Rice and Beans -- Reykjavik, Iceland

I'm starting this post from Te & Kaffi Cafe in Downtown Reykjavik, Iceland. I would be writing from the crowded campsite Boy and I (and Mrs. Peterson) are staying at three and a half kilometers away, but the internet has been down. For three solid days.

"Um, excuse me," I approached the information desk after my first failed attempt to login on our first day. "I have the correct password, but the internet is still not working."

"Yes, it's down today," the woman behind the desk informed me. "We've unplugged it and restarted it and it's still not working."

And that was that.

And still is that. Three days later.

I would have no complaints about sitting in a nice cafe to write my blog, except that nice cafes (and every other kind of cafe in this country) charge outrageous prices for minuscule portions of milk and caffeine. Our eight ounce latte set us back five dollars.

We spend a lot of time fantasizing about getting to Prague. Where, as long as we steer clear of the tourist traps, we can both get cups of coffee.

Boy and I are trying to make the most of our time here, but it's challenging. Had I been more realistic about how my knee injury would impact my... umm... ability to walk with a backpack, I would have looked into other options before arriving in Reykjavik. Options that would have included renting a car for the week and finding fellow travelers to split the burden of the hefty price tag. In the original, pre-injury plan, Boy and I were going to spend our first night at a campsite in Reykjavik -- just to get our bearings and work through any jet lag. Then we were going to adventure! To hitchhike the Ring Road and wildcamp and exercise all my vagabond prowess (I even brought a trowel to bury our poo). This plan involved walking long distances with a backpack.

And Ellie... regardless of all your fabulous aubergine qualities... you, my darling, are NOT light...

We arrived in Keflavik Airport at 5:30 on Thursday morning. Boy and I were both thrashed. WOW airlines offers unbeatable prices, but narrow seats, limited leg room and nary a complimentary beverage (including water). I was also rather devastated to discover that they do not have the thin (but warm) blankets and pillows most airlines offer on overnight flights.

Boy and I were up all night. Fidgeting knees and lolling heads and cracking necks and rolling shoulders. We watched the golden globe set, seemingly underneath us, behind a wall of opaque cotton ball clouds. Then we saw the same sun rise about seven minutes later.


"Welcome to the land of the Midnight Sun," I rubbed my dry eyes and mumbled at Boy. When I'm acutely aware of how dire my breath smells, I make sure to mumble. In my head, by not properly projecting, I'm keeping all the foul smelling air to myself. But in reality, I'm forcing people to lean in closer in order to actually hear me.

I had the address of a campsite in Reykjavik written down in three places and was ready to whip it out on a moment's notice to fill out the entry forms. But Iceland has no entry forms. And at passport control, all they did was ask me if I was in Iceland to watch the big soccer match between Iceland and France.

"No, but he is," I motioned to Boy.

We paid sixty dollars for roundtrip tickets to Reykjavik and then boarded our FlyBus. The forty-five minute drive into the city reminded me of the beauty I experienced a few years ago in the Burren. All the ragged, wind blown grass. The flowers peaking up boldly between rocks, as if defiantly facing the wind with their many purple faces. The stark, treeless landscape.

"How do you find your way out of a forest in Iceland? You stand up and look around!" our tour guide would laugh with us a couple days later. "There are no native trees in Iceland -- they all came from Denmark. If there are more than five trees together, we call them a forest.

I used a map of Reykjavik I'd downloaded onto my iPhone to navigate to the campsite. It was then that I began to feel the full weight of my bag exacerbating the pain in my knee. Every step sent sharp tendrils of agony up my leg -- pain that worsened as the walk went on.

I don't see how I can hitch if I can't even walk three kilometers with my bag...

Because of my leg, Boy and I booked four nights at the Reykjavik campsite. We chose not to book the whole week because we wanted to give a few more couchsurfing hosts a chance to respond and wanted to leave ourselves a little more open to spontaneity. So we set up Mrs. Peterson, took off our shoes and passed out in our sleeping bags with clothes crunched up into make-do pillows.

We woke three hours later and headed into Reykjavik. As neither of us had eaten since a paltry meal in the airport the day before, we were famished. But every restaurant we passed sold food for a minimum of about twelve dollars a plate. A sandwich in a shop cost eight dollars. A carton of yogurt with two servings cost four.

So we made our grumbling stomachs wait and used our money to warm up in a coffee shop instead. Where we met a couple from Oregon who teach yoga in Yachats -- that gorgeous little town where Cummerbund broke down not so long ago.

What a small world this is...

On the way back to the campsite that evening, we stopped at a discount grocery store to do some shopping. A block of cheese, some white rice, a couple cans of beans, a carton of yogurt, some orange marmalade and a jar of korma to serve with the rice.

The part of Boy that's a gourmet chef is dying a little right now... Oof. Poor guy. Welcome to being a vagabond...

After four days of surviving in Iceland, I've discovered that this country is best enjoyed by two types of people.

1) the type that makes plenty of money and doesn't have to worry about spending hundreds-thousands of dollars on tours, renting cars and eating out. The type that doesn't flinch at a sign that says, "Minimum car rental, 90 dollars per day," or at a menu that starts at twelve dollars for a bowl of noodles.

2) the type that can rough it. The type that can hitchhike, wild camp and couchsurf. This is what Boy and I had hoped to be, but with my injury and with how no one in Reykjavik hosts couples, we no longer fit into this category.

Hitchhiking is scary... It's the real life manifestation of all my nightmares about theatre. I'm up for an audition for a part I want -- REALLY badly -- I get to the stage, the headlights -- I mean, floodlights -- glare at me -- and I forget my lines. All of them. I just stand there, smiling and cringing in embarrassment until I either walk off the stage or the lights go out. Hitchhiking feels the same way to me. Standing there with nothing to say... just a dumb smile and a sort of apologetic, sort of defiant thumb in the air.

It's scary and it's something I dislike tremendously. But I dislike it because it challenges all the parts of me that need growth. The parts that need to trust that everything will be okay. The parts that need to be okay with waiting. Waiting on others, waiting on the road, waiting on myself. I'm someone who has either been actively pursuing or actively running away for a very long time. My cherished intervals of just being are few and far between... and, if done correctly, hitching is something that forces me to wait like nothing else I've ever attempted.

"Boy," I started timidly, "I need accountability help. I feel like right now, my reason for not hitchhiking is a legitimate reason and not just an excuse. But there will definitely be times I make lame excuses that have no foundation except my fear. Don't let me use those excuses. Call them out for what they are."

In an effort to make the best of things, Boy and I spend a lot of time laughing. Laughing at the internet that hasn't been working for days. Laughing at eating a can of beans out of a pan for lunch and dinner three days straight. Laughing at all the finds we make from the "free section" of the campsite.

 

I've found peanuts, sauerkraut, rice, beans, pesto (!), jam, honey, instant coffee, muesli and a wee bit of bread I gave to Boy.

We laugh at what we like about the city --

I love the sense of humor.

Reykjavik has a penis museum. A PHALLUS museum. The male bits of every species of mammal on this island is represented at the museum. Including a particularly bold Icelandic fellow who donated his dick to join the exhibit. 

They have invented a special kind of mitten that holds their beer for them.

They attach army men to their street signs and superheros to their chimneys. 

We love how close it is to the ocean.

We love the clouds and how they blanket the mountains. Not one of those flimsy airplane blankets (the ones they don't have on WOW flights..), either. Like a thick, warm, Icelandic woolen blanket that you look at and start to sweat.

Boy likes the planes that are constantly flying overhead.

This is Iceland's Parliament. And even though the won their freedom from Denmark, they still have a Danish crown on the roof.

We both like the old town. The vibrant colors, the row houses, the street musicians, the single church that dominates the skyline. 

Lief Ericson

"Single Gloves, Speed Dating"

Reykjavik's oldest cemetery. In the middle of Downtown.

The original viking who founded Iceland. Had a nasty habit of kidnapping and murdering and raping. You know. First rate viking.

During the last Gay Pride festival, his lips were painted. And have remained painted ever since.

I like (and I'm sure Boy likes too) how Iceland has a pretty fabulous "right to be different" festival. This doesn't just encompass gay pride -- it encompasses all the pride about all the things that don't quite fit in.

I like how easy-going law enforcement is. Reykjavik has a police force, of course, but it doesn't care a bit about whether or not you're drinking in public or having too good of a time. It's mostly famous for its Instagram account -- INSTAGRAM

They have two "military" helicopters, but these helicopters are not used for warfare of any kind -- they're used for rescuing hikers who forgot that they were hiking in Iceland.

"They're all German," our tour guide told us on Saturday. "German hikers getting lost in Iceland."

I love how environmentally friendly this city is. The password for the internet (that doesn't work) at our campsite is "greentravelling". The password at the hostel next door is "greenlove". They have recycling options for nearly everything, composting is common and the entire city is powered by renewable energy. 

Our guide told us that in Iceland, you never turn the heat off. Because with all the geothermal energy, heat is free. Instead of being bothered with regulating the thermostat, Icelandic people just open their windows when they get too toasty. As is demonstrated by the yellow house above.

I love the geothermal pools speckling Reykjavik. There's one right next to the campsite, and Boy and I coughed up seven dollars apiece to go for a dip the other day. We separated at the changing rooms and I found myself surrounded by dozens of quite naked ladies. On the wall was a large poster of a naked figure with red splotches highlighting all the places one was meant to wash. Head, armpits, crotch, feet.  

"Please wash thoroughly without bathing suit," read the poster.

Whoa... it's a good thing I have no qualms with being naked, I thought as I stripped off my bathing suit and joined a dozen women in the curtainless shower area. Two employees supervised us, making certain that we all cleaned our nasty bits sufficiently.

I feel more exposed right now than at a nude beach. Being supervised by clothed women as I scrub my crotch... shifts the power dynamic a bit.

We laugh at what we don't like about this city --

The modern buildings that live everywhere except the downtown area we like so much.

The internet that's so slow I feel like I'm in Guatemala again. But then I remember I'm wearing two pairs of pants, four shirts, boots, socks and a hat. And that I'm still shivering. And then I realize, no, I'm not in Guatemala again.

The cold. The biting, horrible, penetrating cold. The bitterness I feel whenever I see the sign on a downtown shop (selling mittens and gloves) that says, "SUMMER SALE!"

THIS ISN'T SUMMER! Who are you kidding?

The cuisine. It's kind of hard to laugh about this one, but we manage to find a way. In Iceland, locals seem to survive off of coffee, ice cream and hotdogs.

Puffin (an endangered species) and minke whale (also an endangered species... and, umm, a whale) are on the menu for inquisitive tourists. Fermented shark is also readily available. I wouldn't eat the whale or the puffin (guilt would give me indigestion), but I would be thrilled to pieces to try the famous Icelandic lamb, if it weren't so expensive.

How the downtown area of Reykjavik has been entirely shaped by tourism. Tourist information shops on every block. "Cheapest car rental in Iceland!" signs everywhere you look. Shops chocked full of cute stuffed puffins,  awkwardly angry vikings and polar bears. 

POLAR BEARS? What does that even mean? Polar bears don't live in Iceland. The only ones that ever get here are the poor beasts stranded on icebergs that floated over from Greenland. Are they just trying to cater to the tourists who think that cold = polar bears?

I posted a frustrated status on facebook the other day --

Dear Iceland,

WTF? You are the most ludicrously expensive country I've ever visited. I'm sure you're very beautiful and all that, but when bus tickets cost HUNDREDS of dollars and renting a car is a minimum of 500 a week and gas is 8 dollars a gallon, how am I supposed to see any of you?

Work on this.

Sincerely,

Someone who doesn't make six digits a year

I received several comments from friends who were doing their best to be helpful, offering suggestions like couchsurfing, wildcamping and hitchhiking. Which just made me feel more helpless.

This feels the same as when I got sciatica after my knee injury. I've designed yoga sequences to help people suffering from sciatica experience relief. But with my knee injury, none of those poses were available to me. So I had to sit with the pain AND the knowledge of how to fix it AND not be able to do anything about it.

"What can we learn from our time here?" I asked Boy on our walk back to the campsite one evening.

"To not sacrifice happiness for money." 

"Yeah... and to be on the same page. I don't think my body was on the same page as my heart. My heart wanted to travel the way I've been traveling for the last few years... but my body said no. And I didn't pay attention. And I think we needed to be more on the same page. I didn't communicate to you as much as I should have about all the options available to us. About what we would do if hitchhiking wasn't accessible to me. Probably because I didn't want to think about it. But not thinking about a problem doesn't make it go away, as much as it pains me to admit. Not thinking about -- not discussing a problem -- that just limits our capacity to solve the problem when it inevitably manifests itself." 

"So... let's not do that again." 

"Right."