July 2008

We arrived home from our hiking trip last night after a fantastic time away. Incredible how many amazing adventures can be packed into four short days. Here’s a quick run-through of our itinerary:

TUESDAY

Left Reykjavík around 2 pm, drove due north to Hofsós, a small fishing village on the edge of Skagafjörður fjord, where we had our base. Got settled into the house our group had rented for the duration of our trip. People started arriving and we wondered with some concern how 15 of us were going to manage with the TINY kitchen in the place.

WEDNESDAY

Drove further north still, to the foot of Siglufjarðarskarð mountain pass. Those with cars drove them on to Siglufjörður, while the rest of us set off. The drivers then came back in a single car and caught up with us en route. Hiked up the mountain and through the pass, coming down the other side and into Siglufjörður, where we visited the incredible Herring Age Museum. YT is not much of a museum person but I loved this place, especially the live reenactment of the herring age, which made for a Klondike-like atmosphere in the early part of the last century.

Next we went to the only cafe in the place, which happened to be a Pizza 67, and then drove back to Hofsós.

THURSDAY

Sailed out to Drangey, to which the outlaw Grettir Ásmundsson fled and was later killed. Stunning, stunning place, filled with puffins and Kittiwakes. Seriously, I cannot adequately describe my impression in this small space - it’s otherworldly. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it, from near and far. More on Drangey later.

When we got back, we headed to Hólar, which is one of the two Bishoprics in Iceland, and had a look around. From there we crossed the fjord for a dip in Grettislaug, which is a naturally hot pool in which Grettir is said to have warmed himself after swimming all the way from Drangey. EPI and I forgot our bathing suits [or, I forgot them] so after some coaxing from the others we ended up going in in our underwear.

FRIDAY

Drove out to see some place called Ábær, where a woman lived with her five children or something. The road was horrible, and since EPI and I were not driving a SUV and all the SUVs the others were driving were full, we let them go on ahead and went on our own hike, which was great.

Went from there to Mælifell, which is the highest peak in the area, around 1,100 metres above sea level. The Ábær adventure had taken so long that we didn’t get there until 4 pm. We’d planned to go all the way up, but by 6 we were only halfway there and a few of us were getting pretty hungry and tired. We headed down [the women, if you must know], while four of us [the men, if you must know] went all the way to the top. Next time I’m starting the day by going there - and going all the way up.

SATURDAY

Drove out to a nearby headland called Þórðarhöfði. Had to hike for a long distance along a rocky spit before we actually got to it. Then headed up, and across. Down the other side, to which the cars had been ferried, like on the first day. Along the way we picked loads of mushrooms for our big dinner party that evening - every hike ends on a ‘gala’ dinner. It was meant to be an easy walk but it took about five hours. Headed back to Hofsós and started getting ready for the barbecue, which was being held in a house owned by a friend of one of the women in our group. Ate a fantastic meal, drank wine and after dinner the partner of the woman who owned the house brought out his accordion. There was dancing. There was singing. There was madness on the trampoline. And a fantastic time was had by all.

SUNDAY

Packed up all our stuff, then headed down to the Icelandic Emigration Centre, which gives an account of the massive emigration of Icelanders to North America at the beginning of the last century. Around 25% of the nation left!! It’s another wonderful museum, and had our YT enthralled, despite my aversion to staid old museums. From there we drove to Grafarkirkja church, a tiny turf church that has been preserved and which is still occasionally in use. Very beautiful. Took our time going home - had planned to even stay a bit longer on the road, but since the weather was no longer cooperating we decided to hightail it back to town.

Meanwhile, the weather was FANTASTIC the whole entire time we were hiking. Brilliant sunshine and [relatively] warm temps. The weather gods totally pulled through for us!

I’ve just uploaded a gazillion photos to Flickr [not kidding!] that you may want to check out. Just make sure you get comfortable first - and remember the slideshow option!

Dear readers: time for a handful of precious googlie morsels dropped by the Mighty Googlie in the Sky. Read them - and weep for the future of humanity.

There was the usual penis fixation:

pictures of penis in virginia of girl (from an undisclosed location in the USA)

usa big penic (from an undisclosed location in Iran)

i have a mall peins (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK) – funny: we have a peins mall!

big penis from croatia (Zagreb, Croatia) – c’mon, there must be at least one

exposing my penis (Edmonton, Alberta) – a how-to manual for flashers

bare penis at the beach (US) –playing beachball, just generally chillin’

stressed out penis pics (Isle of Wight, Virginia) – chain smoking, perspiring, yelling at his wife…

pictures of penis before and after wash (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) – is there a VAST difference? No wait, don’t answer that.

penis land (Athens, Greece) – Hi, I’m from Penisland. I’m a Penislander.

There was the usual s.e.x. fixation:

how easy is it to get laid in iceland (New York City police department) – New York’s finest, huh?

sex with american girl in iceland (Madison, Wisconsin) – that’s right, stick with your own kind. Call it safe sex.

to iceland have sex on the first date (Abbotsford, BC) – a bit far to go, but hey…

wery wery little tiny sex (Bavaria, Germany) – really, not wery much at all. Wery wery little.

enter porno (Antalya, Turkey) – stage left, prepare for soliloquy

a video of a naked girl being served for dinner on a plate (NY, NY) – by the Naked Chef, presumably?

how long after you meet someone should you have sex (Jordanville, Australia) – Honey, you need to ask yo’ mama.

And, as usual, there were a few earnest queries:

what is considered rude in iceland (Roosevelt, NJ) – Rude? We don’t know the meaning of the word. Farting, burping, elbows on table, shoving, barging ahead, picking your teeth at the table … anything goes here.

where to go to the bathroom in iceland (USA) – you know, we’ve heard of these glorious devices called Toilets that supposedly exist, but we use lava crevices and wipe off with 200-year old moss. Honest. We’ve built our entire tourism industry around it.

[I’m still away! More googlies here]

… continued from last post

YT and the Nicelandic Consumers Union [Neytendasamtökin] go back a long way. Or - well - a few years. We first became acquainted about seven years ago when I owned a dud of a computer that had broken down about six times in two years. I happened to relate the story to EPI’s niece, who was working there at the time as a lawyer. She promptly put me in touch with a co-worker who was, and is, a serious force to be reckoned with. About a month later my computer dud was back with its [not-too-happy] seller, whereas in its place I had a new high-end laptop that turned out to be an absolute workhorse and ran non-stop for about five years without so much as a hiccup. I’ve been a Consumers Union member ever since and am a big fan because they kick ass up there.

Anyway, I called them up and they put me through to the same woman as before, who totally commiserated with my sad story about the phone and its hideous logo. When I got to the part about being stonewalled by the Vodafone manageress, she was indignant. “No. No. Of course she can refund you the money. They sold you a different phone from the display model. You should get your money back.” She asked me to send her an email relating the main points and she’d speak to them. Less than two hours later, she called me back. “Take the phone back to the store in Kringlan and they’ll give you a full refund.”

YES!!!

[Incidentally: this sort of thing NEVER happens in Iceland. The Icelanders can be assertive as hell, but they’re LOUSY consumers - they’re forever being handed wooden nickels and just taking them. Refunds for anything are practically unheard of here. One notable exception is the fabulous ZARA, which when it opened its first store here about six years ago started offering full refunds on clothes that were returned in the same condition as when bought, within a specific time frame. Hats off! - and now a few more stores have followed suit. But I digress.]

So later that day, I found myself in Kringlan, heading for old Vodafone. I had on my tough front, all prepared to be cross-examined or to have to go through the same shit as with the people on the phone, but lo! - nothing of that sort happened, the apathetic kid perched on his stool behind the counter just took the phone and mumbled something about not knowing how to do refunds [you don’t say? ] and then asked someone else before just … opening the till and giving me the refund, in cash. Get that? - IN CASH. I was floored. Because if there’s one thing more outrageously surprising than getting a refund in an Icelandic store, it’s getting that refund in cold hard cash.

Truly, I could hardly believe my good fortune. So what I did was leave the store, walk exactly ten steps across the corridor, and straight into the store of the competition, which I happened to know had that very same phone but WITHOUT the branding on it. Heh heh. I knew this because I’d been there the previous day, but had due to some weird sense of obligation ended up buying from my phone provider, with the aforementioned disastrous results.

So the girl who had been serving me the previous day came up to me and we got chatting and I told her my little story and that I wanted the same phone, and did they have it in white. Alas, they did not. However, she suddenly got this mischievous little look on her face. “I have JUST the phone for you,” she said, and disappeared, only to return very conspiratorially with a little box that she opened. “There are only fourteen of these in the entire country,” she said, almost whispering. “They only ordered six of this colour; the buyers - who are all guys - thought it was a joke, that nobody would buy them.” She raised an eyebrow. “They sold out within an hour - to people in-house. I got one myself.” She pulled it out and proceeded to demonstrate, taking YT through the navigation menu and such. “They tried to order more, but there were only nine left. We don’t even have them on display. We keep them under the counter.”

Whell! With that kind of hard-sell, how could I possibly refuse?

[semi-nauseating gush ahead]

So I now have a gorgeous new phone, that I am absolutely smitten with. Seriously - this is a major departure for our YT. I’m more the classic subdued type, easy on the flash. Not only does my new phone have serious BLING, it’s also not a Nokia [gasp!] and was considerably more expensive than the phone I planned to buy. The screen is crystal clear, the navigation is genius [I much prefer it to any Nokia phone I have ever owned], the buttons are easy to push [i.e. aren’t all jammed up against each other] and it knows intuitively what I want to do, before I do it. [”Do you want to copy your contacts from the SIM card?” - why, yes I do, little phone!] If you want, you can check it out here [it’s the pink one - you can even try it out in their super-duper online virtual phone world].

[/semi-nauseating gush]

Okay then! So you see, all’s well that ends well. And now I must sign off because I’m heading off tomorrow to search for polar bears. Cheerio!

WE HAD A TROPICAL STORM TODAY
I kid you not. It’s what the weatherman said: “The remnants of a tropical storm will pass over the Land today.” Mostly what this meant was a lot of rain, and fairly warm temps - for us, at least. It’s no great shakes at the moment, 12°C [54F] and still raining, sunrise was at 4 am, and sunset at 11.05.

The other day I went to buy myself a new cellphone because apparently making calls and sending hasty text messages and using the phone to remotely control your kids just doesn’t cut it anymore. They have this new thing where you can surf t’internet and pick up your email and gab with your friends in real time and such. And because YT is a typical Nicelander who must always have the latest, best and most superexcellent in all things gadgetry [not really], and also because AAH needed a triband phone she could use in the States and my old clunker fit the bill, I decided it was time to upgrade.

Anyway, so off I go to old Kringlan mall and wander into a store and promptly break into a sweat because ALL THOSE PHONES that do all those different things that I’ve never even heard of before and, well, it was all just kind of overwhelming. So this girl comes over and asks if she can help me pick one, and all I knew was that it had to be Nokia because I’ve always owned a Nokia and everyone in the household owns a Nokia and it’s good because we can all use the same phone chargers, and besides it was useful for narrowing things down a bit. Oh, and I also wanted to be able to pick up my email. That was all.

So, long story short, I go home with this model of phone, except in a lovely white, and after admiring it for a bit I break it open [I’m not kidding, I had to use force] and stick my SIM card in and start playing around with the settings and such. It had this bit of plastic pasted over the screen and the plastic had the logo of my phone company printed on it, and I fiddled with it a bit more [frustrated as hell, if you must know] before removing the plastic, and it was at that point that I realized that the logo and name of the phone company was not on the plastic but embedded in the actual phone itself.

In other words: at the top of the phone: NOKIA. Below that, just beneath the screen, this

[Except the name was to the right of the logo.]

I dunno. Call me anal, if you will if you shall if you must, but the more I looked at that sucker, the more it bugged the hell out of me. It looked like an ugly blemish - nay, a grotesque pimple - on my pearly white 3G Nokia phone. Particularly - and this is important - because the model I looked at in the store DID NOT have such a grotesque pimple on its pristine black surface, so effectively I had been sold a phone that was different from the one I had viewed in the store. Besides, I thought it was pretty damn presumptuous of old Vodafone to expect me to just advertise their brand for them - FOR FREE - for the next two or three years, when they hadn’t even asked me nicely. Or, actually, when they hadn’t even asked me at all.

By the end of the evening, I’d decided I wanted a new phone. One that didn’t have that dastardly Vodafone advertisting logo on it [by this time it was all I saw when I looked at the phone]. After all, I have no particular loyalties to Vodafone - and what if, a few months down the road, I decided to switch phone companies? I’d be with Síminn, or NOVA, or Tal or whatever, and my phone would still read VODAFONE in big screaming letters. Which would just be stupid, like the whole thing was stupid.

So, the next morning I get on the blower to the Vodafone service centre. The girl on the other end talked to me like I was demented when I explained that I wanted a phone that didn’t have a Vodafone logo. “Why? Didn’t you buy it from Vodafone?” - Well yes, I bought it from Vodafone, but … . “Yeah, ok, but we don’t have those phones without the logo.” - Well then I’d like a refund. She laughed in my ear. “A refund? HAHAHHA!” Finally she said I could TRY to talk to the store manager at the main Vodafone store … but her tone of voice made it quite clear that she was purrritty damn sure I wasn’t gonna get anywhere.

RING RING!

YT: Hello, is this the manager of the Vodafone store?

MANAGER OF THE VODAFONE STORE: Yes.

YT: Yeah, hi. I bought this phone [blah] … logo … [blah] … advertise … [blah]… refund.

MOTVS: If you’ve already put your SIM card in it we can’t take it back. It’s a used phone.

YT: Yes, but the phone I looked at in the store didn’t have the logo on it. I get the phone home and it’s got a logo. That’s not the same phone as the one I thought I was buying.

MOTVS: If you’d returned it as soon as you saw the phone had a logo and not put the SIM card in it, I could have taken it back, but you didn’t. You put the SIM card in and now it’s not the same phone as the one you bought.

YT: I thought the logo was on the plastic. I don’t usually start by taking the plastic off.

MOTVS: Well, if the logo bothered you so much, why didn’t you start by checking to see if it was actually on the plastic?

Ah. Yes. Icelandic customer service - at its finest. So after ascertaining that this was her final answer, that she absolutely was not going to take the phone back, I did the grown-up equivalent of running to mommy: I called the Consumers Union.

To be continued …

WEATHER!

Blustery and cool. It was gorgeous yesterday, this morning still pretty nice with just a thin veil of cloud and hardly any wind, but by afternoon it was chilly and blowing pretty hard, at least out by the golf course where EPI and I took a brisk stroll to imbibe some fresh air. Currently 12°C [54F], sunrise was at 3:57 am, sunset at 11:08 pm. Getting darker fast!

When EPI and I and EPI’s father drove across Sprengisandur last week we spent the first night at the a place called Hotel Highland, billed as “the only luxury hotel in the Icelandic highlands”. EPI’s father had called ahead to book a room for himself, which cost a paltry ISK 15,300 per night [USD 197/EUR 125], and sleeping bag accomodation for EPI and me, which cost ISK 2,900 [USD 37 / EUR 23] per night. Neither of us minds roughing it – especially since ‘roughing it’ in sleeping bag accommodation in Iceland generally just means that the bed has no duvet and the bathroom is in the hall.

Hotel Highland is utterly remote; however, just before you get there you come to another place offering highland accommodation, called Hrauneyjar. As we drove past, we noticed that place was hopping – loads of tourists sitting around outside drinking beer and generally having a swell time, by the looks of it. Very inviting.

Meanwhile, the Hotel Highland, located a few kilometres up the road, was absolutely dead. Not a soul was visible on or around the premises, and the reception was deserted. We waited a little while in the tiny vestibule that served as a lobby, completely at a loss, until a bunch of French tourists started piling in, who had just arrived on a bus. At that point, a young woman appeared in the reception and proceeded to deal with our booking. She spoke no Icelandic and seemed very confused about what to do with us. Disappeared again, then came back and announced to my father-in-law that he was in “Room 13” [dumdum], whereas EPI and I were in “L-House. Outside, back there. L-House.”

So we go back outside, EPI’s father holding the key to his room which was attached to a piece of wood with the room number burned into it with a magnifying glass, and proceeded to look for both Room 13 and L-House. Round and round we walked, until EPI and I arrived at low ramshackle building that looked like it could be L-House. His father, meanwhile, wandered off to look for his room.

Words can hardly describe the dismay that filled our YT as she cast around L-House. A more apt name would have been ‘Bleak House’. It was a shack that had originally been slapped up to house temporary workers at the nearby power harnessing station, decades earlier. And it was showing its age. Curtains were torn, the rods were askew, sections of beds were falling off … everything was makeshift and shabby, although – to be fair – relatively clean.

But the worst was yet to come. Back outside, we found EPI’s father – who, incidentally, is 82 – standing in the parking lot in a state of semi-shock. Seems he’d finally found Room 13. He’d stuck his key in the door, opened it, and been accosted by a terrible smell. The room was a mess, the curtains were drawn, and there was a shape on the bed – the shape of a man on his back with his mouth gaping open, who was “either deceased, or passed out,” according to EPI’s father, who was visibly upset.

At that point YT took the lead and decided that we should go back to Hrauneyjar – with all its living, breathing people – and try to wangle a couple of rooms for the night. We left the key to Room 13 in the empty reception and drove back to Hrauneyjar, which – as before – was a hub of activity. So much, in fact, that it took us about 20 minutes to find someone in charge. Finally a plucky, assertive woman with a big Pink Panther tattoo on her neck came along and announced herself as the manager – not only of Hrauneyjar, but also Hotel Highland. Score! So we related our misfortune, she shook her head woefully and got on the blower to the invisible people back at the hotel. “Who is in room 13?! Who is in room 13?!” she demanded to know, before commanding, “Well, get him out of there!” Apparently – she told us later – they have these sorts of problems from time to time, where people get pissed out of their skulls up in the middle of the highlands, don’t check out when they’re supposed to, and when the hotel staff tries to evict them, refuse to leave because: “I can’t drive! Where do I go!?”

So anyway, by way of apology she declared that EPI’s father should be placed in “Suite No. 2” back at Hotel Highland [there was no room at Hrauneyjar] in place of Room 13. Suite No. 2 turned out to be pretty nice – it had its own bedroom as well as a living room with – JOY! – a pull out sofa bed that EPI and I could crash on [imagine our relief in escaping decrepit old L-House]. The ‘Suite’ even happened to have a little patio out back on which we were able to prop up our little travel BBQ and cook up some lamb filets with baked spuds and stuffed mushrooms. Indeed, we were happy as clams in ‘Suite 2’ and didn’t even mind that things were, shall we say, a little on the malfunctioning side, so much that my FIL, who has travelled all over the world, dubbed it the ‘Soviet Suite’. We washed our hands in the bathroom sink and next thing we knew we were standing in a puddle of water – almost as much water dripped from the pipes as came out of the tap. We reached out for a towel in the bathroom and the towel rack fell down on one side and just dangled there. There was no knob for turning on the shower in the tub. But of course, to us these were merely charming little quirks, considering all that had gone before. And you can bet that we drank a hearty toast to the man in Room 13.

WEATHER TODAY!

Perfectly sunny and amiable, but with a chilly wind that sort of kills the fun. It’s 14°C [57F] right now, and sunrise was at 3.51 [it was blazing sunshine when I drove to the airport at 6 am to pick up AAH], sunset due for 11.14.

EPI and I are on holiday right now, which basically means Doing-Everything- We-Don’t-Have-Time-To-Do-While-We’re-Working. Things like Driving Across Sprengisandur, Sleeping Until Noon, Frying Bacon for Brunch, Actually Reading the Newspaper, Hair Appointment, Massage Appointment, Combing Every Fricking Sports and Department Store in the City of Reykjavík for a Decent Swimsuit on Account of Boxers Being Ripped Off [a futile exercise, sigh], Opening That Bottle of Bollinger and Eating Grilled Lobster with Garlic Butter and Toasted Baguette, And So Forth.

Meanwhile, work keeps coming my way and my greatest dilemma is how not to say YES to everything. Some of the assignments are actually very tempting, such as the offer by the major international travel publisher who contacted YT through the Weather Report with a view to doing some work on a Niceland book [unfortunately the timing didn’t work out, boo] and shows how this blog - which started out as an anonymous little diversion - has become much more than the sum of its parts. People keep talking about a recession around here and - yes - lots of people are being laid off, but I’ve never been so busy in my entire freelance career. It’s quite wonderful, actually.

AAH is currently in New York visiting her stepsister and reportedly the pair of them are taking the city by storm, all thanks to a pair of false eyelashes and a borrowed ID card. So, has she seen the Statue of Liberty? Empire State Building? Brooklyn Bridge? - No, but you can bet she can give a detailed description of every H&M and Urban Outfitters in the city. I was on Skype with them last night for over an hour because that’s how long it took for AAH to hold up all her purchases in front of the laptop camera to show me. Honestly, I fear that by the time she leaves all of New York City’s shops will be a gaping vacuum. She’ll need her own fleet of cargo planes just to transport all the stuff home.

IT’S BEEN RAINING!
And pretty damn windy, too. I’ve actually been delighted for all the vegetation, which has just been sucking it up after all the drought around here recently, but I do pity some of the poor tourists I’ve seen, tucked deep inside their windbreakers with their hoods tied up around their faces so just their noses and eyes are poking out. Niceland takes wind and rain to a new level of understanding, by the looks of it. Some of that abated today, though, and there was only minimal rain and actually a few sunny spells. Weatherman sez the next couple of days are going to be stellar, weather-wise. Right now 10°C [50F], sunrise was at 3:42 am, sunset at 11:23 pm.

One of the best-known folk songs in Iceland is Á Sprengisandi [On Sprengisandur] – a song that every man, woman and child in Iceland learns virtually in the womb. The lyrics tell of a man who is crossing Sprengisandur sands in the central highlands on a horse [in the old days, obviously] and who cannot wait to get across. The lyrics are filled with strong imagery, superstition, apprehension and fear of the unknown: among other things the narrator describes the sun setting behind a particular mountain, thinks he hears a shout in the distance and wonders if it is a dreaded outlaw stealing a herd of sheep, and speculates that the queen of the elves – whom he absolutely does not wish to meet – is putting the bridle on her horse and is about to set off across the sands. The song ends with him declaring that he would willingly give his best horse to be in Kiðagil right now – where the route ends.

When I was a kid, those lyrics fired my imagination. I thought about them at length and the mood and atmosphere of the sands – as described in the song – totally got under my skin. What I found most eerie and chilling was the name of the sands: Sprengisandur. The literal translation of sprengja is ‘explode’ or ‘burst’ and when a horse was sprengdur it meant that it actually died from exertion, i.e. its lungs burst. In other words, Sprengisandur derives its name from the fact that horses could die from exertion when crossing the sands, simply because their owners drove them so hard in order to get across.

I found this absolutely horrifying. I remember having conversations about it with the adults around me … I had a lot of unanswered questions, such as: if the horse died on the sands, didn’t that mean that the rider was stranded, which sort of defeated the purpose?

Anyway, those sands have existed in my mind’s eye since I was little, and I have always wanted to see them. That finally came to pass this week, when EPI and I and EPI’s father drove across Sprengisandur in my father-in-law’s SUV. In the brilliant light of mid-summer it was far from the ominous and sinister place I’d imagined as a child. In fact they were incredibly impressive. As someone remarked to me today, being there is a very special experience, one that can’t really be envisioned, nor adequately described.

Meanwhile, it was not difficult to imagine what it would have been like to cross them in a bygone era on horseback, in varying conditions – it would have been frightening, not least because of the sheer size of the area and how long it would have taken to get across on horseback. To say nothing of if the weather changed - for much of the distance there is not so much as a rock behind which one can take shelter. Or if a fog suddenly descended – you’d lose your way in an instant.

There seem to be no such worries today, however. Possibly what surprised me the most about the sands was the number of cyclists and hikers we saw en route, and especially how many people were going it solo. We saw far more people on foot and on bikes than we saw cars, for example. EPI mentioned that he once met a bartender in Amsterdam who spent his days in a smoke-filled bar, save for one month a year when he went to Iceland to hike out in the wilderness – and always alone. Perhaps that was him we saw, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Who knows!

IT SEEMS LIKE IT’S BEEN SUNNY FOR WEEKS
Until today, when it finally rained. Buckets. It was windy, too, and suddenly it feels like fall is on its way. The summer is so short in this country, blink and you’ll miss it. Right now it’s 13°C [55F] here in the capital, the sun comes up at 3.33 am and will set at 11.31 pm.

[This post is filed under MY ICELAND.]

UPDATE! Professor Batty has left a link to YouTube versions of the song Á Sprengisandi in the comments below. The one he links to has both the Icelandic lyrics and a rough translation in English under ‘more info’ next to the video. There’s also a version that has the Icelandic lyrics pop up as the song plays.

EPI and I and EPI’s father have just spent three days driving across the central highlands. It’s incredibly barren and stunningly beautiful there, and certainly brings home the problem of erosion in this country. We spent one night in a hotel up there, just before setting off across Sprengisandur sands [more on them later] which essentially is a desert in the midst of the interior, in between the glaciers Hofsjökull and Vatnajökull [the largest ice cap in Europe - nb. the Wikipedia entry cites the English translation as ‘glacier of rivers’ which is incorrect, it should be ‘glacier of lakes’]. We stopped at several waterfalls along the way and ended in Akureyri, where we spent our second night, and drove back to town the following day [yesterday].

I’ve just uploaded a bunch of photos to Flickr and will elaborate on our trip a bit more anon. Till then

PS. Thanks for all your lovely comments on the last post!

Today EPI and I are celebrating our second wedding anniversary. Huzzah!

Two years since we walked down the isle in the Toronto City Hall, which – truth be told – was more like the corridor to the bathroom in a Vegas chapel than the route to the altar. Not that it mattered. We were just as psyched.

EPI and I met about 12 years ago, when I’d been back in Iceland for about a year. He started working at the company where I was working and we had an instant rapport. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight, but definitely like at first sight. EPI was one of the funniest people I’d ever met, plus he was really nice, and soon it seemed like coffee breaks just weren’t the same if he wasn’t around. Our friendship slowly developed into something deeper and before we both knew it we were crazy about each other.

It was pretty complicated, though, at first. EPI was going through a separation and had three beautiful daughters that he was very close to and which he adored. Meanwhile, I had a string of failed relationships behind me and wasn’t very good with the trust thing. Plus there were all these other people involved, and tattered emotions all over the place. There were lots of times when I honestly thought we were not going to make it, and many times when we tried to walk away. But it was one of those things. There was no walking away. We had this intense bond, and in the end we realized there was really no choice. We had to make it work.

And we have! I sometimes can’t believe how beautifully it’s all worked out, considering. I mean, having a relationship is hard enough [sometimes I just don’t know how people have relationships at all! …], to say nothing of the tender and complicated emotions when there are children brought into the mix … in all honesty, I used to think it was impossible. There are so many things that can go wrong, at every stage in the game, so many pitfalls, it can be like walking in a landmine zone. Truly, I often think it’s a miracle for two people to actually make a relationship work. Either that, or a fluke.

Mind you, we have - and had - a lot of good things going for us – our wonderful daughters, for one, who are all blessed with very generous, positive, sensible and sweet dispositions. I know from my own experience how easy it is to become bitter and resentful and feel victimized and all the rest of it in a broken-family situation, and miraculously they have not gone down that road, which is such a blessing – for everyone concerned. Instead they are embracing life and have their own aspirations and interests. They’re making their own lives work.

Anyway, two [or 12!] years on it just keeps getting better. EPI is still my favourite company in the whole world and after all those ups and downs we’ve now reached a plateau where, yes, sometimes there are challenges, but mostly there are just picnics.

GORGEOUS SUNNY DAY TODAY
Clear and brilliant blue sky, not a cloud visible at the moment, temps 12°C [54F], sunrise 3.22 am, sunset 11.41 pm.