Tuesday, June 17, 2008
National Security
The President of Iceland juast rode by- no motorcade, no fuss, just a nice Lexus with a presidential flag
Dedication
The Icelanders' philosophy of "work hard, play hard" is most famously manifested in their hard drinking on weekend nights. This comes in spite of some very strict laws regulating the purchase of alcohol. Anything stiffer than 2.25% beer (half strength for those of you who were wondering) has to be purchased from Vin Bud - the government liquor store.
Today is Iceland's national holiday, celebrating indepndence from the Danes in 1944. In preparation to celebrate, Lisa and I felt we should stock up on patriotic items like Viking beer and Brennavin (when in Reykjavik..). Vin Bud keeps sparse hours (11:00- 6:00) so we snuck in at 5:50 and picked up some beer. The store was packed and the line was deep but fast moving. On our way out Lisa saw a store employee bar the turnstile for some poor schmuck who will be celebrating independence with lattol.
The difficulty and expense (nearly $20 for our 6 pack of tall boys), not to mention the significant pre-planning, the Icelanders put up with in order to party like the rock stars they are makes their dedication to their craft an inspiration to partiers everywhere.
Monday, June 16, 2008
'Car Days' in Akureyri
After our sojourn to the small towns of Husavik (population 2500) and Reykjahlið (pop 210), we returned to 'the capital of Iceland's North' - Akureyri on Saturday afternoon.
We got into town and began a trek to the great guesthouse we'd stayed at before. There was a much livelier vibe in the street than Wednesday had held. Soon a pickup outfitted with speakers blaring radio ad babble moved slowly through the streets, moving by us on cross streets. When they passed on our street, we could see that they were promoting N3 - a local DJ act playing as part of the Festival and giving out bottles of a soft drink called "Ri Mix" - punny name. Free is rare in Iceland, so we both took a bottle and the truck moved on in the same direction we were headed.
In the main road adjacent to the river there were the loud noises of revving engines and crowds of young revelers. Through the fencing we saw pairs of cars drag racing. We later found that this was Akureyri´s 'Car Days´. The racers were a variety of 'tricked out' street cars of all makes and models - some were more obvious money pits than others. As we passed the road and stood on the bridge that overlooked the line of pending dragsters, we saw a rag tag collection of amateurs - including a number of the style of mid size
luxury SUVs popular in the US! Alright, I can envision a few of my students borrowing Mom's car and drag racing down the Palma Sola Causeway, but standing outside one of these cars was a middle aged man in too tight jeans and a leather racing jacket, strapping on a helmet.
A quick glance through the line of a dozen pending dragsters, I could see that everyone had a helmet on - glad to know that safety comes first.
We got into town and began a trek to the great guesthouse we'd stayed at before. There was a much livelier vibe in the street than Wednesday had held. Soon a pickup outfitted with speakers blaring radio ad babble moved slowly through the streets, moving by us on cross streets. When they passed on our street, we could see that they were promoting N3 - a local DJ act playing as part of the Festival and giving out bottles of a soft drink called "Ri Mix" - punny name. Free is rare in Iceland, so we both took a bottle and the truck moved on in the same direction we were headed.
In the main road adjacent to the river there were the loud noises of revving engines and crowds of young revelers. Through the fencing we saw pairs of cars drag racing. We later found that this was Akureyri´s 'Car Days´. The racers were a variety of 'tricked out' street cars of all makes and models - some were more obvious money pits than others. As we passed the road and stood on the bridge that overlooked the line of pending dragsters, we saw a rag tag collection of amateurs - including a number of the style of mid size
luxury SUVs popular in the US! Alright, I can envision a few of my students borrowing Mom's car and drag racing down the Palma Sola Causeway, but standing outside one of these cars was a middle aged man in too tight jeans and a leather racing jacket, strapping on a helmet.
A quick glance through the line of a dozen pending dragsters, I could see that everyone had a helmet on - glad to know that safety comes first.
A REAL SUV
There are a lot of SUVs here in Iceland - with good reason and real 'utility' (most have caked-on mud). These two fall into the broad category called "Super Jeep" - built for off road trips that may require fording a river
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Saturday night in Akureyri
We were excited to see part of the 4 day Akureyri International Music Festival (sorry to say, no Sigur Ros or Björk on the bill) and enjoy a peak at the weekend runtur (Iceland´s world famous pub crawl), even the calmer Saturday version (Friday night brings out the Vikings).
We checked out Australia´s own Hoodangers - told you it was an international festival - a rockabilly jazz group that had a poster up in every town we´ve visited. They were fun and it was an interesting scene - not our usual and it struck us that the band was used to a lively crowd.
On our way home from the show, just before midnight, we passed plenty of high schoolers hanging out, one pair of middle schoolers (hey, its still light out...), about 4 roaring house parties, one group of women headed out (things start late), and 2 people so drunk they may not
have known where they were (Iceland!)
While waiting for the bus at 8:30 the next morning, we saw one walker of shame in only a few minutes - and this was only the Saturday runtur!
We checked out Australia´s own Hoodangers - told you it was an international festival - a rockabilly jazz group that had a poster up in every town we´ve visited. They were fun and it was an interesting scene - not our usual and it struck us that the band was used to a lively crowd.
On our way home from the show, just before midnight, we passed plenty of high schoolers hanging out, one pair of middle schoolers (hey, its still light out...), about 4 roaring house parties, one group of women headed out (things start late), and 2 people so drunk they may not
have known where they were (Iceland!)
While waiting for the bus at 8:30 the next morning, we saw one walker of shame in only a few minutes - and this was only the Saturday runtur!
Sheep Crossing
Our bus had to stop for a herd of sheep to clear the road. I may be bias towards the far cuter and less threatening sheep, but this was somehow more charming than the water buffalos in the road in Laos.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Photos
I just posted 2 photos (low quality) to the Flickr link you see on the rightside of the page. Hopefully more to come -depends on the rules of the local Internet access - the guesthouses don't seem to like grubby hippies usingup bandwidth with photo blogging.
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