Iceland, day 2.1

Our driver and guide, Trond Eiksund, a kindly bear with a reddish beard, was witty, entertaining, and informative. He succeeded in making his audience comfortable and communal. Since it was sunny, he reordered our itinerary for maximum viewing effect. We first stopped at Pingvellir, or Thingvellir in English, national park. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Trond told us to look around, go straight on the path some 800 yards, and meet back at the mini-bus at three minutes before noon. The morning sun in back and to the right, did not provide much warmth (it was around 30 degrees, no worse than Syracuse and not windy) but silvered the snow and distant mountains. In front of the guest center, I saw what did not surprise me: somebody wearing a San Francisco Giants hat; he was emerging from a tour bus. I walked up to him, pointing to my own 2012 World Series watch cap. "Excuse me. I just knew this would happen. Giants." We shook hands. It was Dustin and his female fellow traveler, Jenna. From Saskatchewan. "I have to ask: why the Giants?" He said he really likes baseball, and a couple guys he runs with got him into the Giants. Naturally, he is also a Blue Jays fan, and I reminded him that Syracuse was their Triple A team for many years. He knew that. Jenna took a photo of us. As I said, I knew this would happen. Lord knows what this fellow made of all this; he seemed slightly taken aback. Why wouldn't he be, with a stranger gregariously putting an arm around him and posing for a photo as if both were ol' war buddies? It was a brief encounter. I didn't tarry. But it was a given this would happen. 

It turns out this scene is nearly a national icon, common on postcards.

Iceland, day 2.0

Ten minutes out of Reykjavik, I knew this trip was right for me, the right thing to do, my self-conjugation of verb and declension of noun, guided by personal pronoun. Despite the quiet, cozy small-town feel of this "bay of smokes," and the grayness I had encountered on the day of arrival, I yearned for more, if for no other reason than to be in slight accord with the lights and shadows and escarpments I had pre-visioned. So, now the sun was rising and blazing shortly after Gateway to Iceland's Hot Golden Circle Tour had begun. Well before 1100, our little bus was basking in unequivocal northern daylight. With snow-bedecked mountains and glaciers to the left and right (mostly left), the scenic vistas of postcard-riddled imagination became incarnate. The trip now felt right because it presented on a silver metaphysical platter the natural wonders so dearly hoped for. My tired and tiresome joke from back home, which barely yielded a chuckle if I were lucky, that I'd return with two Nordic goddesses, twins, Helga and Inga, blond and raven, was now officially irrelevant. I had threatened myself with not taking a camera, and the view from the bus endorsed that notion. No camera captures the majesty of the everlasting hills, the eternal expanse. But I snapped away all day, until the battery ran down. Nevertheless, these majestic and rugged views of grandeur lifted me, though I was tired from the day before. Just this, just this: was this one of the "meanings" for which I had traveled and arrived? Remember, I came alone. I doubt anyone else on the bus had done the same. I suppose I entertained slight pangs of envy or self-pity, but not for long and not deeply. Solo was the way to go. (Yesterday, no traveling companion would have put up with my endless traipsing and trudging onward and onward, ploughing forth. Today, by the way, I discovered the FREE shuttle to the Kringlan mall from around the corner of Ice Apartments! I resisted the slap to the forehead. It wasn't meant to be. Plus, I would have missed the intimate step-by-step experiential first-hand knowledge of the village-like [mostly] streets of the world's northernmost capital.) So traveling as one's own companion frees one of conflict, at least outer conflict, and liberates one from negotiation with respect to plans and their execution. 

Iceland, day 1 (catching up)

Today is day 3 but I am still chronicling day 1. Like all memory, it is now filtered by experience, colored by perception, stained by mental re-vision.

The shower.

Futuristic, to me -- perhaps not to Icelanders, Scandinavians, Europeans, Asians, Latin Americans. (I later learned the owner of the building, who also owns the Black Pearl, employs Dutch design.)

In the bathroom, the shower is not a separate entity. It is a portion of the room, partitioned by one glass door that bends to open wider or fold into the watery flow. The room, on the fourth floor, has several windows, less than a foot square, that sit in a vertical column looking onto the street. I am across from Volcano House (a museum with a restaurant, shop, offices), a construction site, the library. I doubt that anyone can see in from the street below and it does not bother me anyway. Back to the shower. Trying to turn the right metal dial, I was like the Woody Allen character in Sleeper. Water poured from five overhead metal "flutes" with holes. By mistake I first launched a wand next to the dials, splashing me and that side of the room. Finally, I got the water to warm up, and luxuriated in the cleansing warmth. A squeegee on the floor allows one to coax water, if needed (needed), down the drain, a slit in the floor, near the wall. 

Light switches. More sci-fi. Find out which white switch on a white background does what, if anything. I am in a Haruki Murakami novel, except the labels are in Icelandic, as they should be. White switches for room (ceiling) lights are demarcated by "loftljos." The room thermostat does not go above 21 degrees C. (69.8F). Sounds about right, in accord with home, even warmer, given my costs. Press to the right or left. (After two days, I learned a quick press on the left is off, to the right is on; pressing slowly or without a quick release is to dim. Or vice fecking versa.)

A great feature near the shower, discovered accidentally, is an S-like metal tubing on the wall. It is heated! It warms towels, or the foot mat. I used it yesterday to dry my swimsuit after the Secret Lagoon experience.

I took a nap, not more than an hour.

I ventured out again.

I met friends, by the lake.

I did not know the names of these friends, whom I was confident of meeting. But I did learn their names.

They saved the day.

And me.

Iceland, day 1: future forward (contd)

I followed the directions to get in to the Ice Apartments lobby. That was easy, despite being told to "pull" the code numbers when it was really "press." Hey, we've all pulled when we should have pressed, and vice versa, right? For the life of me I could not find the box for the key for the room. I tried the lobby; I tried the fourth floor. I went to the desk of the Black Pearl and had them call Erla, the manager. Daniel, of the Black Pearl, went up to the fourth floor and showed me the "box" on the wall and we got the key. The box looked like a thermostat, but what do I know? The place is spacious for about $100 a night. Lots of white. Modern to the point of science-fiction. All the light switches, in Icelandic, have dimmers and on/off and rocket launchers and artisanal pure air pumps. Or something. Sleek style. I do look out onto the Old Harbor but aside from the new opera house it looks industrial with mountains in the background. 

I hit the pavements, not yet tired. Not yet feeling or acting tired. It was cold and windy, always windy the locals say, with the sky finally brightening. I ambled up the main street of shops and walked uphill toward the Hallgrimskirkja, a Lutheran church that sits atop the cityscape. A statue of Leifr Ericson is in front of it, a gift from the U.S. I went in to the church and heard echoingly loud organ music. It sounded like Bach, but the organist told me it was a French composer. Again, travel surprises. We do not experience what we expect. I assume massive churches to dwarf me, to make me feel struck down with awe. The nave was bright mint green and airy. It felt loose and open, almost retailish in its modernity. The interior was stunningly modern and simple (the Icelandic way), but I was trained to expect the moody candlelit somberness of a European cathedral. So when I walked out and viewed where I had been, the structure, though shockingly huge, seemed less. Granted, that is all conjured by my mind and its anticipation.

After I left, I used a free public WC. Then I went down the street and had a cup of coffee and fruit-laden and grainy bread with Icelandic Butter at Reykjavik Roasters. I chatted with Sebastian, British, I believe. 

I still needed to get to Kringlan shopping center to take care of my phone issue. I stopped a man walking two dogs to ask for directions. He intimated I was crazy, that it was that far. Take a bus, he urged. It was around noon. I brushed his concern aside and walked on. It was a lot of walking, on icy and snow-packed streets. They do a dreadful job of clearing sidewalks. It's a real hazard. I studied my map and turned left onto Miklabraut, a four-lane heavily traveled boulevard that sounds like a German dish. I asked a man shoveling his driveway if I was going the right way. He too tried to dissuade me, telling me to cross the street and take a bus. I trudged onward. Who knows why? I was almost there by now, I supposed. A few long blocks from the mall, I crossed under the street in a tunnel for pedestrians. It had graffiti mural and filth: rubbish, wrappers, plastic, scattered paper hearts in the swampy detritus. I asked another fellow if I was close. I was. For once, he (young, unlike the others I had asked) saluted my walkable mania. 

Here's the bad part. I got to the Simm-inn store and they said it was an AT&T problem, my phone was locked, they couldn't help me, and they couldn't give me a refund. Maybe they could at the airport. Good luck. This was distressing and deflating. Now I felt tired and hungry but mostly tired. In a word, I hightailed it out of there and took a bus back "home" and finally took a nap. Just that hour or so helped.

As for tired, I dare say: has Reykjavik, Iceland ever had a 67-year-old tourist walk so far in one day all by himself? I'll match anyone, though that was not my intent. (What was my intent?)

Then I took the most modern of showers.

[more to come but not tonight]

Iceland, day 1: future forward

What was that about things never being as you expect them to be (The First Spiritual Axiom of Travel and Life)? As we "deplane" at KEF just before 0630, we are greeted by gusts of snowy wind almost throwing us off the outdoor stairway. (True, I can't speak for the rest of the arriving guests.) The pilot had noted the presence of "snow showers." Nope, this had the feel of a good, ol' fashioned Syracuse snow squall. Fine. I held onto the railing as I descended. It was dark outside. Dark like the night. We walked to a shuttle bus, which transported us no more than a few hundred yards to an arrival building. Exiting the shuttle bus, several inches of swirling and drifted snow which belied all the pamphlet hype of "temperate" conditions. I joked with a kid from Wisconsin about it. We all took it in stride. 

The arrivals building (it may be the only building at the airport) is Icelandic slick and pristine: wooden floors, lean lines, bathrooms of white featuring waterless urinals and private closets for other discharges; quiet. I turned in US$150 and got back 18,834 ISK, or Icelandic Krona. don't fight me on this. Maybe I got back 18,500. Who knows? The window said no commission is charged, so I'd say this was a wise move instead of doing the transaction at EWR. I Joe Island (so says the receipt, though I think the sign says Joe + Juice), I bought an Earl Grey tea and a so-called blueberry muffin that looked Martin pink, stawberry-ish, for 798 ISK. Seemed like a lot, but amounted to a total of $6 when I figured it out afterward. Two young guys ran it, zippy, awake, affable, playing pop music (was that Rihanna?). I sat at a round table. They tried to have the feel of a coffee shop (though no bagels or anything; avocado smoothies and health stuff).

At a convenience 7 Eleven-type shop at KEF, I bought a Siminn Prepaid Mobile Service sim card for my phone because AT&T was not working. At all. "Emergency Calls Only." It cost around $25. seemed to make sense. I went over at a table and fumbled with my phone. I see the clerk who sold me the chip walking into the joint with something that looks an awful lot like my Ogio laptop bag, because it is my laptop bag, which I had leaned against the counter. A nearly disastrous close call. Chalk it up to not having slept a wink on the five-hour flight. I scratched off the number on the sim card package and inserted it in the space on my phone screen. (I do not have a smartphone. I did this seven or eight times. No dice, not even with the help of the folks who sold it to me. They told me to talk to the folks at the Kringlan mall and told me roughly where it was. The Siminn folks were not open yet and not answering calls. 

It was time to get out of the airport. I bought a round-trip ticket for the Flybus into Reykjavik. 5000 ISK. I scrounged around  in my pocket and could only find one coupon for the bus. Is it tiredness or nervousness that is spawning these slip-ups? I cut ahead of those waiting in line and asked the gal who sold me the ticket. She said just give your receipt to the driver and use the ticket/coupon on Friday (as if I was supposed to know that). I exit the terminal to make for the bus. Blustery snow. In the dark. At 0830. I had to laugh.

I sat on the bus next to Eddie from south of Boston (but not "Southie" per se, he said), recently retired from the military as a helicopter pilot. A perfect companion for the trip in. We groused good-naturedly about the weather and the dark. "The sun comes up at 11 and goes down at 4," he said. He too was traveling alone. He thought he had read Baseball's Starry Night. He had great Ted Williams stories. Stayed at a condo next door to The Kid, who answered his door in boxers. They knocked down drinks together, in the morning. Jim Craig, the goalie for the U.S. hockey team that beat the Russians at Lake placid, was his neighbor; his brother was Eddie's accountant. Eddie traded away his tickets for that game, figuring our team was going nowhere. As for this morning, Eddie was going to go to a spa for a few hours because he was too early for his room at the Hilton.

Our bus sailed into Reykjavik in the dark. The snow let up. At 0930 it was still dark as we got got in a traffic jam. I saw one plow. do people go to work late? Or was it the snowstorm, which began the day before. No, it was not on par with a Syracuse lake-effect blast, predicted back home for this very day. But I pictured dramatic escarpments, geysers, ocean views, and Bjork on the way in. (More later on music on the flight.) 

At one point, Eddie, sitting on my left, slumped over, bent in half, immobile. Was he dead? We are of similar age. Should I try to rouse him? Listen for snoring? After ten minutes he popped back up. A valuable practice he had matered in the military: sleeping on a dime. 

On the trip in, a young fellow walked up to the driver. Five times we all could hear the driver say, in English, "I can't hear you. You're mumbling. What? I don't understand a word you are saying." Then: "I can't get your luggage while I am driving," with a dose of sarcasm. "You can't wait? Now?" Finally, the riddle was made clear when the driver stopped the bus, let the guy out, who ran behind some pines and took a leak. The bus crept along. Then the bus stopped, holding up traffic briefly, and let the fellow pop back onto the bus, relieved.

Our bus stopped at the BSI bus terminal and let most of us off to transfer to smaller buses. Eddie and I shook hands, mutually declaring we had a good chance of meeting here again.

My small bus dropped me off at the Black Pearl Hotel, in the old Harbor. Ice Apartments, where I'd stay, were said to be adjacent. It was past 1000. Still dark.

[more to come]

pre-Iceland: phase 1

Sheets of Sunday rain cascaded onto the thwacking windshield wipers of my 2007 VW Rabbit. Dark, windy curtains of driving rain greeted me as I sailed south on 81. Much of the time, I left the radio and CD player off. The rain was soundtrack aplenty for the drive that would take me to dear old friends in Florham Park, New Jersey, before flying out of EWR on Monday evening to Reykjavik, Iceland. Around Scranton, fumbling for decent music (rare), I tuned in sports-themed radio stations (FoxSports and ESPN). They delivered second-hand reports of the Seahawks-Vikings playoff game, but I soon tired of their false camaraderie and juvenile banter reminiscent of locker room towel snapping. I mildly rooted for the Vikings (after all, look where I am headed), but I later learned they lost a heartbreaker. Vikings. Heartbreak. Are encounters with Viking descendants the perfect cure for broken hearts, minds, or souls? That question is a shade too cute, even for this writer prone to the showy, cutesy turn of phrase. I suggest it is more accurate to say my Iceland journey is just that: a journey, a reset -- not so much a "cure" for anything. By encountering new vistas, fresh air, new sounds, new people, it will be like taking the Etch-a-Sketch and turning it upside down, shaking it, and scrubbing it of the angular, jagged drawing that was not working anyway. As for this first phase of the trip, I was consoled by my own company. Per her request, I texted trip updates to my youngest daughter back in Syracuse. In Pennsylvania hills before the Poconos, I heard the Rosary intoned. The Third Glorious Mystery: The Coming of the Holy Spirit. I resisted changing the station. Why not? I figured. Each Hail Mary was begun by a male voice who prayed up to and including the word "Jesus." The ten Hail Marys in each decade (dekkid, a severe nun of my childhood pronounced it) were finished by a female voice ("now and at the hour of our death. Amen."). They both had vaguely Irish accents, and the echo in their recitations made it sound like they were in a chapel. As I was listening to this, on a hill to my right, a billboard proclaimed "ULTIMATE MASSAGE. 24/7. No waiting." At a rest stop just inside New Jersey, shortly after the dramatic escarpments of the Delaware Water Gap, I texted my friend Hoagie telling him to tell Brett I had just driven through East Stroudsburg, the area where Brett used to live. By the time I was in the Garden State, the sun blazed through amidst wind-scudded cumulus, casting shadows on hills visible for miles. Temps in the fifties. And after arriving in Florham Park (the second locus of a ten-year stay in Jersey, where two of my children were born), conversation and coming and going. Then eloquent grace from Randy and a grand dinner with nine or ten around the table (family friend Michelle and I the only lefties and seated accordingly), vegetarian delights (couscous, spinach pie, eggplant), stories, laughter, and absence (with the patriarch gone almost a year ago). Today, departure. Like a nervous Nellie or eager child, I fret whether all my documents will be in order or some snag halts the progress of this narrative. Time will tell. It always does.

I have arrived . . .

I have arrived. You thought that I have arrived in Iceland, didn't you? (Is it vain to assume that you, or else you, or maybe you instead, have been reading these prior musings about Iceland and Reykjavik, formulated before my having breathed its air or tasted its water or touched its land with my feet?) I have yet to arrive in my own private Iceland (and I have yet to view the 1991 movie My Own Private Idaho, though I've always loved the title). "I Have Arrived." That's the title of today's little meditation reading in my compilation of wisdom penned by Thich Nhat Hanh. He says, "The realization that we have already arrived, that we don't have to travel any further, that we are already here, can give us peace and joy. The conditions for our happiness are already sufficient." That being said and that being believed and that being practiced notwithstanding, I nevertheless yearn for reset, reboot, revival, restoration, and renaissance. I hunger for the "shock of the new," to echo that cogent title of the work by Robert Hughes. My own private Iceland beckons and calls and whispers.