Made It!

Drinking: Samuel Adams Black Lager

As seems befitting, my journey started off with confusion and things going slightly wrong. The ticket machine failed and I came relatively close to not being able to get a ticket to the airport. At the airport I needed the predictably longest line full of school kids on a Geography field trip to Iceland. At least I escaped the rub-down and swabs for explosive materials this time.

Sat down with way more leg-room than is usual for cattle class. Thought that the arm-rest was a little odd, but it just turned out to be a hold on the emergency exit. 3 hours to Reykjavik went pretty well, but the airport is a little sparse of information with a trip past passport control, only to be told I needed to go back through passport control.

On the plane there were plenty of adverts for Iceland telling us that the most amazing thing about Iceland isn’t the glaciers, or the geysers, or springs, or the fjords. Oh no! It’s the fact that the national dish is cured shark, and that at New Years they send up 600 tons of fireworks, and that every year they have an entire 10 bands trying to make it big. Personally, I’m sold, and so with no need to go see any of the interesting stuff I can consider Iceland as a country I have visited and seen everything worthwhile, all from the discomfort of Kerflavik airport.

Second plane was much like the first: tons of leg-room, an emergency exit, no entertainment system and no food. Only this one was longer than the first. At customs, the queues were as fast moving as you may expect, except mine which was even slower. I did however see that oh so rare sight of a smiling immigrations officer. Carry on to get my bag, go to hand in the form they give you and “you need to be over that way, Sir”. Turns out that the smiling immigration officials were just to lull me into a false sense of security. Fill in the form, hand over the passport, sit down and wait to be called. And wait some more. Speak to one guy and get the usual questions: “What are you doing over here?”, “How much money have you brought”, “When are you leaving?” – all the usual questions designed to make one feel welcome in the land of the free and founded by immigrants. For some reason, they just don’t seem to like my story of coming over to travel for 5 months with nothing but a small rucksack of stuff. I spoke to probably 4 people including “Supervisor Cullhan” who all took great delight in going through all my things, item by item, including a card written to me by Annie that I hadn’t read as I’d been forbidden to do so before leaving. Eventually though, STAMP, STAMP, STAMP, free to go!

Everybody... awwwwwwwwwwww

For the first couple of days I’m staying with a friend from Uni and his wife, Mark and Lauren. Arrived at their’s at about half 9 (after landing at 7) which was about half 2 AM for me. A couple of beers and a bit of food really helped, especially the beers. Mark and Lauren foster kittens so there are 4 kittens currently running round all over the place trying to catch the static sparks on the back of the sofa I’m sleeping on. Today’s plan is to try and get a bike, a phone and drunk.