July 21, 2019 Filed under Amused, Inspiration
“Bloody explorers. Ponce off to mumbo-jumbo land and arrive home with a tropical disease, a suntan, and a bag of brown lumpy things, and Bob’s your uncle and everyone’s got a picture of them in the lavatory. I mean, what about all the people who do all the work?”
Edmund Blackadder
July 21, 2019 Filed under Curious, Introspection
As a tourist, it’s always a strange feeling on the last day of exploring a city. Part of you knows that you may never see this place again, and your one chance to know it intimately is slipping away. The urge to linger – when you have the chance in a relaxed schedule – needles you constantly. “Oh, this place is great; I’ll come back again some time for sure,” you say, knowing it’s a lie.
One of the things that compels me to linger is the thoughtful city planning. Take this street for example. There are benches and tables all along it, oriented so that you can sit down and watch the languid summer sun creep slowly up the base of the church and light up each stained-glass window along the way, reflecting the sun straight back down at you from each one. I only had time to watch it for about fifteen minutes while I ate a little dish of ice cream, but even that made an impression.
Like many experiences I’ve had in this city, it had a gravitational effect. It tugged at my feet, urging them to stay in place. To me, Reykjavik in the summer is like spending a day in San Francisco, except a polished microcosm of that city – smaller, cleaner, safer – and that day keeps going, and going, for two entire months of time. Just one absurdly long perfect day, with sunset clouds bursting over it to mark each ration of 24 hours. I had just enough time to establish a comfortable routine and play with it, and I seriously could have rolled with that routine for 60 more days and been happy — and productive at work.
Writ large, this is the worldwide vagabond lifestyle that many young people aspire to. But even though it’s within reach for me, I can tell it’s no longer a good fit, and perhaps it never was. I’m not here just to be in Iceland. I’m on a mission, and that is to cross Iceland. Having that mission and making progress on it is important to me. And so … On I will go.
By leaving this city I am also leaving the cultural center of Iceland, with almost all of it unexplored. That is a shame.
A new friend from Russia!
A summer night in Reykjavik is night in name only. It’s more like the city is a giant 24-hour restaurant, and the management is dimming the lights to remind people they need to go home and sleep at some point. Of course, you’re free to ignore the suggestion and go strolling around.
On day three of my Reykjavik residence I noticed that almost all my exploration was in the downtown area, so I tried to branch out. I had been planted in a coffee shop all day, with a laptop and a mocha, like an art installation called “Nerd On Vacation,” and the day had vanished in one of those mental editing tricks that introspective people can play on themselves. I found myself outside at 11:00pm with too much energy and no more coffee shops. So I rode over to Tjörnin pond. I couldn’t pronounce it but I could still appreciate it.
Maybe it's a statement about the youth of today or something?
All kinds of interesting themes I could pull out of this sculpture. But the real question is: Does it impress the ducks?
Naptime for ducks!
No, the ducks are not impressed. Then seem to prefer the mermaid.
My favorite part of this photo is the ducks cuddled up to the mermaid.
Birds can really ruin your look.
A similar statue was placed on the shore about 25 meters away, but was curiously free of bird crap. Maybe it’s too hard to stand on.
One of my favorite spots to visit was the church in the city center, which was good because when I ride around randomly I tend to choose uphill more than downhill, and I found myself accidentally returning to it five or six times.
The church is the tallest building in the entire country. There’s probably a law on the books saying it has to stay that way. The sculpture is quite dramatic. A little too dramatic, perhaps…
Dang, what time is it? If only I could lean back just a little more...
“What, go to church? WHO’S GOT THE TIME? … The church does? Well that’s not fair!!”
“Sailed here, built this church on this rock, froze to death 19 times, screw it I’m going to Tahiti.”
“Built this city on rock and roll / Frozen wasteland took its toll / Goats and plunder are my scene / Didn’t tan but did turn green.”
The sunset colors around the church were astonishing. I hauled out the tripod for some HDR-style shenanigans.
While I was out and about I noticed a shift in the population. The crowds reduced, but they also turned younger and even more touristy than before. I saw small groups of people talking loudly and moving with purpose: Pub crawlers! Same as everywhere on the planet.
While I was taking pictures of the church a group of seven Germans walked over to me and surrounded me and my bike in a ring. My Oakland alarm sirens began blaring on high alert: “DANGER! LOCATE A WEAPON AND LOOK FOR EXITS!” … but I suppressed them. In Iceland, this kind of situation probably doesn’t mean the same as back home. Probably. On the other hand, intoxicated people can make poor decisions no matter where they are…
I decided to start out friendly. I reasoned that if they were looking for trouble, or wanted to prey on a vulnerable tourist, they would not have chosen me — especially when I’m dressed in my full riding gear and standing next to a bike loaded with who-knows-what kind of supplies. I could be some kind of “Crocodile Dundee” world explorer with an ugly knife in my saddle bag and a habit of using it casually.
“Wow, that is an amazing bicycle!” “What’s it called?” “How do you ride it?”
Ah, okay, it’s the usual thing. I answered their barrage of excited questions, explaining what a recumbent bike was and the different kinds. One big guy in particular said, “I have to get one of these! But I don’t know, maybe I can’t ride it?”
“Well, a lot of the time I let people do test-rides!” I said. “But I don’t think you should try because it takes a lot of balance and you might crash. Tell you what; you can try sitting down on it. I’ll hold it up.”
He hesitated, looked around at his friends, and then bellowed “Yes! I will do it!” as if they had just asked him to arm-wrestle the biggest guy in the pub, and he was committed to the disaster. He then turned to the man on his left and actually followed up with: “Hold my beer.”
I moved the handlebars forward and he stepped over the seat, then sat down while I held the brake. “Now put your foot on the pedal there, see?” I said. He wobbled a bit, then got his other leg up and he was in the riding position. His friends let out a cheer.
“Wow! This is so comfy! The back support — like an easy chair. If this isn’t from America, it should be!”
I laughed. He wobbled a little bit more, then got his legs back down and stood up. His friend gave him back his beer: Mission accomplished. We chatted a bit more and the circle broke up, then I climbed aboard and rode to another part of the square — partly because I knew they would want to see how I ride the bike, and partly because I wanted to get away. They were friendly but it was still just too uncomfortable being surrounded like that.
Now that's how you label a pack of cigarettes.
Late night munchies? THE VÖFFLUVAGNINN has you covered! Whoops, I spoke to soon; it’s closed.
July 19, 2019 Filed under Amused, Introspection, Stress
I didn’t sleep well this morning due to jet lag, and I got up and immediately had to start working. That went on for five hours, and I didn’t make much progress. Then I got out the bike and a minimal set of gear and went riding over to the hostel — the only building in the whole city that has coin-op washing machines.
It was about four miles to get there. I exchanged some money for coins and soap, and threw my clothing into a cold water wash. There was nothing to do but wait for an hour, so I sat next to the machines and did more work on the laptop.
Laundry day!
People kept wandering into the room to see if the machines were free yet. One woman collected her laundry from the dryer and sat down next to me at the table to fold it, and struck up a conversation. She was Australian, about 30 years old, wearing hiking pants and a floral-print blouse. Her hair was brown and shoulder-length, tied behind her head, and it bobbed a little as she gestured with her muscular forearms. Every inch of exposed skin was lightly tanned and covered in freckles. When she wasn’t looking down to fold a piece of clothing, she held my gaze easily with intense blue-gray eyes.
We talked about bike touring and travel, and what it was like being immersed in different cultures. She’d traveled much more extensively than me – gone all over Europe and Asia – and done it entirely alone. For the last five years she’d spent maybe six months total back in Australia. She talked about mountain climbing, and skiing, and a huge dance festival in the Spanish countryside, and an ashram she liked in Northern India, and hopping around the Greek islands. She did technical work with a laptop to support herself but mostly she got around by joining other groups of people and keeping her costs low. She was confident and opinionated and smart and pretty and she knew it, and she casually assumed I knew it too.
She finished folding and lingered for a while. Her stories were amazing, but to be honest, something about her irritated me and I instinctively kept her at arms’ length.
I got up to switch my clothes to the dryer, and as soon as I banged the door shut a group of people barged in and threw their consolidated laundry into the newly vacant machines. The room was cramped, and the Australian woman collected her laundry and wished me luck on my travels, and left. It had been conversation to fill time. I was sure that in a day – or less – she would completely forget about meeting me.
As I sat there fiddling with my laptop, I realized what it was about her that I didn’t like. She presented herself as an open book, and casually assumed I was too dumb to notice that she’d ripped the last few chapters out and locked them in a drawer somewhere.
I pictured her, moving from place to place, meeting new people bound on the same journey and doing a brain-dump into them to fill the time, accumulating and disposing of friends and romantic partners, laying down the next destination in front of herself like a segment of train track because — well, why? Why does she keep moving?
“Hmm. I bet she’s not looking for anything in particular,” I thought. “I bet she’s trying to stay ahead of something. I think I know what it is.”
“I wonder if she realizes that the loneliness she sometimes feels creeping up the back of her spine is something that she needs to develop certain skills to alleviate, and that her current lifestyle doesn’t actually exercise those skills. Emotional intimacy, vulnerability, compromise, trust — these are not things we can step into like a new pair of shoes after walking without them for year after year. If she doesn’t attend to them, that loneliness is going to keep growing, and extend filaments into everything and lock itself in place.”
It was a prediction based on a hunch, and I knew I couldn’t really see who she was in just half an hour of talking. My thoughts said more about me – and what was on my mind – than they said about her. Was I traveling to find something — or stay ahead of something?
I rolled that around in my head as I waited for the dryer to finish, then I dumped everything into a saddlebag without folding it and got back on the road to do more chores. On the way out of the hostel I saw a flyer advertising “singles night” in the dining area. Wow, hostels really are little worlds of their own. Do they all feel like college dorms? I’m glad I’m not staying in one.
I rode across town to an electronics shop, and bought a USB3-B cable so I could use the remote control for my big camera. I also mailed a package to the nephews back home, and while I was at the post office I got a “camping card” that lets me stay at a bunch of different campsites around Iceland for a nice discount.
(I sat down later in a Thai restaurant and looked over the map that comes with the card, and realized that not very many of the campsites I need are covered by it. Hopefully I can still use the entire amount before I leave…)
I rode back to my AirBnB and dumped my laundry on the bed. As I organized it, I looked around and realized I couldn’t find my green shirt — the one with the bicycle and “Infinite MPG” written on it. Dang, I must have left it back at the hostel. I really like that shirt! Now I was gonna have to ride all the way back there to look for it. Ugh. I grabbed my bag and marched outside.
Along the way a driver shoved her way out into the intersection to make a left, putting me in danger. “Grrr, what an idiot!” I thought to myself. When I got to the hostel, Alanis Morrisette was singing about irony over the loudspeakers in the common area, and I grimaced and thought “Ugh I hate this song!” I checked all around but didn’t find my shirt, so I decided to ask at the front desk. The greasy hiker guy in line ahead of me wanted to buy a postcard and then wanted to haggle over the price, and then the woman at the register put in the wrong numbers and undercharged him. “Ugh; is everybody here stoned?” I thought to myself.
I asked the cashier if she’d seen a green shirt with a bicycle on it, and she said I should ask the cleaning staff, so I tracked them down. They said no, but I should check the Red Cross donation bins. I pawed through those and found nothing. Looks like someone decided to become the new owner of my shirt, and there was nothing I could do about it.
On the way out of the hostel, I got a message from a Facebook acquaintance linking to an editorial in the Paris Review. I unlocked my bike and then stood there reading it. “Oh wait, I’ve seen this,” I said. “Someone sent this to me yesterday. Wow; what are the chances of that?”
It was about some unfortunate woman who’d walked away from her wedding engagement and decided to go on an expedition to look for whooping cranes. It was rambling, had an incoherent timeline, and amounted mostly to an excoriation of her asshole ex-fiancè — who truly was an asshole, no doubt about it. It reminded me of a thousand earnest, wounded blog posts I’d seen in my 20’s from similarly-aged people on Livejournal, and I thought to myself, “Ugh I’m supposed to relate to this and give some kind supportive word about it, but I actually just loathe it.”
Then a funny thing happened.
I looked up, and said out loud, “Wow; I hate everything today!!” and laughed insanely for half a minute. The hostel kids eating lunch in the common area stared at me, which made me laugh even harder.
I had four other shirts, and the search had only cost me an hour. “Lighten up, you jackass!” I said to myself. “You’re in Iceland, your life is awesome, this day is awesome, and it’s dinner time!”
Next stop was a thai restaurant.
If it wasn’t clear to me already from riding through the towns on the outskirts of Reykjavik, it would be clear now: The capital city is a different world.
If these buildings weren't painted so nicely, the city would look quite different.
It’s mostly cement and steel, but to my eye, it sometimes looks like a little toy lego version of a city. In fact, I think the relationship goes both ways: If a child was given a heap of legos and told to build a city, they would probably create something that looks suspiciously like Reykjavik to an Icelander.
Now that I was established in my room, I reconfigured my bike for around-town touring and set off in search of food. I didn’t have hard data but I was sure I’d burned a ludicrous amount of calories getting here, and it was time to eat, sort photos, and catch up on work.
I put on my pants and Hawaiian tourist shirt – to be like Twoflower – and rode downtown to the trendy tourist area. Well, the area that was even more touristy than the rest of the city. For the first time since arriving in Iceland I entered an actual crowd. The bike got the usual distracted stares of course. I planned to spend many hours on the laptop so my destination was a cafe that claimed to be open late, and when I arrived I found a bike rack only 20 meters away, which pleased me. I can get right to work! Great to be in the city!
Catching up on the hackery
The cafe served sandwiches, cake, and various kinds of coffee. So I got one of each. Again the price was only slightly less than what I would have paid in San Francisco. Appalling to the tourists, just another day for me.
Look familiar, science fiction fans?
I was very pleased to see a crafty science fiction reference decorating the walls.
The cafe turned out to be a great place to hang out, and just like the cafe in Keflavik, I decided I would go there regularly. I know it seems stupid for a person visiting a huge city for a limited time to spend more than one day in the same place, but routine is an important part of my well-being, and the theme of my journey – the thesis if you will – is that it’s just as valuable to spend a lot of time absorbing the detail of one place, as it is to get a surface impression of many places. Perhaps even more valuable.
Yes, it's a real place.
Yes; it's the Lebowski Bar.
I had other options of course. The Big Lebowski Bar and the Chuck Norris Grill, to name two.
Yeah, I ain’t kidding! These are real places, and very self-aware.
Along with the photos and the work, I also answered some more curious questions from friends:
Right now my best summary is, three years of Trump have not displaced three generations of slow immersion in American pop culture, and money, and military presence, with both good and bad influences.
A little bit of history here to set the stage.
Iceland was mostly populated by subsistence farmers and fishermen, of varying cultural origins, for many centuries. After World War II that all changed, and the US had a heavy hand in directing those changes, giving a big chunk of money to Iceland through the Marshall Plan and establishing a military base there as part of NATO. Iceland leapt forward and despite being the most sparsely populated country in Europe, also became one of the wealthiest and most modern.
The money was welcomed, the military protection grudgingly accepted, but Americans personally were not. Almost all the contention was over American soldiers mixing with Icelandic women. Soldiers were given curfews, women were put in jail, et cetera. The view back from the present is not a kind one: Icelanders said they were protecting culture, but what they were doing was policing their daughters. Just another case of men trying to control women for the sake of their bloodline.
Modern concerns about Icelandic culture are much more thoughtful and empathetic. It’s not about controlling women’s bodies, it’s directly about preserving history, attitudes, and the land itself. And these concerns are valid: Over the span of 70 years and two or three generations, the attitude towards Americans gradually shifted and the cultural influence of films, books, and most especially music emanating from the military base radio station has slowly but inexorably permeated Iceland and extinguished a lot of traditions. Plus, Iceland integrated very tightly with the world economy, and the American economy especially. The economic crash of 2008 was devastating for Icelanders, and a lot of their recovery has been centered around tourism, which is a further threat to their individuality.
(As an aside, the military base was shuttered in in 2006, and Iceland now has no standing army of its own.)
So, how does this translate to the reception of Americans on the ground?
Like anywhere, it’s a love and hate thing. People from politically liberal or affluent families in the US make good tourists of Iceland, and are well received. Their instincts are similar. Those who show up and are loud, crass, ignorant, and messy, because that’s how they are back home, are thoroughly disliked.
For example: I came downstairs from my hotel room, on my second day in Iceland, to ride my freshly assembled bike around town and I passed by the bar area in the hotel lobby. There were eight or nine American servicemen there getting drunk and talking crap to each other in loud voices. One of them took a drink and bellowed: “Okay guys here’s a question, how many of you would fuck a midget?”
His shouted question got a pile of shouted responses from his friends, all of them just as crass and stupid as you can imagine.
The woman behind the desk who had been so pleasant to me in our interactions over the past few days had a look on her face like, “I wish all of these people would catch fire and die.” And I felt exactly the same way. I wanted to make some comment like, “on behalf of Americans, I apologize for those jerks over there,” but she was less than 15 feet away from them and I didn’t want them to overhear it and punish her. So I just hoped I was a counterexample.
I’ve been friendly, thankful, and straight-forward, and every one of my conversations has gone well. But of course open conflict over anything is highly discouraged in Icelandic society, so, how would I really know what people think?
To compare wireless coverage for Americans, I think it makes sense to compare Iceland to the state of Idaho, which has several massive mountain ranges threading across it. Iceland has about 40,000 square miles of land area. That’s about half the size of the state of Idaho. Its highest peak is Hvannadalshnjúkur, about half the height of Borah Peak in Idaho. It has about 330,000 people in it. That’s less than one fifth of the population of Idaho. The land mass of Iceland has 95% wireless coverage. In Idaho, two competing cell networks give Idaho about 85% land coverage, reaching 99.4% of the population. So, in real terms, it’s about the same.
Plenty of folks out and about at 1:30 in the morning. As it should be!
Pssst... Wanna buy some Nordic crap? Don't look too closely at the lettering. Obviously not made by native speakers.
To my Bay Area eye, this looks like someone is making a weird cultural statement by dressing up a perfectly good house so it looks like a barn.