reykjavik

Date traveled: Feb 24-27, 2017

Reykjavik was hard to get around at first. The street signs are tough to remember because they are so long. And you know how when something is ‘x y street west’ or ‘x y street east’, or avenue or road, it can make a difference? Well I never did figure out the Icelandic equivalents of all that, and there were more than a couple times angrily circling the same areas, not knowing where the hell we were supposed to go, with Matt choosing to work on his Icelandic pronunciation when guessing directions while I’m skidding around the Icelandic version of a round-about.

Once recognizing landmarks it’s not so hard to get around, and literally everyone speaks English, which I actually think kinda sucks. The place is so overrun with tourists, even in the off-season, that so much of downtown is westernized, which ends up approaching a carbon copy of all other cities.

I asked a girl on tinder what the best spots were to go out on a weekend night, and one of the places she mentioned was ‘the American bar’.

It’s ironic that people travel so far to find a new experience yet are still drawn to the familiar, seemingly seeking it out in these new environments.

With that being said, the city was a lot of fun. They party hard on the weekend and are generally very welcoming.

I like hearing Icelandic. It reminds me of different languages fused together. The public art reminds me of Montreal (everything reminds reminds reminds) – it has a cuteness quality and is the sort of thing that I’m still a bit surprised to see as publicly commissioned art.

I think my favourite is the people reaching their hands out, not quite able to touch. Can we ever truly connect?

Some of it has social overtones as well. It’s not afraid to acknowledge the downsides. Doesn’t the workday ever make you feel like it’s so heavy you’ve literally half-become a giant boulder?

They take the absurdity a step further, too. I’m not sure if this is the only penis museum in the world, but it very well might be, and if it’s not, well I’m not particular sure how many there needs to be.

It honestly wasn’t all that interesting, but it’s one of those things that remains with you years later.

I never did find out who was calling me.

One of the first things I noticed, when arriving in the airport, were the bathrooms. Instead of having stalls you can look under (and over if you’re tall enough), and through the cracks that offer astoundingly little privacy, a lot of the bathroom stalls in Iceland have actual full doors. It results in a much more comfortable public washroom experience, and I fully endorse making all new bathrooms in Canada like this as well.

And if bathrooms have full stall doors, un-gendering washrooms becomes a lot less politically charged. Probably, anyway. Besides, who wants other people to be able to see them wiping their ass, regardless of what their gender identity is?

It wasn’t all clean fun there. It was a bit harder to find vegetarian food than in other places, and if you’ve heard anything about Iceland, it’s probably that the food (and alcohol) is really expensive. Which is true.

And while the rest of us in the world are paying hundreds of dollars to go on boat tours to maybe glimpse a puffin or a whale, these bastards are eating them.

We didn’t go to ‘the American bar’, but instead found (and I use that word with intent – we were the 21st century versions of commissioned explorers, losing people along the way, all in the mythical search for the local spots) a couple of clubs unlike what I’ve been to anywhere in Canada (Paloma and Hurra). In one of them a guy asked if I wanted to buy cocaine or ecstasy, at which point I had the sense not to buy drugs I didn’t want from a stranger in a bathroom in a Reykjavik club. That club looked like a place you’d see in an industrial rave-style music video from the late 90s.

The next bar, which we stayed in until nearly 5am, which is when they stop serving in the winter (it’s later in the summer – the rest of the weekend is presumably for sleeping and recovering), was more like a giant, cooler version of the Heart and Crown – lots of space with different bars and vibes that welcomes various types of people.

And you gotta love that 5am cab line near the beginning of the biggest blizzard in the country in almost 100 years.

Although it wasn’t too cold for winter near the arctic ocean – the coldest it was the whole time was a crisp -4 – we had crazy weather. We pushed multiple locals’ cars out of snow, and on our way back from the bar at 5am we had an impromptu snowball fight. When you’re drunk and careless enough, stepping through waist-deep snow in a foreign country is more jovial than paranoid, at least when you’re with friends.

The next morning it was beautiful to walk on icy sidewalks, the sun reflecting in infinite directions, the trees collapsing under the weight of fresh snow.

There wasn’t much I was particularly intent on seeing. I really like the togetherness that seems to come from being a remote island with a relatively small population. At the same time I’m continually depressed by what happens in a space of high tourism and high commercialization, which of course is not a Reykjavik problem but a global capitalism problem.

I should say that it only caught my attention so much in Reykjavik because it’s not big enough to have a hub where locals can have their nightlife apart from the tourist area. In bigger cities there are more opportunities for separation.

But yeah, it’s beautiful, really. Like with most places I’ve traveled the last few years, I’d certainly go back if given the opportunity. It’s a little northern paradise that isn’t that cold because it’s surrounded by ocean, it’s easy to get around, and it retains enough of its charm to still feel unique amidst a watering down of urban cities.