The Strange is Now Familiar

It’s pitch black outside, and the car won’t start.

I’ve just thrown half my stuff into my big duffel, having forgotten that a weekend trip nested in a one-month trip still requires packing. Now I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of the Tucson, listening to the car crank and crank and fail to start. I call roadside assistance. It’s probably a low battery; they dispatch a car to provide a jump start.

I try to gather myself. I’ve just come off a series of intense work calls, so my stress levels are already floating quite a bit higher than I’d like. I know this is fine, everything’s fine, it will all be fine. It’s dark but not terribly late, not even 8pm. I’m in a snug cabin with wifi and cell reception. My best friend, Carly, is in a hotel in Reykjavik, and although I’m impatient to see her, she’s also snug and safe. The worst case scenario here is annoying but not tragic. It’s fine.

Still, when Carly and I get on a video call to debrief the situation, I indulge in a minute of whining. “I want everything to go the way I want it to go!” Just saying that makes me feel better, and gradually I’m able to let the angst subside and enjoy the fact that Carly is here, and to hear about her travels, and to plan for the next two days in the city.

Soon enough, the guy with roadside assistance calls me to get help finding the cabin, which is tucked away at the end of an odd little driveway. He must be a local because he knows the tiny church nearby, so I give him directions and before I know it he’s pulling up in his SUV, unwinding jumper cables. Someone is riding with him; his wife, maybe? He speaks English but just barely, and I’m kicking myself for not having picked up more Icelandic phrases yet. It just seems rude to have someone drive through the dark and sleet to jump your car and not be able to say more than two words to them that aren’t deeply foreign. He applies the jumper cables with thick worker’s hands, hands that have clearly been building and making and fixing for a lifetime. I wonder how he made his living when he was younger, what he does now when he’s not rescuing tourists in remote places. The car roars to life and he tells me in his halting phrases to be careful, that last night it was icy. I repeat it back to show I’ve understood and promise that I’ll drive with caution.

I end up trailing his vehicle for a few kilometers, and it feels as if we’re the only cars driving in all of Iceland. At the first roundabout, he sails southwards and peel off to the west, towards Reykjavik. It’s profoundly dark, but I recognize the roads I drove a couple months… no, wait, a few days ago. Has it only been that long? Not even a week.

I retrace the route through Þingvellir, listening to an audio book that was gifted to me for the trip, settling my breath. After an hour of careful driving through occasional rain and constant darkness, I know I’m close to Reykjavik by the blast of light on the underside of the clouds. Then I crest a hill and all at once there it is, the city. As on the day I arrived, I’m struck by its symmetry; it seems ordered in a way that’s unfamiliar but which tonight I find pleasing. I’m shocked out how strange the grid of lights seems to me after less than a week in the country. How quickly our sense of the familiar can reset.

And then I’m curving along the water, passing familiar sights: the Sun Voyager sculpture, the Harpa concert hall, the side roads I walked along my first couple of days here. I park by the hotel and Carly is bounding down the sidewalk, jubilant.

About ten minutes out from the cabin, I realized that the delay in departure meant I was leaving just as I would usually be eating dinner. By the time I arrive in Reykjavik I’m not just hungry but spacey hungry. Carly she leads me confidently to the restaurant we wanted to try out, a reversal of our usual roles. Something about Reykjavik makes sense to her, and her usually scrambled sense of direction is accurate and sure. We get to the restaurant at 10:45pm, only to discover that the kitchen is closed, as is every other restaurant kitchen in the city.

I know the Nettó grocery store is open 24 hours, so we have a backup plan, but the hotel concierge points us to a Greek fast food place up the street. Within 20 minutes I’m eating a perfectly adequate gyro and trading tales with Carly in my hotel room.

I have a fifth floor room with a fantastic view of the ocean, the islands, the Harpa, the statue of Ingólfur Arnarson. As I write this, I’m pausing frequently to soak in the sunrise view of the water. So my next statements are observations more than complaints, but friends, there is no electric kettle here. Not a one. Alcohol and trail mix, yes, neither of which do me any good at 9am. But no kettle.

Also, the shower appears to have been designed by someone who never took a shower, anywhere, of any kind. Carly will back me up on this. The shower head drops from the ceiling and sprays a fine mist with the occasional (much hotter) downward geyser. There is no pleasant sluicing, just a confused dampening. To make matters worse, the shower has neither door nor curtain, so that as the mist warms the air within the stall, it draws in a chilling breeze from the room to ensure constant goosebumps. The lack of door or ledge means that water creeps outward and eventually laps the hardwood floors, a miniature tide.

And oh the mirrors! They begin in the elevator, which is so mirrored that I didn’t realize it was open, mistaking the glassy reflection for closed elevator doors. Why you would assault a weary travel with infinite reflections of themselves, I have no idea. The hotel room doubles down with a wall of mirrors that, to their credit, make the space seem larger, but surprise the unprepared guest at every turn.

In its favor, the hotel does use top sheets. My only enduring complaint about European ways is the stubborn refusal to implement a top sheet, which I consider an essential bedding feature. So although I’d probably choose a decent shower and an electric kettle over a second sheet to turn down at night, I’m mollified by its presence.

On Friday I wake early — “early,” 8:30am, which in my normal routine would be a luxurious oversleeping. My body is adjusting to this odd schedule but registers occasional complaints; it much prefers being up long before the sun, rather than staying up long after the sun has gone down. Still, I get hungry for lunch at 2 and am fine waiting until 9:30 or 10 for dinner, and waking up at 8:30 feels like getting a head start on the day.

After a leisurely morning routine, the lack of kettle drives me out of the hotel in search of food. I walk up the street to a cafe called the Grái kötturinn (the Gray Cat) and get a veggie bagel and — some of you will understand how earth-shattering this is — a coffee. A regular coffee. The kind with caffeine. I’m a little nervous about the potential for heart palpitations and a hard crash later in the day, but I decide to take the risk. It infuses me with a tingling sense of wellbeing, and I remember why people get hooked on the stuff. I know I’ll need to revert to my usual cup of tea tomorrow, but am cautiously optimistic that the door to coffee-land has been cracked open for me.

Friday is a joyful adventure of Carly showing me what she’s found in the city, and me showing her what I’ve found, and both of us exploring new places together. She takes me to the Culture House to see art; I take her to the bookstore to get reading material; we drive to the Árbær Open Air Museum, where we walk through old Icelandic buildings that were relocated to a hillside for visitors to explore. While we’re there, a formation of geese fly over us, landing in the field where four grand ravens are squabbling on the fenceposts. We get lunch near the hotel: fish and chips for Carly, another plokkari (fish stew) for me. The fish stew isn’t as glorious as last week’s, but it’s a manageable portion size and the rye bread is better.

My travel mode has shifted from solo to paired, and the two of us discuss what that means. The pros and cons of each mode. Tonight we’ll wander more and then have dinner out. I’ll try Icelandic beer. Tomorrow we’ll venture inland to explore waterfalls and craters, beaches and mountains, stores and cabins.

But first: the penis museum.