Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Germany Anniversary

Happy Germany Anniversary to me!

Precisely five years ago today, I arrived in Germany, wide-eyed and eager to explore (still am), but expecting to be here for only a year. Ha ha ha, that joke's on me!

That was then:

(While staying with my friend Lisa's family the very first days, before I even had a place of my own to live. Yup, the same Lisa who was my Iceland travel buddy just a few weeks ago.)


Fittingly, the first destination for my next trip (which starts, er, tomorrow already?) is to the wedding of a friend I guess I've known for, let's see, five years minus maybe three or four days – since we met on the first day of orientation, the first week of that Fulbright grant year. After the Fulbright, I moved to Berlin, she moved to Barcelona, and now she's getting married!

More about the upcoming trip anon.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Reykjavík

Reykjavík is...

...colorful and cute, a toy-sized town nonetheless packed with good music and fun people and oh so many hipsters wearing bizarre combinations of clothing items that somehow work.


...surprisingly, full of great vegetarian restaurants, where you could get the delicious, health-food-y plate of the day, plus as much bread and toppings as you cared to eat, for an entirely reasonable price. Apparently the days of Iceland being super-duper-expensive are over.

...fueled by coffee. Free refills everywhere. I've heard the theory posited that because alcohol was prohibited for so long, Icelandic people turned to coffee instead. ("What do Icelandic people like to drink?" Lisa asked. "Whatever they can get their hands on," Sölvi replied without missing a beat.)

...absolutely as good as its reputation as a music city! We saw great local concerts at a music bar called Café Rosenberg, ranging from a partly-Californian group making mellow, atmospheric music on guitar, harp and keyboard, to a trio of Icelandic sisters who sang stunning harmonies.


...despite its trendiness, a place where everyone truly does wear the iconic Icelandic two-tone sweater. Even to the coolest clubs. (Or, in my case, on a hike. It's versatile, the Icelandic sweater.)


...possessing of many swimming pools, at which hot tubs and saunas are de rigueur. I actually found the local pool far more relaxing than the much-touted Blue Lagoon outside of town. The whole thing is set up to be part of daily life, since people go to the hot tubs so often, so in the changing rooms there are seats with mirrors and electrical outlets, and women placidly going about their routines of curling their hair and such things.

...heated by geothermal energy! Something like 90% of homes have geothermal heating, and hot water in homes comes directly from hot springs, too. Yes, the water sometimes smells of sulfur. But it's possibly the only place in the world where you don't have to feel guilty about taking a long, hot shower!

...completely devoid of signs that there was a big financial crisis here recently. Prices are no longer extremely high, the country has definitely turned more toward tourism as a major industry, and apparently there's some unemployment now. But on the whole, people in Iceland just seem awfully...happy. Especially for people who live up at the top of the world where there's barely any daylight all winter and it's chilly and overcast all summer. But they live in a beautiful place, and they seem to know it.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Reykjadalur, the Valley of Steam

Speaking of people in Iceland being incredibly kind:

My German friend Lisa joined me for the Reykjavík part of the trip, and on our first day there, we met up with Sölvi and his cousin Atli, friends of a friend through couchsurfing. We chatted a bit about this and that, then I mentioned how much I wanted to go on this one particular hike, to a place where boiling hot springs feed into a cold river.

Oh, we were thinking of going there this week too, Sölvi and Atli said. We can take you. When do you want to go? Tonight?

True to their word, they came and picked us up about 9 p.m. (It never truly gets dark in the summer, remember, so to an Icelander there's nothing strange about first setting out on a hike in the evening.) We packed up some provisions, then drove out of town to an area called Reykjadalur, a fantastical landscape of steam billowing out of holes in the ground and muddy puddles bubbling because the water comes out of the ground at the boiling point. Oh, and sheep. Iceland has lots of sheep.


Atli even brought eggs for us to boil in the hot springs – place eggs in some kind of net or bag, submerge in boiling puddle, wait 10 minutes – and we had an impromptu picnic by the river. At midnight.

Then we stripped down to our bathing suits in the very brisk Icelandic nighttime air and jumped into the water. Looks like a river, feels like a hot tub! And there is nothing quite like a natural hot tub in the open air in the middle of nowhere in the stillness of an Icelandic night.

By the time we stumbled all the way back to the car in the darkest part of the never-quite-dark night, around 1 or 2 a.m., I was so tired I could barely talk, but there was no question it was an experience-of-a-lifetime kind of thing. "I can't believe this is my first day in Iceland!" Lisa kept saying.

Sölvi and Atli, meanwhile, do that hike once a month or so (and it's much nicer in winter, says Atli, when you can lie in the river and see the stars, and sometimes the northern lights). You start to see why people might choose to stay in this cold, rainy, far-flung corner of the Earth.

Iceland in Pictures Part I

Here's the album for the first part of Iceland, with the journey across Iceland and the nature reserve Thórsmörk:

Iceland I: The Lake Was a Diamond in the Valley's Hand

Possibly the Nicest People on Earth

The people I met in Iceland – ALL the people I met in Iceland – were friendly and kind to a degree that was very nearly a shock, at least after the gruff, snappish ways of public life in Berlin.

A guy and his girlfriend I'd chatted with on the bus from Thórsmörk to the Reykjavík bus terminal saw me afterward waiting for a city bus into town, and insisted on giving me a ride instead, straight to the door of my guesthouse. Bus drivers, when asked, would drop you off anywhere along the way, not just at the official stops. And then there was the story of the clothes I left at Thórsmörk.

I discovered their disappearance after I did laundry my first night in Reykjavík and came up two shirts short. I felt the loss keenly; when you only travel with five days' worth of clothes, two fewer is quite a blow. Plus, I liked those shirts.

So I called the hostel back in Thórsmörk, hoping against hope they would somehow still be lying around there, and that I could beg the hostel employees to mail them to me in Germany, at least, but would they do it, even if I promised to send them the cost of postage...?

"No problem," the woman at the reception said, after she'd gone and tracked down my errant shirts to the floor of the dorm. "I'll put them on the morning bus to Reykjavík. You can pick them up at the bus terminal." Indeed, my shirts arrived on the bus the next day, packaged up tightly and labeled with my name. The driver was all smiles, so happy and relieved to see the package make it into my hands.



Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Thórsmörk, Iceland

Thórsmörk – which is actually spelled Þórsmörk (that first letter is a "thorn," a fabulous little letter we used to have too, in Old English) and means "Thor's woods" – is many things, including...

...a wide valley shot through with the many twisting strands of a swift, gray, glacier-fed river.


Because the river is constantly changing its course, there's no car bridge, and Thórsmörk can only be reached by four-wheel-drive buses and Jeeps. We forded no less than 27 times, through everything from small streams to true rivers.

The last of these – the real river – I crossed in an ordinary Toyota pickup truck driven by a young park ranger from the Thórsmörk hostel, with water surging halfway up the passenger side door, me shrieking and giggling, and the blasé Icelandic ranger glancing over at me with a look that plainly said, What's your problem?


...surrounded on three sides by glaciers, one of which is the famous Eyjafjallajökull! Unfortunately, I didn't find out until afterward where to go to find areas of rock that are still hot from last year's eruption.

...gorgeous and otherworldly, all dramatic green and craggy mountains, around the endless black stone expanse of the riverbed.


...home to the peaceful little oasis that was the hostel (more like a collection of simple, homey cabins), complete with well-stocked little kitchen and friendly fellow travelers, who regaled me with stories of their far more hard-core hikes through Icelandic wastelands and ferocious winds.

"I never knew before that it could be a sandstorm, rain and sun all at the same time," one woman told me. "Oh, and there was a rainbow."

Ho hum, just another day in a hike in Thórsmörk:


...where I climbed probably the scariest mountain of my life. I wish I had pictures that gave a sense of it, but I couldn't take any, because I generally needed both hands to hold on. Only made it up (and back down) thanks to Jethro, a world-wise, adventurous, yet equally acrophobic college student from upstate New York. (And the chances that two environmentalist vegetarians from central New York State would meet on top of a rock in Iceland are...?)

Jethro coached me through where to hold on and how to maneuver sideways along the steep path, all the while cheerfully admitting that he was just as terrified to look down as I was. Here's a celebratory picture, with the mountain we survived (Rjúpnafell) in the background:


That's all for now! Up next: Reykjavík and the Valley of Steam.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Pronounce the Volcano

Thórsmörk, where I spent several happy days hiking, climbing mountains and fording streams, is a valley surrounded on three sides by mountain glaciers. One of these glaciers is Eyjafjallajökull.

You know, the glacier volcano that erupted last year? And wreaked havoc on European air traffic for a week with its spewing ash particles? And was the bane of newscasters everywhere, because no one could pronounce its convoluted Icelandic name?

I arrived in Iceland still forced to refer to it as "The Volcano Nobody Can Pronounce," but with a clear goal: Learn to pronounce the thing before my week in Iceland was up!

In fact, it only took about a day, thanks to the helpful woman at my hostel's information desk, who broke it down into syllables for me. Then I hiked around all day, periodically muttering the name to myself as practice. I'm sure my pronunciation is still terrible, but it turns out it's not too difficult to learn the syllables, at least. Try it with me:

Ey-ya, FYAT-la, YO-kutl.

Or if all else fails, follow the suggestion of my new-found hiking buddy Jethro, and call it by its literal translation: "Island Mountain Glacier."

And yes, pretty much all Icelandic place names turn out to be that charmingly literal, once you decipher the parts.

Crossing Iceland

The ferry from Denmark arrives in the early morning in a fjord on the east side of Iceland. Reykjavík and most of the country's population are on the west side, and Reykjavík is where my friend Lisa would be flying in to meet me four days after my arrival.

After some internal debate (it would be so fascinating to go north and check out Grímsey Island, which sits on the Arctic circle! but the island is inconvenient to reach and I'd be using up my entire time just to get there and turn around again!) I decided to spend my time in Thórsmörk, a nature reserve in a dramatic river valley hemmed in by glaciers.

If you want to know where these places are, by the way, check out my handy map. I do love making maps:


View Iceland and the Faroes in a larger map


First, though, I had to get to Thórsmörk.

My research had revealed the following points:

– Buses in Iceland are very expensive.
– Schedules from the east to the west don't align well, so it would take me two days of travel just to get to Thórsmörk.
– The hostel in Höfn, where I would have to wait overnight to catch the next bus, was already full.
– All sources say hitchhiking in Iceland is safe, friendly and easy.

You see where I'm going with this?

Recently getting to know some freewheeling, hitchhiking, couchsurfing types in Berlin had inspired me, and I started thinking, if not in safe, friendly, easy Iceland, then when in my life am I ever going to dare to hitchhike? I decided to try it, with the bus as a back-up as necessary.

First attempt was in the parking lot before the ferry even left the Faroe Islands, but that yielded no results. Everyone else seemed to be headed north, not south, around Iceland's ring road.

Next I tried asking around on the car deck of the ship, just before arrival, and found a German couple willing to take me just into the next town, Egilsstaðir, which lies on the ring road. Here's a first glimpse of Icelandic landscape:


In Egilsstaðir, for the first time in my life, I did the real hitchhiking deal: Set myself up on the side of the highway with a hand-drawn sign and a goofy grin, feeling silly but determined at least to try.

And in fact, it only took 10 or 15 minutes before someone stopped. He was driving all the way across the country to Reykjavík, and could drop me off where I'd catch the bus into Thórsmörk. For a long stretch in the not-very-populated east of the country, the ring road (in other words, THE major highway) looked like this:


My ride was Zlatko, a Serbian soccer player who'd been living in Iceland for 13 years and spoke the language fluently. Yes, I had a moment of qualms about traveling with a man (might have preferred a woman, a couple or a family – but then, couples and families had cars that were already full!) and felt very much on my guard at first. But he turned out to be incredibly kind, even stopping at sightseeing points he thought I should see along the way, and very much a gentleman, telling me stories about his young son in Reykjavík and his current drive back from Serbia.

Yes, you read that right. He drove from Serbia to Iceland. Only a trip of about 2,800 kilometers (1,700 miles) on the road, plus two nights on a ship. By this point, he just wanted to get home!

Zlatko made sure I saw Jökulsárlón, the bay full of icebergs that calve from a glacier into the water. He said it was only worth seeing it if the weather was good, and he'd only had that, in changeable Iceland, once or twice in 13 years. We had good weather.


I was able to catch a bus into Thórsmörk that same evening, arriving a day ahead of plan. I estimate Zlatko saved me at least 100 euros, plus a day of travel time, plus a lot of bus-station-finding hassle. Not to mention being an interesting person to talk to. Thanks, Zlatko!

I don't know whether or not I'll be hitchhiking in the future, but I'm glad I did at least this once.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Smyril Line Ferry, Part II

Leaving the Faroe Islands, the wind up front on the deck was fabulous, and little kids weren't the only ones delighting in doing this:


We glided past more islands than I thought the Faroes even had, all of them steep, dramatic and shrouded in fog.


And then, the open sea!


Once we were on open waters of course, the ship's pitching and my motion sickness set in. But this time, I was prepared. I knew just to lie down, not to make any fancy plans to check out the swimming pool in the ship's basement, or eat an actual meal in an actual restaurant.

And then, just as we were boarding, I met this cool group of young Belgian travelers, who were friendly and chatty and invited me to come to the swimming pool with them.

I did manage to make it down to the pool, which was a hilarious sight, all the water sloshing up and over the sides as the ship rocked, to the delight of all the kids present.

But after that, I crept back to my bunk, nauseous, and did in fact spend the rest of the trip lying down. So much for making cool Belgian friends.

The good thing, though? I ran into the same Belgians days later on the street in Reykjavík, after they'd been somewhere in the interior of the country, and I'd been hiking by the glaciers in the south. In other words, Iceland really is a small country!

I [Heart] Nordic Summer Nights

Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, July 26, 9 p.m., broad daylight:


11 p.m., still distinctly twilight:


Midnight, still ever so slightly blue:


Tuesday, August 9, 2011

The Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands were:


(beautiful and very green;)


glorious, long twilight evenings that never quite end, and continually trying to capture these in photographs;

couchsurfing with a Danish singer-songwriter and her boyfriend;


hearing strange, experimental music on classical instruments, and amazing jazz by folk musicians, plus a friend of said musicians showing me pictures of a concert they'd performed earlier in the day: in a cave, in the water, sitting in little boats and wearing life vests;

wandering around the slopes and cliffs, looking out to sea and discovering that it is the universal nature of all sheep to fix me with what I have now determined to call the Sheep Stare;


freelance translating from my netbook at the estimable Café Natur in downtown Tórshavn;

discovering that Tórshavn, the capital, for reasons known only to the Faroese and possibly the Danish, is pronounced not "Tors-hav-n," but "Tor-shawwwwn";


being diligently followed around town by a dog that wore a collar but was on nobody's leash, who would cross the street when I crossed the street, and periodically glance around to make sure I was still with him, as we wandered around town;

meeting a stranger on a ferry and wandering around together on a tiny, adorable island with a tiny, adorable village;


dancing on a Tuesday night with a bunch of young Faroese folks who were pulling out all their crazy moves to 80's pop songs, and when we went to leave, we were motioned toward the back door and ushered out by a guy who made a big production of putting his finger to his lips and encouraging utter silence as we tumbled out into someone's backyard, as if trying to keep the party a secret – even though the pulsing sound of the bar's music could be clearly heard from everywhere around;

discovering I had only 400 kroner left in my wallet (equal to about 5 euros, in a rather pricey country) and when I asked the bartender, "What can I get for 400 kroner?" the guy sitting next to me on a bar stool muttered, "A banana."

Monday, August 8, 2011

The Smyril Line Ferry

From Denmark, I caught this ferry to the Faroe Islands:


The good thing: Traveling by ship feels adventurous and exciting.

The bad thing: Already extremely prone to motion sickness, I was so dizzy the entire trip, I couldn't even stand up for more than a few seconds at a time. "We never have weather this bad during the summer!" the guy at the reception desk helpfully told me afterward.

The good thing: It turns out the rocking of a ship, while nauseating if you're standing, is simply lulling if you're lying down. So I went to bed sometime in the afternoon, and slept right through to the next day.

Up next will be... arrival here: