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9 Reykjavik July 12-15, 2004
Arriving in Reykjavik
Gray skies but not the forecasted showers greeted us
as we touched down at the international airport 25 miles away from Iceland's capitol
city of Reykjavik ("ray-kah-veck"). I clutched at the sight of the
unexpectedly bleak, flat land and
despite the bright paint, the clusters of modern buildings seemed
reminiscent of an isolated polar research station.
The ubiquitous though attractively done corrugated metal roofs (and sometimes
siding) added to the 'hunkered down' look of the eve-less, low-pitched roofs. The palette of terra cotta, buttery yellows and slate blues
succeeded in their thinly-veiled effort to use the architecture to add some visual liveliness, but the starkly functional look of the homes and commercial
buildings shouted that survival was the only priority around here.
The modern concrete and metal buildings seemed
out of place on this tundra-like land--land that looked like it was at the 7,000 to
8,000' level in the Alps and instead should be sprinkled with charming wooden chalets.
None of the vegetation was over knee-high and most of it was the low,
bunchy grasses and mosses of the high mountains. We were essentially at sea
level and the high-altitude look instead was coming from the high latitude, as
Iceland almost touches the Artic Circle. And even though the immediate terrain
was generally flat, the gnarled, exposed volcanic rock suggested that everything
about living on this barren land must be hard.
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The high-clearance bus we rode into town seemed to have an amphibious heritage
and its ruggedness only added to the feeling of "What have we gotten ourselves
into?" The bus unexpectedly dumped us out at an isolated terminal building, leaving us without a clue as to how to get the rest of the way into town. The
biting cold wind and desperate look of our surroundings made me quickly willing
to shell out the $10 for a taxi rather than sorting out the public
transportation situation as we would normally do. There was nothing normal
about this place and a part of me was eager for some comforting and reassurance
that we weren't going be stranded in the Twilight Zone.
Reykjavik's urban core had the same
scoured-clean look as the surrounding countryside--like a sand-laden wind had
come through, followed by a wind that then carried the sand away. The
mid-afternoon temperature was in the mid 50's F, but the wind and the generally
wintry feel of the city made it easy to imagine that there would be an evening
snowfall. Even being inside the grocery store reminded me of being in a
winter sports area, though it was hard to pinpoint what triggered those
feelings. Some winter sports areas, like Aspen, Colorado, completely shed their
winter image come summer and yet in mid-July Reykjavik seemed to actively projecting the spirit of the
past winters.
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The severity of the hilltop Lutheran cathedral and the starkness of the public art on the streets seemed to exaggerate rather than soften the foreboding feeling in town. The coldness of the gray skies must have influenced my interpretation of this metal sculpture as I saw it as depicting frozen bodies emerging from blocks of ice. Other metal sculptures around town also seemed to emphasize unwelcome solitude and lifelessness. Had I been on the town's public art committee, I would have favored a bit of color and joyous whimsy for the public spaces. And Reykjavik's population of 180,000 just wasn't enough to energize the city and it instead felt like a place that was leaking out its life force. Seventeen days was looking like a very long stay in Iceland.
Reconnaissance Work
We held our breath as our first stop after
stashing our luggage at our Reykjavik guesthouse was the grocery store. We knew
sticker shock was going to be profound as our modest 'toilet & shower down the
hall' room was about $85. I have a
special little spread sheet program on my handheld computer that I use for
recording the most important traveler's words for each
country we visit, but I immediately could see that in Iceland it would be
used for
comparison shopping for groceries. We couldn't make our "buy/don't buy"
decisions based on what was a reasonable price but instead would have to resign
ourselves to recognizing what was a low price by Icelandic standards.
As Bill put a few things in our basket, I busily
recorded the prices for fresh and frozen produce. It didn't take long to
know that there would be no
impulse buying or buying out of habit here--nothing
could go in the shopping cart without translating the name and then converting the
price. That bag of fresh carrots we instinctively reached for (and then put back) was
$8, the bag of frozen broccoli we passed by was almost $10, as was the fresh
broccoli. Along with striving
to eat 10 servings a day of fruits and vegetables, we always include some
carrots, citrus fruit and something from the cabbage/broccoli family. We quickly
decided that we'd be eating the much more affordable cabbage in Iceland and
carrots and broccoli will drop off the daily menu. But I felt like I had
trophies in my hand when I found cauliflower that was in a clearance bin just
prior to being thrown out. Like other people through most of Iceland's history, eating for us was
now more a
matter of survival. We would have to wait to leave the country to savor
strawberries, peaches, and melons as the prices were just too high and the
quality far too low to be inviting.
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To take the sting out of the high prices in Iceland, we lugged along an extra 25 pounds of food in our baggage (thinking it was half that weight 'til I just now carefully tallied the numbers). That included enough bulgur (cracked wheat) and olive oil to eat for breakfast and enough dark chocolate for our lunchtime ration for our entire stay. We also tossed in enough of our favorite Italian pesto sauce for a week, a bag of pasta and a head of cauliflower for our first dinner. Not until we were in Iceland did we see the 6 pound per-person limit for bringing food of any kind into the country. But our total hoard amounted to about $50, which was well under the close to $200 per person limit they impose--clearly they aren't after the unwitting bulgur smugglers. Never before have we seen a weight limit on food carried in luggage. But amazingly, when entering Iceland ordinary groceries get listed along with cigarettes and alcohol as regulated commodities.
Prices
I will keep my whining about Icelandic
prices to a minimum after this tantrum, but it really is outrageous and
seemingly without good explanation. Little pocket field guides to birds, rocks
or flowers that we might pay $15-20 in the US ran about $65 in Iceland. A book
published in Germany on cycling in Iceland had the Euro equivalent of about $15
printed on its back was selling for $43. Most of the tourist oriented
books on Iceland that are published in Iceland sell for around $50. Amazingly, a
book on Iceland that's printed in Denmark that I ordered online in the States is
$10 less in than than it sells for in Iceland. And the very thin international
edition of the Herald Tribune newspaper that sells in the far reaches of Europe
for $1.80-2.00 sells for $3.70 in Iceland. Whether the goods originate in
Iceland or not, most of the grocery store items are 2 to 5 times higher than
what we generally pay in western Europe. And, just like our guide book warned,
bottled water was more expensive in Iceland than auto fuel or as we discovered,
even orange juice. In France, the local budget brands of bottled water started
at about 20 cents, in Iceland the local bottled water at the grocery store
was over $3. The tax doesn't explain it, as their tax that appears to range
from about 14-24%, which is pretty standard throughout Europe. We no longer had
to imagine how the Eastern Europeans feel when they travel into Central and
Western Europe--we experienced the living standard difference first hand.
Our Iceland guide book states that the food prices are about 3
times higher there than in Europe because everything is shipped in. “Sounds
reasonable” was my first thought. But then I remembered all those South African
purple grapes that I bought in France that are cheaper than the French grapes, and
the Spanish strawberries that are cheaper in France than the French
strawberries. And I thought back to purchases back home where the Italian pasta
we buy at Trader Joe’s is only pennies more than we pay for it in Europe and
that New Zealand apples can be shipped to the apple growing region in Oregon and
still
be sold at competitive prices. And then there is the fact that shipping by sea
is outrageously cheaper than overland costs by truck or train. It's like there
is a gatekeeper in Iceland pocketing a huge amount of money and keeping the
prices in Iceland artificially high.
We only expected the food prices to get higher
after we left Reykjavik, so we purchased more food to add to our luggage hoard
before leaving on our
trek around the island. We stashed away enough pasta for our dinners and tuna
for lunches for the rest of our stay, as well as topping off our supply of pasta
sauce that we brought with us. We bought a week's worth of a hearty dark bread and rye crackers
for our lunches, plus 11 pounds of cabbage, 3 pounds of apples and about 3 gallons
of orange juice. These are economies that we wouldn't be able to indulge in were
we traveling by bike but could as car travelers. Our small but
nutritionally sound hoard seemed even less foolish after learning that a portion
of the student body at an Icelandic agriculture college contracted scurvy from the
nutritional-wanting cafeteria faire. Stocking up on all this
food made me feel like we were embarking on some great, hazardous sea voyage or
heading out into some uncertain land crossing. It was odd to realize the only
threat or uncertainty that we were provisioning ourselves against was high prices.
Biking Blues
When our airport bus dumped us at the bus terminal just out of
Reykjavik's core, we spotted a couple of bikes loaded for touring. Pangs of
shame and envy shot through me as I heard "That's what we planned on doing."
The cold wind and threatening skies helped ease the longing but the same
feelings were triggered the next day at the post office, as one of the stamps I
purchased had 3 cyclotourists featured on an Icelandic road. I vowed to ask for
email addresses from the next cyclotourists we saw so I get could some first
hand reports after their journey was completed.
My chance to make contact with a bike traveler come the next
morning in Reykjavik. The twenty-something Polish man arrived in Iceland the
same day we did and he already had tales to tell. After breaking camp in the
rain, he had spent too much of his day of riding at only 5 miles per hour
because of the wind, rain, and the unexpectedly rough road. He did this
arduous ride without food or water (something we have never done). I was amused
to learn that he too shipped food into Iceland, though his was mailed. I hoped
for his sake that the controls at the post office would be as lax as at airport
customs. His similar strategy also made me wonder just how many other tourists
soften the blow of Icelandic prices by carting provisions into the country.
After a long chat, I made note of what was distinctive about his
equipment and silently vowed to share food with him if we saw him on the
road as it will be hard for him to carry enough, especially traveling alone.
Unfortunately his website isn't working but we'll email him after he returns to
Poland and hope to learn more of his trip.
As we left this man and
his undoubtedly still-wet tent, I thought again of our guide book's worrisome
comments about the potential harshness of the cycling conditions. Comments like
needing a tent to sit out 2 to 3 day sand storms should they come up and being
prepared for sudden, drenching squalls didn't sound like fun. And the websites I
checked out for organized bike tours mentioned their back-up vehicles that would
transport the bikes across high water areas--not our kind of biking.
Even camping in Iceland sounded too harsh for us as car
travelers. Though camping would range from free to $20 per night and keeping our guesthouse and hostel costs down under
$100/night for two would require vigilance and careful planning, it seemed like
the right choice for us. And once we arrived, the forecast of rain for 12
of our first 14 days in Iceland made the decision not to camp look even better.
It had only taken a few hours in Reykjavik to appreciate having a room into
which we could escape the endless, chilling winds.
While in Reykjavik, I made a point to remember my conflicted
feelings about not being on our bikes so that I could compare them with my
feelings after we had toured
around Iceland by car for 2 weeks. For
months we had planned on biking Iceland and only when the ferries out of
Scotland were unavailable did we decide to fly and leave the bikes behind. It
was a difficult decision and it was hard to let go of our images of the bike
trip. We also lamented the deconditioning that would set-in with almost a month
out of the saddle.
Daily Life
There were immediate changes to deal with in Iceland, the
first being the language and the money. The language has a soft, rolling sound
that left me with little hope of catching any individual words.
We'd take a stab at learning our basic traveler's words but I suspected we'd be
limited to sign language and English to communicate. Fortunately, many
Icelanders are multi-lingual with English and several of the Scandinavian
languages. And like in England, we had left the Euro behind and had yet another
currency conversion factor in our heads. Our 10 days in England had
scrambled our brains with the left-handed road driving but at least in Iceland
we were on familiar territory in traffic, which was especially important since we
were renting a car.
Differences we didn't expect were in our home environment. All through Europe we have usually been treated to layers of
window coverings to darken our room at night, often having shutters or rolling
outdoor blinds plus heavy drapes. But ironically, here in Iceland where it
doesn't really get dark at night in the summer, one of 2 windows in our Reykjavik
guesthouse only had lacey sheers and the other window had a light-transmitting
curtain with the heft of bed sheet. Perhaps shutters bang around too much in the harsh winds, but it is
hard to imagine why they don't favor room-darkening drapes for a good night's
sleep in the endless summer brightness.
Our other surprise was the tap water. I felt like I was
in a scene from Macbeth as I washed and washed but my hands didn't come clean.
Finally I realized that the persistent soapy feeling wasn't a lingering soap
residue but instead a heavy dose of dissolved minerals in the water. The
decidedly rotten egg smell and taste of the hot water suggested it was coming
too directly from some underground hot spring, of which there are many in
Iceland. We laughed about reprogramming our associations with the odor and
accepting that sulfury smell as "Ode to Iceland" instead of something rotting.
Unexpectedly, the cold water which is not drawn from thermal sources, is
odorless and very palatable. (Later in our trip we realized that the water hardness wasn't likely coming from
calcium as in most countries--Iceland is lava and not uplifted sea bottom so
lacks the calcium-laded limestone.)
After having made our first contacts with Iceland by exploring the
grocery store and life in our guesthouse room, we headed out for a less serious
look at Reykjavik. The first stop, which proved to be a much longer walk than
expected, was the city
library. We laughed, as this very fresh and modern building was completely surrounded
by a moat of water. The fortress look isn't what most libraries strive
to project these days and it echoed the lonely, isolated theme of the street art
in the heart of town.
At the library we hoping to further our cost cutting campaign by finding free internet
access mentioned in our guide book and by catching up on the news without having to pay for a newspaper. The
journey was marginally successful as the internet wasn't free after all and the
few English newspapers were days and weeks old. The good news was that there was
no reason to make this long walk a second time. But the bonus was that on the
way we stumbled across the huge city cemetery.
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In contrast to most of the city
where any vegetation looked frail and recently planted, the cemetery was
practically a jungle of lush, established plantings. Most European
cemeteries are pretty barren, being packed with above-ground granite sarcophagi
and the only greenery being freshly cut flowers. But this Reykjavik cemetery had more the look of an allotment
(community) garden. Most of the plots were raised earthen beds bordered with
stone and many had at least one deciduous tree planted along with flowers you
might find in a 19th century garden. Some plots also had a patch of grass
growing and the narrow paths between the plots were soft earth like on a forest
trail. Lacking the harsh lines of most cemeteries, it was a place that invited
us to linger. And after reading about the few prized planted forests in Iceland, I could
imagine that this cemetery would be the lushest, most densely vegetated place we
would see in Iceland.
The cemetery was actually one of the highlights of our
out-and-about time in Reykjavik as even while in France we knew that we would miss the
premier historical museum in the city. Our Iceland guide had said it was due to
open any day and we tried to plan our travels around the museum's reopening
date. We had checked their website and finally called tourist info for the
opening day. The woman at tourist info could only sputter when I pressed her for
more information and she refused to comment beyond "They say in September".
Further looking at the web revealed
that this museum has been on the verge of reopening for no less than 6 years.
That made the French museums look a little better as in France about a third of
the museums we tried to visit were closed for explained or
unexplained reasons or significant portions of the exhibits have been removed
from display.
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Heading Out
It only took a few hours in Iceland for us to tentatively put it on
the "Nice place to visit...." list and Bill was joking about going to Spain
before we even made it back to the hotel from our first grocery shopping trip.
The barren land, the harsh climate, the geographic isolation, the high prices
and the battered looking produce seemed like they would be too wearing for a
lifetime. And the faces of some of the people of the street suggested that life
here is indeed too hard for some. We of course knew that many spectacular
sights awaited us as tourists and were curious to see if we could imagine living
in Iceland after getting to know it better. So, after orienting ourselves to
Iceland and provisioning during our 2˝ days
in Reykjavik, we were anxious to pick-up our rental car and head out on the real
journey all the way around Iceland.
Where We Are Now 8/10/04
Ironically, we were greeted by a heat wave and a
still-ongoing series of flash
floods when we returned to London after weeks of cool, windy weather in Iceland. After
a little sightseeing in and around London we were happily reunited with our bikes.
But Bill tweaked his knee while walking in Iceland and our second full day on
the bikes ended with a sudden episode of pain in the same knee. He let the lame
leg dangle as the other pedaled alone for the remaining mile or two to our
lodging for the night. We are now hotel-bound in Peterborough north of London
while in the "wait and see" phase of assessing if
this is a trip-ending injury or just an extension of our forced-rest interval.
He doesn't have a clue as to what is amiss as it is unlike our previous knee
problems. Though he was sure surgery was in his future when it happened Sunday
night, the inactivity, ice, ibuprofen, and elevation seem to be working their
magic and we hope to be riding again later this week.
Love,
Barb
