Sep 2006

I came to Iceland for several reasons.

One was of the course the inspiring scenery.
Another was the people it inspired.
And the last was the culture that arose from this relationship.
Of course I was only thinking of the country itself, and now I'm here, another learning mission has chosen to accept me; experiencing people from many different countries.

The scenery isn't just breathtaking, it physically steals my oxygen while I'm sleeping and distributes it evenly across the whispering shores, the sighing mountains, the shouting waterfalls.
Most of that you can see in the pictures from the pre-sessional field trip around Southern Iceland in the album linked in the last entry. I love photography (on an extremely amateur level), but dammit this country just makes any attempts at good pictures useless. My favourite picture I took was of the waterfall and the rainbow (displayed a couple of entires ago), but that still isn;t enough. What I can't show you is how that rainbow moved, faster than eyes can shift, once creeping closer and then again creeping back shyly. Lovely.

There are a lot of rainbows in Iceland. Mostly because it rains a lot. Speaking of which, last weekend I saw the most rain I've ever seen fall in one day.
This story ends with me being glad I still have friends.
I suggested to Antje and Eemeli that we take a bus trip to Ólafsvik, a town in the west on the Snaefells peninsula, near Snaefells mountain (and associated small glacier) where the heroes of my third-favourite-book begin their Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
Bus goes ok, and by bus I mean minibus, a public service minibus, and we get to Ólafsvik. It's a pleasant evening, little wind, some sun, and life feels easy.
"Did you book anywhere?"
"Naw, I'm sure it'll be fine."
They don't blame me, I'm young. The first guesthouse is full. It's not long before we learn that winter starts September in Iceland. And everywhere else in town in shut for the winter. The next minibus out of there was 5.35. The next day.
After much desperation we manage to book a hostel in the next town, 30km away, and decide to hitchhike.
Perhaps not wise in Iceland.
A guy picked us up on the outskirts of town, but could only frive us a little way. Still 20km to go, but now we're hopeful, and begin to walk.
We were still walking 2 hours later! You'd be amazed how many Icelanders drove by with massive 4x4s and only themselves for company. Eventually, we were picked up by a German couple in a tiny two-door car, so we sat very tahnkfully cramped in the back with our packs on our laps. I love Germans.

The next day, prepared for a hike to Snaefellsjokull, it rained a preposterous amount the whole day, laving us stranded in the hostel.
At least the 'walk' gave me some good photo ops:

What's amazing is those two actually still grace me with their company, and what's even more amazing is we're all going on a trip round the whole island starting tomorrow! Me, Antje, Eemeli and a Czech guy called Tomas, a small hired car and a whole host of pre-booked accomodation.

More amazing pictures to come, see you next week! :-)

Hello!
Just a quick update to point you in the direction of my photos:
http://www.photobucket.com/albums/v14/Colossal
In the album 'IceIntro' you'll find 100 of the best pictures of Southern Iceland. Tho I do admit 23 pictures of Jokulsarlon is a little excessive. Coincidentally, if the photo names look like they're missing vowels, they are, the site can't cope with ó and á and í and whatever else, so it just removes them.
Also, in the album 'CaitlinParty' you'll find some mug shots of some friendly foreigners.

Another party tonight, for all the foreign students, which should be a riot!

Oh, while I'm here, just a thought if any of you decide to write me a letter and are feeling generous there are a few things they don't have here I'm missing...
1. Tic Tacs. How am I living without Tic Tacs?? I can hardly think.
2. Herbal Essences. Only 20% of a travel bottle left. My hair weeps.
I'm sure there are more, luckily I've found a couple, some expensive Dairly Milk, and thankfully Antje found me some Marmite, phew!

Steam rises lazily in the afternoon sun from Antje's coffee. The cafe balcony is alive with chatter. The street mildly bustles with mixed languages.
I am in Iceland!

I have changed immeasurably in the past week alone. In fact, that's a lie, I can measure the changes. And they run along these themes:
1. Germans are great. Truly remarkable people.
2. Conversely, Britons suck.
3. Girls are great, and I can have a great deal in common with them.

Of course, these require more explanation.
1 and 2 can become clearer at first with a simple statistic. Of a class of around 40 people, 18 are German. 1 is British: me.
There were 4 Brits on the list to come, but I'm the only one who turned up.
During the pre-sessional field trip, I had the opprtunity to talk to many Germans (as it was hard to avoid talking to any really). I quickly learned that something like 80% of all Germans go abroad sometime during their study (they always gave me figures as percentages). It's a part of their life, their culture. Truly then, the Germans are global citizens.

It's funny, I always thought we were kind of friendly rivals. The kind of enemies in a film where one will say "We're a lot alike you and I".
How wrong was I?

I'm afraid it kind of made me resent this little closed off xenophobic island of ours.
If you ever get the chance to go abroad for a length of time and experience another culture completely, I implore you to take it. It'll change your perspective in minutes.

Point 3 is on a more personal level. Although my best friends are girls, Jo, Ree, Jess, Holly, I have always thought I have more in common with guys. Like when I hang out with Gareth n Matt n Keith, or at Uni, where my friends are Tom, Matt and Harry.
But here in Iceland I stick to Caitlin (American), Antje (German), Alina (Finnish), and well girls. And even stranger than that, we've adopted just this one guy called Eemeli. So where I'm usually the only girl in a gang of guys, now he's th only guy in our gang of girls. It's good :-)

Pictures of these people will become available soon, there's a house party at Caitlin's tonight :D

So much has happened, I'm sure if I tried to put it all down right now either I'd drop dead writing it or you'd drop dead reading it!

I haven't described the beauty of my field trip yet, but I'll leave that for next time, I'll just leave you with a couple of the most beautiful sights:

More pictures to come later