Business in Egilsstaðir

You know how I can tell I’ve been here before? My laptop automatically joined the network.

“Home is where the wifi is,” goes the saying. I guess this town is a little slice of home.

Before leaving the hotel I placed my camera on the windowsill and took a picture of myself against the blank hotel wall.  I could crop this down and make something approximating a passport photo if I had no other option.

In the hotel lobby I managed to harass the printer into spitting out the last two pages of my bank statement, then a tiny passport-size version of the photo I took upstairs.  The color was horrible.  This would probably not work…

I rode two doors down to the bank, and hit the ATM outside it. I extracted 12,200 in Icelandic cash, then marched into the bank and had the teller wire it to the visa processing center. I asked for a receipt, which I added to the stack for the application.

Next I rode over to the restaurant and bought some pre-packaged fish for eating on the road, and then went across the main street and down a block to the post office. Time to send some gifts to some nephews!

I drew a little card to go in the box, including an anachronistic horned bicycle helmet:

My standard expression, of course!

The package was expensive to ship, but nephews are worth it.

I also found a large envelope that was perfect for containing my visa paperwork. As I paid the bill I asked the woman behind the counter if she knew where I could get a passport photo.  She led me outside and began pointing at streets and talking in Icelandic, so I handed her my phone and she pointed at an icon on the map that was right next to my hotel.  It appeared to be the computer store I’d been looking at the other day.

I rode over there, marched inside, and repeated my question about passport photos to the clerk, a big bearded man in a smart red vest. He smiled and said, “come with me,” and waved his arm toward a door leading into the back. I noticed that he had a tattoo on his forearm reading “CANON”, in the same lettering used by the Canon photography company.

There was a full photo studio in the back room, with a neutral backdrop set up for taking passport photos. This solved my problem nicely! And no doubt it’s here because I was far from the first person to have this problem.

While the clerk powered up the hardware I asked him about the tattoo. “Yeah, I was drunk at a concert,” he said by way of explanation. “But this guy from Canon saw it on my arm and said he wanted my contact information, and then he sent me a whole computer in the mail!”

“Fantastic!” I said.

Snap snap, grin grin. Wink wink nudge nudge. “The photos will be ready in about half an hour,” he said.

I rode back to the restaurant and ordered a sit-down meal, thinking about how lucky I was to discover all these resources.  Free use of a printer, passport photos across the street, a bank of the same kind required by the consulate right next door – with an ATM – a post office across the way, and then at the top of the hill a few blocks along the way to my next destination:  The office where I need to drop off the finished application.  All within walking distance if I didn’t have the bike. Or dumb luck? Or thoughtful civic planning?

I scooted up the hill to the visa office with my envelope. There was nobody in line.

Half an hour later it was submitted, and then all I could do with respect to the visa was wait. Maybe this office would sit on the paperwork for a few days before sending it to Reykjavík for evaluation; maybe not. Maybe they would reject the whole thing on a technicality. We shall see!

Back at the hotel I chatted with friends about American culture in Iceland. They were amused by my photos of the 50’s-style “Skalinn Diner”. Andrew pointed out that you’d actually need to look pretty hard to find retro American dining among the hundreds of restaurants all around the Bay Area back home, but it was there, in the form of Mel’s Diner and Fenton’s. Or you could go for the lowest-common-denominator modern version, with Denny’s and IHOP.

The conversation went kind of sideways from there:

I told James about this, and he got in on the act:

James and I got to wondering: Did Icelanders’ exposure to American radio extend to crazy DJs? Because that would be awesome. I would love to hear an Icelandic take of a crazy radio DJ.