass printed before the machine beeped and spit out a notice that it couldn’t print out the boarding pass and that I needed to see a gate agent. It was at this point a niggling feeling crept in that we could possibly get stuck in Iceland if there was some kind of problem with our boarding passes. There being no gate agent in sight, we decided to just proceed with our digital boarding passes.

We dropped our checked bags at the self-service luggage station, my husband making a wise crack about hoping to get a 401K with our new airport jobs. And we continued on our way to the security checkpoint.

Now, we are seasoned travelers. Even my daughter knows how to get through security smoothly. We perform our usual routine of airport undressing and walk through the metal detector. No problem. Except my backpack (with the passports stowed safely back inside) is delayed in the bag scanner. I couldn’t see it anywhere, and for a moment I panicked thinking I had left it sitting on the ground next to the conveyor belt when I was pulling out my laptop. But then I saw it finally come through the scanner. Unfortunately, it got pulled aside for a bag check. I couldn’t imagine why my bag had been selected for an inspection. I’m always very careful how I pack it for security making sure there are no stray liquids and that all my charging cables are neatly coiled etc…The kind security agent (yes she was kind, all the security agents we encountered in Europe were very kind and nothing like their American counterparts) said it just needed to be rescanned. Ok. I waited for my bag to go through the machine again. And again, it got flagged for inspection. At the pace of a glacier, it made its way down the conveyor belt back to the same kind agent. She cheerfully said that something was wrong with the tray the bag was in. They needed to put it into a different tray and run it through the scanner one more time. That was one I’d never heard before. But third time is indeed the charm. My bag finally was green-lighted, and we were able to get on our way.

We didn’t get far. After being led through the giant duty-free shopping area into the international gates, we had to bide our time. For some reason, in Europe the departure gate often doesn’t get listed on the flight information monitors until it gets really close to the boarding time. The monitor informed us that our departure gate would be announced in a little over half an hour. We went to a centrally located café to wait. I had a coffee, hubby had a beer, and the kiddo had some fruit. And we waited. My daughter and I entertained ourselves playing a spelling app and watching Icelandic Coca-Cola commercials flashing on the big-screen nearby. The whole time we were watching the clock count down the minutes until our gate would be announced. I remarked that I hoped it wouldn’t be in the D-gates because the sign said the D gates were a 20 minute walk from where we were, which, if accurate, meant that we would arrive at our gate just as boarding was beginning. Sure enough, we were assigned gate D 27. Immediately, we headed toward the D gates, where we ran into the customs agents. Thankfully there were several customs booths open so there was no waiting in line.

A smiling customs agent with a slicked back ponytail of long blond hair kindly greeted us in English and asked for our passports. I dutifully dug them out again. She began flipping through one and her smile turned to a frown. After flipping through all the pages of the passport, she turned back to the beginning and flipped through again. Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. “How long have you been here?” she asked as she began flipping through the pages again.

It dawned on me that she was looking for a stamp indicating the beginning of our time in Europe – which I knew she wouldn’t find. I explained that we had been in Iceland for only two nights, but that we’d been in Europe for almost three months. That there was no stamp on our passport because we arrived on a transatlantic cruise that had set sail from NY and had disembarked in Portugal. She pursed her lips. And tapped her fingers impatiently on her desk. She picked up another of our three passports and flipped through it as well. Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. The agent in the adjoining booth looked at us and made a gruff remark in Icelandic.

“I’m sorry?” I replied in as nonchalant a voice as possible.

The ponytail translated, “He says you should have got your passport stamped in Portugal when you got off the ship.”

I shrugged my shoulders and replied that we simply walked off the ship and that was it.

Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. Tap, tap, tap. She leaned back and whispered something to her fellow agent. He whispered a response. She stared at us. The clock ticked. She pursed her lips and scanned our passports into her computer and then pushed them back at us with a scowl on her face.

I had kept the panic from showing in my face, but relief flooded through me. Once again, I felt like we’d narrowly escaped being stuck in Iceland. We booked it to our gate.

At D27 we joined the long line of travelers waiting to board. A gate agent came through the line checking passports, which I had quickly shoved back into my backpack and now clumsily fished out again. After checking them, the agent warned me to keep them handy to show the next agent alongside my boarding pass. The line steadily moved along as the final gate agent scanned boarding passes and matched them to passports. As we approached the gate agent, our queue split into two lines; one for scanning your own boarding pass and passport, and one to have a human scan your pass for you. Normally, I would have chosen to just scan everything myself, but knowing that we’d already had trouble with our boarding passes, I chose the human. I prayed that our boarding passes would work.

I handed the gate agent our pile of passports and she motioned for me to scan our mobile boarding passes. I scanned the first one and a loud buzz went off. I looked down and the scanner said, “unable to board.” Panic immediately set in, but I kept my poker face on. I had no idea why my boarding pass triggered that response from the machine.

“One moment,” said the agent.

Thoughts of being wrongfully detained in Iceland for an unknown reason filled my head. We did wish we’d had more time to spend in the country, but this was not how we wanted to do it. We’d been traveling for almost three months straight, and we wanted to go home. The only reason we were coming through Iceland in January anyway was because it offered the shortest transatlantic flight back to the US. Less than six hours from Reykjavik to Boston. The agent typed away on her computer entering my passport information manually, occasionally glancing at me in the process. A long line of travelers stood behind me and my family. I felt like I was in a movie where any second international police would pop around the corner and escort us to a back office…

“Ok, thank you.” She said as she handed back our passports and motioned us through the gate.

Great waves of relief surged through me as we boarded the plane and made our escape from Iceland.

 NB: I have no idea what was wrong with my boarding pass, but I’m sure the glitch has nothing to do with Iceland which is a beautiful, if austere, country with friendly people. We hope to get back and explore it properly someday.