Reykjavik, Day Two

I've just had a dinner of Hakkbollur (lamb meatballs) in gravy, with mashed potatoes, and with that, I think I'm officially over Iceland.

At this time of year, Iceland's days are roughly 20 hours long, and the "darkness" is more like dusk for the other 4. Apparently I was so worn out that I failed to notice any of this and slept for 12 hours last night. When I woke up, I felt totally refreshed, and was completely adjusted to the new time zone. I'll say it one more time: having screwed up circadian rhythms can be a blessing, but only when you're traveling.

After breakfast and coffee, I spent my afternoon wandering beautiful downtown Reykjavik, in the wind and drizzly rain. I saw lots of churches and statues, walked around the pond, bought some souvenirs, and took a few pictures. And now I'm pretty much done with this place.

It seems that Iceland is a country like no other in many ways, but that's because of the variety of natural wonders all within this small island. I'm probably 90% City Girl and I couldn't justify spending $150, and a whole day, exploring nature with a tour group. If I ever come back here, I'll rent a car and go find nature on my own. This time, I stayed in town, and there wasn't all that much to see.

The oldest building in Reykjavik was built in something like 1745, so it's not exactly filled with the historical sites of other European cities. The streets in the Old Centre are one tourist trap after another, and I was finding myself hard pressed to spot any locals. I'm a sucker for water, and there's plenty of that, so I quite enjoyed sitting on the various banks. It's a nice, friendly place and absolutely worth the trip, I've just had trouble experiencing anything distinctly Icelandic here.

Because of that, combined with the kitchen facilities in my hotel room, I decided to save money and not eat out much. I have tried local brews and foods: the aforementioned lamb dinner (meatballs a bit gamey, but fantastic gravy!), and skyr (sort of like yogurt, but technically a healthier form of cheese). I figured the (many many!) bars were full of other tourists, and skipped them for a couple of beers from the 1011. As a side note, every third store front seems to be a pub here, but I haven't seen a single store selling liquor or wine, and the grocery stores don't even have beer. The convenience store (1011, the Icelandic 7-11?) has only light beer with 2-3% alcohol. Very odd to me.

So I've foregone the drunken antics and am in for the night, especially since I have to get up at 4am to get back to the airport for my flight tomorrow. Next I'm off to Amsterdam. It's unfortunate that I no longer partake of any of the typical activities tourists visit the Netherlands for, but I'm sure I'll find something to get up to...

Reykjavik

Looks like my first day in Reykjavik will be ending early. It's a gorgeous day here, blue sky, a bit of a wind chill, but nothing I'm not used to. The sun is low to the horizon, so it's always in my eyes, and I'm sure I'm already a little sunburned.

So far I've spent some time down by the water near the harbor, and wandered all around the City Center. I'm on foot, so I haven't gone far from my hotel, which is right in the middle of the touristy area. Everyone is friendly, and automatically speaks English when they see me. Am I that obvious?

There's still plenty to see, and wow, are there a lot of bars to visit! It's reminding me a bit of the same type of area in Edinburgh, only here there's no castle looming above it all.

Unfortunately I'm so sleep-deprived that everything's a bit surreal. I'm having trouble taking it all in, and engaging with other humans. Since I have all day tomorrow to explore, I gave in and accepted an early bedtime. I picked up a few groceries -- it's so awesome that I have a mini kitchen in my room -- and I'm back to relax and plan out everything I want to see in my second day here.

More tomorrow... which I hope will make more sense after I've had a good night's sleep and can get my wits about me.

The Beginning

It's about 9:30am in Reykjavik, and I'm sitting at the desk of my (upgraded to studio!) hotel room, trying to figure out how to get into the wifi. This is probably being posted much later than I'm writing it.

I didn't sleep much on the plane, or for the two nights before I left, so I'm completely exhausted, but I need to adjust to the new time zone. I'm trying to pretend that I just woke up, rather than just arrived. I took a shower, ate a breakfast bar, and now I'm drinking some coffee. After this, I'll dig into my guidebook and figure out what I'm doing for the rest of the morning. My brain is starting to play along, but my eyes are refusing to buy it. They don't want to be open anymore.

I'm also listening to Catatonia, but wishing I had some Sigur Ros on my iTunes. The in-flight system had a large selection of Icelandic music, which I've always loved, because it just doesn't sound like anything else. As we descended, I looked out the window at the big pile of rocks and glaciers we were heading toward, with Meo Blodnasir in my ear buds, and it just made sense. All music from this country has a strange and ethereal quality that fits the unique place the artists come from, but if Iceland has theme music, it's Sigur Ros.

My first photo of the trip was taken out the window of the bus between Keflavik and Reykjavik. I kept seeing these amazing scenes out the window, so I finally grabbed my camera, and ended up with a photo that could easily be the Washington coastline. It's really so different, and yet so much the same.

The main international airport for all of Iceland is only a few scattered buildings and runways in the middle of rocky terrain. The town of Keflavik is visible in the distance, with a backdrop of the sea. Turn around, and it's all mountains and plumes of geothermal steam. The smell of sulphur is in the air from the moment you step off the plane, but soon becomes so commonplace that your senses fail to register it -- until you turn on a hot water tap and the distinct odor again rises in the steam.

As you get close to Reykjavik, the rock and moss disappears, and it seems that you could be in any North American suburb. There are large houses with foreign cars parked in the driveway, and American fast food joints peppered throughout. Reykjavik itself is more like any European town, with narrow streets and quaint buildings crammed close together. It's clear the tourist industry has become huge here, seeing all the businesses catering to us. I'm sure I'll find out more about that as I venture out today.

I may be dead tired, my neck may hurt from 7 hours on a plane, but I'm so glad I'm here.

Crazy Town

For someone who never traveled until a couple of years ago, I've gotten good at it. I'm a totally jaded flyer, and I have the routine pretty much down. It makes things go more smoothly, because I can execute the routine without having to think much about it. Unfortunately, not all the steps in the standard process are enjoyable.

I spend a lot of time getting stressed about everything that needs to be taken care of before I leave home, but at some point, I get it all done. A feeling of zen calm comes over me, a pure contentment which OCD people like me can only experience when we've crossed every To Do off the list, and then I can relax. I snuggle up with a cat, watch some TV, maybe drink a glass of wine. I might even sleep through the night. But sooner or later it hits me: The Oh Shit Moment.

As in Oh shit, I'm about to go halfway around the world to visit 5 countries where I don't speak any of the languages. I'll have no immediate connection home, and if things go pear-shaped, I've got no one to back me up.

That's where I am now. Welcome to Crazy Town.

The funny thing is, I need to go through this stage, much as I hate it, much as it's making me sleep-deprived and nauseated right now. Once it's over, I'll be ready to go have a great trip, stress-free, but I have to do this first. I recently read that if you tell a pessimist everything will be okay, don't worry about it, they tend to panic. If you let them freak out about every possible way things can go wrong, they get their contingency plans set, and then they're calm and have a positive outlook. Optimists work the opposite way. Evidently I've always been a pessimist.

Besides, I spent a lot of my childhood living in fear of what could happen, being shy, listening to my overprotective mother who saw danger in every shadow. Life sucks like that, so in order to live fearlessly, I have to do things that scare me a little bit. If I wasn't freaking out a little, what would be the point? Life's too short, so I do everything I want to do, even if it causes momentary panic. Like going halfway around the world to 5 countries where I don't speak the language, with no one to rely on but myself. And truly, I recommend it to everyone. There's nothing like the feeling of confidence and independence when you complete the adventure.

But now, I have to head to the airport in a couple hours, so it's back to Crazy Town for me. There's still so much left to do before I can relax and enjoy my vacation.

Next Stop, Iceland...

An Incongruous Movie Location

I was just reading my new issue of Chicago magazine, and I finally realized that there are other people just as crazy as me about movies. Well, crazy in the same way, at least.  Chicago* always has the standard back-page-editorial-what-have-you pieces that I never fail to read. This time, Jeff Ruby commented on the Top 40 Chicago Movies feature by writing about how he's one of those people who polices the locations of movies set in Chicago.

I wish the article was online, but it's not there yet, so I'll just have to touch on the main point: Some of us get psyched to see our hometowns on screen, but movies often fail to follow location paths that actually make sense in reality, and that makes us crazy.

This is exactly why I can't enjoy any movie that is set in, or just filmed in, Seattle. While I loved Reaper, anytime they went outdoors, I'd pick out the Vancouver, BC, scenery that they were claiming as some specific Seattle location. Since I moved to Seattle, I haven't been able to watch Say Anything without rolling my eyes at the random cuts between driving down 45th in Wallingford or the Viaduct and locations far from those roads. It's totally incongruous. I recently watched Love Happens, and instead of escaping into a perfectly respectable sappy and predictable romantic comedy, I spent 109 minutes yelling at my TV, saying things like Why are you driving down the tiny road in front of Pike Place Market to get from the airport to downtown?! That's ridiculous! Not only is it totally not on the way, nobody ever drives on that road unless they're a Pike Place vendor!

Ok, I'm not sure what my point is, I guess I'm just glad I'm not the only one. I might be the only one in Seattle, but according to Jeff Ruby, there's a whole Hey that's [insert specific location] subculture in Chicago.

Just one more reason for me to be there. Do people in Seattle even see movies featuring their own city? Or are they too busy shopping in thrift stores and not washing their hair? Where's my Seattle Hey that's cult?

If you exist, come out of the shadows, folks. It's okay; this is a safe space.


*Yes, I subscribe to Chicago magazine. I freakin' LOVE Chicago. Why? Because I just feel like I belong in that town. It's full of no-nonsense, hard-drinking, meat-eating, multi-hyphenated-adjective-described working class heroes. My favorite grandparent grew up there. They still have old school gangsters with names like Legs Manhattan, for godssake! Why doesn't EVERYONE want to live there?

Anywhere but Here

I always manage to get sick right before I travel. If I don't, then I catch something on an airplane so I'm sick by the time I get back. I leave the continent in 5 days, so of course I'm home from work today with a virus of some sort. I tried to get up and go into the office, but that clearly wasn't happening, so I decided to work from home instead. Then I realized that I need to take a break. I get so stressed out trying to do a million things before I leave, that my immune system just flips me off. It's not like I'm all that healthy to begin with, and after a lazy weekend I'm still suffering. So instead of freaking out and trying to get work done, I have spent my day curled up on the couch with a cat or three.

That was a lot of backstory when I could've just said, "I've been home watching television all day, and...." Oh well. Nobody ever accused me of being a woman of few words.

Where was I? Oh yeah, trying to get to the point. Earlier I watched a rerun of The Fifth Estate wherein a Canadian guy made a comment about why he moved to New Zealand. It wasn't at all germane to the story being told, but it was the only part of the show that stuck with me. He said (I'm paraphrasing), "Sometimes a place just grabs you. You don't go looking for a place, you just get there and it grabs you for one reason or another."

His comment perfectly describes how I decide where I want to live, which seems like such an arbitrary process to everyone else. And it explains why I travel so much now. Seattle grabbed me long ago, and held on tight, but now it's more like a failing relationship. I'm not the same person I was back then; it's just not working anymore, and I know deep down that it's over. And even though I'm sticking around, trying to make the best of things, working to remember what I fell in love with all those years ago, I can't help but take a look at the other options. It's only a matter of time before I leave Seattle for one of them.

So I get on a plane, as often as possible. I shop around for other cities. Most of them do nothing for me, but occasionally something just works. London grabbed me. Chicago grabs me time and again. Most of them aren't realistic long-term, but it's still nice to have a fling, to feel at home for a while. Maybe Amsterdam will get its hooks in me this time. Or Malmo, Sweden. Maybe I'll just be happy to come back to Seattle's comfortable, familiar -- albeit dark and passive-aggressive -- embrace.

I just won't know until I get there. And that's the best part.

Iceland (I hope)

At long last, it is almost time for me to begin traveling again. This means that right now my stress level is high, and my cash stocks are low, with all the stuff I need to get done before I leave. But two weeks from today, I'll be in Reykjavik, enjoying the first leg of my trip, and making it all worth it... I hope.

Eyjafjallajokull (which is hard to spell, but really fun to say - eye-ya-fya-la-yuh-kul) is doing its best to thwart my trip. I'm not really worried about the eruption itself; I live in the Pacific Ring of Fire, so what do I care? My worries are only around the airport closures which seem to be happening (seriously) every other day at Keflavik.

Odds are high that either my flight will be cancelled, or I'll be rerouted to another small airport and put on a bus for 4 hours into Reykjavik. The former is unacceptable. The latter, I don't really mind. Under normal circumstances, I do my best to avoid bus rides of any length, but it might actually be cool to spend a good chunk of my day looking out the window at Iceland. It's a crazy place -- glaciers, volcanoes, body builders -- who wouldn't want to see it? I just need a window seat. Outta the way, Tourists!

Besides, what's travel without a little adventure? I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I can actually get there somehow. And then get back out...