11 Places LGBT Students Should Avoid While Studying Abroad

“At the top of the world during Midnight Sun” sounds like something I made up as if I were an emo poet.

Yet I found myself this August on the Arctic Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard before boarding the MS Trollfjord. A life-altering trip organized by Hurtigruten (www.hurtigruten.com) on the Svalbard Line South, this sojourn was not a queer trip, per se. But considering Norway’s progressive LGBTQ+ and gender politics, and that I flew 4,500 miles from Los Angeles to Longyearbyen in Svalbard where the sun never dipped below the horizon, I was struck with true awe and a delightful queerness in my out-of-time romantic surroundings.