Monday, May 30, 2005

Holy crap, I'm in Iceland

In an internet cafe in a mall somewhere near my hotel, to be exact.  Or, as exact as one can be in my state.  I left Maryland (more on that in a later entry) at 8:45 at night, and some six hours later, I arrived in Reykjavik at 6:ish in the morning.  Aren't time changes fun?  I'm fairly certain I got three or four hours of sleep on the flight (woo-hoo!) and, with that, I'm supposed to function normally. 

Heh.

Upon arriving at my hotel, I managed to walk right through a sand sculpture on the floor.  I think I broke a little candleholder sitting in the middle of it, too.  I apologized profusely (I try to be on ESPECIALLY good behavior when I'm an American abroad), but, really -- you shouldn't put obstacles on the floor (between the registration desk and the elevators) at a hotel that caters to tourists.  Your clientele is largely sleep-deprived.

My first impressions of Iceland -- gained largely from the walk to -- and around -- the mall, is that this is really the first country I've been to where English isn't the official language.  OK, I've also been to Israel and Jordan, but I was never ALONE there.  Here, the lady at the hotel registration desk told me there was an internet cafe on the third floor of the mall -- it didn't dawn on me until I got here that ALL THE STORE NAMES ARE NOT IN ENGLISH.  Try staring at a directory in a foreign language and figure out the shop you need.  I ended up walking from one end of the mall to the other, and not finding it.  Finally gave in and asked at the Information Desk (everyone seems to speak English, which is great -- you just have to let them know you need it) and it turns out the cafe is on the FIRST floor.  Probably would've found it walking by, too.  Although the place is called S24 (which means little) it does have "Internetkafe" written on it. 

By the way, the keyboard is the same ... but different.  They´ve got a few more characters here (like these guys: æ and ð) and, in order to have keys for them, they've moved the other stuff around.  I have to hunt around every time I need an apostrophe, as it is living two keys over to the right of "p" -- and shares a key with the question mark.  I'm telling you, typing is a challenge on a strange keyboard on four hours of sleep.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You walked through a sand sculpture? With a candleholder in the middle of it? Weird.

I'm glad you're sharing a bit of your trip with us ... I'll read as I get the chance. Fascinating!

Anonymous said...

You walked through a sand sculpture? With a candleholder in the middle of it? Weird.

I'm glad you're sharing a bit of your trip with us ... I'll read as I get the chance. Fascinating!

Anonymous said...

Ooops.  Sand PAINTING.  Shows you where my mind is.