copenhagen i love you

My last two days in Reykjavik involved drinking way too much beer (trying to keep up with Frenchmen), finding a whole brand new still sealed 1 litre bottle of vodka in my room (nobody knew where it came from so it´s mine now! that´s worth about 70 bucks in iceland), and not sleeping at all the last night.

I also got to sample the delights of the Nordica Hotel, courtesy of Monique, which after the Salvation Army dive was like nirvana....spas and massages and big clean bathrooms.

Then Monique and I flew to Copenhagen and into yet another fabulous hotel, the Hotel Skt. Petri which has the BEST beds and extra-nabbable products. Monique was here for about five days during which we changed hotels a couple times (including the D'Angleterre which has a sort of faded grandeur thing going on), drank a lot of beer, were treated to Mexican food by some random guys (just when I was craving Mexican too), did a tour of various castles, walked past Pink on the street (I swear it was her, she was playing a show here that night) and saw Sweden. We didn´t go to Sweden but we saw it from across the water at the castle at Helsingør (aka Shakespeare´s Elsinore from Hamlet).

Now she's gone and I'm back at a youth hostel where I belong...sleeping in and walking around this gorgeous city and buying hot new Camper boots because my running shoes were so busted they were making one of my toes go numb. It would be stupid to let one of my toes fall off just for the sake of economy.

Copenhagen is not really what I expected...I am not sure what I expected but it's much more beautiful; filled with spires and canals and bridges.

I have to say I am not as enamored of Christiania as I had thought I would be. I went there twice - once in the evening with Monique and once during the day by myself. In the evening it was fine and we hung out and had a beer and wandered around. That is it was fine till it got dark. We were mostly on and around Pusher Street where there were no streetlights and a lot of dudes hanging around fires in barrels. At one point we just both looked at each other and said "I think we should leave now."
I went back a few days later in the middle of the afternoon. Again I was mostly on Pusher Street so maybe other areas are less creepy but I have a serious problem with any place that has a 30:1 male to female ratio. I especially hate looking around and realizing I am the only female person in eyeshot. There was a big squad of police roaming around but that really didn't help the atmosphere. Lots of dogs too. Big aggressive dogs off leash.
I don´t know - maybe if I knew my way around a bit more I would like the place better, but it all just felt really furtive and sad, for all the bright paintings and murals. It's no Kensington Market.

"oh my god. oh my god!"

that is what you would have heard me screaming last night (this morning?) at approx 2:30 when I ran into Monique, my roomate from french school in Villefranche, in the middle of Laugavegar street in Reykjavik. I had no idea she was there, she had no idea I was there, yet there we were. I had already found and been separated from several groups of "instant friends" that night so why not one more? So off we went to some extra swank bar (a far cry from the dives I have been frequenting of late!) till about 3:30 and then Monique and co. went to bed and Jose (another instant hostel friend) and I went off and found some other friends in the lineup for a much smaller sweatier dingier place. Dancing till 6 a.m. - it's even crazier than Barcelona!
Even more amazing - we're on the same flight Tuesday morning to Copenhagen and since Monique is there for work, I get to crash in a sweet sweet hotel room and tag along as she investigates the best food, clubs, and activites that Copenhagen has to offer. I have a lot to learn from this woman.

Airwaves has been freaking incredible...I've seen 30 shows in 4 days and there are a few more tonight yet..including Patrick Watson who is playing his ass off at this festival. Highlights were We Are Scientists, Datarock, The Whitest Boy Alive, Islands (I only saw their in-store performance and decided to see another band, 120 Days instead of their full show at the Art Museum...a decision I have come to regret since even though 120 Days was pretty good, I suspect that Islands show was transcendental. It was later described to me as "the best thing I have ever seen in my life". damn), Brazilian Girls...the list goes on and on and on.
God I've missed music.

James and Robyn, this is for you.

In honour of Robyn's upcoming birthday (and for James just because he mentioned it earlier)...I ate it. I ate Hakarl.

I ate putrid rotting shark meat. Actually it wasn't as bad as I had feared. Although it was pretty damn bad.

Evidence, and dozens of newly uploaded Iceland photos, can be found here on Flickr.

rock in reykjavik

i don't think I have seen a real concert since I left home (aside from some dubious performances in Barcelona...), so it´s pretty exciting that I will be attending this:
Iceland Airwaves from Oct 18 to 22nd. Well, exciting for me anyway.

This means I get a week or so to relax and chill and then about 5 days of unapologetic rocking out, $10 beers be damned.

I have been taking a rather 'what happens in iceland, stays in iceland' approach to food and vegetarianism. sort of like my previous 'what happens in france/spain/morocco...' experiences. I'm pleased to report that Icelandic hot dogs are freaking delicious. Apparently they are made with lamb.
They are even better when rolled in bacon, deep fried, and then covered in cheese and crispy fried onions.

iceland: fog, skyr, and amorous horses

we have been driving around iceland for about 11 days...for six of them there was no sunlight at all, only fog. also, a horse tried to have sex with our car (while three others tried to eat the paint off it).

we left Reykjavik on Friday with our little green car, Thor (or þor, if you want to get technical about it) and started around the island clockwise.
Two days on the Snaefellsnes peninsula (home to the access point for the centre of the earth - read Jules Verne if you don´t believe me), then up through the Vatsnes peninsula and over to Sauðarkrokur, home of slightly creepy men, excellent farmstays well out of town and away from the crepy men, and exceptional librarians. When I logged in and found some information about my great-grandparents in an email from home, along with the name of the wife of a distant relative who lives nearby, the librarians got in gear, calling up people in the phone book ("we're not going to give up until we have his phone number!" she said to me), looking at the list of farms where my great and great-great grandparents were born and telling me which ones are abandoned, which are now inhabited by people she knows...apparently one, where my great-grandmother's mother was born, is now abandoned but was a location used in filming ain Icelandic crime movie last year, Kalda Sloð.
Then she called the Emigration Centre is Hofsos (Hot Sauce!) and got the guy to open up for us even though it is closed for the season.

He was nice and let us in for free even, looked through the database and told me that I could probably knock on doors throughout the country and announce myself as a relation. He even called a guy he knows, who is my...i don´t know, like eighth cousin 3 times removed...and jokingly told him that we were showing up on his doorstep to stay for a couple of weeks. Unfortunatly he lived in the opposite direction of the one we were going in and we didn´t have time to see him or the relations in Varmahlið either.

We spent a day in Akureyri and then two in Reykjalið at Lake Myvatn where we did driving lessons on top of volcanos, watched pools of boiling mud, and swam outside in a hot pool at night.

On the way to Kopasker we stopped in Husavik which we soon discovered is the new-ish home of the Icelandic Phallological Museum - actually it´s been there for a couple of years but our guide book is old. If you're on the verge of looking Phallological up in the dictionary, don't bother...yes it is indeed a Penis Museum.
The museum was closed for the season but as we could hear someone in the basement we knocked on the window and hoped for the best ("willy answer the door?" - credit has to go to Jessica for that one).
He let us in and we took in the sight of dozens of animal penises - whales (enormous and terrifying) to mice (hee!). Also displayed with pride and anticipation are agreements from four men who will donate their genitals to the museum upon passing (and possibly even before in one case!). Each contract is displayed alongside images and artifacts relating to the member in question, these range from photos to plaster casts to silicone. The silcone is ELMO, who is quite a specimen indeed. I took a photo (which I will not display here) and it makes us giggle every time we see it, like two old ladies at a Chippendales show. Apparently if you go to the right sort of store you can buy your very own silicone Elmo, he´s that famous.

Amusingly the Husavik church sports an extremely penis-like doorknob, however we were unable to determine whether the two institutions were in collaboration on that one.

We went to an amazing enormous horseshoe shaped canyon called Asbyrgi (legend has it that this is where Odin's horse accidentally touched ground once) and were the only people there, wandering around this gorgeous silent place filled with trees in full autumn colour. Legend also has it that this is a haven of the Hidden People as well but they were, well, hidden to us.

Beautiful waterfalls (the biggest have names like Dettifoss and Sellfoss and Hafragilsfoss...can you guess what FOSS means?) but we drive past dozens of smaller and maybe even more beautiful waterfalls every day, just spilling down over the mountains behind farms and in the middle of nowhere.

We drove around the northernmost point of Iceland, a couple of km from the arctic circle, went to the visitor's centre for an enormous dam that is being built and has just started to be filled a couple of days ago (there have been lots of ongoing protests but it looks like there's no going back now) - we couldn't get in to see the dam itself though as it's on a 4x4 track and our insurance won't cover it. All the good stuff is on 4x4 tracks. I must come back here in the summer time.

On the shores of the apparently monster infested Lögurinn lake we visited Iceland's cute little 'forest'...actually it´s quite nice. Nestled within is Iceland's oldest tree. It has been named GUTTORMSLUNDER. It was planted in.... 1938. It is about 20m high and when I saw it I accidentally yelled "you mean that's it?". Sorry Guttormslunder...

In Stöðvarfjördur we spent the night in the cutest little converted church imaginable, what a great place to stay. Visited one of the world's largest mineral collections and bought some shiny rocks to carry around with us.

Last night we stayed in Höfn and spent about 3 hours swimming outside again in the heated pool. Towns in Canada should do this too - even when it's 3 degrees outside, as long as the pool is warm it is very comfortable.

We have finally reached glacier country, I don´t know if we will actually go onto it today but we can see it which is pretty cool. This is the third biggest icecap in the world after Antarctica and Greenland.

Okay, I know, what you really want to know about is Þor and the horses right?
We stopped at the edge of a field one day to take some photos of some beautiful Icelandic Horses, not noticing that they were not fenced in...we rolled down the windows and the horses came right over and soon our car was surrounded - they must be used to tourists with free food.
Unfortunately we didn´t have any food so since the windows were still down the horses started trying to get IN the car. Then we noticed that all the horses were licking the windows and the trunk, a couple at the front were gnawing on the headlights, and one resourceful filly had located the rear door handle and was rubbing her backside against it. And she wasn´t scratching anything, folks. It took several beeps of the horn and finally just starting to move the car slowly to get free. We still haven´t washed the car and you can see horse tongue marks all over it.

Poor Þor, we haven´t been treating him that well...driving over a road that was only about halfway constructed we started to notice a scraping sound coming from the right wheel well. We had to stop at the nearest mechanics shop where Gunnar extracted a tiny stone and identified the source of our troubles.
We christened the stone Elmo.

It's strange but a lot of the people we've been meeting remind me a little of Grandpa - quiet men who have his voice and way of speaking. It makes me miss him and I wish I could send him a postcard and a bucket of fresh Skyr.

photos have been uploaded to flickr. see here for scotland photos. it´s too expensive right now to get the iceland ones posted.