I spent most of the rest of the day walking around the city and window shopping. Lots of sweaters. It stays light from about 3:30am to midnight or a little past every day, so you do have some sort of ‘extra’ energy. By the time I went to the hotel, showered and got dressed for dinner - it was past nine. You just completely lose track of time because it is sunny all day. Kind of nice. I went for yet more seafood at the place above - Fjalakotturinn. Definitely more low key and more traditional than the first place and god bless their little hearts for real - they had some bloody decent cava. In a world of crap champagne, a good cava is your best hope.

At this place, I actually had a chance to speak with my server at some length as I was one of the only late diners. Not a single Icelandic person was in the restaurant that night besides the staff. So I asked him about it. For those who may not know, the Icelandic krona was at 62 krona to the dollar when my guide book was published in 2008. It is now at 125 krona to the dollar. And the banking/financial system is pretty much a train wreck. Of course all these facts affect people there, but my waiter’s explanation of why there were no Icelanders was a bit more interesting. He basically told me that Icelanders are do it yourselfers and would prefer to stay at home and figure out how to cook something crazy rather than go to a restaurant. Moreover, restaurants are sort of a special occasion thing. He told me that cookbooks are super popular there and when I was in a bookstore the following day, I noticed that there were indeed hundreds of cookbooks. Very interesting…

And the next day involved more walking around, eating of waffles with jam and cream and about fourteen big coffees. For what they lack in alcohol, they make up for in coffee. The buildings above are typical modern apartments in Reykjavik. This building happens to be right on the water and is apparently quite desirable property. Not so attractive though, eh?

While at an exhibit at the Reykjavik Culture House on Icelandic cinema, I learned something interesting that somewhat relates to this architecture and what is considered desirable, etc. In a nutshell, Iceland went from being a country of fisherman and farmers to a more urbanized, industrialized population in a matter of a few decades. Most buildings in Reykjavik were built between about 1910 and 1930. Modern buildings are very much in line with that architecture and somewhat ‘Bauhaus’ according to one bartender.

Socially, you have a number of dynamics that resulted from such a rapid transition and Icelandic cinema has tended to focus on those dynamics of disassociation, identity crisis (individual and collective) and various other social phenomena that arose from such a massive transition, namely rural to urban life.

In addition to that, you have a country where the basic history is that of settlers from the Scandinavian countries - primarily Norway - and not much else. Very isolated in a myriad of ways. But as I was saying to someone the other day - look at the upside: they didn’t have a civil war or slavery. And I think it is this strange combination of the physical impact of the place and its geography along with some unique karma/energy that makes it so appealing - at least to me.

The people are pretty blunt, but they definitely know how to have a good time. And as I was walking home my last night there, which happened to be the Friday night before a long holiday weekend, I heard music coming from people’s windows and saw the sun setting. I could see people having small parties in their backyards, dressed a certain way, and it reminded me completely of the film Heima with Sigur Ros - my inspiration for going there in the first place http://www.heima.co.uk/  - in particular, this song… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhLZP6Cz2dA.