General info & observations

Nature

• Rainbows are a common sight. You can see them on a daily basis, usually on the mountains.
• Weather forecasts are accurate only about the temperature. The weather changes constantly: usually it's sunny, rainy, cloudy and windy every day.

Transportation & traffic

• Public transportation is free for anyone.
• Parking is free.
• Internal flights are cheap. One-way ticket from Akureyri to Reykjavik costs 4990 ISK (27 €) at the lowest. Same trip by bus is 9000 ISK (49 €).
• Drivers respect pedestrians. Usually you only get a nice smile (instead of serious honking) when crossing a street at the wrong time.

Food & drink

• Opening hours for grocery stores are weird. Usually they open between 10–12 AM and close at 6–7.30 PM. 1011 is open 24/7 and Samkaup Strax until 11 PM but their selection is narrower and pricing is outrageous.
• There are no fresh meat counters. Fresh fish can be bought from fish stores.
• Cow meat in Icelandic is 'nauta' which is the same in Finnish.
• There are no scales at vegetable compartments. Cashiers weight them.
• Non-fat milk tastes like white-colored water.
• Icelandic drink sour milk too.
• There are a lot of products with Finnish labels. Some are only in Swedish and Finnish.
• Grocery stores sell only low-alcohol beer < 2,25 %.
• Liquor store Vinbuðin has only one cider (apple flavoured Kopparberg) in their selection. Tap ciders are unknown concept at bars. Local women drink beer.

Misc

• Hearts are all over Akureyri. Even the red light in traffic lights is heart-shaped.
• A pack of tobacco costs normally 700 ISK (3,8 €) but on "night sale" (after 9 PM) 900 ISK (4,9 €). All tobacco products are hidden under the counter by law.
• Local operator Siminn censors sites. For example, I cannot drool on recent celebrity nipple-slips at egotastic.com.

First snow

This is weird. Leaves haven't fallen and it's SEPTEMBER.

River rafting

Our student union president Jóhanna arranged a chance to get to an river rafting adventure. Twelve UNAK students – local and exchange – got excited and the adventure awaited.

Yesterday we met at 11:15 AM at Solborg and took off to Varmahlið where local travel services company Bakkaflöt is based. Varmahlið is ~100 km from Akureyri towards Reykjavik. I haven't travelled west from Akureyri before so the scenery (=mountains) was new to me.

At Bakkaflöt we got instructions regarding clothing. Recommendable garment was (in dressing order):

• swimsuit
• water-proof overall
• "water-proof" shoes
• fleece jacket
• water-proof jacket
• life vest
• helmet

I'm always sweating so I settled for less and replaced the fleece with a t-shirt.

Globally all raftable rivers are starred from 1 to 5. I've been told (don't take this for granted) that there are only three rivers in Europe which have more than 4 stars. One of them was the river we were heading to, Austari. All participants have to be at least 18 years old and have to understand that accidents really happen. Everyone goes at his/her own risk and have to sign a paper for that. I got a mental boner!

"Row, row, row your boat..."

We got briefly instructed how to act in different situations: the raft could flip over, passangers could be underwater for several seconds etc. The main thing was not to panic at any point. The weather conditions were coldish: heavy wind, air 9°C, water temperature a little lower. Comfy! We divided into two groups. One raft contained six amateurs and a guide.

Motherfucking snakes in the motherfucking plane

Finally we got on the move. Our route length was 16 km. Most parts was just easy floating spiced with pure icelandic splashes. Just before the most dangerous part we got ashore to see what's coming. The fearful ones were suggested to skip that part. We went one raft at a time, I was in the latter. For some reason we went the free fall sideways and almost flipped our raft. Excitement, finally! After this part the river got tougher and more exciting. Our second stop was at a 7-8 meter high jumping cliff. Almost all of us jumped + one chinese girl fell :) It looked horrifying.

After four hours of shivering with cold we got back to Bakkaflöt and inside hot tubs. This time we soaked ourselves in warm water :)

In overall the trip was definately worth experiencing. I was a little disappointed about the difficulty: it could have been much rougher for me.

Short video about preparations coming soon.

I think I'm going for a walk

My lunch.

Finnish inside joke, sorry.

Previously at Akureyri

• We throwed a "meeting" (not allowed to have parties) at our yellow house. Our landlady gave us first warning <3
• I tried Canadien beer called Moosehead. The taste wasn't very special but the package was awesome.
  
• I offered light to Alicia Keys. I didn't have a lighter so I lit her cigarette with mine.
  
• We played around with some sheep (apparently Google videos can't be embedded :( )
• Went to see Inglourious Basterds. It was mostly in German and French and subtitles were obviously in Icelandic. Great experience.
• Kussasin pontti koslantilaista intti kommiä mintti. Kon häntti koottaa santti kokea luntti koman täntti, koten jontti kaamioin nontti kokstin tentti kotten entti koimaidu lentti kohvastelijaksi rentti.

One-day road trip

I don't remember when I have voluntarily woken up before 6:00 AM on Sunday. Last Sunday this world's 8th wonder happened. Twenty exchange students met at 7:15 AM outside our house, stuffed their shit into four rental cars and left to a one-day road trip to North-East Iceland.

Our first two stops were at Guðafoss waterfall and Höfði natural park. Guðafoss was pretty lame as a waterfall but the actual water was bright and had gorgeous blue color. Höfði natural park was just a forest - perhaps it's a sight for icelanders. Lake Mývatn looked nice from Höfði.

Guðafoss

Lake Mývatn looking from Höfði

Námafjall was out of this world, literally. I've seen pictures of bubbling mud ponds and Mars-lookalike landscapes, but experiencing them personally is a whole different thing. And the smell of sulphur <3 (smells like a gentle hangover fart).

Námafjall

"The road was slippery and the tires were bad"

Fictive Mika Häkkinen quote almost fit there. The road wasn't slippery but quite bumpy when we got closer to Dettifoss waterfall. The first half an hour our average speed was 20-30 km/h. Then we realized that going faster means less bruises in our asses. Perhaps faster speed wasn't good for suspension or tires, but there's nothing what a lithuanian boy-wonder couldn't fix :) Dettifoss was definately worth of seeing.

Dettifoss

Next we were off to Ásbyrgi canyon. Before entering Jökulsárgljúfur national park we made a quick stop to a gas station where some little punk (what is kusimutteri in English?) tried to frame me for breaking a milk jug :( Ásbyrgi was outstanding. I think The Lion King was filmed there.

Ásbyrgi canyon

It was getting late so one car from our armada headed back home. They were in such a hurry that the driver Grzegorz got a 52 000 ISK fine for speeding. Running into a police is truly bad luck. There are like 10 cops in entire Iceland. Rest of our fleet drove back to Mývatn area to Jarðböðin Nature Bath.

Jarðböðin. I stole this picture from their website.

Larger pictures



P.S. Sorry for posting this so late. I haven't had time, interest or internet connection to update my blog.

Pictures

Lots of open ground...

...FOR ME TO POOP ON!

Change of residence

On Monday I moved to my "permanent" residence to Gula Villan guest house. At the moment I have eight flatmates from six different nations. My room is in the top (third) floor with the best view.

Every floor has a kitchen and a bathroom of it's own. The quality of the kitchenware is poor. If I want to use oven I have to go two floors down and for microwave oven one floor. That's not good for a fat-ass like me :( And there's no coffee-maker, goddamn!

We are fortunate to have a internet connection (compared to the previous house) but the speed is very slooooooooow. I have to disable images from my browser in order to browse smoothly (smoothly = page load takes about 10 secs). Well, I didn't come all the way to Iceland to browse the internet...

The house is in a good location on Þingvallastræti. Outdoor swimming pool is right across the street and the city center just down the road. Trip to school takes 15-20 minutes depending on the wind.

Old house on Hamarstígur

Gula Villan guest house on Þingvallastræti

View from my window. It doesn't look so good in a picture.