Boxes and coffee

Now that the bike was unpacked and ready, I needed to deal with the box.

The next step was to get the box shipped out of the country. Like last time, I couldn’t be sure of my eventual destination, so I couldn’t just send it ahead of me. I needed to ship it to someone who could hold onto it for three months or possibly longer, and then be willing to send it somewhere else.

Extra strategy time!

Instead of getting out at the airport like a sucker I asked the shuttle driver to take me around the corner to the DHL depot.

I didn’t do this last time because I didn’t know exactly where the DHL office was or what it looked like.  I thought perhaps it was a desk inside the airport itself.  I also didn’t know where the shuttle would be dropping me off relative to anything else.  This time I had a mental fix on it.

The lobby was closed but a guy came out and started to tell me that the nearest DHL shipment center was quite a ways away. Then he paused mid-sentence, shook his head as if to clear it, and told me to come inside because they could just ship the package here.

He brought me back into the rear office, and I sat in a chair by his desk. He opened the website shipping interface on his computer and walked through the forms with me. All around, people were moving boxes and loading up a van, listening to 80’s-era rock music loud on a stereo built into the wall. In about ten minutes they shut the van doors with a bang and it sped out of the loading bay.

My friend clicked the last button on the form and saw that the site intended to charge me 900 dollars to ship an empty box. He hissed in his breath, then without saying a word to me, he put on his earphones and made several phone calls, talking rapidly in Icelandic. He leaned his head close to mine and said, “bear with me,” then got up and left the desk for a while, still arguing on the phone in Icelandic. Eventually he pulled out his earpiece and sat down again. He opened another window on his computer, typed a few things, and presented me with a bill for $450 — cutting the cost in half.  I had never asked for a discount, and he had no obligation to give one to a wacky foreign tourist like me, but there it was. I could only conclude that charging so much to ship a box was morally offensive to him, and he had the freedom to do something about it, and so he did.

While the paperwork printed and he ran my credit card, we chatted about traveling the island and the weather projections, and I showed him a picture of the bike.

He wished me a good journey.

Note for next time:  bring an entire roll of tape, not just a quarter.

In the evening I visited the cafe I’d grown fond of on the last visit.

“I think a tip jar is just thievery.  People in Iceland get paid a living wage.  But it’s complicated, because sometimes visitors feel obligated to leave a tip, or the custom is too strong and they feel weird if they don’t do it.  So I have a jar at the end of the bar there but I don’t label it.  Really though, don’t tip.  It’s just businesses taking money for no reason here.  It’s almost stealing.”

“I see what you mean.  Yeah, I wish it was like this back in the U.S.  Employers can hire someone and pay them very little, because they know they’ll make money from tips.  But then they take a cut of the tips.  They should just pay them a living wage.”

“Yeah.  And it’s also confusing for me when I travel.  I was back in the ‘States, and I gave a tip to a waiter who did a really good job.  My friends told me that he doesn’t actually get the money; it goes into a pot and all the waiters get a cut, and also the chef in the back.  That doesn’t seem right.  How do I reward good service?  And if a waiter is doing badly, the other waters will want to punish them.  Plus the taxes are different in every state.  I feel bad if I don’t tip, but how much is right?  So, I don’t know.  But there’s two things I tell everyone who comes to Iceland:  One, don’t tip for anything.  And two, don’t buy the bottled water.  The water from the tap is better.  And it hasn’t been sitting in a plastic bottle on a shelf for who-the-eff-knows how long, pardon my language.”

After my chat I ordered a tasty looking slice of cake, and what I’ve decided to call an Icelandic-style mocha, which is more like an elaborate hot chocolate with coffee mixed in. I ain’t complaining — it’s delicious!

There’s that guy again… I suppose it’s time for me to hit the internet and try and figure out who he actually is.

Aha. It’s a painting of a fisherman by a German-born artist named Harry Haerendel. Apparently it’s become popular in a semi-ironic way. “You come to Iceland thinking about stoic old fisherman, yeah? Okay, here he is. The rest of us don’t fish much, but he does.”

After my pie and coffee, I went riding around in search of more substantial food, and came upon a tiny little fish and chips shop:

While I chomped my order inside and away from the wind, I read the little “about us” poster they were displaying on the wall:

Across the street I could see a situation unfolding that I’d never seen during my previous visit. A police officer pulling over a motorist.

A little more riding around town and I came upon something I never thought I’d see in Iceland: A vandalized car.

For a brief moment it was just like being back in Oakland. And not in a fun way.

But then I saw something that made me laugh out loud, as I was riding back to the hotel for a nap:

I suppose you have to be of “a certain age” now to find it funny that a shop is making an oblique reference to “Olsen twins”. (But it’s not really worth explaining, so if you don’t get it, go poke the internet!)

I crawled into my hotel bed and tried to sleep for five whole hours, but tossed and turned with my brain racing instead. “Don’t Stop Believin'” kept echoing around in my head, to my extreme annoyance. The restaurant I used to frequent back in Santa Cruz would play that song every night as they shut down, and I’d grown to dread the way the few remaining patrons would burst into song during the chorus. Now it was filling the silence of this room. Arrgh!

I had coffee but it was seven hours ago.  Would it still be that strong? Was my resistance to Icelandic coffee weaker?