Easter in the West Fjords

This year, like last year, I spent Easter up in the West Fjords. I went with Grétar, and we stayed in a guest-house in Bolungarvík, which is a little place quite close to Ísafjörður. There is a tunnel that goes through the mountains connecting the two towns. Grétar's friend Símon and various others were also staying in Bolungarvík, in someone's grandmother's house. Grétar and I drove up on the Friday (föstudagurinn langi, or the long Friday, as good Friday is known is Iceland), stopped in Reykjanes to go swimming again, and made it to Bolungarvík about an hour before the Aldrei fór ég suður music festival started. It was in the same warehouse as last year, biggest names playing were probably Mugison (who we missed), Retro Stefson, Sykur and Páll Óskar. Those are moderately big names in Iceland, honest. I also missed Snorri Helgason, which I was annoyed about. We were sheltering in the car from some country and western band from America, and I think he was playing right after them.

It was a lot of fun, although on the Saturday night we managed to go through the tunnel no fewer than four times. We drove into Ísafjörður and had dinner there, before heading to the Aldrei fór ég suður warehouse. An evening of music and gin and vodka, before we found our way onto the shuttle bus and arrived back at the guest-house to discover that we didn't have our keys. Grétar rang the guy who ran the place and he said he'd be there at some point in the future - I don't remember how long he said but it seemed like a long time. Some American girls were going into the same guest-house, and offered to just let us through the outer door - then we could have waited inside. In a cloud of drunken confusion though, we thought the keys were probably in Grétar's car, so got a taxi back to Ísafjörður, where we failed to find the keys. So we got the shuttle bus back to Bolungarvík, and the man let us in. Then we found our keys on the chair inside our unlocked room. Skills!

To be honest, we didn't do an awful lot other than the music festival. Some pretty serious napping took place, we mooched around Ísafjörður a bit, ate Easter eggs, and one day we went to the Natural History Museum in Bolungarvík. It had a stuffed polar bear and a flamingo which had apparently come over to Iceland with a flock of swans, in some fit of confusion. I suppose the Icelanders were so surprised that they immediately stuffed it and put it in a museum. But that was pretty much it, because the weather was much, much worse than last year. Mostly it was just cloudy, with occasional rain, but on the Sunday night the temperature dropped, the wind picked up and it began to snow. By Monday morning the weather had reached a point where it was considered inadvisable to drive over the heath. We went over to the house where Símon and co were staying and weighed up our options. Finally decided to just go for it around four in the afternoon. Símon was driving a jeep, and we went behind in Grétar's Honda Civic. It was probably not the best idea in the world, the weather was so dreadful up there. There are yellow poles along the sides of the road to help in such conditions, but we could only see one set at a time through the gale and snow. We went veeeery slowly, following the vague grey shape of the jeep and luckily made it down the other side, and eventually back to Reykjavík, unscathed. 

Now I Remember...

Sometimes it's all too easy to forget why on earth I would want to live in Iceland, especially in the cold, dark winter months. And then we have days like this.

Stacey and I bought sandwiches downtown and came to Heiðmörk. As you can see, the weather is impossibly perfect. And it's been like this all week!

Spot Hallgrímskirkja. And Snæfellsnes in the background - visibility was amazing.

Nice clouds.

I think I am wearing this same shirt in almost every picture of me that I have put on this blog. This is merely coincidence! I do own other clothes.

Spot the Seltjarnarnes lighthouse.

6° and sunny is totally ice-cream weather in Iceland!

After the ice-cream stop in Garðabær, we headed to Álftanes to see the President. This is his house, Bessastaðir. It has an OK view, I suppose.

Good old Reykjavík.

This evening Árni, Kevin and Christina are coming over for dinner. Life is pretty amazing today. It doesn't take much to make me happy, just sunshine and friends and mountains really. Beer and ice-cream help also.

Mall Work

I thought I'd let you all know what it's like working in an Icelandic shopping mall. Mostly terrible, you will not be surprised to hear! I mean, clearly I am unsuited to the service industry. I knew this before I started, as did all of you who know me, I'm sure. Looking on customers as irritations who have come to bother you right when you were in the middle of doing an experiment with the different teas is surely not the best attitude. I started off with better intentions, and to be honest there are people who I don't hate - it is a hundred percent to do with how they treat us. Sometimes people come in who are nice, polite and manage to interact with us without making it clear that they consider us inferior, and then you actually feel inclined to do things for them. Most of them seem to regard us as not quite real people, though, judging from their manners. Then you feel like you really don't want to do anything for them, but you still have to, and that kind of breeds resentment. 

There are many, many things which annoy me about the sort of people who have the audacity to come and try and buy things from us. Probably top of the list is: why do they need to take about fifty paper napkins, no matter what they are having? I manage to consume almost all of my food and drink simply by putting it my mouth instead of on other parts of myself or my surroundings. Everyone puts food on themselves sometimes. These things happen, I understand. But it's the exception, not the default. If you regularly require a fistful of serviettes every time you tackle a cup of coffee or a plate of salad, I don't know, it might be time to sign up for some sort of soup-eating course at your local community college. Fuck's sake, guys. I don't actually know why this irritates me so much - it's not like I'm paying for them. It just really gets on my nerves. 

I could write a lot more on the subject of annoying things about my job, but I'll save some for another time. Luckily, everything else in my life is pretty fantastic. I recently applied to do an MA in Translation Studies at the University of Iceland, so hopefully by the autumn I will be returning to the role in which I feel happiest - student! Being a real person is so over-rated. 

Gleðilegt sumar!

Today is the official first day of Icelandic summer! Unlike last year, when it snowed on our way to Ísafjörður, this year the weather has been co-operating. My mother also sent my camera charger which I left behind in the UK (amazingly it seems to have passed through customs without a problem), so I am able to provide evidence. Happy summer!

On Ingólfsstræti, outside Bónus where I went to get some vegetables.

Amtmannsstígur.

Lækjargata.

The parliament building.

Ráðhús and Tjörn.

Til Ísafjarðar

Sorry I haven't written anything in ages. I don't really have an excuse, just couldn't be bothered. I am rubbish. Anyway, I'm off to Ísafjörður today for Aldrei fór ég suður. The weather forecast is terrible, but hopefully it should be a fun Easter anyway. I'll write about it, and all the other things that have been going on since I last posted, when I get back. In the meantime, gleðilega páska everyone!

Moved

Well, I am all moved in to the new flat. Unfortunately it doesn't quite have the internet yet. We got a router, and we're supposed to be getting it free because Ahmad works for the government, but as always with these things there is vesen with getting it to actually work. I have never once managed to get the internet sorted out anywhere without some sort of hassle. So I am in Babalú writing this and doing all my various internet chores, like filing my tax return (quite simple, since I do not owe any tax at all at this point) and registering my change of address. 

Apart from being cut off from the internet, my fifth limb, everything is great in the new place. I have a bed and a chest of drawers in my room, and I made a bedside table from a cardboard box, and a bin from another cardboard box, with a picture of a bin on it. The actual bin that was in the box is in the bathroom, but I almost like mine better. One thing that is nice, which I didn't think about before, is that now I am able to live in a place where the room temperature is actual room temperature, rather than Icelandic room temperature. Heating being pretty cheap over here, most Icelanders seem to have become fiercely defensive of their right to walk around their home in their underwear, and they adjust their radiators accordingly. I myself was brought up in the "just-put-on-another-jumper" school of thought and appreciate being able to wear more than just my underwear without overheating. When the snow and cold weather stops, I reckon we'll be all right just having the heating off entirely. It actually did stop for a bit a few weeks ago, but then winter changed its mind about leaving. Hasn't snowed for a few days, though, so maybe spring will be in time for Easter. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Yeah, so all the essentials (apart from the internet) are pretty much sorted, after a few trips to IKEA and Góði Hirðirinn, and some work on bland.is. We own a washing machine as of yesterday, although it actually needs a part changing before it will be functional. I hope we get that sorted out quite soon, before I run out of clean clothes. But I suppose I can always go crying to a friend's house or to the Laundromat Café if things become critical. Anyway, I have to go to the shops now to get some stuff for dinner. Can't just spend my whole day off in this café.

Adventure in Hvalfjörður

Last night I went out on an adventure. Logi, Maria, Bjarni, Ewelina and I went out in Logi's jeep and drove to Hvalfjörður, which is a fjord north of Reykjavík. We were heading to a natural hot-spring that Logi knew about in order to sit in the hot water, drink beer and look at the northern lights. You may have heard, there have been some explosions on the sun recently, which is causing some cool auroral activity. The forecast site actually said that it would be "extreme", so we were pretty excited. 

The place was basically in the middle of nowhere, on a little peninsula inside the fjord, if that makes sense. So there was water on both sides, and mountains beyond the water. There was a man-made water-tight hot-pot sort of thing, made of rocks and presumably concrete, and the water from the hot-spring had been channelled into a pipe, which it was possible to move in and out of the pool. If you had the water always flowing directly into the pool it would be far too hot to stand, so we took it out and put it back in in turns. So of course it was fine once you were in, but getting in was a different matter. It was around 1°, with some intermittent snowstorms. Standing in the snow getting undressed and changed into your swimming costume in these conditions, by the light of a torch, is somewhat less than comfortable. I was shivering so hard I could barely stand up straight, but it was definitely worth it.

The moon was almost full, so there we were in this hot pool, drinking our páskabjór, surrounded by moonlit water and snowy mountains with the northern lights arcing over us. It was pretty incredible. The actual lights were not quite as good as I was expecting - they were mostly white rather than the green ones I've seen before, but still very cool nonetheless. It was getting on for midnight when we got there, and we left around two in the morning. The clear skies probably lasted for about half of our time there, and then the snowstorms blowing through started to intensify and the cloud lowered. We all looked like those Japanese monkeys, sitting there with our hair and hats encrusted with ice and snow. 

We waited for the next pause, and then got out, which was probably worse than getting in. I didn't get so cold, because you have a lot of residual heat from the pool, but I was dismayed to discover that my bag had blown over and partially filled with snow. And then I accidentally dipped my towel in the hot pool as I got out, rendering it useless. My pants were too wet to put back on, but the rest of my clothes were OK. I scrambled to put on as many as I could before I started to cool down and then raced back to the car in my socks, quite damp and covered in snow. My phone had also fallen out and been lying in the snow, but luckily it was absolutely fine. We arrived in Reykjavík at around three in the morning, definitely glad to get back to a warm bed.

Overall, an amazing experience. Definitely not something you do everyday, and something that you can probably only do in Iceland. This is an incredible country.