The Epic Saga Continues!

Two important links! Time-sensitive!

2008-05-08T23:39:15Z

As of now, the Myanmar government is still refusing to allow US aid workers and supplies into the country to help the hundreds of thousands of cyclone victims. Mercy Corps, an organization I trust and give to frequently, does have international partners whose aid is being allowed through.

If you would like to give through them and help, Click here.

And of course, the US is only offering 3 million in aid. We would have a lot more to offer for that purpose...or for schools, or infrastructure, or to buffer gas prices, or to aid in recovery from foreclosures, or for ANYTHING ELSE if we just stopped pouring money down the bottomless sink that is Iraq.

Bush just asked for ANOTHER $160 billion for the War. For the love of sanity, please, click here to tell your Representatives to tell him no more blank checks. The vote will be any day now.

- SW

sagawizard @ 2008-05-08T10:13:00

2008-05-08T14:14:18Z

Really good New York Times editorial about Guantanamo and the horrible shit our tax dollars are paying for to go on there. More and more evidence coming out about innocent people kept there and tortured for years - no charges, no trials, nothing. This particular piece talks a news journalist tortured for 7 years before being released.

I never thought I'd live to see our country operate a full fledged gulag. Haven't heard ANY of the Presidential candidates talk about shutting it down. We need to remind them of that priority.

May 4, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Prison of Shame, and It’s Ours

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
My Times colleague Barry Bearak was imprisoned by the brutal regime in Zimbabwe last month. Barry was not beaten, but he was infected with scabies while in a bug-infested jail. He was finally brought before a court after four nights in jail and then released.

Alas, we don’t treat our own inmates in Guantánamo with even that much respect for law. On Thursday, America released Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera who had been held without charges for more than six years. Mr. Hajj has credibly alleged that he was beaten, and that he was punished for a hunger strike by having feeding tubes forcibly inserted in his nose and throat without lubricant, so as to rub tissue raw.

“Conditions in Guantánamo are very, very bad,” Mr. Hajj said in a televised interview from his hospital bed in Sudan, adding, “In Guantánamo, you have animals that are called iguanas ... that are treated with more humanity.”

Al Jazeera’s director general, Wadah Khanfar, said by telephone from the hospital that Mr. Hajj was so frail when he arrived that he had to be carried off the plane and into an ambulance. Guantánamo inmates are not allowed to see their families, so that evening Mr. Hajj met his 7-year-old son, whom he had last seen as a baby.

Reliable information is still scarce about Guantánamo, but increasingly we’re gaining glimpses of life there — and they are painful to read.

Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, has just published a memoir of his nearly five years in Guantánamo. He describes prolonged torture that included interruptions by a doctor to ensure that he was well enough for the torture to continue.

Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, an American woman of Afghan descent who worked as an interpreter, has written a book to be published next month, “My Guantánamo Diary,” that is wrenching to read. She describes a pediatrician who returned to Afghanistan in 2003 to help rebuild his country — and was then arrested by Americans, beaten, doused with icy water and paraded around naked. Finally, after three years, officials apparently decided he was innocent and sent him home.

A third powerful new book about Guantánamo, by an American lawyer named Steven Wax, is summed up by its title: “Kafka Comes to America.”

The new material suggests two essential truths about Guantánamo:

First, most of the inmates were probably innocent all along, but Pakistanis or Afghans turned them over to America in exchange for large cash rewards. The moment we offered $25,000 rewards for Al Qaeda supporters, any Arab in the region risked being kidnapped and turned over as a terrorism suspect.

Second, torture was routine, especially early on. That’s why more than 100 prisoners have died in American custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo.

One of the men still in Guantánamo is Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi. He is a Libyan who had been running a bakery in Afghanistan with his Afghan wife. Bounty hunters turned him over to the United States as a terrorism suspect, and he has been in custody for more than six years.

Mr. Ghizzawi was taken before a “combatant status review tribunal,” which ruled unanimously in November 2004 that he was not an “enemy combatant.” One member of the tribunal later scoffed that the supposed evidence against him was “garbage.” But a later tribunal reversed the first one’s finding, and Mr. Ghizzawi is being held indefinitely, though he is unlikely to face trial.

Candace Gorman, a lawyer for Mr. Ghizzawi, says that his health has sharply deteriorated since she first saw him. He is in constant pain from severe liver disease resulting from hepatitis B that first manifested itself in Guantánamo, Ms. Gorman said, adding that he also contracted tuberculosis there.

Worse, a doctor at Guantánamo twice told Mr. Ghizzawi in December that he has H.I.V., she said. Ms. Gorman believes that officials were just trying to torment him.

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, denied that any doctor ever told Mr. Ghizzawi that he had H.I.V., or that Mr. Ghizzawi contracted tuberculosis or first suffered from hepatitis while in Guantánamo.

Granted, it can be hard to figure out what version to believe. When I started writing about Guantánamo several years ago, I thought the inmates might be lying and the Pentagon telling the truth. No doubt some inmates lie, and some surely are terrorists. But over time — and it’s painful to write this — I’ve found the inmates to be more credible than American officials.

Both Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates have pushed to shut down Guantánamo because it undermines America’s standing and influence. They have been overruled by Dick Cheney and other hard-liners. In reality, it would take an exceptional enemy to damage America’s image and interests as much as President Bush and Mr. Cheney already have with Guantánamo.

-SW

Whoah

2008-04-17T20:36:49Z

So I just found out that a student I had several years ago, with whom I was fairly close and whom I convinced to join the school newspaper, where she rose to the rank of Asst. Editor...

...is now an interim speechwriter for the President of France.

No shit.

She apparently just wrote some speech he gave to the President of Ghana, or something.

So yeah, maybe I am helping to shape the future, just a little bit...
(lord help us all)

-SW

sagawizard @ 2008-04-02T15:55:00

2008-04-02T19:56:10Z

Couldn't depart without my weekly poking fun at those wacky Japanese:

A Japanese chain called "Puppy the World" offers dog rentals. That's right, rent a dog for a day. Why? Um...

And here's a testimonial from an American who rented a dog there...

- SW

Cell phones more carcinogetic than cigarettes?

2008-03-31T16:59:14Z

After years of being told cell-phone/brain tumor connections were the stuff of myths, there is now a new surge of studies suggesting that cellphones indeed have links to cancer, as well as about-to-be-done studies since apparently we've been using cell phones long enough now for the data to be significant...

One MORE thing to worry about.

- SW

sagawizard @ 2008-03-26T17:13:00

2008-03-26T21:23:30Z

From a recent Washington Post article:

This one slipped by me (no doubt with the help of a media that buried it on page 18), but apparently on January 30th Congress actually did assert some gonads and, in Section 1222 of its defense appropriation bill, specifically banned funds from being used to set up permanent military bases in Iraq, or to exercise control over the region's oil. The language is remarkably plain:

"No funds appropriated pursuant to an authorization of appropriations in this Act may be obligated or expended for a purpose as follows:

(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq.

(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq."

Our President, still believing he is Caesar, basically just wrote in another of his infamous "signing statements" saying that he didn't have to follow those rules because they would "interfere" with his role as Commander in Chief.
He also, incidentally, issued signing statements saying he refused to follow Congress's order to form a commission investigate waste and fraud in military contracts.

In terms of a "legacy", President Bush has left this if nothing else: he has exposed our balance of power as something of a sham, that if a President just refuses to obey the law, there is no one to force him.

It will be just deserts if Hillary or Obama gets elected, and then follows Bush's lead and exercises whatever power they want, knowing they can evoke "national security" to tell Congress "screw you" with no consequences. I hope the Republicans who back Bush in his signing statements realize this. Ruin democracy for your own personal agendas, and you open the door to let anyone ruin it for theirs.

- SW

The incredible disappearing war

2008-03-25T16:14:45Z

War going badly for you, meeting few to none of your benchmarks? Not to worry. Just take it out of the news:

"While in all of 2007 the Iraq war occupied an average 15.5 percent of the "newshole" in the media, in the last quarter it fell to nine percent, and then to just 3.9 percent in the first quarter of 2008, according to PEJ's Paul Hitlin."

This, of course, on the heels of "Afgani-where" and "Osama bin who?"

The few times the media even mentions its own lack of recent war coverage, the defense I here is, "well, there are more pressing issues, like the economy and gas prices", as if Iraq wasn't a major contributing factor in the economic downturn. $500 billion dollars, entirely out of the normal budget, most of it borrowed...you'd better believe that has a catastrophic effect on the economy, prices, etc. Borrowing from foreign creditors certainly deflates the value of the US dollar...and since we in many cases borrow from China, it affects our ability to smack them upside the head over issues like Tibet...you really can draw links to all sorts of issue before even delving into the fun conspiracy-laden ones.

If Hillary and Obama weren't so busy smacking each other upside the head about helicopter trips and Rev. Wright, they might think of trying to make explicit those Iraq-Economy links, since McCain has foolishly chosen to align himself with an "US troops in Iraq for 100 years" position. Oh wait, if Hillary did that, she would have to confront her own complicity in that war. But the path's wide open for Obama. And hell, Hillary could always pull a John Edwards and say, "ok, I apologize for my vote, now I want to stop the war." It wouldn't make me vote for her, but it might work with others.

And lest we forget, once XM and Sirius merge, we'll have even fewer separate avenues to choose from for our information, war-related or otherwise...

- SW

Reflections as we begin year six

2008-03-19T21:30:35Z

About to head off to yet another antiwar protest on this, the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War.

Five years after Congress handed President Bush a blank check for war, we've:

- spent 506 BILLION dollars on this war, money not even factored into our normal military budget, borrowed from China or social security or anywhere else Bush could find it

- lost 3900 us soldiers in combat, not to mention 29,000 soldiers wounded, not to mention the tens of thousands more who are psychologically scarred.

- lost somewhere between 85,000 and 100,000 Iraqi lives, created 2 million refugees

- sparked a spinoff war between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds

- found NO weapons of mass destruction

- found NO pre-existing links to Al Qaeda prior to the invasion, but plenty who have set up shop since

- found our economy headed into a tailspin, inflation on the rise, and fuel and food costs soaring

And what have we gained?

-We kicked one dictator out of power, and let dozens if not hundreds of small terrorist cells set up shop in his place

-We gave Iraqis a pseudo-democracy at the cost of stability, safety and health

-Halliburton and Bechtel stock have soared

-Worldwide anger at America is at a record high

-We feel, not safer from terrorism, but more at risk than ever

State of the antiwar movement

The antiwar movement has had some impressive victories: over the course of those five years, beginning with NO ONE on their side - not either political party, not the media - we organized, formed internet groups like MoveOn.Org and TrueMajority that were wildly successful in turning public opinion around, in doing the nuts-and-bolts work that gave the Democrats a congressional victory in 2006 and have been converting polling places away from electronic ballots across the country. Groups like the ACLU have been challenging Bush's illegal overreaches of power as fast as Congress can rush to legalize them.

But in another way, we're failing miserably: the Democrats, who we are responsible for electing, have turned their backs on us. They have consistently refused to take any real efforts to bring an end to the war, content to propose plans and swallow vetos with no thought of fillibusters or maneuverings. They have ignored their mandate, and they are paying for it - MoveOn has had success in several races getting incumbent, pro-war democrats ousted in the primaries in favor of diehard antiwar candidates.

There is hope. While John McCain is firmly behind 100 more years in Iraq , Obama and Clinton are at least TALKING a good game about ending the war. They are at least presenting, on the surface of things, a real choice for American voters in this regard. They might even accomplish it, but only if we continue to put pressure on them.

The message opposing them has changed from "Saddam is gonna get you" to "support the troops" to "we can't pull out now, there'd be chaos", which is true only in that there'll be chaos WHENEVER we pull out, now or 10 years from now. We got a larger number of troops out of Vietnam in a matter of weeks, and within two decades Vietnam is stable and their economy's looking better than ours.

So I'm out there in the rain today, holding my damn little sign and thinking about what we've accomplished, and how many hours and hours and hours over FIVE YEARS I've spent at marches, doing phone and internet organizing, writing columns (some published in the Globe, Newsweek and USA Today), teaching critical thinking about war to all my students....and thinking about how far we have to go, how much work we have to do.

WHEN this war ends, and it IS a matter of when, some dumb politician - maybe even Clinton or Obama - will get the historical credit. I can live with that. But never forget that we've been the ones, and will continue to be the ones, doing the real work. Here's hoping it doesn't take another five years.

-SW

Bush calls fighting in Afghanistan "romantic"

2008-03-18T16:36:12Z

In a scene more appropriate to some World War I novel about a high and mighty German count visiting the trenches and patronizing the soldiers, our own President Bush visited the troops in Afghanistan and told them he was "envious" of the "fantastic, romantic experience" they're having there.

I quote:

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

This from the guy who found the thought of war so "exciting" and "romantic" that he not only made sure he served out Vietnam in the Texas Air National Guard, but then didn't even show up to that service.

-SW

This is rich

2008-03-14T23:00:42Z

Wow.

John McCain, entirely without a sense of irony, has criticized Congress for being "out of step with the American people" for ignoring the will of the people in rejecting a one-year moratorium on earmarks that he co-sponsored.

This from the man who is so "respecting the will of the American people", over 75% of whom want an end to the Iraq War, by running on a platform that we should keep military forces there for 100 years.

- SW

Tibet Tragedy

2008-03-14T14:35:59Z

There have been a series of protests just now in Tibet, which the Chinese are sending in troops to quell.
Read more here. A lot of the news is apparently coming by way of Western tourists caught up in it and blogging reports about it.

It was VERY freaky to read this, having been to Tibet this summer, recognizing the monestaries and locations the news is talking about...knowing that some of the monks I met and spoke with may be among the protestors, among the arrested, or among the dead...

One more place to keep in our thoughts. And maybe one MORE reason to boycott Chinese goods, policies, and that fucking horrible decision to host the Olympics in Beijing...

-SW

sagawizard @ 2008-03-08T08:57:00

2008-03-08T14:03:19Z

Congress voted to ban waterboarding, but Bush will veto that ban, and Congress doesn't have the votes to override it. It is a complete shame to our nation that we can't get 2/3rds of our elected representatives to say "we won't torture people", even though the Geneva convention, our constitution, and our own Army field manual say it's illegal.

And even McCain, who has BEEN tortured, is one of the people supporting Bush on this!!!

All this, despite the overwhelming evidence that torture doesn't even produce reliable information. Want more evidence? How about even more?

There are only two explanations I can think of - either too many of our lawmakers base their judgments on episodes of 24 and not real research, or else they really don't give a shit, and are willing to commit crimes against humanity if it means getting perceived of as "tough" and thus getting votes.

Either way, and I'll quote Teddy K on this, "it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world."

- SW

Hoo-boy...

2008-03-07T19:14:55Z

So it begins. Dammit.

The Bush Administration and the warhawks of both parties ignored YEARS of peaceful protests, haughtily dismissing them as inconsequential.

Leaders never get it.

If you refuse to engage with the nonviolent protestors, some people start turning to violence.

We've now seen the first bombing of a military recruitment center. No one was killed - this time. But in the 60s and 70s, whole cities burned because the government wasn't listening to antiwar and pro-civil rights protestors.

I've been saying for 5 years now that this shit was going to happen if the government didn't take the antiwar movement seriously. But this is a bad, bad road to be traveling. It delegitimizes both the antiwar movement and the government. It will only make things worse - an escalated government response, an escalated violent protest, repeat and repeat.

South Africa, the Soviet Union, Nepal, Chile, India...they all had to learn the hard way that you can't ignore the will of the people. I still have hopes that moderates in Washington will turn around and start negotiating, and not sending the message that the only way for the people to have a voice is through bombs, because that voice leads to nothing good.

- SW

Democratize, or the puppy gets it!

2008-03-04T17:18:30Z

File this one:

30,000 to 200,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq? No big deal.

But when our marines kill a cute little puppy dog, there's hell to pay.

Reminds me of a scene that Tim O'brien wrote in The Things They Carried, about his experiences in Vietnam...it's an upsetting scene of the soldiers shooting up a baby water buffalo, and then he admits that he made the whole scene up to try and get a reaction out of his readers - he feared that we were so desensitized to human death, no one would give a shit unless his characters killed a cute animal.

- SW

Boing! Happy Leap Year!

2008-02-29T19:23:20Z

I never realized keeping track of leap years, days, and seconds was so damned complicated and vital to our existence. Apparently there is actually a problem brewing with leap seconds and the calibration of GPS devices and such...

One MORE thing to worry about, I suppose...

- SW

Converting from Region 1 to Region 9?

2008-02-25T14:38:35Z

Ok, calling all tecchies - any of you know of a way to convert something on a region 1 DVD to a region 9 DVD format?

Or know of a message board full of DVD-savvy users where I could ask this question?

Much appreciated,

- SW

Guess who's coming to dinner?

2008-02-24T23:52:58Z

So Nader is back.

As someone who - yes, I'll admit it - voted for him in 2000, I have mixed feelings.

On the one hand, this race is going to be so damned close that I worry about any liberal/progressive votes that could get siphoned off by his candidacy.

On the other hand, I do not, repeat, do not blame Nader for Al Gore's 2000 defeat. That disaster came about because:

1. Florida was corruptly run by Bush's brother and two former Bush campaign workers.
2. The Supreme Court voted for partisanship, not fairness
3. Not a single senator had the balls to formally challenge the election when they legally had that right

Nader was in no way responsible for any of that. As to the question of whether #1-#3 would have even come into play if Nader hadn't garnered as many votes as he did, it's the supreme arrogance of the Democratic party to assume those votes would naturally have gone to Gore if Nader hadn't been in the race. Likely, those people wouldn't have voted at all if Nader hadn't been a candidate.

If Gore in 2000 had been the Gore of 2007, who was not afraid to wear his progressive credentials on his sleeve and talk up the environment as a major issue, I would have voted for him.

If the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she is, is smart, they will COURT voters like me by actually LISTENING to Nader and addressing some of his concerns, so THEY can steal progressive voters from HIM. That's the landscape as I see it.

Folks like Nader and Huckabee exist as magnets that hope to pull the major candidates just a little wee bit towards their pole. I think it shows the strength of our democracy when those candidates get airtime, and the weakness and insecurity of the major parties when they try and squash them.

- SW

Home!

2008-02-24T02:01:08Z

Home at last...

Small last-minute panic as the proprietress of our bed and breakfast made clear though pantomime and Icelandic chatter that she did not in fact accept credit cards, and wanted cash. To pay a $500 bill. Yipes. It took 3 trips to the town ATM, with 3 different cards, to get that all for her, all at 8:30 AM when we really had to get on the road and start burning snow for the airport...

...a 3 hour journey later we were back in Rejkavik, where we ascended the giant electric-nipple tower and threw a penny out into the skies of the capital, vowing to return...

...then we took a wrong turn at the airport and muddled through this random town until finally arriving...

...then we accidentally went behind the gate and confused the living hell out of the stewardesses by mixing with the arrivals from our plane...

...and our plane flight back became the party-shuttle, as a bunch of rowdy Icelanders, still on their native clock (10:00pm on a Saturday night, which is the traditional pub crawl time in Rejkavik), decided to continue the tradition and get utterly soused. They filled the aisles rip-roaring drunk as the stewardesses helplessly tried to clear some space, and went right on partying through the 6 hour flight until we landed in Boston, whereupon they pulled out hip flasks at the baggage claim and kept on drinking.

...whilst we, unaided, crawled slowly back home and went to bed!

Peace out,

SW

Icy sharky steamy fun time!

2008-02-22T20:04:46Z

Wow. We are finally roaming about in the “real” Iceland, and it is awesome.

A few hours drive North out of Reykjavik takes you up through winding snow-covered mountain passes and plunges you straight into Lord of the Rings territory. Up here is truly Bifrost, land of the Frost Giants. As empty as Iceland has seemed, the Southwest coast was positively crammed compared to the Northern wastes of the Snaefellesnes Peninsula, right up at the foot of the Westfjords…a land of towering glaciers, half-frozen rivers, and lunar-looking lava fields.

And us.

I. THE ROAD TO THE END OF THE UNIVERSE

The ONE highway in this region became a gravel road at times, and then an iced-over, snow-covered gravel road, weaving in and out of valleys and mountains where the only signs of human habitation were little empty shacks every few dozen kilometers that could be used as emergency storm shelters.

And ponies. Long haired shaggy wool-covered ponies that eyed our truck with mild curiosity. Or maybe it was ravenous hunger. We didn’t get close enough to ask.

Iceland in the winter is like New England at superspeed: whiteout snowfalls that reduce visibility to “your dashboard and wipers”, blown by insane winds that then quickly blow the clouds past you, so within 10 or 15 minutes the sun comes back out with blinding radiance. Oh yes, the sun. We saw it at last, the Northern sun that seems like a small, tight angry ball of yellow fury that doesn’t so much rise or set as find a nice comfy spot wedged between the mountains and blasts away. But what a change in mood, to see an expanse of blue! It makes you feel quite charged and invulnerable enough to do all the crazy things we wound up doing. Not the least of which was driving in the North of Iceland in the winter (although actually, 4 wheel drive and studded tires let you accomplish small miracles).

There was pretty much only one major town to gas up at along the way, Borgarnes (henceforth referred to by us as “Bojangles”) where we ate our packed grilled-cheese lunches and baffled some of the local kids by buzzing by their church and snapping photos. Then it was back into the frozen wastes until, hours later, we arrived at the northernmost settlement on the peninsula, Stykkisholmur, population 1240. The snow-buried sign welcomes you to a charming little port town carved into the side of this foothill, beyond which is the North Atlantic (or maybe the Arctic?) and the jagged fjords beyond. It really felt like the edge of the world (and, having been to the SOUTHERN edge of the world a few years ago, I know how to recognize that feeling!)
A few lonely fishing boats float unmanned in the icy water as gulls and hawks circle the freezing updrafts, searching for fish. Basalt rocks mine the waters and one fat Island houses a red lighthouse, the last testament to man’s presence out here. We naturally drove across the iced-over iron causeway and climbed to the top of that Island, stood by the tower, and surveyed infinity. Because surveying infinity is neato.

The whole town had a kind of deserted feel, complemented by a near-inability to walk on the sheet-of-ice streets, all of which were set at 50 degree angles to the hills (but damn, if those Icelandic kids didn’t sled down them all day and night. Who wouldn’t, in their place?) Surely the people of this town have jobs, or lives, but we never saw more than 5 people in any one spot at any one time, and usually the streets were bare except for snow squalls. We were lucky that the town was small, because some of the “streets” listed on our map were in actuality footpaths.

Let’s see, what else was there here? A radio tower, an empty airport the size of the average backyard and a bafflingly-out of place modern-art Church that looked like half of Deep Space Nine (we have taken to calling it “Our Lady of Cardassia”). There were some ferries docked here for whale and seal watching, but they were non-operational for the winter. There was a “water library” full of nautical maps and periscopes, also closed. Of the three hotels in town, two were apparently closed for the winter, and we managed to claw our way up the unplowed hill off an unnamed street to the one place that wasn’t, the one we had reserved via fax-back-and-forths, a bed and breakfast owned by one Maria Baeringsdottir…which, also, was closed.

Facing the unfavorable prospect of a night in the truck, we found the tourist bureau (staff of one), and the lady there called up Maria, who had apparently been asleep. We returned and met her – she was a charming octogenarian woman who spoke not a word of English, who led us into the charming antique-museum that was her house and let us use the spare bedrooms. She immediately took to Josh (something about his height) and stood on tippy-toes to put an arm around him and kiss his cheek. You go, girl! She even forgave him for plugging in his laptop and blowing a fuse, since he was the only one tall enough to flip the circuit breaker on the shelf in the hallway.

II. OH GOD, THE STENCH! MAKE IT STOP!

Since Stykkisholmur (henceforth referred to as “Stick it to Homer” and later just “Sticky”) didn’t seem to have much to offer us, we drove out into the wastes to check out some of the other prime landmarks. Like the shark farm at Bjarnarhofn (population 5), where fermented shark is harvested and processed. To get there, though…we had to pass through Berserkerjarhraun, better known as…

The “Beserker Fields”.

G-d, I’ve been waiting a lifetime for an intro setup like that one.

Basically we had to take this “scenic shortcut road” which lay completely buried under the snow, which ironically made it EASIER to drive on than the so-called main road, because the snow provided more traction. This road takes you down the coast where the glaciers surround you, right smack into a lava field where phalanxes of natural-statues made from frozen volcanic rock spread out in a “garden” of sorts. These are the berserker fields. There are all sorts of stories about them in the Viking sagas, involving murder and betrayal and mass destruction, but today they basically serve as a valley-sized anteroom for a fermented shark farm. After crossing the Berserker Fields without incident, we rumbled up the snowy beach to the shark farm, whereupon three dogs came running at us with a crazed expression in their eyes.

Lucky for us, they were hell-bent on cuddling and being petted, and kept hurling themselves at our legs in nonstop nuzzles. Trailing behind were a man and a woman in arctic gear wearing reflectors all over their suits. They introduced themselves as the proprietors of the farm, and seemed pretty damned tickled to have guests. They took us into a small surplus-military Quonset hut retrofitted as a museum where he showed us the equipment he’d saved from the FOUR HUNDRED YEARS his family had been in the fermented shark business. There was some pretty neat shit here, from shark-spines to entire heads with jaws and teeth, to pickled shark eyes and shark embryos, to the contents they had dredged from the stomachs of sharks they had killed. Said contents included polar bear pelts and the frightening skeleton of this weird snake-like creature. “We sent it to the universities in Norway, and then Canada, and then the US, and each time they told us they had no idea what it is.” He shrugged.

Those sharks are BIG, by the way, easily the size of our truck, and looking like perfect refugees from an HP Lovecraft book. It’s like, you searched beyond the fringes of human civilization and found the most evil creatures from the nether realms of the depths of the oceans that humanity was never supposed to encounter, and you’re serving it as a side-dish now? And by the way, as befitting its evilness, it stank. We thought the hut smelled bad, but then he took us out to this shed where giant slabs of sharkmeat were hanging to cure in the wind, and then ran away, leaving us there to bask in the putridity of it. We didn’t tarry, but it was too late – it lay its touch upon us. Our coats, and thus the truck, began to reek of shark, and haven’t stop reeking since. We figure it’ll be a bonus to the next renters: “here you go, welcome to Iceland, breathe in the smell of genuineness!”

That was enough excitement for the day, so we went back to town and had a nice dinner at the local restaurant, “Fimm Fiskar” (which also apparently doubled as a movie theater) where the waiter tried to tease us with a hearty, “are you cold enough, huh?”, to which we boldly retorted that we were New Englanders, and quite used to this, thank you.

III. THOR SPARES OUR LIVES YET AGAIN

The next morning Maria made us a ginormous breakfast, and we took another road trip, this one to Helagfel, Thor’s favored mountain and the original site of the Viking Allthingy until, alas, they befouled it too much with their toilet waste.

We began climbing the mountain (well, because it was there, duh), and quickly discovered that it was MUCH bigger than it looked from the bottom. A combination of sunlight and excess shark-smell poisoning emboldened us to push forward nonetheless, and a half-hour’s efforts indeed brought us to an icy summit, where the winds buffeted us brutally and any removal of our gloves to take pictures resulted in insta-frostbite. Those pictures you’ll see of this place, they came at a cost! We hunkered down in a small rock shelter and tried to enjoy the commanding views while at the same time wondering how the hell we were going to live through this, but eventually made it down, despite the fact that the wind blew enough snow to have already covered all the footprints we had made on ascent. Still, the chance to stand “on top of the world” and take in the peerless panoramic view of the region was well worth the numb extremities. Thor knows how to pick mountains.

Deciding to take it a little easier from here on in, and drove out to Grundarfjordur (population 980), a cute little hamlet by the waterside, hemmed in by giant volcanic rocks, where we ate lunch at a diner (which ALSO apparently doubled as a movie theater) and tried to push farther to this communications tower that held the honor of the highest structure in Iceland…but at this point Thor decided to bitch slap us with a giant blizzard, and we figured enough was enough. We high-tailed it back to Sticky, stopping here and there at some frozen rivers and other photo-ops, and then took a dip at the town pool, which itself was an experience: -5 degree weather with ferocious wind a snowsquall, and there we are lounging in an outdoor hot tub with jacuzzi staring at the stars and talking politics with the waiter from last night´s fish dinner and one of his friends. Ok, so we had to do punctuated "hops" to and from other pools outside to get to the door afterwards, and it took awhile to work the ice crystals out of our hair, but it was so worth it!

It’s truly been an unforgettable experience, especially since getting out from under all that rain in the capital. Liana seems to have already half-taught herself Icelandic (hell, I only know the name and population of all the towns we’ve been to because she memorized them), Josh and Taneka have learned what it’s like to travel “the saga way”, and me…hell, I’m just happy I’m still alive. And even happier I got to road trip across some of the most amazing scenery on the planet with some of my bestest friends in the universe. Assuming nothing untoward smushes us tomorrow, we’ll be back in the states before you know it, because as the Simpsons say: “America has its ups and its downs, its grandeur and its folly, but most of all…it’s where our stuff is.”

Time to get back to our stuff!

- SW

Day Five

2008-02-20T20:13:35Z

Wow. How does anything LIVE on this island? I mean, the blast of icy rain and wind is pretty darned constant, and I think I’ve forgotten what the sun even looks like. It’s square shaped and fuchsia, right? Or maybe mauve?

Today’s blog does not so much recap an itinerary as

I had been trying to keep tight reins on Liana, but after five days there was simply no holding her back.

“There’s an island!” she pointed feverishly on the map. “Let’s go there! We can take walks and look for seals!” Have I at any point mentioned that the weather in Reykjavik, 24/7, has been nonstop wind and freezing rain?

Figuring (as it turned out, correctly) our guidebook was wrong about the ferry times, we went to the tourist bureau midmorning, whilst Josh and Taneka were still abed, and asked for the ferry schedule while a dismayed British couple nearby was pleading their case: “But…but…you mean we won’t see the Northern Lights at all? Not even a bit?” Sorry, dude. You want a break in the cloud cover, pay on-season prices. Aren’t we the veterans now, eh?

So we hauled our veteran buts over to the docks where the ferry was to depart, only to find a small shack with a sign on it saying the office won’t be manned until 15 minutes before departure. We also saw the island across the bay, and frankly it was the size of the average city block – teeny tiny, with a church, a restaurant, and a walking trail. That was it. We could have SWUM there, well, if not for the freezing temperatures and rushing current of the bay, and the fact that we’re not Olympic level swimmers.

With 45 minutes to spend until someone came to man the docks and the old port, we walked up and down the docks, getting pounded by freezing pellets and blown by gales. Then we walked back to the office. And waited. And waited. And waited. With the office still vacant 15 minutes AFTER scheduled departure, and the empty ferry listing idly back and forth in the winds, we decided to look at that sign a little closer…and lo and behold, in not very small print that neither of us had any excuse NOT to see the first few times we looked at it, it said, “only runs on weekends in the winter.”

Now, the Guidebook, we can forgive. It’s written and printed in the UK by tragically hip college students selected for their dry whit and keen shopping sense (“did they even COME here in winter season?” Liana remarked acidly at one of the many points where it failed us). But the local tour guide? Sending us there was either an act of incompetence or sheer cruelty!

Having blown about 90 minutes thusly, we decided to drive up and down the coast to Seltjarnarnes, a sleepy capeside town not all that far from the capital. We drove to the very end of the peninsula, where a lonely lighthouse beckoned as enormous waves crashed against the lava-rock coast and, once again, no other human being roamed within a nine mile radius. I think the natives all hibernate with the polar bears until May.

“Well, there,” I said into the driving horizontal sleet , “we’ve seen it, let’s head home and –“

“Ooh! Tidepools!”

Too late. She was off. Across the rocky finger of land to the lighthouse, a rocky finger of land that only existed at low tide. Fortunately there was a tide calendar on a billboard nearby. The tide was scheduled to come back in at 2:25. It was now 1:50.

“Plenty of time!” Li called back. So we stumbled over rocks as I nervously watched the freezing ocean moving pincer-like towards us, until we stumbled over kelp and jagged volcanic basalt to the lighthouse. Hooray! Then Liana decided to play “let the wind catch me as I lean back”, and then she had to take pictures of every small outcropping and puddle of water, and, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be one of our vacations unless it contained at least one scene of the two of us racing across a lava-field about to be crushed by millions of tons of icy water.

Ok, so it wasn’t all that bad. But it could have been. Just like the geese that rushed our car later on COULD have attacked us had we not gunned the engine after they began rushing our way (one of those “oh, cute geese, let’s stop and…whoah, they’re getting up and coming towards us…um, let’s hit the gas?” kind of moments)

We decided to give our sopping wet coats a chance to wring out by going to the National Museum, which only had four exhibits, each one of which impressed me by sucking more than the next.

The neatest one by far was a video of a woman chanting in traditional Icelandic…um..chants, with a bouncing ball lyric ticker running beneath so you can follow the cantellations. It went downhill from there.

There was the “super-realism” exhibit, which included a lot of comic book artwork so I thought it would be neat, and it was, sort of, in the sense that stubbing your toe only “sort of” hurts like hell. Basically the artist took all kinds of characters from Marvel and DC comics – 90% of whom, mysteriously enough, were the enormous-breasted female characters – and overlaid them with other images like Soviet Propaganda posters or Picasso’s “Guernica.” It was surreal, but at least there were enormous-breasted female characters.

Then there was the giant room full of 10X10 foot architectural plans for remaking Reykjavik. Now, maybe perusing an airplane hanger of giant 2D top-down floorplans all in Icelandic is your idea of a good time, but me, I’d rather be eating fermented shark. There were some illustrations here and there, but these did little to decode the plans: one had pictures of people sitting on “lava benches” (um, owch?), another showed downtown Reykjavik replaced with fields of giant hydrogen balloons (ok, REALLY bad idea, especially in a nation of so many smokers) and a third showed what could only be people ice-skating on top of slanted roofs (which is an even WORSE idea).

But the piece de la resistance was the invisible sheep.

It was a sheep pen, with a pile of hay, a bucket of salt, and a bucket of water, that the plaque insisted housed a “hidden sheep” donated by one of the “hidden people”, you know, our friends the elves. The plaque cautions, entirely without irony or mockery, that the sheep may be “difficult to see as it occupies another dimension.” However a lengthy explanation, complete with boring diagrams, shows how the pen was built to exacting modifications dictated by a seer who can see elves. He also gave strict instructions as to the sheep’s care and feeding (example, it eats salt, but only salt from the National Highway Planning Commission, which needs to be replaced each day. It is very insistent that only NHPC salt may be used).

Nothing culminates an afternoon of being soaked to the bone on an ice-monsoon drenched beach in Iceland like staring at an invisible sheep, except, oh wait, going for a snack and seeing that croissants cost $10.

Ok, I love Iceland, but at this point I have not experienced peripheral vision for 5 straight days on account of my tightly drawn rain-hood, and am starting to swiftly resent the fact that you can’t get a nosh in this country for less than the price of front row theater tickets! Grr! It’s enough to make me place an anonymous call to Dick Cheney’s answering machine and tell him Iceland has oil.

We ended our day with a visit to the Althingy, Iceland’s parliament, which was actually in session. The guys at the security desk apologized profusely for the fact that they couldn’t give us a tour, and rushed to give us all kinds of brochures and things (I mean, for all we knew we were the first tourists EVER to actually want to see their Parliament), and – get this – apologized for the brochures only being in English. I guess Liana and I don’t look American? (Hell, waterlogged as we were, we probably looked as if we were visitors from Atlantis) Actually, last night, the Viking restaurant waiter guy actually asked Liana if she was from Greenland. Egyptian, Inuit, it all kind of looks the same, I guess, when you’re not 7 feet tall and blonde.

So anyway, as we’re on our way out, the security guy says, “ok, here, look, go around the back of the building and through this alleyway, then go through this door and climb three flights of stairs, and you can watch the Allthingy in session.”

Puzzled, we did as such, opened the unlocked door to see an unmanned desk and climbed the stairs where one, count him one, security goon, unarmed, eyed us and got out of our way without a word, without a pat-down, without a metal detector or anything, despite our huge puffy coats and multiple plastic bags.

We then took our seats in this balcony that overlooked the Allthingy itself, which sure enough was in session. No bulletproof glass, no ANYTHING except a small sneezeguard. If we were bad guys, we could have taken out Iceland's entire government in one fell swoop (although really, I think that's the kind of thing that would even get terrorists to look agast at you and say, "Dude, what the HELL? I mean, seriously, that was a downright ASSHOLE thing to do. You are NOT getting invited to the next martyr-mixer.")

Up in those stands, it was EMPTY, except for the delegates below, and as we walked in they all PAUSED in their proceedings and looked up at us.

Um, awkward?

Then they went back to work. The agenda didn’t look very packed – in fact, neither did the assembly. The Allthingy is apparently composed of about 6 people, or at least, those were all who showed up today. Iceland’s political parties, incidentally, run the huge ideological gamut of (and I am not making this up):

* The Social Democratic Party
* The Progressive Party
* The Left-Green Party
* The Liberal Party
* The Independence Party

Wow. I totally live in the wrong country.

No. Screw that. You’ve now found out the price for my socio-political principles: I will consent to living in a country that is owned body and soul by right wing corporate fascists SO LONG AS IT HAS SOME FREAKING SUNLIGHT!!!

There. It’s out now.

I feel better.

Tomorrow, on to Snafellsness, or in English, “Snow Fall Beach.” There HAVE to b cear skies there, right.....???

- SW

Day Five

2008-02-20T20:09:09Z

Wow. How does anything LIVE on this island? I mean, the blast of icy rain and wind is pretty darned constant, and I think I’ve forgotten what the sun even looks like. It’s square shaped and fuchsia, right? Or maybe mauve?

Today’s blog does not so much recap an itinerary as

I had been trying to keep tight reins on Liana, but after five days there was simply no holding her back.

“There’s an island!” she pointed feverishly on the map. “Let’s go there! We can take walks and look for seals!” Have I at any point mentioned that the weather in Reykjavik, 24/7, has been nonstop wind and freezing rain?

Figuring (as it turned out, correctly) our guidebook was wrong about the ferry times, we went to the tourist bureau midmorning, whilst Josh and Taneka were still abed, and asked for the ferry schedule while a dismayed British couple nearby was pleading their case: “But…but…you mean we won’t see the Northern Lights at all? Not even a bit?” Sorry, dude. You want a break in the cloud cover, pay on-season prices. Aren’t we the veterans now, eh?

So we hauled our veteran buts over to the docks where the ferry was to depart, only to find a small shack with a sign on it saying the office won’t be manned until 15 minutes before departure. We also saw the island across the bay, and frankly it was the size of the average city block – teeny tiny, with a church, a restaurant, and a walking trail. That was it. We could have SWUM there, well, if not for the freezing temperatures and rushing current of the bay, and the fact that we’re not Olympic level swimmers.

With 45 minutes to spend until someone came to man the docks and the old port, we walked up and down the docks, getting pounded by freezing pellets and blown by gales. Then we walked back to the office. And waited. And waited. And waited. With the office still vacant 15 minutes AFTER scheduled departure, and the empty ferry listing idly back and forth in the winds, we decided to look at that sign a little closer…and lo and behold, in not very small print that neither of us had any excuse NOT to see the first few times we looked at it, it said, “only runs on weekends in the winter.”

Now, the Guidebook, we can forgive. It’s written and printed in the UK by tragically hip college students selected for their dry whit and keen shopping sense (“did they even COME here in winter season?” Liana remarked acidly at one of the many points where it failed us). But the local tour guide? Sending us there was either an act of incompetence or sheer cruelty!

Having blown about 90 minutes thusly, we decided to drive up and down the coast to Seltjarnarnes, a sleepy capeside town not all that far from the capital. We drove to the very end of the peninsula, where a lonely lighthouse beckoned as enormous waves crashed against the lava-rock coast and, once again, no other human being roamed within a nine mile radius. I think the natives all hibernate with the polar bears until May.

“Well, there,” I said into the driving horizontal sleet , “we’ve seen it, let’s head home and –“

“Ooh! Tidepools!”

Too late. She was off. Across the rocky finger of land to the lighthouse, a rocky finger of land that only existed at low tide. Fortunately there was a tide calendar on a billboard nearby. The tide was scheduled to come back in at 2:25. It was now 1:50.

“Plenty of time!” Li called back. So we stumbled over rocks as I nervously watched the freezing ocean moving pincer-like towards us, until we stumbled over kelp and jagged volcanic basalt to the lighthouse. Hooray! Then Liana decided to play “let the wind catch me as I lean back”, and then she had to take pictures of every small outcropping and puddle of water, and, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be one of our vacations unless it contained at least one scene of the two of us racing across a lava-field about to be crushed by millions of tons of icy water.

Ok, so it wasn’t all that bad. But it could have been. Just like the geese that rushed our car later on COULD have attacked us had we not gunned the engine after they began rushing our way (one of those “oh, cute geese, let’s stop and…whoah, they’re getting up and coming towards us…um, let’s hit the gas?” kind of moments)

We decided to give our sopping wet coats a chance to wring out by going to the National Museum, which only had four exhibits, each one of which impressed me by sucking more than the next.

The neatest one by far was a video of a woman chanting in traditional Icelandic…um..chants, with a bouncing ball lyric ticker running beneath so you can follow the cantellations. It went downhill from there.

There was the “super-realism” exhibit, which included a lot of comic book artwork so I thought it would be neat, and it was, sort of, in the sense that stubbing your toe only “sort of” hurts like hell. Basically the artist took all kinds of characters from Marvel and DC comics – 90% of whom, mysteriously enough, were the enormous-breasted female characters – and overlaid them with other images like Soviet Propaganda posters or Picasso’s “Guernica.” It was surreal, but at least there were enormous-breasted female characters.

Then there was the giant room full of 10X10 foot architectural plans for remaking Reykjavik. Now, maybe perusing an airplane hanger of giant 2D top-down floorplans all in Icelandic is your idea of a good time, but me, I’d rather be eating fermented shark. There were some illustrations here and there, but these did little to decode the plans: one had pictures of people sitting on “lava benches” (um, owch?), another showed downtown Reykjavik replaced with fields of giant hydrogen balloons (ok, REALLY bad idea, especially in a nation of so many smokers) and a third showed what could only be people ice-skating on top of slanted roofs (which is an even WORSE idea).

But the piece de la resistance was the invisible sheep.

It was sheep pen, with a pile of hay, a bucket of salt, and a bucket of water, that the plaque insisted housed a “hidden sheep” donated by one of the “hidden people”, you know, our friends the elves. The plaque cautions, entirely without irony or mockery, that the sheep may be “difficult to see as it occupies another dimension.” However a lengthy explanation, complete with boring diagrams, shows how the pen was built to exacting modifications dictated by a seer who can see elves. He also gave strict instructions as to the sheep’s care and feeding (example, it eats salt, but only salt from the National Highway Planning Commission, which needs to be replaced each day. It is very insistent that only NHPC salt may be used).

Nothing culminates an afternoon of being soaked to the bone on an ice-monsoon drenched beach in Iceland like staring at an invisible sheep, except, oh wait, going for a snack and seeing that croissants cost $10.

Ok, I love Iceland, but at this point I have not experienced peripheral vision for 5 straight days on account of my tightly drawn rain-hood, and am starting to swiftly resent the fact that you can’t get a nosh in this country for less than the price of front row theater tickets! Grr! It’s enough to make me place an anonymous call to Dick Cheney’s answering machine and tell him Iceland has oil.

We ended our day with a visit to the Althingy, Iceland’s parliament, which was actually in session. The guys at the security desk apologized profusely for the fact that they couldn’t give us a tour, and rushed to give us all kinds of brochures and things (I mean, for all we knew we were the first tourists EVER to actually want to see their Parliament), and – get this – apologized for the brochures only being in English. I guess Liana and I don’t look American? (Hell, waterlogged as we were, we probably looked as if we were visitors from Atlantis) Actually, last night, the Viking restaurant waiter guy actually asked Liana if she was from Greenland. Egyptian, Inuit, it all kind of looks the same, I guess, when you’re not 7 feet tall and blonde.

So anyway, as we’re on our way out, the security guy says, “ok, here, look, go around the back of the building and through this alleyway, then go through this door and climb three flights of stairs, and you can watch the Allthingy in session.”

Puzzled, we did as such, opened the unlocked door to see an unmanned desk and climbed the stairs where one, count him one, security goon, unarmed, eyed us and got out of our way without a word, without a pat-down, without a metal detector or anything, despite our huge puffy coats and multiple plastic bags. We then took our seats in this balcony that overlooked the Allthingy itself, which sure enough was in session. No bulletproof glass, no ANYTHING except a small sneezeguard. And it was EMPTY up here except for the delegates below, and as we walked in they all PAUSED in their proceedings and looked up at us.

Um, awkward?

Then they went back to work. The agenda didn’t look very packed – in fact, neither did the assembly. The Allthingy is apparently composed of about 6 people, or at least, those were all who showed up today. Iceland’s political parties, incidentally, run the huge ideological gamut of (and I am not making this up):

* The Social Democratic Party
* The Progressive Party
* The Left-Green Party
* The Liberal Party
* The Independence Party

Wow. I totally live in the wrong country.

No. Screw that. You’ve now found out the price for my socio-political principles: I will consent to living in a country that is owned body and soul by right wing corporate fascists SO LONG AS IT HAS SOME FREAKING SUNLIGHT!!!

There. It’s out now.

I feel better.

Tomorrow, on to Snafellsness, or in English, “Snow Fall Beach.” Maybe there’ll be clear skies there???

- SW

Volcanoes and Elves and Vikings, Oh My!

2008-02-20T09:20:24Z

Another day (er, cloudy lightless period between waking and sleep) has come and gone in the wilds of the Northern Lands, and it was a rather good one, or rather, two good slices of awesome sandwiching one horrific experience in-between.

We got a chance to experience the famous “Blue Lagoon”, which really was worth the hype. About $27 a person gets you unlimited time in this semi-natural lake dug out of a volcano, filled with steamy, mineral-rich blue-white waters heated by underground lava. If this wasn’t cool enough, you get to change clothing in a locker room that can only be described as “the Federation builds a spa.” Seriously, the décor and design scheme is 100% Starfleet, right down to the electronic lockers that read your waterproof armbands and automatically open for you. Poor Josh had to go back and get a new suit three times until they found a size “XXL” for him, and he is hardly portly, which means that obese Icelanders either don’t exist, exist but only in a holding pen to be fed one day to the Fenris Wolf, or else don’t go bathing publicly.

The lagoon itself was amazing – if we had any reservations about visiting Iceland in the off-off-off-season, this morning washed them away. We had the lagoon almost to ourselves, and it’s HUGE, a real bona fide lake carved in basalt, where the water is about 100 degrees (hotter in parts if you swim near a heat vent) and the ground beneath you is ankle deep in what we affectionately called “elf-snot”, this wet mud that’s apparently good for your skin (we sure hope so, since we got covered in it). There are artificial mini-geysers and waterfalls to play around, or you can just wade around and relax. As you know, I’m not exactly one for pampering, but it was undeniably one of the neatest experiences of my life to feel hail and sleet falling on my head and yet still be rather toasty in up-to-the-neck volcanic lagoon water. Four stars!

Then we made the horrible, horrible mistake of going to Hafnarfjordur, which all of us except Liana eventually gave up trying to pronounce and just called “Narf-narf.” Advertised in the guidebook as “When it comes to towns surrounded by lava-fields, nothing beats us!”, Narf-narf is a pleasant little harbor city with big docks, a few strip malls, and some nice old-timey architecture in its hinterlands. We came for the fabled “Elf-Tour”, which from the beginning went horribly wrong.

According to polls taken by someone who gets published a lot, something like 2/3rds of Icelanders believe in elves, trolls, dwarves, pixies, Bjork, etc, and take great pains to placate these “hidden people.” That’s fine by me. I believe in democracy and social justice and other probably-nonexistent myths as well. And maybe elves and such do exist, and if they do, I have nothing against them and apologize if I offend with anything I write or say…this is more a rail against the Elf TOUR than the Elves themselves (ooh, that rhymes).

So the “Hidden Worlds Tour” begins at the Narf-narf tourist bureau, which we got lost and nearly ran out of gas trying to find. We eventually had to ask directions at an Icelandic Domino’s pizza, where the gaggle of teenage girls there told us they were from out of town and couldn’t help, and the two clerks impressively ignored our presence before them for 5 straight minutes, leading Josh and I to leave and ask directions at the post-office next door.

We got to the tourist office at last, where we and three hapless British youths met our friendly tour guide, a stout, grinning middle aged woman who informed us that, despite what we might have read in Lonelyplanet, no townspeople in elf costumes will be joining the tour, and that we were welcome to leave now if we wanted. Sometimes the gods offer you a break, and we foolish mortals still pass it up. Then she proceeds to fleece us all for 3000 kronur a piece, 500 more than the Lonelyplanet guide said the tour cost. 3000 kronur is $46! This tour had better take us to the Elf Eiffel Tower.

What did we get for our $46 a head? A 45 minute stroll (even though the guidebook said the tour lasted 90 minutes), in pelting ice and sleet, through a completely unremarkable suburban neighborhood of the type you can see in any Western nation, led by a softspoken Icelandic native who can’t see elves herself (but has a friend who can) and thus points to the occasional rock or pit and mentions a charming story about elves or dwarves. These stories were so brief and hackneyed that she added filler material like "this tree was voted the best tree in town, I don't know why" or "this was a house where a famous swimmer lived, and I said his awards were mine once and he came out and yelled at me, hee hee." 45 minutes of this, for $46. That's like a dollar a minute, which is the rate for many "adult chat lines." Not that I'd know.

Remember, you can experience the Blue Lagoon, Iceland's most famous tourist destination, for about $27 a person. This buys you unlimited time in gorgeous geothermal pools in one of the finest setups I've seen in the world, and I've traveled to over two dozen countries. And this is TWO THIRDS the price of getting pounded by sleet whilst walking in a half-mile circle looking at random trees and being told elves are there but you can't see them. My Lonelyplanet Guide, to which I wrote a very long letter about this tour last night, cost half the price of the Elf Tour, and it has 356 pages and maps and loads of full-color pictures. Dinner for two last night, at a better-than-average restaurant, cost less.

I realize that caveat emptor is always good policy, and, as I said, I've been to over two dozen countries, many of them developing nations where subsistence living is the rule and one doesn't complain about bug-ridden beds and no plumbing because at least there's a roof over your head (In one of those countries, incidentally, you could feed a family of 4 for a month on one elf-tour admission). Even had the locals shown up in elf costumes as promised, it wouldn't have saved this experience. For nearly $200 (remember, four of us paid for this shit), I expected a team of elf masseurs to give us a rubdown.

To be fair, the tour price did buy us a “Hidden Worlds Map”, which none of us has yet had the courage to look at. The experience is still too raw and painful.

I had to do a lot of convincing to get the gang to go to our planned third destination, the Fjoukrain Viking Village Restaurant, but we finally schlepped out there and lo and behold, it was actually a very pleasant experience. We were prepared by our by-now-dubiously-authorized guidebook for a cheesy overpriced Viking-themed kitschfest, but it was actually a nice subdued dinner hosted by a man named “Jerker” (pronounced, thankfully, Yher-kher), a former UN Soldier-subsitutue-teacher-woodworker-storyteller-turned-Viking-impersonator from Sweden who plied us with good humor and stories from Norse Mythology. He had a wonderful sense of humor, a storytelling voice to die for, and the food he served included some of the best fish I’ve EVER had, anywhere (heavily heavily salted). He took his job seriously, with great self-respect with no sense of self-conscious irony that plagues everything in the States. In fact, even Elf-Woman appeared to operate this way. Iceland comes across as shockingly earnest, even as it tries to kill you in a variety of ways, from the physical to the financial (which includes $8/gallon gas prices). We even ran into those three British guys again, confirming that this indeed was our day to be tourists.

When we emerged from the restaurant we were struck stunned by a strange light in the sky…was it…the moon? And the stars? Had the permanent cloud cover actually CLEARED?
We hopped in the truck and raced out of the city and drove until we basically ran out of passable road, then cut the engine and tried to see the Aurora Borealis, which this region is famed for at this time of year. The moonlight, alas, proved too bright and washed them out, BUT also revealed this amazing fantasyscape of white mountains lit by the full moon’s glow, so bright that it cast our shadows upon the surrounding snow. There was NO ONE around for miles, no signs of civilization, just a view like something out of the Lord of the Rings. We just stood there in silence – it was a real moment.

Then we realized that we were easy prey out here for the dire wolves of the North, so we got back in and drove home.

We’ve got one more relatively “take it easy day” before we press Northwards into the frozen wastes for some country livin’ in Stykkisholmur (we think part of the reason Icelanders are in such good physical shape is that they have cut vowels out of their diet entirely)…dunno if we’ll have email access at that point…till then,

- SW

Ice Ice Baby

2008-02-18T22:54:07Z

There comes a time in the life of any friendship when you end up stuck wheelbed-deep in a snowbank in a frozen wasteland with no one around for miles, and you ask yourselves, “how the fuck did we end up in Iceland”, and someone remembers, “didn’t we all say we wanted to go on a road trip to Vermont?” And then we blamed it all on Kevin. And then we engaged the four wheel drive. And didn’t die. That time.

Yes, today, we found Iceland. The real Iceland. Get only about 40 minutes from Reykjavik and civilization doesn’t so much recede as flee screaming before the advance of the marauding glaciers and you drive on narrow semi-paved roads for miles and miles and don’t see another car or living creature. The real Iceland fulfilled all our expectations and more, including trying to kill us repeatedly.

PART ONE: SELF-GUIDED TOURS

Facing small pinpricks of sunlight for the first time since we arrived here, we decided to set out and replicate the famous “Golden Circle” circuit, which in Josh’s words, “is a circle in the way that a crushed soda can is a circle.” The guidebooks all advertised tours that would take you around all the tourist sites for a paltry 7,700 kroners a head, which upon conversion we realized was about $109 each. Screw that, we figured – we have a truck, we have Lonelyplanet, we have maps, and we have gumption. Let’s just copy the itinerary and do it ourselves!

Problem#1: Our map was apparently printed to commemorate the 1962 world’s fair, and thus had different numbers for all the roads, listed some paved roads as unpaved, and failed to list many other roads entirely.

Problem#2: We didn’t realize this deficit until hours into our journey.

Problem#3: Unrelated to either of the above two problems, we set off immediately in the wrong direction, and we were so ecstatic about seeing a freaking ray of sun punch through the clouds that didn’t realize we’d swapped North and South until about 45 minutes into our journey.

Oops.

So we madly tried to find an alternate route to the first stop along our planned circuit of wonders, which was the Nesjavellir Geothermal Plant, testament to Iceland’s green energy policies. We pulled off-road onto a pile of basalt to plan and immediately got set upon by a feral dog, who upon further inspection appeared to be both an owned dog and a friendly one…and so our alarm switched from “ohmigod, don’t let it break through the glass!” to “omigod, don’t squish it when we back out!” (This began a series of dog-related encounters, including one time later in the day when we mistook a dog for an arctic fox – my bad – and the dog decided to charge the truck and then chase us for a good kilometer and a half).

We then take another break to take in the vast frozen fields of…well, nothingness (I mean, it’s not even tundra, tundra implies some kind of plant life underneath, doesn’t it), and take pictures of the white expanse, and then upon leaving promptly get stuck in a snow rut (see intro). Which we eventually did extricate ourselves from, thank G-d, or else (lacking any phones, signal flares, or common sense) we would have had to wait several days until the next vehicle thundered by.

Then we managed to find a windy mountain road that snaked up and down these frozen foothills which afforded a commanding view of an enormous frozen lake, to the soundtrack of Taneka’s mad screams of “ahhh! Too fast! Aah! Not ANOTHER blind curve! Ah! We’re going to die!” We passed all sorts of small settlements, unoccupied and snowed under, leading us to theorize that they were all either summer homes or else failed towns in which everyone starved to death. We spent a little time bumping down a completely dirt scoophill that bore the sign “Nesjar” before realizing we were looking for “Nesjavellir” instead. Which we finally did find.

PART TWO: GAS PLANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE

How to describe Nesjavellir?

Well, we smelled it before we found it. Imagine a sheer mountain drop-off that suddenly plunges you from ice into the cratered surface of Mars, if Mars were covered by green lichen and the whole planet smelled like eggnog left out on a table since Christmas of 1993. Giant plumes of geothermal smoke rose up into the sky and rivers of boiling water ran in channels and streams past the one road that led to the power plant, which resembled nothing so much as a space-age settlement dome plunked down like some lone moonbase in the wilderness.

Except it wasn’t completely alone. A “Nesjavellir Hotel” sat just outside the campus, completely abandoned, with a lone tire-swing swaying eerily in the winter wind. There is still no one in sight…there really hasn’t been since we left the Reykjavik city limits.

The security bar by the plant was raised up, so, like every set of idiot heroes in a zombie movie, we figured we’d head right on in because hey, they’re clearly welcoming visitors! So we park in the lot and approach, gawking at the giant steam pipes running up the mountainside, taking pictures of everything, wondering mildly if we were really allowed to be here and whether if we started chanting “Allahu Akbar”, how much trouble we would get in.

The door was locked, bearing a sign saying the “Welcome Center” was closed to visitors until the summer, and listed the name of ANOTHER powerplant that would-be gasophiles should instead visit. Upon referencing our guidebook we discovered this power plant to be clear on the other side of the nation, and decided we didn’t want to see a stock 1950s black and white PR film of “Magma: Your friend and mine” THAT badly.

At this point we’re noticing that we can’t quite walk in a straight line, and that the pounding in our skulls is probably

1) A result of the massive inhalation of sulfur fumes surrounding us

2) Not a GOOD thing

So we drove ALL the way back up, 30 minutes, to the comparatively “main” road of Route 36 (or 3, or “A”, depending on which map we followed) and proceeded to try and find Thingvellir National Park.

Which we found, mainly by noticing the visitors center, completely buried in snow. But the bathrooms were fully stocked, squeaky clean, and, in an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of parkside lavatoriology, HAD TOILET PAPER. A friendly note on the frosted-over door suggested the visitors center might be open on the weekends.

But as we stepped over the half-snow-buried path to the lookout point, we saw it was ALL worth it.

Thingvellir is the place where the two continental plates of Europe and North America meet, and create shitloads of geothermal activity that rewarded Icelanders, after suffering a millennium of regular settlement-annihilation at the hands of earthquakes and volcanoes, with limitless geothermal power. It’s also the place where Reagan and Gorbachev met for some historic nuclear missile reduction treaty that President GW Bush broke a few years ago, to make sure we could build bigger and more powerful thermonuclear bombs to employ in our war against bearded guys who live in caves and ride donkeys.

We stared at the towering cliffs upon which the early Viking leaders conducted the first “Allthingies”, their democratic assemblies by which they governed their people. It was suitably impressive.

PART III: A SMALL INTERLUDE

Then we decided to check out Geysir, as in, THE Geysir, the one they named all other geysers after. Except the road we wanted to take, once we found it, was blocked off by big scary signs in Icelandic that looked close enough to the word “Impassible” that we got the point and, furiously checking our maps, found an alternate route around…one which added at least another hour to our sojourn…but which took us past some lovely frozen farms upon which shaggy horses frolicked, either really really short horses or really really tall horses that had just sank up to their knees in the snow. We were going by too fast to really determine which.

Eventually we found a small settlement full of buildings marked “borg”, and at one of these borgs was a gas station. After the four of us, three of whom hold graduate degrees, couldn’t figure out the gas pump, I got to show off my wicked sharp Icelandic by going to the proprietress inside and saying: “Gudayin” (good day), pointing to the pump outside, and saying “Hyalp!” (help).

She spoke enough English to make the transaction doable, which only opened up new problems.

“Ja, ok, how many liter?”

How many…what?

Can’t we just fill the tank?

“No. Need how many liter, ja?”

We all huddle and converse. Our tank is half empty. How many liters does the tank hold? We have no idea. Most SUVs have a 20 to 25 gallon tank. Ok. How many liters is that? No fucking clue.

“Um, ten liters?” I ask hopefully.

The woman scowls at me, takes my credit card, and pumps.

“Geez,” says Josh, “for such an advanced, cashless society, you’d think they’d know about preauthorized transfers.” He and Taneka head off to the restroom and, so as not to block up the gas pump, Liana and I move the truck to the other side of the station. We then join them, and spend a few more minutes marveling at the immaculate nature of this country’s roadside pee-places. I mean, geez, four star hotels aren’t this clean in the states. We may be able to preauthorize credit transfers, but we’re kind of raw-meat-chewing barbarians in so many other respects.

Josh speeds on ahead of us as we leave, as Josh is wont to do, and as he rounds the corner we hear his agonized shout, “Oh God! Oh GOD! Oh no!”

We start racing to catch up with him, and he is pointing and waving madly at the pump. “The truck! The truck is gone! They fucking stole the truck while we were in the bathroom! What are we going to ---“

He then looks around the corner.

“Oh,” he says softly, and is very quiet for the next 10 minutes or so of driving.

PART IV: THINGS THAT BUBBLE AND EXPLODE

We finally did pull into Geysir, which distinguished itself immediately as the first location we’d found that:

1) Had more than two living people moving about

2) Had a visitor center that was open.

A word or two about this visitor center, and only a word or two, because it wasn’t more memorable that the geysers, except in the fact that it sullied the name “tourist trap.” They charged $8 for a bag of Doritos. A fucking bag of Doritos. Now, I know produce is hard to come by in Iceland and everything has to be imported, but tell me, right here, right now, what the fuck is so rare and hard to grow about synthetic nacho cheese powder?!? Is it harvested from the noses of the camels of the five richest sheiks of Saudi Arabia?

Ok, fine, the chips might be subject some sort of international products import tax, but that does nothing, NOTHING, to excuse the Canned Air. Canned Air! Someone, for the love of G-d, explain to me the fucking Canned Air! It was just that, a can of “fresh Icelandic mountain air”, selling for $15! I suppose if you’re stupid enough to buy it, you deserve the experience, and given how bad the sulphurous air of Geysir was, maybe I can see how a tourist, gasping and half brain-damaged from the fumes, can stumble into the sinisterly extended waiting arms of bored, 16 year old “Sigrid” at the counter and gratefully receive a can of fucking AIR and pay $15 for it. But here’s the part that raises the bar from evil to Satanic – the pricetag of most items in the store clocked in at JUST under, by a couple of cents, what you’d need to get the tax refund at the airport upon your departure.

Fucking Vikings.

Achem. Anyhoo, yes, the geysers. They were quite cool, bubbly and smoky and staining the earth many shades of crimson and cobalt-blue. One of them, “Litli Geysir”, was adorably cute, or at least, as adorably cute as a boiling hot-pot of festering mudwater can be. Geysir itself wasn’t exploding today, as apparently (according to the guidebook) too many jerky tourists had thrown rocks in it and plugged it up, but its neighbor Stukkor was still blowing every six minutes or so, and it was quite impressive.

We wandered and took in the natural beauty, interrupted as it was by annoying British prepubescent boys viciously hurling chunks of ice into the geysers and crossing past the “do not cross” ropes to stand at the lip of the bubbling craters. Despite our secret evil hopes, natural selection did not at that point remove them from the gene pool.

Later on in our journey, we also visited the site of an exploded volcano, a miles-wide crater called the “Kerid+ Explosion Center” where we marveled at nature’s raw destructive power, which the Icelanders decided to honor by hosting a Bjork concert there a few years ago.

(Oh yes, Bjork is alive and well, with stacks of CDs at every OPEN rest stop we found)

PART V: HOLY SHIT, WE’RE GONNA DIE!

Actually, this could apply to pretty much any of a dozen moments today, but I’ll focus on Gulfoss the waterfall, because it was the most breathtaking and stunning way in which we almost died.

Gulfoss (not to be confused with Selfoss or, I kid you not, Dentifoss) is Iceland’s largest waterfall, which was earmarked by foreign investors to become a hydroelectric project (despite the threat of the original landowner, ousted by eminent domain laws, to hurl herself into the falls in a public suicide protest) until the problem solved itself when said investors neglected to pay the lease. Now it’s a national park. Go fig.

I can’t really describe how ungodly beautiful these falls are – it’s like Niagara built into a glacier. Oodles of rushing water crashing its way down a glaciated ice-ravine, with little ropes ringing a frozen path towards the edge, and then, a little ways past the end of the ropes, the actual lip of the falls.

Somehow, in a state doubtless attributable to our earlier sulfur inhalation, Josh and Liana and I all decided as a unit that it would be hella cool to climb all the way down, past the ropes, to the lip, because we saw some Australian tourists doing it and surviving. Taneka, the lone voice of sanity, elected to stay behind and film us doing it. Presumably she figured she could go for help if something happened to us, but really, what the fuck was she going to do, she had no cell phone and I accidentally took the truck keys with me when I set off, so we basically just condemned her to a lingering death if we died a swift one.

BUT we didn’t die. I slipped and fell on my ass down a muddy slope, which was more amusing than terrifying. We slid and tumbled our way across the ice, or kept to the snow and risked sinking up to our waists, and what didn’t help was that I wasn’t wearing boots and Josh and I were sharing one pair of gloves…BUT we finally made it, and damn, it really was worth it. To stand on an ice lip and stare out into the fury of a glacial waterfall – I mean, there’s really nothing that compares to the power, the humility, the spray of icewater in your face, and the realization that you just MIGHT have made a very bad decision.

But we managed to make it back in one piece, with amazing photos to show for it, and Josh mused as we climbed the rain-slick stairs back up the cliffside that America, fearful of lawsuits and mistrustful of the idiocy of its population, was kind of like a place for children that needed to be told what to do and what not to do. Iceland treated you as if you were an adult – no rangers, no warning signs, minimal ropeage – you know the risks, and if you want to be an idiot, oh well, that’s that much fewer people to compete for the limited pool of fermented sharks.

We warmed our shivering bodies in the near-deserted guest center over a $12 bowl of tomato soup that gave me ferocious indigestion for the rest of the day.

PART VI: THIS TIME WE DON’T TEMPT FATE, BUT STILL ALMOST DIE

Poor Taneka. She has a terrible fear of heights, and had been slowly steeling herself to take over the return trip back through all those icy mountains all day. I toyed with the idea of staying at the wheel for the drive back, but I was not only exhausted from a full day’s driving but also soaked to the bone, and basically had to disrobe until I’m in my t-shirt and skivvies – thank G-d for the truck’s heated seats! This, of course, necessitated that every time we stopped for a stretch break, I called out, “woman, my pants!” and Liana tossed the sopping wet jeans to me.

It was starting to get dark again, and rainy, and Taneka thanked me bitterly for saving this best part for her. We drove up mountain roads with no guardrails and fog so thick that it was basically in Odin’s hands whether we fell off or not, and even when we could see, our direction-finding went something like this:

“Ok, I think we turn at that little gingerbread village looking thing.”
“What? Where? Which one? This whole damned COUNTRY is one giant little gingerbread village looking thing!”

But we were doing a fairly good job for ourselves, and Taneka was finally starting to settle down, when all of a sudden we see this giant yellow warning sign on the road that read, in huge alarming bold font, “VINNUS VASAVEDTHER!”

We all just stared as Taneka slowed the truck down. “Vinnus vasavedther? What the heck does that mean? Would it kill them to translate Vinnus Vasavedth….HOLY FUCK, THE BRIDGE IS OUT!!!!”

We slammed to a halt inches before dropping into a raging river in the ravine beneath us, as, sure enough, the bridge was in a shambled half-state of reconstruction. Upon further inspection (which itself followed a brief period of shoving our stomachs back down our throats), we saw there was a little makeshift bridge constructed out of packed dirt, pitted and gutted with huge water-filled craters, and had a grand old time thunking and bashing our way across the chasm.

….

….believe you me, we were never so glad to get back and see good old “McLabRat” street again back in Reykjavik. We didn’t even so much mind getting lost again for a bit downtown.

So there you have it, our first day in the REAL land of ice and snow, where men are men, geysers are geysers, arctic foxes are really dogs, air costs $15, and roads are more of a suggestion than an actual national infrastructure.

Josh quote of the evening: “I am Loki, and I curse you with this biting toilet seat of pain, mwahahahah!”

Tomorrow we plan to relax a bit at the Blue Lagoon and then take an “Elf Tour.” Pray for us.

Yours, half frozen,

- SW

Iceland still exists, somewhere...

2008-02-17T21:27:10Z

Day Two under the Northern Lights (which we can't see through the cloudcover). I ate the most inedible-yet-technically-edible animal known to man, and got to lounge in a geothermal hotpool.

Another fine day in Iceland, if by fine you mean rainy, gusty and dark. I’ll excerpt from Josh’s journal to describe our morning driving routine:

"Oh..you're looking for..um...M-i-k-l-a-b-u-r-a..."

"Wait a second. McLabRat? We're looking for a street called McLabRat?"

"Mmm! Sounds tasty!"

"Are we on Spitalicastur yet? How the hell do you even pronounce this?"

"Baldursgata? Wait a second. Baldurs Gate? We're on a street called Baldurs Gate? Kickass!"

"What the fuck is wrong with this country? It's 8:30am and it's pitch black! And where is everyone, did the zombies get them?"

Yeah, that was pretty accurate.

Liana and Taneka attempted to check out a knitting store that was recommended by Lonelyplanet, but it was closed for Sunday. We attempted to check out the National Gallery, but it was closed for renovations (we were then directed to enjoy the adjoining sculpture park, which had exactly three sculptures). We attempted to visit Iceland’s parliament, which is known as, I swear to G-d, “the Allthingy”, but it was closed. By complete accident we wandered into the Sri Lankan embassy - I'm serious. Which was also closed.

You’d think a track record like this would have made our day untenable, if not for two very important events, as mentioned above.

1) We found a geothermal pool

2) I ate fermented shark

Let’s take the second part first: one of the few pursuits one can really enjoy on a rainy Sunday in Reykjavik, apparently, is the city flea market, housed in a giant warehouse by the harbor docks. It mostly consisted of giant piles of cheap clothing and knickknacks sold by Cambodian women, or a giant piles of books in Icelandic (Liana somehow managed to find a copy of the Communist Manifesto, written entirely without vowels, which are probably bourgeois inventions anyway).

But then we found the fresh seafood section, and I figured this was as good a time as any to try some kæstur hákarl, a delicacy found only in Iceland…an exclusivity that is likely due to a SALT-style international treaty banning its use in any other civilized nation on the planet. What is kæstur hákarl, you may ask? Nothing more or less than fermented Greenland shark. Which they don’t eat in Greenland, because they’re not stupid. Greenland shark is the most inedible creature known to man that is still TECHNICALLY edible. It is a testament to how fucking desperate the Vikings were, starving out on this Island far from Denmark and Norway, that they took these sharks, buried them in the ground for SIX MONTHS in order to get them to decay enough to be tender, and then PISSED ON THEM so their uric acid would kill the germs. And incidentally, this is still how hákarl is prepared today, albeit in a more industrialized fashion.

According to Wikipedia, “chef Anthony Bourdain, who has traveled extensively throughout the world sampling local cuisine for his Travel Channel show No Reservations, has described shark þorramatur as `the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing" he has ever eaten’”, and also that “American service men and women, when experiencing þorrablot while stationed in Iceland, have described the taste of hakarl as "a piece of mushy sponge soaked in window cleaner." There's even a video of a TV food critic trying it and puking.

Our locally-bought guidebook was, if anything, even less complimentary. It described cured and fermented shark as “Sensation: Disbelief- feel violated – wander (sp) if you will live. Comment: Lasting psychological damage. But will make such wonderful story for your friends when you get back home.”

So naturally I had to try this shit. Just for sheer bragging rights.

The fishmonger lady didn’t speak much English, but she directed me to the hakarl vendor who was happy to give me a tiny piece on a toothpick. When I tried to nibble, he told me “the man’s way is to eat it all at once”, and so as not to find my masculinity impugned I obeyed.

It was…um…chewey. And at first tastes like nothing. Then the little flavors start bursting out. It tastes bitter. Really bitter. Moving swiftly to rancid. I could tell it was moving somewhere else even faster, but before I found out I forced myself to swallow. That hardly killed the fun, though – it proceeded to burn down my esophagus, creating a large lump-like feeling in my breast area that festered for a good hour or so. The Hakarl vendor gave me some free trout pâté as a chaser, which didn’t help much. Even now, every time I belch, I still re-taste the damn shark.

But I would be disappointed if I didn’t. Huzzah, I can check something else off my list of things to do before I die!

Well, two things – bathe in an Icelandic geothermal pool.

And this is the main reason why today was alllllllllll worth it. We drove to the outskirts of the city to some abandoned industrial park to find the local hotpot, which was like a Japanese onsen except populated only by large Nordic people. Josh and I basically observed the other pre-bathers to discover that we had to shower and scrub extensively before getting out to the pool, and counted ourselves so suave until we wandered down a tunnel in our bathing suits and ran into a guy in a heavy coat who said, “Um, looking for pool, yes? This is way to outside. Go back other way, ja?”

No problem. So we went back other way, ja, to the pool, which also was, in fact, outside. We froze our half-naked butts off until we managed to plunge into the geothermally heated sulfur-water…

…and here, at last, was the Iceland I had been searching for!

Bubbling hot pools that you can lay in under a winter’s sky and feel toasty. Bliss! (Not to be confused with “Bless!”, which is how you say “goodbye” in Icelandic). They even had a 200 foot water slide that Josh and I climbed (seemingly forever) and then went down twice. By the time we left the place we were all noodled-out, and spent the rest of the evening eating and watching DVDs.

Tomorrow we'll drive out to the countryside and see stuff. Getting some nice pictures despite the rain, will post them eventually...

- SW

PS - The domestic airlines in Iceland fly so low that companies paint ADVERTISING on their underbellies...we got buzzed by more than a few prop-jets with long website URLs on the fuselage...

Sagawizard in the LAND of sagas!

2008-02-17T12:53:48Z

By Odin’s hammer, we have arrived in the land of the ice and snow, with the midnight sun where the hot springs blow….aaaaaayyahhh!

Valhalla, I am coming! As soon as I can figure out how to read any of the street signs.

You can get pictures on tonysalieri's site. In the meantime,

As I write, we have finally had a night’s sleep following the World’s Longest Day (tm), which began with a full day of teaching and continued into a feast at my mother-in-law’s, interspersed with an amusing story of Josh and Taneka attempting to reach Liana’s mom’s house and getting lost (“foolish mortals”, I reminded them, “to think that your puny GPS could avail you in BOSTON!) One car ride full of all of us later (which Sonia described as “the most entertaining drive I’ve ever had”), we boarded IcelandAir#630 nonstop to Reykjavik.

Ah, IcelandAir. With seat-space geared for small elves, and seat trays bisected in two, with Nordic stewardesses with hair dyed jet-black gave no safety demonstration and seemed not to care all that much if we had stowed everything as we began landing. Obviously, they were confident Thor would strike us down with a thunderbolt if we were determined to be impudent. An indeed, the Son of Odin must have been rather torked at us indeed, because we landed in the midst of a swirling sleet-storm that sent horizontal streaks of snow rushing past our windows (it looked, frankly, like we were at warp speed)…and then we passed through and landed in the darkness of Reykjavik, 6:00 AM.

Which, incidentally, is identical to Reykjavik at 9:30 AM. Pitch darkness. And rain. Lots of rain, vacillating between pelting droves and lingering drizzle. We picked up our rental 4 wheel drive, noting with pleasure that our airline ticket stubs contained coupons for Hertz, then deflating slightly when we realized that said coupons expired in June of 2006. Ah well.

Already jetlagged I somehow got nominated to drive us to our rental apartment in the city, which led to a harrowing series of hard-to-see lane dividers, unexpected road narrowings that led to drop-offs into rocky basalt, rotaries that appeared out of nowhere…and the only thing that made pitch black mist-filled driving even MORE difficult was unreadable streetsigns once we reached the city.

So here we are, all exhausted from jetlag, rumbling in a giant SUV through tiny cobblestone lanes in the pitch-darkness whilst three people in the back scream directions at me like, “That’s Digranesvegur! Quick, turn left!” or “Shit, we just passed Fithuvammsvegur, we need to turn around!” or even, “oops, we’re on Hofsstadabraut, we need to be on Hildardalsvegur!” And I am not making ANY of these names up. In fact, if anything, they look EASIER to read to you, because my keyboard can’t replicate all of the weird Icelandic letters like “thorn” and “eth” and the crossed-out o’s, and I can’t replicate the sense of trying to read it only by the dim cabin light of the truck.

Eventually, through grace of the All-Father, we ended up on Odiinsgatta (“Odin’s Gate”), the street for our apartment, but had an hour to kill until the proprietor would be able to meet us. It is 8:30 AM and still pitch-black and raining. I have to use the little-viking’s-room something FIERCE, but everything is closed. So the four of us wander the streets helplessly searching for a place where I can use a bathroom (did I mention it was freezing cold and raining? NOT conducive to continence!)…Liana and I even, at one point, went into a youth hostel (the door was unlocked) and basically went floor by floor looking for one, but every door opened into a maintenance closet. I mean, seriously, I know the Icelanders are neat-freaks, but how many brooms do you freaking NEED? Would it kill you to replace one with a loo?

Eventually we give up and look for an ALLEYWAY where I can relieve myself unnoticed, except here is where we learn A Harsh Lesson in Icelandic Urban Design:

There ARE no hidden alleys or private spaces in Reykjavik. Everything looks out on everything else, and every house has HUGE windows on EVERY side and surface. Liana theorized it was because light was so precious here that people wanted to soak in every bit of it. I theorized it was because God had forsaken me. Truth, as usually, probably lies somewhere in the middle.

I finally found an upscale hotel, rushed in through the guests milling in the lobby, and took care of business. Noted the impressive continental breakfast on my exit.

Then we perused the parked cars on the streets and found that, far from making us self-conscious as Americans, our rented 4X2 SUV was actually rather SMALL compared to the custom nine foot tall 24 valve monster trucks parked up on all the sidewalks. Hell, even half the sedans had enormous Bigfoot-tires.

At 9:30, with still no hints of sunlight emerging from the cloudy skies, we were approached on the street by a stocky woman who identified herself as “Gulla”, and assumed (correctly) that, since we were the only people OUT at this “early hour” on a Saturday, that we were the American tourists who wanted to rent an apartment. So she led us to “Alaborg”, which was actually a darned nice place with a fully stocked kitchen, a strong shower (that floods the whole bathroom, necessitating that you self-manage the deluge with a squeegee that breaks in half when you try), a television (that until Josh figured out the cable system only showed Icelandic talk shows and “Omega”, a Christian broadcasting channel which aired programming about the Apocalypse 24/7), a cordless phone (which we never got to work), plenty of fresh drinkable water (that reeked of sulfur) and a nicely secured door (with a frozen lock that Gulla had to oil the next day for us to use). But the heat – holy shit, was the heat nice! Boundless geothermal (pronounced with a hard “G” by the Icelanders) power. And free wifi! We were in business.

While Josh and Taneka rested Liana and I took a nice long walk (in the rain) that took us to such sights as a giant Lutheran church (in which we caught a young couple furiously making out), a “Spital” (hospital – good to have one nearby!), a lovely rocky coastline with a mock-viking ship docked there, and, OF COURSE, the red light district, looking pretty humble in the 10:30 AM dawn, with pictures of Nicole-Kidman-lookalikes in corsets plastered on the walls of the buildings. We also passed such fine establishments as “House of Pain Tattoos” and dairy stores featuring “Blaberjum!” (which was apparently yogurt, containing a full day’s supply of “fita, kalk, and fosfor”). Everything we eat here appeared to contain Whale, until we looked up the word “Orka” and discovered it meant “energy.”

We returned to crash a bit until Josh and Taneka were ready to come back out with us, and watched a show on “Omega” about, you guessed it, the apocalypse (we thought it was a real news broadcast about the Middle East until we saw the absolutely cheesy special effects version of nuclear war, and Liana derided the fake broadcast for saying “location: Armageddon, Israel” by reminding us that the name of the place is actually called “Megido.”)

Finally we all decided that the place we absolutely HAD to visit was the one, the only, “Saga Museum.” It would be nothing less than a pilgrimage for me.

Now, we HAD a rental truck. We COULD have driven there. But Liana convinced us to walk because “it’s only two kilometers!”, which is about a mile and a half. And besides, it was an easy landmark, a giant dome with a searchlight on top that looked like nothing less than a huge breast with an electric nipple. So out we go…

…into the squall of freezing rain and mist. After thirty seconds we were soaked through. After about 15 minutes the sidewalks disappeared and we were going under highways in weird troll-tunnels. After about 10 more minutes even those disappeared and we basically found ourselves scaling this giant hill, feet slipping on ice or sinking in muddy grasses. Oh, and we totally lost the electro-nipple in the wall of fog. And we were pretty sure we heard the howling of arctic foxes closing in on easy prey…

Somehow we were not surprised we ended up like this. Lost in the woods, unable to see in the rain, proto-pneumoniac, we scaled the edge of the mountain after much effort and…huzzah – there we were! Noting the ample car park nearby, Taneka declared, “you know, I don’t think this place is designed to be WALKED to…”

But once here, we entered, waterlogged and half-frozen, and peeled off our layers, hanging them in the free and open coat area (wow, trust in their fellow men! What a concept) and entered the museum proper.

The museum was a wax museum, and we were met at the door by the owner and designer, along with his adult daughter, who was the ticket-taker. Apparently this giant exhibit hall (retrofitted from a hot water tank) was a family project, and all the wax statues inside were modeled on members of the family (indeed, we recognized both the proprietors’ faces on several of the mannequins). An audio-tour (in English on headphones) explained to us the bloody succession of Vikings beheading one another in various exploits that made Iceland the fun place it is today. For added realism, you’re surrounded by the smell of wet hay and the sound of shrieks pumped through ambient speakers. And naturally no museum would be complete without a lifesize statue of a woman holding a broadsword to her bare breast and screeching to frighten off marauding hordes of native Greenlanders who had the unmitigated gall to oppose their friendly neighborhood Viking pillagers.

But you have to admire the place, as all of the mannequins’ clothing was hand made and even their hair was hand spun. We saw a video that explained the whole thing, then had a long chat with the owner, who seemed to have plenty of time on his hands, as we were pretty much the only ones there (government grants fund and maintain this thing…hmm, imagine that, a government supporting the arts). The owner was friendly, although he expressed to us his extreme displeasure at how global warming (mostly our country’s fault) was destroying his country. Um, awkward moment…

If not for the temperature increases, instead of being drowned in rain, we would have been drowned in snows! Darn us.

Afterwards we thought about getting a coffee, but found out that a small cup was $6.00. And a salad was $15. The museum roof was supposedly the best place to see the city, but all we saw was a wall of fog. Oh well. We went back down and immediately got geysered – an indoor fountain suddenly sprung up from the bottom of the atrium and sprayed everywhere. “Geezus!” Josh exclaimed. “Go outside, get soaked, stay inside, get soaked!”

So we decided to go outside and get soaked. The owner’s daughter told us we could take a bus home, but neglected to tell us just how far the bus stop was…about 15 minutes of downhill walking later, including crossing not one but TWO major highways on foot (thank G-d for Iceland’s low population, which makes for large gaps in traffic), we found the bus shelter…

….and waited over an HOUR there. Despite what the (now-soaked) bus schedule we held attested, the busses apparently weren’t running today. So we sighed and began to set out on a walk back home…

…when, naturally, the bus arrives.

So we run, we run like our little lives depend on it, to catch up and get onboard. The ride back took all of 6 minutes and cost $5.00 a person. Fuck, this must be what people from Peru feel like when they come to the US and try to get by economically. Our American dollars were freaking toilet paper in this country!

Hence the reason why we bought food at a supermarket and cooked all our meals. After dinner we spent quite a while drying out (and watching “The Muppet Wizard of Oz: Starring Beyonce” in Icelandic…an experience best not detailed any further), then decided to make one more attempt on Reykjavik. Tonight was the legendary “pub crawl night”, so we decided (again, at Liana’s insistence) to head out and “be a part of it.” So once again we braved the storm (this time it had settled down into a generalized haze) and went pub-thumping…

…and ended up in “Vegemot”, this upscale, dimly lit bar where no waitress ever came to serve us, so I had to go up to the bar and try in my HORRIBLE Icelandic to order two beers. I ordered two “Vikings”, because we saw signs for that brand everywhere and figured it was their national beer. Whatever the bartender said she sounded really pissed, but managed to communicate that it would be delivered to our table. So we huddled in the corner and succumbed to jetlag until the beers arrived, and then the four of us nursed the two glasses until we’d MAYBE finished half of each one.

It was at this point that Josh remembered from our guidebook that beer, which was banned in Iceland until 1988, is still super-expensive and that these two beers probably ran about $20 each. THAT shook us out of our jetlag for a moment! But when we finally went back to the bar and paid, they were each merely $9, which led us to believe that Viking is probably Iceland’s version of Pabst Blue Ribbon or Golden Anniversary. It was a pretty upscale place, so maybe the barkeep was so torqued off at us because we did the equivalent of going to a fancy Manhattan trendy-bar and saying, “gimme a Bud Light!”

Ah well. We rolled ourselves home and conked out for the night. We just woke up today at about 10:30…and we realized this whole country is like a casino, in the sense that the light (or lack of it) is always constant and there are few to no clocks, so everything exists in a more or less unchanging sense of time. I’m pretty refreshed now as I write this, but Josh and Taneka were woken up by screaming babies and running kids on the floor above them.

Now it’s time to re-emerge into the Nordic perpetual gloam, hoping the CHUDs will be too waterlogged to impede our progress…we hear there's a flea market in town...

- SW

The Epic Saga Continues!

Two important links! Time-sensitive!

sagawizard @ 2008-05-08T10:13:00

Whoah

sagawizard @ 2008-04-02T15:55:00

Cell phones more carcinogetic than cigarettes?

sagawizard @ 2008-03-26T17:13:00

The incredible disappearing war

Reflections as we begin year six

Bush calls fighting in Afghanistan "romantic"

This is rich

Tibet Tragedy

sagawizard @ 2008-03-08T08:57:00

Hoo-boy...

Democratize, or the puppy gets it!

*Boing*! Happy Leap Year!

Converting from Region 1 to Region 9?

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Home!

Icy sharky steamy fun time!

Day Five

Day Five

Volcanoes and Elves and Vikings, Oh My!

Ice Ice Baby

Iceland still exists, somewhere...

Sagawizard in the LAND of sagas!

Boing! Happy Leap Year!