One man's journey into married life, middle age and responsibility after completing a long and perilous trek to capture his dreams. Along the way there will be stories of travel, culture and trying to figure out what to call those things on the end of shoelaces.
Note to the Universe: Look, I am unbelievably happy with the way my life has turned out. Last year was the most amazing thing that I could ever imagine. I reconnected with the woman of my dreams, fell in love and we decided that all we want is to spend the rest of our lives together. And I understand that there is good and bad in life so things can’t always be that perfect. But can you just ease up a little? The past couple of months just seem to be bad things followed by horrible and tragic events followed by just more crap. Can we get a little break from everything for a moment? We’d really appreciate it. Thanks.
Anyway, it’s kind of late and I’m pretty much spent so I figure that I would just post the following video. It is the best thing that I have ever seen in terms of showing what Iceland is actually like. Except that for some reason in this video it isn’t constantly raining. Of all the sights shown in this video Kim and I were probably at about three quarters of them. Pretty amazing to think that you hit almost all of the locations shown in a tourism video.
Note: video is slightly not safe for work due to a tad bit of nudity. That is Europe for you. You put in tourism ads the sort of things that would typically appear on HBO. Well, not as bad as what you can see on HBO now. Seriously, when did they turn into Cinemax? Anyway, consider this fair warning. Oh, you will also be singing this song for the rest of the day. At least it will make you pretty happy to be doing so.
Thought I would share some stories about my visit with Kim to the Blue Lagoon.
Iceland’s primary tourist attraction is the Blue Lagoon, which is rather interesting given that thirty years ago the place didn’t even exist. This obviously requires some explanation and not surprisingly power plants are involved. Iceland gets most of its electricity through geothermal plants and typically they use the water involved for hot water for houses. Well, the water from this one plant was too salty for domestic use so they just made a lagoon out of this volcanic region and just pumped the water in there. In doing so they created this wonderful, one hundred degree lake filled with blue mineral water. After a few people started swimming in it they realized what they had done and built a spa around it. So now it is the one place in Iceland that everyone visits.
There are a few interesting experiences before you even get to the lagoon. When you check in you get a wristband that acts as the key to your locker and a virtual wallet for when you are inside the spa. Very useful and much appreciated. Then you are asked if you need to rent a towel (which I did as I neglected to take the words of Douglas Adams to heart.) Also, if necessary you can rent a swimsuit. Now, on the list of things that I wish to rent in my life a swimsuit has to be at the absolute bottom of the list. I don’t care what type of laundry service you provide that just seems rather nasty. Plus, given the number of speedos I saw on display I really don’t want to know what you would get.
Once you go inside the locker room to change you are informed that you must shower before entering the pool. This doesn’t sound too interesting until you see the signs that highlight in great detail what particular body parts must specifically be washed. I mean, you see a picture of a body and arrows and everything. Add to that you are in a communal shower with a significant number of large Germans with various bits flopping around and it makes for a rather interesting experience. (For the record, they may not have been German but I have decided that every foreign language is German for the sake of convenience.)
It is now time to enter the lagoon itself. For this you go outside into the 45 degree air with a good 20 mile per hour breeze whipping across this barren volcanic landscape. It is like you are on the surface of the moon except that the rocks are darker. The cold just sucks the air right out of you as you drop off your towel and flip flops and walk stiff-legged as the cold has frozen your joints solid. You somehow make it to the pool itself and step in and….
Release the biggest sigh of your life. Nothing has ever felt as good as getting out of the cold air and into what is just the nicest, warmest bath of your life. The water is so salty that you just naturally float in it. You don’t even swim; you just kind of hover around in a search for a spot that is just the right level of warmth for you (they move about so it is a thrill when you stumble upon one.) There are waterfalls to experience and mud masks to wear but just the joy of being in the water was amazing. Plus, since we were at the end of tourist season it wasn’t too crowded so at times Kim and I seemed to have the entire place to ourselves, which made it seem ultra-romantic.
Making things even better was the fact that they served beer. There were two small problems with this though. 1) You had to go inside for the beer, which meant getting out of the pool and walking into the cold. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. You know how you feel so heavy when you get out of a normal pool? Double that and give yourself hypothermia in the process. If anyplace needed a floating bar it is this one. 2) They impose a three drink maximum per person. This seemed tragically small as we probably would have stayed there drinking until we were forced out. I assume that they have a good reason for it (you do dehydrate like mad and it does keep people from, uh, puking) but it cost us a bit of enjoyment.
This was easily one of the highlights of the trip. We stayed in the water for hours, just floating around and laughing and enjoying the fact that it was windy and rainy and just horrible outside to the point that the lifeguards were wearing heavy winter jackets. We didn’t care about anything else in the world. We just enjoyed the moment. If there is anything more you can ask of from a vacation I don’t know what it is.
Some things I discovered in Iceland that were totally unexpected…
1) Apparently the entire country is not a frozen wasteland. Given the name Iceland you expect the type of place where Superman would construct his fortress of solitude. Instead, it seemed to be more attuned to Swamp Thing as every available surface was covered with moss and lichen. It was rather pretty but given that it was in the seventies at times we seemed to be at a loss as to where all the ice was.
2) If you have ever traveled to European capitals you realize that every other building you see is actually older than the United States. That is not the case in Reykjavík as the city was basically built in the past 100 years. For some reason instead of making all of these nice, quaint buildings they decided to take pages from the old Soviet design manual. Lots of corrugated steel and squat, drab concrete structures. Part of the is necessity in a country where it is always rainy, windy and cold but it does take a little bit of joy out of the place.
3) While the majority of Icelanders speak English (enough so that we never had any issue in making our way through any situation) the primary language is Icelandic, which hasn’t changed from the Viking era. Apparently, the language has been so constant that the average person can grab a thousand year old manuscript and understand it completely. Compare that to English where it is difficult to read a 400 year old Shakespeare play much less Chaucer or Beowulf. I don’t think it is possible to read Beowulf in Old English without years of training. Anyway, Icelandic is such a foreign sounding language that not only is it impossible to understand any words but it makes all of the speakers sound like elves.
4) Because much of the island is volcanic and filled with hot springs the hot water is piped in from the hot springs themselves, which means that the water has a wonderful tinge of sulfur to it. You know that the water in the shower had warmed up when it began to smell like rotten eggs. It did wake you up in the morning; I will give it that praise.
5) Before it sounds like I am ripping too much on the water I have to say that the bottled water from the glacial springs is the best water you would ever taste in your life. The ice cube I had from an actual 12,000 year old glacier may be one of the best things that I have ever tasted. So it isn’t all bad.
6) This is more of a comment on Europe in general. I have no idea why no matter what country I travel to, no matter how good the hotel is, that they have absolutely no idea how to design a shower. I can accept the fact that I am taller than the average European so I have to stoop to get clean. But for some reason all of the showers are designed with about 12 unlabeled knobs and the shower head in the absolute worst spot imaginable. It is always fun to be dealing with jet lag and trying to reverse engineer plumbing.
7) Kim and I were there for just under a week, traveled around about half the island, and probably went through at least two thirds of the inhabited portions of the place. In that entire time we saw only two black people on the entire island. It got to be really disconcerting after awhile. We saw more tourists from mainland China.
8) Speaking of other tourists I have to tell this story. As part of one of the organized tours we took we were given the opportunity to look at a geothermal power plant. Kim had no desire to look at it and stayed in the bus reading a book. I may have had even less desire to see it because I have spent a good portion of my adult life looking at power plants and had little desire to watch a utility powerpoint presentation that I wasn’t being paid to sit through. What amazed me is how all of the other people on the tour were going up to the windows and taking pictures of the generators and the plant design. Trust me, it is my job and it is not that interesting.
9) They are really, really big on hot dogs. I have no idea why that is the case and as I discussed a few days ago they seem to be an acquired taste. It just seems to be like the most random food for them to be into. I just assumed that their entire diet consisted of fish. Oh, and don’t eat the dried fish unless you ate the fish food you gave your goldfish as a kid.
10) You have to love a country where the kids go out to the clubs at five in the evening and don’t come home until the next morning. That is dedication for you.
Best of 120 Minutes: Have to go with the Sugarcubes tonight. It’s Iceland’s number three export. And for the record, we did not stay at the Hotel Bjork though we went past it.
The five random CDs for the week: 1) The Raconteurs “Consolers of the Lonely” 2) Scott Miller and the Commonwealth “Upside Downside” 3) Robbie Fulks “Country Love Songs” 4) Neko Case “Blacklisted” 5) The Tragically Hip “Live Between Us”
1) Our first dinner in Iceland was Domino’s Pizza. Now some people would claim that this really breaks the spirit of traveling overseas. I respond with the following. A) I had another one of my medical misadventures on the plane (I owe Kim everything in the world for helping me through it) and neither of us were in an adventurous mood, B) jet lag killed any desire for us to leave our hotel room and C) it was the best Domino’s Pizza I have had in my entire life. Seriously, it was freaking awesome.
2) We went on a number of bus tours, which meant pre-arranged stops at tourist locations for lunch. At one we were requested to try the meat soup, which I must admit was quite tasty. However, you have to question any soup that is simply defined as being flavored by meat. Could be beef, could be lamb, could be some other small creature, you can never be quite sure.
3) As is the case with most of Europe in Iceland there is this unnerving tendency to serve every sandwich with some sort of unnamed sauce. In England everything comes lathered with butter whereas in Iceland it appears that Thousand Island dressing is the condiment of choice. This led to Kim’s continual request that our meals come as listed on the menu and not with some sort of mystery attachment.
4) Per Kim (since I never tried it) the Icelandic Brie was just off the charts good. I personally found the Icelandic hot dog to be quite good while Kim did not enjoy it in the least. It is a natural casing dog much like the Bohemian hot dogs I had as a kid and came with a mustard sauce that was quite like a remoulade. Personally, I just like the fact that I went all the way to Iceland to have a hot dog.
5) At one point we had dinner in a Mexican restaurant in which I ordered a fish and chips and Kim ordered a chicken sandwich. This made perfect sense at the time. I believe it was because they wanted thirty bucks for fajitas.
6) One of the best things we did was have dinner at a tapas restaurant (recommended by Canadians who while we can fault their health care they are good at finding places for dinner). This let us try a number of Icelandic delicacies as well as give me a chance to try a few things I had never had before like escargot. We had puffin, the national bird and mascot, which was kind of oily and gamy and not that great. Monkfish was also quite good but the star of the night was the minke whale. Yes, I tried whale and it was delicious. Like a cross between tuna and a really good steak. That and a few other dishes made it one of my best meals ever.
7) Yes, you can complain that we dined on several cute creatures, especially when you include our lamb lunch the next day that was just exquisite. I would just like to state that on our whale / bird watching expedition we saw neither whales nor puffins so we felt like they owed us for not being there. And the lamb was just too good to pass up.
8) Next to our hotel was this bakery that we passed every day but only ate at on our last day. Which was a mistake because they had this cinnamon roll covered with fudge that would make you end your diet in a second. I’m not a big pastry type person but this was pretty amazing. Inexpensive as well, which was a great change of pace.
9) At one point Kim ordered a hamburger that came with a fried egg on top of the bun. You know that you have spent a long time travelling when that seems to be a perfectly normal way to serve a hamburger.
10) If I learned one thing from our trip it is this: you can never go wrong when you order the lobster feast.
Did you miss me? Was my wit and panache longed for in the midst of cyberspace? Did anyone actually notice that I had stopped writing for two weeks?
Anyway, as I said I went on sabbatical which is really a fancy way of saying I finally took a vacation. In fact this was the first time that I took five days off from work that did not involve volunteering in New Orleans in almost a decade. It has been that long since I have had a real vacation and that says something and I don’t think it is very good.
So what did I do? Well, Kim and I went to New York to Iceland back to New York to Detroit to South Bend then back to Detroit and finally home. We spent nearly a week in unseasonably warm Iceland where we saw glaciers and icebergs and waterfalls and geysers and a whole lot of gray skies. We also ate amazing food including the best ice cube you will ever taste as well as puffin (they are both cuddly and delicious.) We then went to New York, going from a country of 300,000 people to a city of 8 million. We did the museums and Times Square and saw a play and I had my first experience of life in New York. Then it was on to South Bend for the Notre Dame game and reunions with some old friends.
Obviously I have a thousand stories to tell and I will be sharing them over the next few weeks. Right now I just want to say that I am back safe and sound though the jet lag has finally caught up to me. Travelling the world via early morning flights starts to drain you once you reach your mid thirties. So, I am going to thankfully sleep in my own bed right now and get ready to go back to work in the morning. More stories to follow.
But what do you mean Tali won More to Love while I was gone? Why in the world did Luke choose her? I really have to disagree with his logic there. Mandy was robbed.
The five random CDs for the week: 1) Death Cab for Cutie “Transatlanticism” 2) Tommy Malone “Soul Heavy” 3) Damien Rice “Live from Fingerprints Warts and All” 4) Various Artists “Bloodshot Records Sampler 2001” 5) Rufus Wainwright “Release the Stars”
