30 November 2005

Ég flýg til Akureyrar á morgun

Aren’t you amazed by my newly acquired Icelandic talent?

Tomorrow I will be going on my first Ice-business trip to our office in Akureyri. It’s a 45-minute plane ride away to the Great City of the North, where I will meet all the guys I have been writing emails to for the past two and a half months. It’s a town that inspires fierce loyalty among its inhabitants, and the people living in Reykjavík that are from there were full of stories of places I had to see and experience. Although I am staying overnight, I am not sure there will be much time to try out the ski mountain or climb the other Favorite Mountain that all schoolchildren from Akureyri have had to climb.

Ship Sighting: Atlas is still in the shipyard after three weeks, and I am not sure what they are working on there. They finished the hull paintjob and redid the lettering of the name, but it’s still there. Another ship, Vestmannaey, came and went last week for its own touch up, the first time I have seen two boats of that size in the yard together. It’s always exciting to stop at the light by Hamborgara Búllan and see a new set of radar and antennae rising above the building- it reminds me of the seafaring history of this country on a daily basis. I hear that when the harbor development plans begin, the harbor will lose most of the gritty working character. I am sure it will be an improvement of sorts, but I will be sad to not see fish unloading and boat scraping as part of my regular routine.

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