Where I end and you begin

So it's now come down to this. I'll be out of the Icelandic soil in eight hours (and less when I'm actually completing this), some two months earlier than originally planned. I do not mourn, as I feel happy to go home, but at the same time I'm feeling a certain amount of mist in my eyes, reflecting to all what this half a year has given to me and taken from me. I will not delve into that as I'm not yet sure I can see it all, probably won't until some time later.

There are a lot of things I wanted to see and do here, but I never either had the time, motivation, or ultimately money to. Yet, I am not feeling disappointed. Of course the past six months didn't turn out quite like I would've thought beforehand, but that's just der Lauf der Dinge in life, isn't it? The way things go. What's important is that even when I'm leaving prematurely, I'm both excited to go back and not feeling sad to disappear already. It gives me an itch to come back someday.

This'll also mark the end of this blog. There was a steady decline in posts per month, so it doesn't take much to see that I started either losing the inspiration or running out of things I wanted to say in public. I doubt that I would be able to continue writing something like this when I return home, and even if I could, it would be silly to keep doing it under this blog title.

There are things I know I'll miss the moment I get on the bus towards the Keflavík airport tomorrow. The pools, the vastness of the ocean. The mountains behind the cityscape, the quirky but fascinating language. The adorable cafes, the unexceptional feeling of trust among people. And of course E, E, N, and P, for being the wonderful people you are.

As I'm searching myself for the last words to utter in here, I'm listening to Sigur Rós and peeking out of the window, for the sky is putting out quite a display again. The pink, lavender colours remind me of my first weeks in here, when I was walking towards the campus at sunrise, marvelling how those exact same shades were reflected on the mountain Esja, overlooking the city. It's as if a circle was completed, the colour now moved from the mountain to the sky. It gives me a sense of closure, and I can't stop smiling, looking at those clouds slowly tumble by.

I find the old proverb "home is where your heart is" rather truthful after all these months. When I reflect on my life in here, it truly seems to fit, I guess I knew all the time that I won't stay permanently, or probably even want to. Acknowledging that doesn't take anything away from how much I've enjoyed the time I've been given. Instead it grants me a bit more understanding of my mindset, and how thoroughly Finnish I am. Maybe my heart never settled in Iceland, but it will always long here.

Come, to think of it

I've felt quite non-bloggy lately. I guess I've started to lose the inspiration to marvel my life in Iceland, as the things I've been doing and the thoughts I've been thinking after my re-arrival have been quite casual and mundane. It looks like I'm almost set to leave the country in a couple of weeks, two months earlier than I originally planned. The reasons to stay are growing thin, there's pretty much only the will to travel around to see more of the Land, and a couple of wonderful, wonderful people left.

By no means I'm saying that those aren't good enough reasons to be here, quite in the contrary. The financial situation is just limiting my ability to do so. A job prospect and a reunion with some of the fantastic gang in Vaasa look rather appealing at the moment.

The Copenhagen incident turned out rather neat. Enjoyed a couple of local microbrews, wandered around the downtown, checking out what Tivoli looks like in the nighttime, watched a nuclear swan family have a late night / early morning swim & snack just outside the Tycho Brahe Planetarium, and had a little nap at the very same place.

The Flickr page also has a couple of (long overdue) shots from my current whereabouts in Seltjarnarnes.

I don't really know what I'll be doing in here for the last weeks. Tomorrow Air is playing at Laugardalshöllin, but that's everything scheduled for now. Some possible hiking routes have been planned though, so at least there ought to be a plenty of fresh air to come.

Before Sunrise

I guess my attempts to travel back to Reykjavik hadn't backfired enough yet.

After a lot of hassle and several changed plans I was already on a plane to Copenhagen today. It had to return to Helsinki because the electronics gave a signal that one of the cabin doors is not properly closed. An hour and undoubtedly several sheets of paper later, it turned out to be a false alarm. Nonetheless, we were too late for my connection to Iceland. Turned out that there are no more flights tonight, so I took my stuff, got on a train and rode to the central railway station. I crammed my stuff to a locker and thought to visit a city I haven't been in during my years I can remember.

So. This is a nightly transmission from Denmark. I have a few hours to figure it out. To live Copenhagen.

What remains

The week in Finland again has been quite an unexpected experience.

I couldn't anticipate how strange it would feel. After five months of living in the enchanting but rather barren Iceland, to come back to the stupendously lush and lively sceneries I have been raised in. The characteristic edgy rockiness has been replaced by firs, birches and fields and fields of spring wheat and hay. The greenness of everything is pretty much inarguably at its best this time of the year, it's the kind of new, sweet, light instead of the inevitably darker shades of the midsummer.

While visiting my mom and the region I lived in for most of my elementary and high school, I also got to take a look at what the most ubiquitous places of my teenhood looked like. One of these was a grove, just a couple minutes away from our home. The way there would go past a patch of forest next to a kindergarten, which was closed a couple of years before. The forest paths I always remembered from there were no more, lost due to no more hordes of children trodding upon them. Vegetation there wasn't exactly the thickest, the once paths now serving as a growing ground for some hay.

The grove itself had undergone an equally thorough transformation. It used to be a surprisingly lush little valley, surrounded by a lot less damp land, and having a little stream run in the bottom. Now, you can't even enter it any longer.

Instead of being the paratiisi it is called it looked more like a paradise lost. Trees were fell all over the narrow paths that lead to the bottom of the grove, the small bridge over the stream and back up on the other side again. Going down might've probably even been dangerous, as the valley looked very prone to suffering some small landslides. The once so serene grove was not walkable any longer. The laborousness and the dam engineering had run over it. And it was executed by beavers.

Very close to that site is the neighbourhood tennis court. That was still there, but looking completely abandoned. Sure it always was a little low maintenance, hard surface one, but it didn't have trees or other plants extending their branches through the fences, and the door had been broken. The net still looked pretty good though, so I guess it could be at least semi functional still. I know I would've played there.

The whole part of the little town once grew to support the hospital, originally designed as a tuberculosis ward. When the disease was decades ago banished from the land, it was turned into a common clinic. It has been under fire for many years now, some functions closed already. The area is bursting with life a lot less these days, which is hardly a surprise. Still, the grove served as an even better reminder that nothing really is permanent. I had expected that life is being siphoned out of the homes slowly, but I couldn't imagine it to happen for the parts of the nature I always loved.

Today I will spread my wings again

As it often seems to be the case in the life of the undersigned, when things happen, they happen swiftly, unexpectedly and in multitude. I'm flying to Finland via Copenhagen tonight, and be in Helsinki tomorrow morning.

After I made the realization that there is a chance that my days in Iceland may be growing thin, I've been going through a rather wild barrage of thoughts. What did I come here for, did I achieve that? What did I learn? What did I see? What did I not?

Perhaps most importantly, if given the chance to stay,

would I want to?

I'm not sure any longer.

I've loved being in Iceland. I wouldn't trade any of the moments I've spent in here away. And yet, now when I'm about to go to my own lands, without having any idea when I will be back in here and for how long, it doesn't feel hard to go.

And I can't quite understand why.

The one thing I do know is that my Flickr has a couple of new photos. Yesterday evening, after a mind-clearing conversation over a pint glass, I didn't want to go to sleep. Instead I took my camera and wandered around Seltjarnarnes, looking at the incomprehensibly beautiful landscape that has been my home for the past five months and trying my best not to do injustice to it with the camera.

I'm coming back here in a week though, that's for sure. I suppose the most likely "what next" scenario is that I'm returning without a job in Finland as well. That frees me to live as a vagabond in Iceland for June, and I will try to make the most of it. See many of the things I wanted to until I run out of money. I hate to have the €€€ dictate my summer so much, but I can't not to.

If I happen to get employed in Finland, then...

I will come back to move away the rest of my stuff and say a few bye-byes if it's time to go, but I wish I could've given the country a better farewell.

Short term failures, long term uncertainty

It's been stressful for the past two weeks.

Despite my frantic search for a job, I'm still unemployed, and truth to be told, I can't afford that for much longer.

In any case, I'm going to Finland for a week soon, probably leaving on Tuesday. My mother has her 50th birthday next Thursday, and even if she's not really making a number of it, I'd like to be there. After that, I'll probably meet some friends during the weekend, stock up in salmiakki and rye bread, go visit a sauna and a forest for the first time in five months, and whatnot.

However, the job issue is starting to very problematic. When I came here initially, I thought that I might struggle with the studies in here a bit, but at least getting a job shouldn't be a problem. Turned out that the exact happened. I did very well with my studies, managed to complete everything and actually more than I intended, and with decent grades too. And now it seems like the employment became the issue instead.

For the past two weeks I've been running around, sometimes calling and mostly visiting pretty much everything I've managed to think of. Just trying random places or asking for the advertised jobs they offered to me at Vinnumálastofnun, or paikallinen työkkäri på finska. I've tried so many things from stockroom stuff to cafes the post and smaller delivery companies to car rental companies to Icelandair to gardening, and virtually every single time the answer is either "sorry, we're looking for someone to stay permanently" or the way more common "give me your number and I'll call you tomorrow, I think I have something".

Since I'm typing this, y'all can probably guess if anyone ever called.

I just don't know. I can't comprehend that I'm this undesirable for an employee, but I suppose it's either that or then it's not as open a work market as I've been told it to be. Again, I haven't been picky with what I would take, but it looks like nobody is willing to give me a job with anything. I suppose I'm doing something wrong. Finding something would probably be easier in the countryside, but now that I've committed myself to this apartment for at least June, I wouldn't like to leave now and pay for it, not living there at all.

I now started to apply for some possible places in Finland. I guess the competition over there is even tougher, but at least I can try. Coming in here has been a huge financial investment already, and I can't spend this summer without working somewhere to compensate that.

It just makes me a little befuzzled. I originally thought that I'll have a lot more chances to travel in Iceland during the summer, when I can actually afford to do it. I've seen so little of what I've wanted to see so far. And now it might be that I can't stay for much longer.

I will come back again in the beginning of June, after that week in Finland, but I don't know how long I can stay for. I don't even know what I would prefer. If I'm lucky enough to get a job in Finland, I'll probably need to take it and leave Iceland for now, having experienced much less than I would've liked. The more likely alternative is that I'm coming back here as a vagabond for June, traveling around the country as much as I can, and go back to Finland in July, either living with dad in Helsinki or trying to study something in Vaasa.

Such is the way things go. Enviroments change, but I still have trouble in finding myself a summer job.

Luck be a weirdo tonight

I love my new neighbourhood to death. The surprising thing might be that it is definately at its best at night.

On Saturday night, after all the Eurovision craze, the following party with random people made me at last realize that I'm not made for the stereotypical exchange student living. Not like I didn't know that even before I came here, but that night it just finally struck. I have never felt like being so alone. I had to negate that somehow before going home, before even making an attempt to tuck myself into bed.

We've been blessed with a magnificently clear and sweet weather for the past couple of weeks, so I felt like doing the soul searching at the Seltjarnarnes peninsula beaches. The south side of the peninsula was being quite dimly lit, the sea an unstable and shapeless mass, the lights beckoning from Hafnarfjörður.

As I kept strolling forward, towards the western tip of the peninsula and the northern side of it, the sky started to change. The deep blue started to have slightest hints of yellow, which would later grow to golden. The sun that was turning and planning to rise in a somewhat immediate future also coloured the sea differently, the giving life and shapes for the waves approaching the shore. The water turned from a dark void to a moving organism. I felt calmer again, maybe, hopefully, learning even a little bit about my position in the universe. It was not drinking along those people of whom I barely knew a couple, it is at the serenity of the sea during a windy spring night.

Tonight, as I was coming home from a dinner, the view experience was completely different, but no less touching. A couple of hours earlier, the sky was spattered with a plenty of orange in addition to the blue and yellow. This time it was almost still, the same colours reproducing on the water surface, distorting the horizon. The sea looked so crystalline and shining that it was almost like one of those autumn mornings when you first see how the local pond got the thinnest shimmering layer of ice on it during the night.

My shortcut to the house cuts past the swimming pool and a couple of schools, and I was wondering why there were a couple of cars with their engines running at the parking lot. It became apparent very quickly though, as the scent of the sweet smoke reached me from surprisingly far.

And for me, being high on landscape was more than I'll ever need.

Life at the sidewalks

One of the essential Reykjavík area characteristics are the relatively narrow sidewalks. I haven't yet discovered whether this is the cause or the effect, but the local walking behaviour seems quite different from what I've used to. The Icelanders don't seem to like making way, so we foreigners end up sailing from one side to the another, dodging the determined looking locals walking their perfectly straight lines.

This naturally isn't a problem since I'm used to doing it anyway, but it makes me wonder what happens when two groups of Icelanders going to different directions meet at the narrow trodding paths. I never realized to observe, but based on my own experiences, I'm assuming an inevitable crash. Actually, I think that Mike Patton visited Iceland when working on Faith No More's Album of the Year and wrote the track Collision on Icelandic sidewalk behaviour.

No, the jokes aren't going to get any better. Suck it up and bear with me.

The narrowness makes the cycling a little tricky at times as well. While you'll definately attract more attention from the other traffic participants when you're on the saddle, there often isn't ample room to maneuver. As a result I find myself interacting on the other sidewalk users a lot more than I'm used to. The thankful headbobs and smiles, ushering someone else to go with a wave and the like are quickly becoming the second nature.

You've come a long way, baby

Last week was so busy that I can't really believe that I still didn't make any progress with the history essay or acquire any furniture to my room. At least now I have a duvet, took care of the moving paperwork in Icelandic, dealt in many occasions with the customer service of my Finnish bank (keys to the online bank expired and they sent the new ones without any address, unsurprisingly they never arrived) and went to a police auction.

Speaking of the latter, it was for stray bicycles they had found, a tradition that's held in Finland as well. Most of the bikes were so new and good looking that I can't believe anyone would've just abandoned them, but oh well. This resulted in outrageous prices for some of them. I went there in hopes of picking up something old and rusty for a couple of thousand, but for two hours it looked like everything would either be out of my price range or a tricycle. The median price must've been over 10.000 ISK, some were going for well over 20k. Luckily at last something I wanted came up. An adult sized oldie that nobody else wanted, so I picked it up for a thousand. I was a little concerned since it looked quite worn out, but to my delight, turns out that it works almost flawlessly. The front gears are stuck but everything else is either fixed in two minutes or working as intended.

Two of my German co-habitants also went there, but failed to show sufficient perseverance and left after thirty minutes, being shocked by the prices the Icelanders were willing to pay for used bikes. I wanted to ride away from the auction with something though, so I stuck around, and got rewarded. When I rode it home, their curiosity and patriotism was sparked by the fact that it's apparently been made by a famous East German factory. Whenever I'm leaving Iceland, I think I'll be able to sell it to them for profit.

Especially since they apparently understood that my price announcement of "eitt þúsund" ment "eight thousand."

The weekend saw a surprise visit from a friend back Vaasa, who recently came to Iceland via Nordjobb and is living and working in Borgarnes now. She brought another svensk nordjobbare with her, and I got to act as a terrible tourist guide to the Big City as they both hadn't been there yet. We strolled around Perlan, Hallgrimskirkja and 101 during the day, before going back to some Seltjarnarnes touring, which was almost as much exploration for me as it was for them. The original plan was to cook at home and then dispatch to the Reykjavík nightlife, but as it usually goes, things didn't go like planned. Eating late, watching the sun peacefully set to the sea while having a couple of glasses of wine and having conversations with a wacky mix of Swedish, English and Finnish drained the energy.

Around 1 at the night we were still determined to go, but the Swede fell asleep on the couch shortly after, and looked so happy that waking her up would've just been too cruel, so instead the two of us just kept talking. The interesting thing is that the two of us didn't know much about each other or even talked before really, despite having started the same studies at the same time almost three years ago. One of the mysteries of life, it seems. How far you sometimes need to travel to learn to know a little from someone who has always lived so near.

A taste of Seltjarnarnes

Curious is the way things go.

I spent yesterday in one of the worst hangovers imaginable, which made the prospective moving business a little tricky. First of all, I had to get to Seltjarnarnes, so I got into a bus. A wrong one at that. How'd I manage that, I have no idea. Luckily I realized it soon enough.

After managing myself into a right bus, I wasn't completely sure where to drop off. I had tried to memorize the map of Seltjarnarnes since I didn't have anything printed. Luckily it ain't especially the biggest or the most wildly laid out town, so I managed to find the location quite efficiently. I also managed to control my bodily movement and the shaking apparently well enough to convince the folks renting the room to let me in. It turned out though that I sort of knew them from before. Have you ever shared a house with a German construction engineer, architect and plumber?

Me neither.

As of now, instead of noisy neighbours and non-existent household equipment, my room is lacking lighting, curtains, a bed and basically all other furniture, a door and an internet connection, but it's still an improvement over where I used to live. I can see a little sea from the yard, and to get to the shore for a proper panorama, I only have to walk a couple of minutes. The house of the single family flavour, a little on the older side, but definately cozy and on a beautiful neighbourhood. The services are close and the sweet, sweet Seltjarnarnes seawater pool is ten minutes away. Lovely.

The walk to downtown Reykjavík isn't much longer than it used to be either, but in addition to some furniture, acquiring a bike would probably be useful. I heard that the local police holds auctions for stray bikes in here too, and it should be soon.

I believe I will start wandering around tomorrow looking for a job, and whoever I talk about it to, seems very encouraging about finding one. Maybe I'll tempt fate and waltz into Morgunblaðið as well. And who knows, maybe I'll even have a door later this week!

Ég er búinn... eða er ég?

That's the second relief.

Despite that the concept of tests on Saturday seemed incomprehensible for many, the written part our Icelandic exam was this morning. Despite expecting a complete trainwreck after some truly bad preparation, I believe I managed to pass it. I know I still can't conjugate or decline very well, but it's all starting to come together better than two weeks ago.

Seven of us wandered to sit at babalú's terrace afterwards, and it was warm enough to drop the jacket. Afterwards five of us wandered towards the shore and picked up ice cream on the way, and found a spot where it wasn't absurdly windy. The relief of being done with the exam and the joy of having beautiful, springy weather caused the smiles be loose and the laughter loud. It was so good to be outside again.

I also registered myself as a job searcher yesterday, bought an absurdly big and cute giraffe mug for tea, and possibly found a new place to live in. It'll be a little more expensive than the (already expensive) price I'm paying now and it won't be furnished so I have to look up for a thing or two, but it'll probably be a lot more quiet, and it's in Seltjarnarnes. If it happens, the sea will be so very close in all directions, I get to visit the fun salt water pool more often, and won't be much further away from downtown Reykjavík as I'm now. It'll be an investment, but I think it could be worth it.

I don't really know what the future holds for me. I haven't got a job yet, but there's not much more to worry about studies, so I can devote myself for finding one. The friends I've made are mostly leaving the country in May. One thing is sure though - it'll be a different kind of summer. I'll try to make the most of it.

Oh boy!

I had the oral exam in Icelandic today. It was pair work, thus making it the most stressful thing I would have in my studies in here. We did fine, and I'm sure we both passed it. Such a relief. I've still got written exams in Icelandic and history coming up, but at least I'll only screw up my own stuff if I don't do well in those.

Now I can start committing myself to finding a job. And a new place to live in. That's long overdue, and not sure I can pull it off yet anyway, but at least I'll try harder.

Today I shall have a couple of exquisite and expensive ales, and not feel bad about it at all. It'll be rather chillax from now on.

Also, it looks like I may be able to pull off a curious move and go to the Big Chill festival in England in August. It'll be kickass. And Emmi, if you're still reading, check out these. Some very interesting Polish movie poster art right there. I wouldn't mind covering my walls with some of those.

Down and to the left

Yesterday was dubbed Traveller's day or the first day of the summer according to the old calendar. Of course the beginning of summer was rather vague, since the temperature was just barely above freezing, but oh well. Since the Icelanders seem rather eager to organize all sorts of activities, this couldn't be an exception. In addition to the rather standard "museums and galleries have a free admission" theme day, there were quite a lot of things to do outdoors. One could've gone angling or sailing, embark on guided walking tours, either refining their skills in the Nordic variety or go underground to explore the power plants and caves. ATV's and rather cheap scenic flights over the capital area were at display as well.

The thing that piqued the interest of an exchange student bunch was the discounted horse riding tours at Hafnarfjörður. We planned going there a couple of days beforehand, but when we started moving at 12oo yesterday, half of the group had changed due to cancellations and emergency recruitments. Everybody else seemed rather fresh and enthusiastic, even the trip organizing lady who had just an hour and a half earlier declared that "I'm hung over... No, I'm probably drunk." While that's certainly not the safest horseback condition, she looked considerably more lively when we picked her up later. She managed to assure us that she'll be fine.

Due to the group composition changes, we were just seven instead of the original nine, but that didn't turn out to be a biggie. While we were waiting for our turn in the dressing rooms, the usual silly amusement of wearing the helmets the wrong way and striking very serious looking rider poses for laughs ensued quickly. Instead of being offended, the experienced riders in the group joined the fun.

Around a half of us hadn't been on a horse before and were treated accordingly, being given the most patient individuals to ride and a crash course in steering. It turned out to be quite a popular event, and there were at least thirty of us forming a line when we were about to start going. The Icelandic horses seemed rather apt at this, you quite often see them in lines even when they're just chillaxing in the pastures without anyone around. Mine was a sturdy brown one called Sokki, since he was wearing white socks.

The thrill of starting to move was an unforgettable one. A few instructors were riding in our side and orchestrating the whole parade, and it was probably at least as much up to them to keep the line moving slowly in form. During the first ten minutes I wasn't doing all that much, just learning to adjust to the movement of the horse and trying not to tense the lower back too much. Shortly after that the line was split into two different routes, and we got a little more room around us. It was then when I started to get a grasp of the subtleties of steering him. While I probably could've just sit there without doing anything and manage the tour nicely, telling him when to speed up, slow down and turn did indeed have an effect. At the beginning I felt as if I was on a furry automatic taxi, but in the end it turned out to be a little less automatic and greatly more fun, and still giving me the opportunity to enjoy the valley scenery.

Afterwards our friend bunch kind of split as well, as a part managed to hitchhike a ride, but three of us wanted to take the walk. We wandered towards downtown Hafnarfjörður, and asked the first couple we saw for directions to the bus station. They were going the same way and we joined them, and it quickly turned out that they had housed exchange students before. It's a small world. The town itself looked cozy, tidy, tucked away from the frantic Reykjavík, but conveniently close whenever you need to visit.

Reykjavík excursions

We have a proverb in Finnish which says "hyvin suunniteltu on puoliksi tehty" or "well planned is half done." Let me tell you, that's a mighty fine phrase. Surprisingly truthful.

The shenanigans began around 16.40 yesterday when I noticed I had gotten a letter from Pósturinn. The most I figured out of it was that I had received a package for which I need to pay tolls and taxes, and I need to fetch it from a post office quite a far away. I tracked it down, found a bus line from the route planner and thought that well, I'll give it a go. I also checked that the post office in question should be open until 18.00, and I wouldn't have troubles getting there. It was Friday anyway, so if I didn't go now, I'd have to wait over the weekend. It's not like I can get locked up anywhere or anything, right?

I rushed to Hlemmur just in time for the bus, which was not a full-sized one but a smaller service line type of thingy. The driver was Polish, and after taking the passengers in he chatted a storm with some of his fellow countrymen who were standing at the door. Nonetheless, we departed in time, and after that the driver dug up his phone and called someone. While I couldn't hear what he was talking about, of even figure out the language used, or even really care all that much in the middle of my city admiring, the whole bus could hear when he was finishing the call. Imagine full four minutes of the exaggerated cartoony suck-your-lips kissing sound and way too sugary bai bai's. All this from a bald, middle-aged Polish guy who's seemingly paying more attention to the phone than the bus he's supposed to drive and you are in.

The few passengers were trying not to chuckle too much, but it was all in good spirit and mood, everybody was smiling. Then there was two young looking Icelanders, a boy and a girl probably not even in high school age, holding hands. The girl was at least one head taller than the boy, and they were slightly blushing, smiling and exchanging slightly embarrassed, quick looks with each other. So cute!

I got off the bus where I was supposed to, but I was presented with a new challenge. I saw Pósturinn offices in two different directions, and trusting my instinct, headed towards the more "office" looking one down the road, instead of going up for the more industrial looking district. When I got to the door, I must've been slightly distracted by a cute Icelandic lady in a long, fluffy skirt who just came out, and I waltzed in without giving it too many thoughts, the door was open anyway. There was another set of sliding doors on the other side of the entrance, but to my surprise, they didn't open, even though I was there well before six. I wondered about it for a moment, and after that I noticed a vastly impressive array of security system on the wall. Several different panels for imputting keycodes or keycards. I thought that this probably isn't an office for visitors after all, and turned back.

The outer doors didn't open either.

So there I was, in the hallway of an Icelandic post management building, trapped between the glassy doors. I was quite dumbfounded, but after awhile started to look for a way out. I didn't bother to worry too much, since I doubted that the lady I saw would be the last person to exit that building today. I was looking at the security panels, but didn't dare to touch anything since they didn't seem to contain a clear "open those doors" button. I also saw the occasional person wandering about the other side of the lobby, but there was one more door between me and them, so they probably couldn't hear me knock.

Just as I was about to call the security service phone number I found from one of the panels, someone came out. I greeted him with an embarrassed smile and told him that I couldn't find my way out. Instead of entering some kind of a keycode he reached to the side of the outer doors and pressed a little button. Great. Getting out didn't require any kind of magic or inside information, but I hadn't noticed the small button over there, I just concentrated on the other wall. We laughed it off, and I had some dignity left in me and asked where I was supposed to go with the letter I had, and he pointed out that I indeed needed to go to the industrial looking area instead.

I promptly thanked him, noticed that I hadn't wasted more than 15 minutes of my life being ensnared, and thought that I still can get to the other office before 18.00 even without rushing too much. I did, found the main office and the toll department, only to find out that while the actual post services were indeed still open, the toll office had closed at 15.30. I took a closer look at the Pósturinn letter, and in clear Icelandic it mentioned the different opening hours for the toll office indeed. I would've been too late anyway.

During my stay in here, I've never felt so tourist as I did after all that. I was in a surprisingly good spirit though, just thinking about the old wisdom of "well planned is half done" and smiling at my combination of poor overall planning of the needless-in-any-case trip and the slightly bad luck and extremely good timing that got me locked up in an Icelandic Post building.

That was my afternoon. How was yours?

Aldrei fór ég norður

My Easter shenanigans were greatly overshadowed by excellent success in one of Iceland's national sports, catching a cold. That rendered me nearly immobile, and as a result, I didn't get to make the trip to Ísafjörður's rock festival. Although, everybody I knew had vanished days before too, so I wouldn't have been able to embark on the planned road trip anyways, but would've needed to find alternate travelling methods. I ditched it.

As a secondary result, I don't have much to tell about Icelandic Easter traditions either. What I saw was mostly huge, huge and ornated chocolate Easter Eggs on display at the stores. No mämmi, although Páskaöl might've been rather close, even if in liquid form.

I do not mourn though, for yesterday She had a concert at Laugardalshöll and made it all better. It was an expectedly strange mixture of her old things with a twist and her new things. There was quite a few players in the stage, varying from the brass section to an older man, undoubtedly a musician by profession, who took care of the piano parts with a synthesizer of sorts. And the songs, then. What about a super compressed and gated version of Army of Me? Yes please! Insanely beautiful brass renditions of All is Full of Love and Bachelorette? Don't mind if I do! There were also a couple of songs in Icelandic supported with a harpsichord of sorts, unsurprisingly I didn't know them. Also there was a rather fascinating guest appearance from Antony Hegarty of Anthony and the Johnsons. Definately one of the most inspiring duets I've ever heard.

The new songs seemed quite enchanting, but I couldn't really elaborate much from them. I just believe that Björk fans ought to be in for a real treat in Volta. There was one clear miss though - one of the newer songs made me feel something between frustration and anger. The very generic hip hop style of the song and the even more generic hip hop sounds behind it just didn't compliment Björk at all. That was undoubtedly Timbaland's contribution. Next time, if doing something similar and in need of a producer, she should turn to someone a lot more talented and versatile one. Like, Coldcut or RJD2. For starters.

As if that wasn't a good enough treat, Hot Chip played after Björk. While their music is a little overwhelming and even exhausting when you get exposed to it for longer periods of time, it was also groovy as hell. The amount of head bobbing in the audience seemed like an agreement to me. It was pouring down, but the folks wandering back home seemed in a good enough mood not to care too much.

The Something Random:
- While I never really found Jackass and the likes very funny, this bloke from a Channel 4 show is ace. Legeeetttttt!

The Something Finnish:
- Pitkästä aikaa pitää antaa Yleisradiolle oikein iso käsi. Tuo Pasila on mulle ylivoimaisesti parasta suomalaista televisioviihdettä pitkiin aikoihin. Kaiken kruunaa se, että jaksot näkyypi netistä, vieläpä ilman että henkilöllisyytensä joutuu todistamaan jollakin sähköisellä ID-kortilla, sormenjäljillä, tv-lupamaksukuitilla, verkkokalvoskannauksella sekä postittamalla tämän lomakkeen kolmena kappaleena lähimpään konsulaattiin. Te vaasalaiset toverini: tiedättekö onko Pakkalalla jotakin tekemistä tän sarjan kanssa? Routalemmen hahmosta tulee Näsä niin vahvasti mieleen, että reppeilen jatkuvasti jo on se jännä-fraasin intonaatiolle. Parasta.

Thick stew

A couple of people I'm living with had their birthday in a relatively short timeframe, so they decided to make the celebrations a joint effort. Since these are of the little quirky kind, they did not invite everybody they know asking everybody they know to come as well and go to Kaffibarinn. No-no. Someone had found a nice camping location between the viewpoint and the domestic airport, so instead of high heels and collars we dressed in warm jackets and hiking boots and took off towards Perlan on Wednesday. Our small squad was a curious looking lot, carrying all sorts of at-least-somewhat-dry trashwood we managed to get our hands on. Most of it was splinters that were torn off our former downstairs kitchen, apparently a future room for another tenant. We salvaged what we could.

Speaking of that kitchen, its fate quite well summarizes how this building is maintained. The landlord is apparently turning it into a room since "nobody was using that kitchen anyway." Well, it wasn't very inviting to use in the first place, since all the wooden and metal surfaces were more thoroughly paint splattered than Jackson Pollock works. Not to mention that it was all the time used as a building material and equipment storage. So yeah. From now on we'll have roughly 15 people using one kitchen with three stove hotplates. One short circuited few weeks back.

But anyways. After climbing to Perlan we wandered westwards for awhile, since they didn't remember the exact location. It turned out that we arrived from a little peculiar direction, since the site was located in the bottom of a gorge. We threw our firewood down first and got a little mountain climbing experience. Everybody had enough grip on their gloves and shoes and we were able to descent smoothly and safely. Of course, a brief exploration of the surroundings revealed alternate routes to the camping site, via really tiny stone stairs.

It started getting dark right after we had settled down and lit the fire, producing quite an unusual camping experience. We were located just next to an airport, weren't too far off of a busy motorway, but you couldn't believe it by the complete silence of the surroundings. The occasional plane taking off or touching down excluded, of course. Cooking consisted mostly of stuffing different kinds of small things inside lumps of dough, letting them slowly cook next to the fire and wondering what might come out of it. It worked well.

Tonight we'll have the mixed bag concert and a week later Björk is playing. Good times for the music lovers.

And some randomness:
- Swiss army knives rock. Admitted that I'm late in discovering their usefulness, at least I got there. It's like everything you'll ever need and more in red plastic and stainless steel. Dad gave me one when I leaving, and I seem to find more and more ways to utilize it every day. Mine seems to be some sort of an officer model though, sporting for example a stupendously terrible magnifying glass and a retractable antenna-like pointing stick contraption. I suppose those are useful for the grumpy old generals whenever they need to roll out the map and go to the "alright, this is us and this is them"-mode. No hate for the corkscrew though!

- For anyone with a bit too much time and aural enthusiasm in their hands, there's Ishkur's guide to electronic music. A tremendous amount of effort has been put into that - the descriptions are often amusing and the samples have been cut with excellent precision. I often lose myself listening to the few second long loop which I just conveniently forgot playing on the background. Most of the stuff is pretty uninspiring, but I've found so many new tunes and artists from it. For grooves, check out for example Downtempo -> Chillout. My newest addictions are Hedfunk's Agua and Luke Vibert's Get Your Head Down. Go there, you'll love it.

Sorry I make you lush

I like seasons. One of the best things about living far away from the equator is is being able to spectate the yearly cycles of nature. I'm writing this since The Moment happened today. Today I first felt like that spring is beginning and taking over from winter.

I used to be a winter person, but that seems to have changed in the recent years. These days I look forward to staying up for ridiculously long in the midnight sun and watching the waves gently break against the rocky shoreline, or having spontaneous kick abouts with a couple of friends in the neighbourhood football pitch, or waking up incredibly energetic when the sunlight reaches your chin after being filtered through a bunch of birch branches and leaves in front of my window.

Even back in those days when I loved ice hockey and used to go out and play virtually every night during the winters, I liked spring. I wasn't sad to see winter go away. As much as I enjoy spring, I pay it some respect. While people often say that it is the time of happiness and hope and love and whatnot, I'm not entirely convinced. Surprisingly many of the people I've talked to seem to perceive spring as emotionally the most difficult season, just as I do. I don't really know why. Is there a similar effect as in the Christmas time? So many expectations about how great everything must be that it burns some people out?

Or is it just the fact that I know mostly Finns?

Anyway, that being said, my trek to the campus this morning was one of the best I've ever had. I barely got out of the door before realizing that this is the day. My personal spring. The sky was presenting all the bright blue shades in its disposal, the sunlight felt a lot warmer and personal than it has been during my stay in here so far and everything was sprinkled with dew. The combination of these did wonders to amplify the colourfulness of this country to even higher, previously unreached levels.

The red steel roofs looked blindingly bright and the greens were deeper than they've ever been. The metallic turquoise paint in a landmark jeep in Hallgrimskirkja parking lot was was shining like it actually was coated with the gems. The asphalt looked as if it was freshly laid, the oily glow shimmering on the surface. Light was being so playful with the moist surfaces that all the colours seemed ridiculously exaggerated, very reflective and slightly unreal.

The world was an oil painting and I was walking in it.

Chivalry is not dead!

Now when I'm starting to have some kind of a hang of the local language, I've begun discovering some words that mean something curious or funny in my own. I know this is the cheapest ever thing to write home about, and I know that pretty much every Finnish word means something like sweaty armpits in some language or another, but I can't not to, since I find some of these genuinely amusing and interesting. The fact that these two languages are from two completely different origin makes for some great mashups. And besides, I get an excuse to mention the term Cervantean English. So there.

First of all I need to refer to the title. There is one old and glorious profession that was thought to be extinct in the contemporary world, but it indeed lives on in Iceland, and is actually even more powerful than ever. This is ritari which translates to secretary. It just happens to be that it means knight in Finnish. So, I grew up with the show Ritari Ässä, literally "knight ace." And no, it was not about secretaries. It was about The Hoff.

Veski is a very common word in Iceland. In fact, pretty much everybody has one, as it is a wallet. In Finland most people need access to one every now and then, and failure to do so might be a source of major inconvenience. In Finland veski is a toilet. This has caused some excellent jokes among the Finn community. "I need to go to the wallet" has become a smash hit, and doesn't mean that they're paying for everybody. Sadly.

An often heard quick greeting, hæ, can also be traced to Finnish. It is pronounced "hai", which in addition to sounding exactly the same as the English greeting, means shark in Finnish. Very appropiate in a rotten shark eating nation, isn't it? This is also related to one of the most amusing inside jokes ever. That involves a couple dozen communications students, a sauna themed party with plenty of unforced singing, my oriental bathrobe, martial arts demonstrations and loud interjections. I will try to prevent further mental damage by refraining from going further though...

Hana is tap (as in water/beer tap) in Finnish, but in Icelandic it's the accusative form of hún, she. Kisa refers to cat in Icelandic, whereas for me it'd be a competition. The word láta, let or put is pronounced "lauta", which in Finnish is a plank. Peysa is one of the favourites for every Icelander, it's a sweater. When pronounced, it becomes the surname of a friend of mine, "peisa." I might start calling him "sweater" now.

I'm sure there's a whole lot more of words with similar character which just haven't entered my vocabulary yet, but I'm getting there. Meanwhile I keep myself entertained by thinking of the BAD MOTHER FUCKER toilet.

Remind me

Recent days have seen my cooking variety expand tremendously due to a couple of reasons. The first one was discovering a decent replacement for good old Koskenlaskija cheese. While these aren't quite as versatile in cooking due to slightly harder and hence not-as-easily-melting composition, they're good, very good. The other one was actually wandering into this Asian store I pass on almost daily basis. The window shows mostly oriental vases and different kinds of collectibles in all imaginable shapes, but it took me so long to actually go inside and discover all the grocery goodness. Thanks for the tip, E!

The weekend turned out to be fantastically refreshing, and helped to combat my lately slightly blue moods. A Swede from the Icelandic classes had invited me, friend N and an unclear number of other people to her birthday party on Friday. There we happily went, and it was probably the first time I've ever been in a room filled with archaeologists. While I deliberately formed the previous sentence to sound terribly exciting, well. Those archaeologists seem to drink quite like the rest of us. Maybe it's all the fresh air they get on the outdoor excavations. Nonetheless, the vibes were good and we got several good chuckles. Not least in expense of a couple late arrivals, one of which was a Finnish girl who had just graduated from high school. She claimed that she's able to recognize Finns everywhere yet it took her roughly 30 minutes to realize that I was speaking mostly Finnish with N. To be fair though, most of us can probably attest to the fact that there are times when perception just doesn't seem to kick in.

I've recently been pondering quite a lot about what will my Vaasa be like whenever I go back, since so much seems to have happened since I left. People seem to be moving away, moving together, leaving my old neighbourhood and doing whatever shenanigans they come up with when I'm not keeping an eye on them. Thus, it was incredibly delightful first to fall happily asleep after a great socializing Friday and wake up to a lazy Saturday morning and have the player instantly fire up Groove Armada's My Friend. Whenever I'm down / I call on you my friend / a helping hand you lend / in my time of need... It's a naive sounding little song, but there's also a lot of groove and fun. Another personal experience with the ultimate effect of music on us.

While I've never been good at making friends with everybody around me, that particular Groove Armada tune felt so completely fitting. I realized that while I'm probably regarded as the house oddity in our little community and haven't filled my phonebook with everyone's number, I've learned to know a couple of my kind of people.

Never stop learning, they say. It seems safe to assume that also applies to learning about yourself. This whole living over here thingy has proved to be excellent in that department.

There's been quite a lot of different movie experiences going on for me too. From watching the aforementioned and lovely Paris, je t'aime with Icelandic subtitles and understanding delightfully much of it to crashing lazily on the couch to witness penguin life and Emilie Simon's wonderful tunes in La Marche de l'empereur and yesterday's epic loudness and loud epicness of Frank Miller's 300. It's all good.

Plus, in the immediate vicinity we have this concert. And just a few days later in Ísafjörður there's Aldrei fór ég suður,which translates to I never went south. A rock festival named after an (apparently) popular Bubbi tune, with lots of Icelandic and a little international flavour as well, topped with a free entry. An excellent excuse to cram big masses of people into significantly smaller cars and enjoy some roadtrip awesomeness, West Fjords scenery and lots and lots of live music.

What's there not to love?

You're not the man now dog

There are times in everyone's life when change is inevitable.

There are decisions that may appear small, but later on you discover they took you into a completely different direction.

There are things that you do, even though you know beforehand that they will lead to another.

There is the kind of determinat... Geez, okay okay, I'll just stop rambling.

I became a goon.

No. I didn't accept a job offer for some shady security service representant neither did I plan to start being a football hooligan.

I registered a forum account to Something Awful.

At this point I know that one of the three readers goes "...", the second one is like "???" and the third says "uh, yeah, and?" Allow me to elaborate!

Something Awful is internet's premier community for things that:
- are geeky
- are angry
- are funny
- do not make sense
- most likely are a combination of most of the above

As the site describes itself: "Something Awful has been mocking itself and the internet since 1999, bringing you reviews of the worst movies, video games, and websites to ever exist. If it's something and it's awful, it's probably on Something Awful, where the internet makes you stupid."

So there you have it. If you don't find yourself terribly offended by all this information, you might be equipped with a suitable mindset for an awesome exploration in the world of nonsense. A few possibly good starting points might be either the Misspelled Movies II or Anagrammed Video Games Photoshop Phriday collections. Or the ubiquitous Your Band Sucks. I know I'm cheap, but I couldn't not laugh at the likes of Super Air Brooms or Gonad Farming. If you're adventurous enough, you might even wander to the forums. I take no responsibility for anything though.

On a completely different note, this has been one of the days which warrant the Icelandic saying "we don't get weather in here, we only get samples." I woke up rather early to perform some finishing touches for my Icelandic history presentation, which I somewhat successfully gave today. At that time it was raining. When I was ready to start wandering towards the campus, I looked out of the window and saw a relatively clear morning, and it looked to stay that way. After ten minutes of frantic printing I moved into another building at the campus, and it had started snowing. After a few hours of classes, it looked rather clear again, although there were some rather gloomy grey clouds visible in the west. Well, they were moving towards us, and in 15 minutes it was hailing.

Although technically I'm not sure if it really was hailing, since hailstones usually tend to be pretty hard and these were definately not icy. Maybe the guy responsible for atmospheric convection was some sort of a bored summer worker today. They might've not been all that concerned with quality, letting the to-be-hailstones drop off the upstreams and out of the clouds before they were properly formed. Yeah.

After grocery shopping for five or so minutes it was clear again. When I began to write the previous chapter, it was snowing again, and now when I finish this, it's clear again. I kid you not.

Just for the kick

Some things never change.

One of these is a shortage of books necessary for classes. My presentation for the history class is due on Wednesday, and neither of the essential books have been anywhere to be found. Oh well. At least there seemed to be a reading copy of the more important one, so I can write the thingy in the library. Possibly a couple of long working days ahead.

The country is celebrating a French Spring, entitled Pourquoi pas? My awesome (terrible) French skills (babelfish) tell me that it means why not? which is actually pretty clever. The concept is rather cool, since the thingy really is running for most of the spring. It began in late February and ends in the middle of May so they indeed do have grounds for dubbing it French Spring. The program reveals that there's a variety of things going on. As an aviation geek the first thing I had to do was checking out the Airbus exhibition, conveniently located at our campus. After reading the description, it was quite a let down, unless I didn't actually see everything. I certainly didn't come closer to gradually understand how a plane can fly in a simple and interactive way. What I saw was just a couple of posters, a few ads for Citroën, a few small scale models of the planes, a couple of films and a genuinely terrible flight simulator. O'well.

There's also a few interesting French films being shown at the university cinema. One of these is Paris, je t'aime which seems to be getting the most exposure. I'm definately going to see this one, even though it will be subtitled in Icelandic. Chances are that I won't understand anything about what's going on, but I'll give it a shot. At least it's not spoken Icelandic and written French.

I jumped the bandwagon and went see Little Miss Sunshine on Thursday. That one's easy to recommend, it's been a while since I watched something so genuinely funny. Also easily recommended is the new album from Air, which I picked up on said Thursday. One thing that makes me chuffed is that they are apparently playing in Iceland in July!

Sweeeeeeeeeeeet. I'm goin'.

I also had to neglect my dislike towards band/music/whatever shirts, since Amon Tobin put a couple out. This was an excellent display of postmanship, since the package was shipped to me from Canada just five days after I placed the order. I was prepared to wait at least three weeks. And, just how cool are these?

Motion detection

One of the small interesting details of how things work in Iceland is how lighting is in many places controlled with motion sensors. The first time I stumbled into a public restroom and had the lights automatically switch on for me left me a bit confused, making me wonder that "ok, so who's that watching now?"

The usage of these isn't only limited to toilets, since The Museum of Photography was also equipped with these. There was nobody in when I visited for the first time. It was quite a fascinating afternoon moment to enter the museum floor, lit only by the fading sunlight from the few windows. After a few eerie seconds of listening the soft purr of the ventilation system and looking into the dim but not dark museum the lighting kicked in. I felt a little sad, since the little filtered sunlight made the place look incredibly beautiful and atmospheric. Maybe the level of interaction with the automation will eventually reach a point where I can tell the lights to stay off if I'd like it better that way, but as of now, I didn't have that option.

After the initial befuddlement it became obvious that this is a smart way of conserving energy, and in the toilets the lack of a light switch is one step closer to the perfectly hygienic relief experience, for those concerned. Still, the urge to test how well these things actually work and how far can I sneak in undetected may become uncontrollable at some point. So should the unlikely happen and one of you readers ever bump into me in a Háskóli Íslands toilet or other applicable enviroment and find me crawling on the floor like I was stalking a prey, don't worry. I've probably neither dropped my contacts (as I don't use any) or finally went completely bonkers (hopefully). I'll just be observing the limitations of technology.

Backseatpacking

This is being written a bit late, since it took me three days and several search attempts to realize that my camera cable had fallen between my bed and the radiator. I rock.

Sunday was the last full day the guests were going to stay in the Ice Cream Land, amd we had been planning to drive around the Snæfellsnes peninsula. However the moods had changed overnight, so when I arrived to their hotel in the morning they declared that it's too far for daytripping. I agree that it probably would've taken all day, but would've loved to do it anyway. I opted against issuing many complaints, since after all, it was their holiday, and if it means they'd rather have a good and completely assured sleep before leaving with the morning flight, who am I to judge?

Nonetheless we decided to cram into the car and drive north for some time and turn back when we feel like it. It was still tremendous weather. The folks had to endure some wind, but they didn't receive a single drop of rain during a long weekend in Iceland. I think they could make it into one of these cheesy testimonial style ads. "Yes, we indeed spent a full weekend and then some over there, and like you can see*, it really didn't rain at all! And if that's not good enough for you, I also lost 30 pounds!* Wow!!!" *photoshops go here

We drove slowly along the Whale Fjord, pulled the car off road quite often and marveled at the numerous truly photogenic and beautiful sites. The variety of the landscape just occasionally leaves you breathless, since this location is not very far from the one in previous picture, and it got even more snowy a bit later. This also deserves a mention for hilariousness, since dad got to take a swipe at the traffic sign-wise confused backseat.

We later ended up in a small and delightfully old fashioned café in the small town of Borgarnes and caused utter confusion by communicating at least in Finnish, English, Icelandic, Swedish with an Icelandicesque accent (I seem to do this a lot, sadly) and German. The route back to Reykjavík also ran through Akranes, where we amused ourselves looking at the curiously colored houses on the shoreline and picking smooth pocket stones at a remarkably windy beach.

The beauty of this country is such that you don't need to go anywhere in specific to find the kind of view which is capable of leaving you speechless in admiration. Even if you should get bored looking at Esja or the gorgeous sky in the city, just take a hike, a bike or a ride out of it. I guarantee you, you won't travel far before you first have to stop for pictures.

Good omens

Well, the interview's done. She showed remarkable patience in spelling embarrassingly many of her answers and even translating a couple of my wacky extra questions to Icelandic, thus extending the list of things I can say in the language these days pretty much to: yes, no, I, hot chocolate, numbers from five to nine (one to four have to be declined), to be or not to be, sunny is a nice weather for ducks, how to disappear completely and to set yourself in fire.

I think I actually need to figure out "... and never be found" to be even bit more of a show off.

My visitors seem to be travelling under some truly favourable stars, since Iceland has been gracing us for the past two days with the most perfect weather. It's been barely freezing definately cloudless almost all the time. Instead of a "spot the sunshine" -game we've actually been resorting to "spot the sole cloud".

Yesterday evening was dedicated to visiting the Blue Lagoon which is kind of an industrial accident turned into a tourist trap. I make the premise sound a wee bit sour, but I couldn't help being very very enchanted by the place. Should you have never been there, take a look at this photo from a little pond next to the entrance to actual spa facilities. It gives you an idea. In addition to the water being something like what we in Finnish tend to call "bird's milk" the views were just spectacular, if you could ignore the power plant in the background, of course. We were one of the last guests to leave, so we got to watch the day turn into a night in the lagoon. If possible, it was even more beautiful in the evening lighting. Several couples seemed to agree, making out more or less discreetly in the water.

One of the Blue Lagoon's fun effects was that my beard was afterwards very stiff. I probably could've used it as a substitute steel brush and employed myself in the paint removing industry. The womenfolk complained that their hair was tying itself on dreadlocks, but they looked way too relaxed and happy for those complaints to be taken seriously. I had it in my hair as well, and I totally looked like an anime character this morning. I wouldn't give full credits to that bird milk water though, since I often do. Like I've been saying, I don't have bad hair days, I just have different hair days.

After a well slept night we embarked on a Golden Circle tour. Like I wrote earlier, I had been a terrible Iceland habitat, and hadn't really seen any of the landscape outside the city yet. It was as much discovery for me as it was for my guests. The weather was very generous for us to show everything in its full glory. The landscapes are just out of this world. Since I come from the land of ubiquitous flatness and view-blocking forests it is just such a different experience to see the rocky, harshly chiseled cliffs and plains roll in constantly different bur always unearthy shapes and forms. The texture and color of the landscape is ever changing, from mossy green to burnt orange to completely dark gray and barren. And since that apparently isn't enough, everything is here and there sprinkled with curiously colorful houses, weird steam-producing contraptions, rivers that seem too quirky to ever flow straight and beautiful horses.

The whole country seems so special that it seems like an understatement towards it to call some specific places "must see sights." It also makes me wonder how thoroughly you get used to the things you grow up with. You just unconsciously start to take for granted something that someone else conciders the most enchanting thing they have ever seen. I know that the tourists visiting Finland look at everything completely with a completely different glee than I do, and many Icelanders don't seem to get all the enthusiasm we outsiders feel towards their landscape.

Yet sights we saw. The first stop occurred next to an information plate at Þingvallavatn which sort of caught us by surprise, nobody was paying attention to the right side of road when someone went "hey guys..."

The most marvellous part of Þingvellir I saw was the visitor centre. I say this with a little sadness in my soul, but it was also pretty much the only part I saw. Here I saw some indications that dad would've loved to go wherever I would've gone, but the stepside of the family didn't seem very adventurous. There seemed to be a fundamental difference in thinking about travelling between us. They didn't want to take the effort of walking down there because they didn't really know what they would've found there. I would've wanted to go exactly for the same reason. I realized that I'm not the tourist on this trip, so I just better suck it up and come back some other time, since I'll be able to. No arguments involved, but I felt a little bad for being so close and not actually seeing anything besides this view.

The geysir was up next, and what a jolly site it was! The first amusing thing was running into a couple of fellow Finnish exchange students also doing the same daytrip with their parents. The second were the chocolate muffins. The third were geysirs, when we finally got back outside. Dad has been to Yellowstone and the Old Faithful before so the phenomenon wasn't new for him, but the rest of us were caught admiring. This one also seemed a lot more active, going off every few minutes instead of every 46, if he recalls correctly. I've often spoken how one of my favourite feelings is this childlike amazement and wondering, when for example you aren't aware of how something works. I still occasionally get this when going to Heureka for example. Yes, I do love the place and its relatives, but I can now confirm that it's even greater when you get it in the nature instead of with something that was man made.

The last planned stop was at Gullfoss. The wind was very strong and apparently again demotivating for a part of our expedition, and they didn't want to descend to actually see more than an overview of the waterfall. This time I couldn't not go, so I sent them to wait at the café while I rolled downwards on the icy but surprisingly unslippery path. And as you might imagine, it was worth it. I was too busy being impressed and watching the thing slowly unfold to me to feel bad for the others. One thought that makes me feel especially warm is that even though it looked fantastic today, next time I'll visit it will probably be in a completely different weather and it will not look the same. The famous philosophical phrase about one not being able to step into the same stream twice seems truly in effect in here.

When we started heading back towards the City we could watch Geysir go off a couple of times more, but this time from a distance and in the car. We were around Hveragerði when the sunset was starting to be at its most perfect and since the road 1 emulates a true serpentine path just after, we were able to look down to the town which was being colored all over with pink and gold. Sadly no pictures from this.

What more can be said? I had tremendous time and Flickr is loaded with new stuff. I finally got around to see any of the things I came here for, and even if it took long, I can't be angry at myself about it any longer. And tomorrow, I hope, Snæfellsnes.

Interviewsection/intersectionview

Lots of goodness recently!

I've got some visitors now as dad came over with my stepmother and -sisters. This means a few things:
* They rented a car. That gives us a lot of flexibility for moving around. They'll want to do the Golden Circle on Saturday, but I'm thinking of a Tour de Snæfellsnes for Sunday.
* I received a shipment of Essential Finnish Goods. Salmiakki, rye bread, Fazer chocolate and alcohol. Only missing were a sauna and antidepressants, and of them I only crave one, but I'll leave it for you to figure out which!
* I can lure them into places where I would've liked to eat but have been too cheap to do it myself. I plan to do this by giving some vague, cheeky and totally made up recommendations about how the quality of offerings in this specific place would now perfectly complement and further magnify the greatness of our daily industrious activities.

Winter Lights Festival kicked off. I went to see Michel Moglia's fire organ show. Rather impressive, it has to be said! The loudness of that was perfectly balanced with a rather serene little art exhibition at the city hall, A Dark Light. I was especially impressed by the northern light paintings, the colors were wonderful. Obviously a painter can some extra touches of color, but she had not gone overboard with it.

Next week will be a "reading week" at the uni, and my classes are suspended. However, for the language classes we're supposed to do a little interview with an Icelander, in Icelandic obviously. My local connections are not especially plentiful, but they were enough. One of the people I met at the election office party promised to do it. The funny thing is that I hadn't seen her for a few weeks now, but after arranging a meeting for tomorrow, I bumped into her in the middle of the Lækjargata-Bankastræti intersection. It was an odd place to have a quick conversation, with cars going by on both sides. I'll just try to focus on my Icelandic pronunciation and hope she won't be calling the cops tomorrow for trying to kill her with laughter.

Other good stuff:
* A couple of Mr. Scruff's monthly Keep It Unreal mixes streamable at giantstep.net! The versions are shortened since KIU sets run for at least six hours, but it's still a highly adorable mix of soulful and groovy stuff. I've been planning to attend one of these myself, possibly even this spring or summer, and I even might be able to pull it off.
* Scruff's tea label, music videos and other involved silliness.
* Receiving updates on what kind of inside humor and memes have been going on among a certain group of friends since you departed, and still laughing, even when you only see them in text.
* The Fast Show
* Realizing that your teeth still indeed are capable of processing said rye bread.

Travelling without moving

Yesterday indeed turned out to be a huge personal culture experience. I had discovered that Kjarvalsstaðir recently opened a new exhibition with Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval's work. Their website spoke about the curator joining a guided tour on yesterday, so I thought that's a good point to begin my exploration.

It turned out to be in Icelandic. I stuck around nonetheless, trying hard to pick up any familiar words. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to pick up more than a few numerals and a few random words here and there. At this point I'm able to figure out some things from written Icelandic, but understanding speech seems very, very difficult. I think I've actually improved my Swedish more than I've learned Icelandic so far.

The lads at museum counter were very friendly, and answered my questions practically before I got to ask them, upon finding out that I didn't speak all that much Icelandic. Reykjavík Art Museum seems to have a rather nice system with the tickets. They have at least three different buildings in different parts of the city, but the receipt you get is valid for all of them for three days. At 500 krónur would not be bad for just one entrance, but you can actually get to the other parts with it as well. On Thursdays the entrance would be free, too. Tomorrow after the classes I'll probably take the opportunity to visit Hafnarhúsið, which holds at least their collection of Erró.

At the evening there was the Lifi Álafoss concert. I have no idea whether it was just a marketing strategy or a bunch of misunderstandings, but unlike many seemed to think, it was not really a Sigur Rós concert. Of the five acts they were the second to play. As the name suggests, it was a protest concert against a highway that's about to be built in the pristine area of Álafoss. The venue was sort of interesting. Getting there involved several staircases and asymmetrical, under-construction hallways, which gave the impression of the most shady secret practice room, but turned out to be a rather spacey, holding probably at least a couple of hundred people. It was a seated concert as well, this is apparently a Sigur Rós tradition.

The music, then... Amiina opened, and I couldn't do anything but smile and melt. Every gentle bow sound made the girls seem like magical creatures, which they probably are. Whenever in the middle of their slow swaying they bursted into little chants, I was even more confident of that. It was nothing but an audiovisual overload of shy and fragile but cheerful cuteness. And in the middle of a song I realized that I understood their verses.

Sigur Rós played next, and they were armed with what I'd call a truly great selection of songs. I love this kind of music they and Amiina play, it just captures every single cell in your body with its sheer beauty. At one point I remember feeling like I absolutely have to hold someone's hand, and I probably did.

These two marvellous bands sort of set the tone for rest of the evening, so unfortunately the rest of the stuff didn't really inspire me all that much. Pétur Ben's indie rock thingy was pretty fresh and interesting, but I think I was still floating way too high in SR's and especially Amiina's soundscapes. Next up were some Icelandic stand-up comics. First there were two charming and bald old men, whose skits I really would've wanted to understand, they seemed very interesting. The other comic act was a young guy in a red vest whose punchlines only seemed to be about raising the volume of his speech, and he got a lot less responses from the audience as well. After that there was a short and apparently involved performance from what seemed like a supersillified and still not very amusing version of Ultra Bra. Not too fond of that. Although at one point at the stage was something that looked like Vesa-Matti Loiri's midget brother, but in the end he turned out to be not a midget after all, which made it slightly less hilarious. Benni Hemm Hemm played last, and I sort of wanted to like it, but didn't all that much.

Nonetheless it was a very memorable evening. I would've had Amiina and SR play last, but still. The thorough happiness I found during their shows remained in me for the whole night. It was the kind of happiness that overwhelms you. I can't really think of anything whenever I feel that, but I don't want to either. It's definately one of the mindstates which make life worth living.

I just slowly floated and drifted homewards, perceiving everything as immensely beautiful and over and over again softly chanted "ég er ugla, su-sumar ugla..."

All shades of

I'm rather jealous at you Finland peoples for the fact that Ilosaarirock has managed to lure The Cinematic Orchestra to play there. It's a wonderful tradition they've made, having one artist from Ninja Tune every year.

In other news, my activity for getting a new apartment here kicked up a couple of gears yesterday. My grail is now full. Without going into the details, I'll just say that I thought I was living with adults, but apparently am not. I hope I can think of something, and quick. I really wouldn't want to get the living arrangements get the best of me, since otherwise I'm enjoying pretty much everything.

The past couple of days have been rather gray also in terms of weather, the kind when you just shouldn't move anywhere without having a spare raincoat or parach... umbrella with you.

Kjarvalsstaðir is open again, so I'm planning a visit. I was about to go today, but a quick look at their website revealed that the exhibition curator will join a guided tour there on Sunday. That sounded like a fair chance to get interesting inside information and remarks, so I'll try to go then. Might become a culturally frantic day, that Sunday!

I'll also get some visitors in a week, which is nice. There's a lot of things to look forward to in immediate future.

You are beautiful at all times

I am delighted to report that I am in possession of a ticket to the Lifi Álafoss!-concert next Sunday. In the words of Ian Holloway, I couldn't be more chuffed if I was a badger at the start of the mating season!

The other reason for an unbelievably happy morning is how much more pleasant dreams I've been having while sleeping in here. With the word dream I've usually ment daydreams in here, but now I'm getting a plenty of them at nights as well. Back home in Finland I used to only remember drunken nightmares, so this is one more rather welcome change in my life.

Last night I dreamed of a girl I used to have a bit of a crush on at secondary school, but haven't seen, or actually thought really, since graduating from Finnish equivalent of high school in... Three years now. It's fascinating how your subconscious occasionally reminds you of such things from the past.

For the first half of secondary school she used to seem a bit depressed and introverted, hiding behind really long hair and anonymous clothing, speaking even less and in quieter voice than I did at the time. I always thought that she was interesting, but knowing how bad at getting to know ladies I still am, it's no wonder that I never really got to know her.

But just in one day she changed. She cut most of her hair, wore different, lighter clothes with brighter colors and started smiling. You couldn't believe that she was the same person. I still don't know her or what she's up to these days so I have no idea why she seemed so depressed when I first met her, but all that just vanished overnight. For all I know, there could be some magic involved.

That's why she brings a smile to my face now when I remember her again. She is a real life fairytale.

The lazy traveller

So far I've been the worst Iceland visitor, I haven't really been anywhere outside the capital yet. Many people from our house have been rather laborous with daytripping, but I've never been able to go with them. Every single time I schedule something, it gets into way of something else.

And that's once every two weeks or so.

The situation is about to change though, since at least my dad is going to visit in a couple of weeks. I can use that to comfort my wanderer soul, which has started to wail a little. And then again, I still walk everywhere in the city, and am enjoying it rather much. I'll manage.

The UK English accents sound more and more lovely to my ears every single time I hear someone speak on them. I was occupying the hottest hot pot a couple of days back, and some lad stopped walking in when the water reached his knees. "Oi! 'tis too bloody hot!", he said. "Just bite yer tongue, mate!" I answered. I think my Scotsman impression is very lousy, but that led into a short but quirky conversation about Scotland, Finland and why Icelandic men live so long.

Our housing community seems to be rattling a little more day by day. At the beginning everyone was being very careful about not letting any dishes be around unwashed or water on the bathroom floor after taking a shower. Maybe it's sheer politeness towards people you don't know in the beginning, but now that we're starting to settle in, some of us are getting lazy or ignorant when it comes to common courtesy towards others. Doesn't really help to liven up the athmosphere in here. It's not like most of us don't like each other, but most of us don't like living here. Now my best friend from here is moving out so I'll probably stop calling this the Orange house, 'cause our future's not bright!

Besides that, life's good in Reykjavík. The ducks, swans and geese seem to be getting along fine at Tjörnin too. This morning I took a completely different route to the campus and was delighted that even if it looks longer on map, it really isn't. That adds even more variety to my morning walks.

When I popped by at Perlan, which also houses the Saga Museum, I thought that a wax character in lobby looked kind of like Richard D. James. A completely random Flickr browsing session revealed that I'm not the only one thinking so. The comment row is fun, too.

Tremors

The day before I got a different, but subtle reminder of where I live.

After classes I had wandered home and was lying on bed, maybe intending to take a nap, maybe listening to the soft hum of people taking a shower and preparing something for their lunches. The building shook for a second. It was nothing out of ordinary, just like a huge truck passing by if you happened to live just next to the street in first floor. Or someone using powertools downstairs, since the house still seems to be sort of in progress. I dismissed the whole thing immediately.

A few hours later a flatmate asked if I had noticed the earthquake. I had no idea what he was on about. When he said that it was around three in the evening, I suddenly remembered. "Oh yeah, it was like a truck driving by your window?" "Yeah, but there's no street under our windows." "Yeah! Yeah. Yeeaaaahhhh, true..." I dissolved into my thoughts. I'm not living on top of the oldest bedrock in the world any longer, but instead on a lot younger and more volatile vulcanic ground. I don't think it's discomforting, but it's something to know. Next time you won't mistake small earthquakes for a truck or something flying way too low.

Yesterday Reykjavík Grapevine or the most important English newspaper/magazine in Iceland invited the exchange students to a party. The invitation said something about a presentation at 21.00, a party afterwards. I had an absolute chuckle at the line "... and by free beverages we mean free bear." Obviously I had to go. I just made the mistake of finding the website of the place before going in. The background music of that site was so damn great I had to listen to it over and over again before leaving! Check out the third track, Aim's Cold Water Music. 'tis awesome.

I arrived late, but since the presentation was also late like everything in Iceland, I didn't miss anything. Sadly there was no Finnish bear-beer to be found, but the folks at Grapevine seemed like great blokes, true top geezers. I talked to the editor for quite awhile after the presentation. If I can't figure out anything else to do for the summer, maybe I'll try to overcome my doubts about my ability to become a journalist and give them a shout.

A few Finns afterwards went to a place where the main appeal is cheap beer. With these prices that's a rather nice appeal, so much can be forgiven. It was still rather interesting to enter. It wasn't packed full, and there were quite a few televisions. A couple were showing taped football, one was showing what looked like one of Sir Richard Attenborough's documents, one was showing gay porn. Hmm.

Oh well, beer was cheap.

A minor victory

To much of my delight, it's snowy and wintery again, and skies have been favourably cloudless. On Sunday I celebrated this occasion somewhat and went on a little picture tour. The colorfulness you occasionally get here just never ceases to amaze. Pure snow truly lights up at days like these.

I still feel like I'm only progressing in the language with baby steps, but yesterday for the first time I found myself giving an automatic reply to something unusual in Icelandic instead of English. Two guys were going to the pool before me, and the other paid for both by using these popular ten time admission cards. There was also someone behind me in line, so the lady inquired if I wanted to pay for two too. "Tvö?", she asked. "Nei, bara eitt" I answered and was rather pleased with myself for the next hour. I know it's such a small victory, but I'm hoping this could be the first step towards being able to use the language by instinct. In previous occasions I've often been half a second too hasty switching to English, I've missed so many good opportunities to show off my newfound Icelandic proficiency. I remember what I could've said in local language right after finishing saying that in English.

Since I've taken up the habit of posting stuff I've been wasting my time with, I might as well keep doing that whenever I feel so. I've presented visions of this hypermedia (this word makes me digress, but I use it anyway, since it's in the course title) production project to a few of you. I'm starting to believe that I can also craft the background musics and sounds myself. That gives me the liberty of owning all copyrights, so if it happens to become nice enough, I might start using it as a part of my résumé. The concept might be unveiled completely when everything starts coming together, but just to give you a general idea: The "storyline" jumps back and forth between two different but intertwining collections of mysteries, puzzles and demosceneesque animations. The light and happy side will be named Rhino Statist, the dark and gloomy is called I Shot Tristan. Both are anagrams of the actual name for the production, which some of you crafty readers could figure out rather easily. Here's some quick and crude sample tunes for the light side and the dark side.

The more you get into anything, the more there is to be learned.

Write it back

After finishing classes this morning we were walking away from the campus in a bright blue morning. The sky had a slight hint of gray in most directions, but on the southwest it was completely murky. The cloud masses seem to travel very swiftly, so after ten minutes of walking and watching the cumulonimbus chase us we were hailed from above.

The hailstones make your face feel all tingly and ruthless is their way onto the back of your exposed neck, unless you're clever enough to wear something with a hood. After a brisk and refreshing minute of that it turned, much to our disappointment, into a honest rain. A few minutes after the clouds were all gone again. Such is the weather in Iceland, temperamental and moody like the mind of a humanities student.

Hey, trust me. I'm one.

There's some trouble in our apartment again, since our only washing machine appears to be broken. When you have nearly a dozen tenants in here, you'll quickly have a lot of unhappiness and dirty clothes in a queue if something so crucial is out of order for some time. The other fridge isn't doing a very good job either. There's a growing sense of discontent among us. It doesn't really help liven up the feelings I have towards my living arrangements right now. Besides that, I'm enjoying my life in Reykjavík. Still, wouldn't a comfortable home be a rather essential thing when it comes to everyday happiness?

I try not to write about blogging, since I don't have much experience or knowledge about the subject. Since starting to write here more regularly, I've noticed something different in how I think about certain things. By now my contemplative nature should hardly be a surprise to anyone. I now sometimes find myself asking myself if I could weave the thoughts strings I was just going through into a pattern which could make sense for someone else. It gives me a different kind of view to the things I'm rotating around in my mind. Would this knowledge or experience be useful for someone? Could it be amusing or heartwarming?

I'm not trying to make myself too aware of my thoughts or direct them anywhere just for the sake of making them sound more interesting. Before I had my own blog I remember having a discussion about them with someone. I declared that blogs where people write about themselves are sort of diaries which they conveniently unlocked forget to somewhere public, sort of thinking whether someone will discover and read their thoughts or not. Some days the diary is forgotten somewhere really visible, sometimes it's mostly tucked under the morning paper. Now when I have some actual first hand experience with blogging, I stand by my opinion. It's a nice feeling to know that someone probably discovered what you had on your mind that given day. If they found it somehow significant or curious enough to make them come back some other day, then you must be doing something right. Even if it's the smallest, silliest thoughts, you're giving something to the world.

This week I 'ave been mostly eating mushrooms

Most of the people I'm dealing with at this point are at least bilingual, and remarkably many even multilingual. Besides enabling you to spice up conversations, it often makes for some unexpected amusement. Many of the students seem nearly fluent with English, but all the other languages bring their own condiments to the communication soup. I know I tend to get German and Swedish words all mixed up, but it's especially funny when some of these influences sneak into our English. Yesterday saw a little bit of such comedy.

After the lessons at Háskóli I was walking just somewhere with a couple of friends, a Finn and a Swede. During the class it had started raining, not very heavily, but none of us seemed to have equipped ourselves against rainfall. The fellow Finn had probably the worst clothing choice of us, wearing a soft cotton jacket. She wailed "Argh, why didn't I take my parachute with me?" It took probably half a second for us others to burst into laughter, and half a second more for her to do the same. We traced very quickly where that word came to her mind, as one of the Swedish words for umbrella is paraply. Nonetheless, we kept bombarding her with all the parachute and umbrella related jokes we just could come up with, and we were rather resourceful. Probably to a point where she just wanted to kick our teeth in.

Even after crossing that border we suggested that Hallgrimskirkja would probably be a great base jump location.

I adore such moments of random silliness. On my way home from the pools I for some reason remembered the Finnish actor-author Reidar Palmgren. Now when I'm using English more, I also tend to look at Finnish a little differently, so I quickly discovered which English word the name resembles. Since I'm an avid supporter of idiocy and complete nonsense, I had to spend a few moments materializing some of the similar oddities I've recently been shaping in my mind. An Unfunny Alert needs to be issued though, since the following is not particularily skillful and you probably won't find the following very amusing if you are
A) not me AND/OR
B) on something.
I'm sorry.

I still got a few chuckles when I was creating it. I probably should start writing bad haikus again too. Nonsense just has too much potential.

What I thought today, or the chapter in which a multitude of baffling subjects is discussed

I adore the pools more and more every single time I visit one. They make me feel good in many different ways. There's the knowledge that in addition to walking everywhere I'm doing some very good regular exercise, I'm moving a lot more and also more efficiently than I used to. Some of them apparently have saunas. I've yet to visit one, since you'd apparently have to pay a bit more. Nevertheless, it's comforting to know that I can get to one if I start having withdrawals. They also offer some very good means for relaxation.

I had been swimming laps for maybe an hour and a quarter and was thinking about having a break. I went to the hottest of hot pots, and sat there for maybe 15 minutes. That already was rather nice and unwinding, but I didn't realize what I was about to do when I jumped into the colder swimming pool again. My limbs instantly turned into well boiled spaghetti. It caught me by complete surprise. In theory I could've kept swimming very slowly, but I had absolutely no strength left in my body. I just ditched the thought of doing more laps and went to the showers, embracing the feeling I had gotten. I don't think my body has ever felt so relaxed.

The pooltime thoughts have also been quite interesting. I find myself either watching how the waves travel or overlap each other and rebound from the walls, or then thinking in English. I noticed the latter last time at the pools. Of course English is my main language of communication at the moment, but I don't seem to be thinking in English anywhere else at this point. When I noticed it, I could also recall that I had been doing it on my previous pool visits as well. With some of you readers I've been discussing how I always get the best ideas when taking a shower. This observation seems like a logical continuum for my vague theories of how water seems to affect thought processes. Or something.

A few days back I was craving for some whisky, so visited the liquor store for the first time. I suppose I couldn't have done a better job at looking a poor, dubious student if I tried, with my backpack and everything. There were like six people working at the store at the time filling shelves and unpacking boxes, and also a dedicated guard. I was the only customer at the time, so upon entering the store ALL eyes turned on me. The unpacking of boxes slowed down a bit, conversations dampened. The guard followed me as I took a round trip around the small store. I felt like I had entered Fort Knox. Hardly surprising though I suppose, seeing how the goods stored seem to be of similar value in both. I just stayed as far from the shelves I could while retaining the ability to read prices, and didn't touch anything before I had made my decision about what to buy. The price was naturally outrageous, but I felt relieved that I got out of the store without hearing blaring sirens and having all the workers jump on me, swearing in Icelandic.

I've never been good at scheduling. To think, I've never really liked it or seen it as a necessity. I don't keep a calendar. When I was working at the grocery store in Finland, I would just memorize my next shift, not copy the whole chart somewhere. I always knew when I'm supposed to be at work for the next time, which was enough. I don't have schedules in my travels either. Maybe I'll miss many of the tourist attractions wherever I happen to be, but I think my way of just wandering wherever I feel like gives me a lot more interesting view of the current location. I'd hate to leave something curious just because according to my timetable I should be already going somewhere else. I think that most things you can possibly do are more fun when you do them spontaneously.

Which brings me to how much I love the randomness of living here. Part of the fascination may become from actually living in a lively city for the first time in my life. Vaasa is a rather quiet and small town by Finnish standards, with not all that many things to do. I've began to understand the frustration some of my friends there have had for the town - they've either already lived in livelier cities or wanted to end up in one. The evening before I went to the Nordic House, where we had a free concert from a Finnish trio which had composed songs from Edith Södergran's poems. In three languages too, Finnish, Swedish and English. Afterwards I found myself talking to the Swedish ambassador couple about Icelandic, I apparently knew more than the lady did. Again slightly afterwards I found myself sitting in Tapasbarinn with the ensemble and mostly older Finnish ladies. This is what you get for speaking Finnish in public, I guess. It was fun nevertheless, although I think we were served too few bread baskets! Not sure if I'd go again, but you've got to try everything, right? Afterwards everybody else crammed into a taxi and I waded slowly home, past most of the hot spots in Icelandic nightlife.

Yesterday's randomness led me to have a fun surprise lunch downtown. Afterwards I went to see Reykjavík Museum of Photography. The current exhibition of photos from Greenland was rather good, even though I think there were a couple too many shots of fish drying racks. And yes, they also had postcards of mr. Kjarval drinking Brennivín. Both seemed very photogenic. I also went to enjoy my Saturday evening brew to a very honest looking pub, The Dubliner. Guinness was surprisingly not-overpriced at 600 krónur. Soon after I had sat down the table next to me was occupied by a Swedish group of three men and three young ladies who were discussing some rather personal matters, and making some relatively crude jokes. I tried to smile inwards, not wanting to make them aware of the fact that I understood most of the things they were saying. They left rather swiftly, after drinking just one quick round. Slightly after I was halfway into my second pint and feeling very contemplative, I was smiling openly by myself. I was happy I hadn't had a schedule for that day.