I have so many trips I could segue into on this first post of posts. There's so many places I could talk about that I've had the fortune of visiting. But today, I think I'll stick with where I am now. I'm in Iceland, up in the North Atlantic amongst the cold and the summers of endless day.
I'm here for work, I'm getting paid to be here but it seems more like one long, wonderful holiday. Except for the part where we got stuck in a hotel in Keflavik, which is 45 minutes and 1,200 Kronus away from Reykjavik. I've been schlumping back and forth between the two cities for the past few days getting steadily poorer and poorer. The endless sunlight has thrown me off a bit as well. My second night in Iceland and I'm tooling around Reykjavik with three wonderful Aussies I met on a tour, there was beer and food and good conversation and I glanced at my watch only to realize that it was almost 11 at night and that the bus back to Keflavik was leaving very soon! I'm surprised I didn't get hopelessly lost and turned around, but my directional ineptitude finally decided to leave me alone for a bit and to go bug other people. To bad I didn't read the fine print on the bus schedule. There were no buses running to Keflavik that late at night until May 15th. I was out of luck. In lieu of my oncoming panic attack at the prospect of having to spend the night on a hard bus bench, the wonderful gentleman behind the counter arranged a ride for me with a driver who was going out that way to pick up a flight crew.
I was impressed with the Icelandic people. The guy at the bus counter who helped me out so much seemed almost typical of the Icelanders I've met whilst here: friendly, accomadating, proud of who they are and their country. The driver who was kind enough to bring me to the front door of my hotel was even better, 45 minutes in a van just chatting. What could have been an awkward trip late at night turned into a friendly gab fest.
I don't tend to plan my trips. The most I manage to plan is for the next day. The nature of my job means that I never know where I'm going or what I'm going to do until the last minute. I've found myself relying on happy accidents and serendipity more then once in my rambles around the world. What could have turned into a miserable experience on a hard bus bench instead became a wonderful memory of new friends made and perfect strangers doing more then they should to help someone out.
