Berlin-Iceland-Berlin, June 28 - July 3, 2006
(some youtube links acting buggy so refresh page if nec.)
when first getting to germany i thought every other car was working for an embassy or smth, until i realized that, no, every other car is really happy about german football. it reminds me of what you see in the US whenever wars start.
one night in berlin before hopping over to iceland, so met up with mia and saw her dad play piano at a jazz bar... i think in fhein but maybe pberg
naturally germans are very fond of american politicians...
we skipped over to magnet to check out the king klattsche party, which was super funz. dani wasn't able to make it, but
mia was able to... thanks mia es war tres kuhl!
crashed into RKK, to be met by the freshest air i had inhaled in ages.
digging the 1960s style tour bus cruiser lined up along volcanic rocks
siri was telling me about some icelandic song, going like: "blue lagoon, geysir, german backpacker go home"... and here i was living up to the song by going directly from the airport to the blue lagoon. but, hey, i had the urge to breathe in sulfur and smear white gunk on my face, what's a boy to do?
the volcanescque walkway to the bath
before entering you get to face just exactly how electric blue the water will be. i don't even think a $2000 SLR could capture how blue it was (not that i had one)
now, coming from budapest, bath culture is not exactly unfamiliar, but this felt otherworldly...
ready to take the plunge...
so i plunged, and afterward pitched up at siri-biri's cute little shared flat on hatun street. here we are posing in front of the map of iceland, you know, just to do it.
later stepped out for some yum seafood quesadillas at vegemot restaurant
and finally skipped over to sirkus for some 'welcome to iceland' thursday night drinks.
a brief scan of siri and the happenings at sirkus that night
the main shopping drag, cute enough as is, but even cuter that it needs a sign that says "this is the main shopping street" or smth like that, in order that you realize what it is.
1 am mid-walk home chillin by siribiri
storefronts i liked
my pad for the stay
on friday we got ourselves a little road racer and set out to discover the wonder that is southwest iceland. siri shown here pretending to navigate.
i had to resist the urge at times to severely abuse the posted speed limits
off we go!
we took our first breather at this non-descript spot
to have a little walkaround
and check out this fab view
not long after this picture was taken, we realized we were hanging out by a countryside dumpster, when we saw a truck pull up with a bunch of garbage to throw in.
but hey, one man's garbage dump is some stupid foreigners vista point, right?
soon afterward we had to pull off the side of the road again due to: SOFT SPONGY MOSS ALERT
my attempt to demonstrate how soft and spongy the moss was. i think only succeeded in demonstrating how crap a video i can take.
Siribiri out hunting for small things on the ground as she does
and us feeling a little, uh, windblown.
SOFT SPONGY MOSS. seriously i'd like to eat this.
siri examining whatever the kind of stuff she finds on the ground. babygirl hasn't yet decided yet what career path to take, but siri... paleontologist! i could see you in africa making human/ape fossil discoveries at the rate of about one per minute.
Nice View Out of Side of Car Shot.
Siri in the meadow, right before reaching...
the second part of the 'german backpacker go home' song, geysir land!
i wasn't sure what was more entertaining, watching the geysir waiting for it to explode, or watching the people waiting for the geysir to explode.
so if you must see, it looks something like the above...
after a brief draumur candy bar respite...
we headed over to water fall land! i love the lone bench they put here in case you feel like sitting while getting battered with fierce winds and thick waterfall mist.
siri approaching wind and waterfall...
speaking of getting battered by fierce winds...
looking back at path and mist
siri using the majestic backdrop of the waterfall to contemplate on that thing she found in the moss a half hour ago
more waterfall vid excitement
at times it felt the water was coming down directly from the sky
me and girlygirl trying not to think about the fact that if the wind picks up one bit more in velocity we are half a meter from plummeting to our deaths.
so, there a lot of roadside horses in iceland, you know, offering tricks and the like.
from the waterfall spot we could see a massive glacier in the distance. here is siri thinking how nuts i am thinking WE COULD ACTUALLY DRIVE TO THE GLACIER in our little toyota midgetolla.
i couldn't help it though, i was transfixed. all that white stuff under the clouds is not more sky, it's actually ice. i was drawn to it as if hearing a siren call from close encounters of the 3rd kind.
but right around the time of reaching the above bridge, we realized it was turnaround time.
we later found Red Soil Land
is it just me or does Siri look here like a super cute version of dr. Seuss' grinch?
and yes, as this is a SUMMER holiday i was damn well expecting to have some beach time. we were one moment away from stripping down here and laying out the towels. okay, well, maybe two moments away. okay, um, well, maybe never.
in addition to people slaves, i think the vikings took a lot of sheep slaves from ireland as many of them had a ginger tint, like the little fella in the center here.
super pretty babbling brook
Siri babbling by the brook, looking for ground objects
stopping off the road yet again....
i suppose because of the almost total darkness 6 months out of the year, icelandic horses get a bit depressed and thus sport emo haircuts like these.
Siri has a bit of a lie down as i film our emo friends
we wound our way up a fjord north of RKK
where we found....
our own private waterfall!
'living with... our own private waterfall'
It was all just too super cute...
if it was 10 C warmer we would've had a picnic right there and then
Cliff. Siri. Car (getting a wee bit dirty by now)
Walking back from the car rental place i had to give mad props to the roof grass house. Suburban USA would just be so much cooler if they had these instead of the front lawns
It was a friday night and all. Meaning, of course, that siri had to lipstick stain every mug she could get her hands on.
It was at this time when we had siri's greenlandic speaking flatmate speak some of her language (one only about 50,000 in the world who can!) for us by reading the danger sign on a cigi pack cool huh?
and she made pronouncing it seem so easy. look at that word: it's 24 letters long! even the lego languages of hungarian and german can't compare. i guess only welsh.
our two in Sirkus party shots before being told no pictures were allowed...
which had me feeling a bit like this WC art
so it just meant i had to be more sneaky about it...
by now i can only guess what i'm doing. feeling shamed in the corner?
eventually we skipped out of sirkus, and because most other places were already closing, we spent a few last amusing moments in this tri-level deal, i think called 11. i was digging the shafts of light thru the glass.
being pierced by shaft of light
we first did a little 'blue monday-ing' downstairs
and what i'm trying to point out here is completely beyond me
finally though, as any good RKK night should be wrapped up, hanging outside the aktu taktu on a small hill.
and thinking about how good one of those pizzas would taste.
saturday we had, as you might surmise, a late start. we decided to first hit the RKK public baths in order to sweat out the previous night.
before hitting the all you can eat fish dinner.... yumz!
some pieces of RKK on the walk home.
after barely scraping together enough energy to make it out for saturday evening, siri and i headed to kafeebarinn to kick things off.
as you probably notice by now i'm a fan of WC scribbling.
anyhow, i'm really glad siri and i found the energy to go out as we ended up having a blast on my final night send off.
first meeting up with siri's mates maria and erin in KB, doing their best ali/frazier caricature. backstory: upon departure from KB, heading down the stairs, erin, threw her hands up in a 'holla we iz come to party y'all!' kinda way, which so happened to clip maria in the mouth directly above her. but not to worry, a little bloodied lip was not about to stop homegirl...
in fact, upon reaching sirkus, i think the violence got to us all a little bit as we were suddenly all playing booby peek-a-boo! (censored, as, you know, what happens in RKK, stays in RKK)
the view from erin and maria's side above. as far as the view from our side... well... i think you pervs have enough fodder as it is...
big ups to the ladies being able to dance with the ceiling about a foot shorter than they are. really, you try it.
We eventually hooked up with a nice icelandic fellow whose name escapes me right now, and made our way back to KB.
it was just one of those super fast forward nights where you can't exactly remember every zig zag you make, but just know you were having a fun time doing it. back room closing time back at KB. can you spot me, erin, siri, and maria having intense chat with fellow barman?
alas, at 4.45am, i had to roll in order to catch my early morning flight back to berlin. sniffle.
upon landing i met up with bojan (who i hadn't seen in about a year!) and had a pleasant bike ride through the city.
i was digging the wall mural of the golden gate bridge which put it in some sort of forest/jungle setting.
And, you know, because i just didn't have enough waterfalls in iceland, we had to visit on in berlin, which cascades down berlin's biggest natural hill, a few meters from tempelhof airport.
the view down.
on the way back we passed some straight up bizarre german dancing class. seriously, these are my ancestors, right? hmm.
in the evening got to meet up with Dans, who just ended up in berlin from budapest! here seen with vodka and cucumber. nice to see ya dans!
and of course, the happy host, bojan.
BIG BIG BIG thank yous to all involved it was a great weekend and look
forward to seeing everyone at different locales in the coming months.