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.