lucky number seven

I've just completed the move into my seventh home in Reykjavík, back in my original moved-to-Iceland postcode, and a few blocks from this place. It's a lovely old house from the 1930s with graceful proportions and funny little details like a frosted glass window on the narrow bathroom door, and a pantry. Unlike my last apartment, the ceilings here are so high I can only see into a third of the kitchen cupboards, so I'm no longer ducking to get to my fridge or closet.

One of the grand things about this neighborhood is that it's old enough to have proper vegetation, so the view from the kitchen window to the back is a jungle of berry bushes, tall trees, shrubs, rhubarb, and cats that prowl through the underbrush. From the front of the house the view is bounded by the mountains to the southeast, with bits of ocean visible between the cute houses opposite. It's a street I remember walking down in 2005 on my way to the immigration office, never imagining that someday I would occupy one of these lovely places.

Our downstairs neighbors have lived here for decades- he's been in the house since he was 3 and he's now in his 80s. They've got a book binding room and a Finnish sauna in the basement, and the garden overflows with plants I didn't know could live happily here, like deep pink peonies that are blooming now against the warm stone wall of the house. It's a lovely place to live.

Since returning to this neighborhood I've returned to Sundhöllin as my local pool, a spot that seems most frequented by tourists who wander lost in the mysterious maze that is the locker room. These mini-dressing rooms are one of my favorite elements of this pool, as well as the generously sized hot tub on the roof with views over the city (and into the apartment opposite once occupied by a friend). I've noticed that the locals who go there seem to have certain locker loyalties, so while I'm lacing up my shoes I overhear the classic old pool-going men specifically asking for locker sixty-two please. I haven't noticed any particular difference in the lockers, other than the importance to get a high number so as to avoid the boring overflow lockers, so I do wonder what the attraction is.

But back to lucky number seven, where I am typing this while watching the little calico cat that lives opposite prowling the territory, and admiring the flowering trees that line the street. I've realized that with the exception of my first home here, I've always had a view- a snippet of mountain, a sheen of sea, maybe both. It can spoil a girl to have a couch oriented so that the seagulls and the airshow are all on display. This is why there's no need for a TV- an open windowshade is all I need.

I'm still finding out about the neighborhood essentials though. Yesterday en route home from downtown I found a video store, and there's a bakery that seems heavy on the chocolate-themed baked goods but not so much on the breakfast staples, but I'm still hunting for the last-minute-open-late shop. Plenty of guesthouses and hotels around though, and we certainly don't lack for tourists because of that. It's a great place to walk around, full of architecture that varies from late 19th century to a few more modern 70s looking places, trimmed with charming gardens and friendly cats patrolling their section of pavement. The only downside is that I've had to learn how to parallel park properly for the first time in my life. Can't have it all, I guess.

two ways

Last Saturday I met one of the very few traffic engineers in Iceland, and we spent some time discussing how they're in the process of overhauling the timing of all the lights in town so that certain corridors have the "green wave" where you can hit greens all the way along. This was happy news, since only a few months ago I'd been having a conversation about how the number and timing of the lights in town can make geographically close places seem very far away. I'd actually done a mini-project just after that where I took a camera-phone picture of every red light I waited at over the course of a week's worth of commuting. I missed a few (my cameraphone is slow, I was of course focusing on driving, and sometimes they turned green only a second after I'd stopped), but it still shows the variety and frequency to some extent. You can see how the Búllan left-turn stop is a frequent appearance, but also how the view at some lights make it no hardship to wait. Still, I'm happy to see that these changes the traffic engineer mentioned have started to make a noticeable difference, and I'd be interested to see if a week of red lights in a few months (when there's enough light to repeat this project) would yield the same number of photos over a week.

To contrast with this, I occasionally go for the 40 minute walking commute that I've mentioned before. My most common route passes my local corner bakery, then heads over the pond and down Laugavegur, ending on the rather ordinary office-building street where I work. I've continued the walking commute in spite of the season change, taking another route in the darkness of Icelandic November. In the dark the appeal is different- the route I take goes along a street displaying views to the left of downtown, and passes a number of small houses where I can see people reading the paper and drinking coffee in their kitchens. I've also found other mysterious corners of Reykjavík, like the location of the handicapped association swimming pool, and hidden gardens located in the center of downtown. To follow the whole trip from one morning a month ago, check it here.

So now you see how most of my days start and end, a string of red lights or of uninspired architecture framed by what is still some seriously memorable landscape. Could always be worse.

accidental delights

Two weeks in Germany seems like a rather fat chunk of time but it ended up being only just enough to wish that there'd been more time to explore. Along our trek from north (my beloved Weimar) to south (Oberstdorf), from east (Frieburg) to west (Görlitz), we happened upon quite a few accidental delights in our relatively loose plan.

One such happenstance occurred as we were making our way east from Weimar and felt the need to stop for lunch. A winding road labeled the Saxon Wine Street caught my eye in our six euro map book, so we exited just before Dresden and headed north to the street that we almost missed at first glance. It ended up being a narrow road that followed the Elbe's valley, stacked on the opposite side with red granite cliffs. Behind nearly every house on the street was a tiny cluster of grape vines, and the few restaurants along the way promised river trout and local wines.

S soon spotted a sign for Schloss Proschwitz's winery, and since the combination of castles plus wine was irresistable, we followed the arrow up a steep road that ended at the top of the red granite cliff. There, we missed the unlabeled winery building altogether and ended up in the church yard at our first attempt, but soon had righted things and were in the sunny stone courtyard, surrounded by freshly painted yellow walls. Inside the wine shop, we learned that they didn't serve lunch at the restaurant there but the proprietor happily pointed us back down the hill to where a former ferry-landinghouse served up a good meal.

Back down the hill we found a grand old building with a sunny terrace looking over the Elbe and a pasture full of cows. We lunched there, accompanied by frosty glasses of local riesling (not normally my favorite but this was dry and delightful) while a paddleboat flapped by, and a majestically furry cat sought shade in the cool soil of a potted tree. Then, since it's a shame to go anywhere called a wine road without actually purchasing some wine, back up to the winery on the hill. There we were shown the paces of the locale, and when it turned out they had a guesthouse with a free room we decided that reaching the Polish border that day was really not all so pressing. Why not stay here in a room named after one of the grape varieties grown there, a princess fairy-tale of a room, complete with half-timbered ceilings, curly iron bedstead, a wall of windows overlooking the courtyard, and cheerful striped curtains?

After a pause that refreshed, we climbed back into our American rental hampstermobile and descended to the river valley again, where we found a tiny ferry chuffing cars across, and buildings marked with the high water levels from the flooding some years ago. Then, on to Meissen, with its tempting medieval skyline. We climbed up the hill to the castle, a white flourish of fantasy with a walkway encircling the base, then snuck up a staircase to admire the soot-stained twin towers of the cathedral inside. A winding road descended from the castle into the old town below, past crenellated brick house-tops as well as forlorn forgotten remainders of the GDR era.

We stopped to try the Meissner fummel, famous more for the story than the flavor, I'd venture. History goes that this yeast-bubble of a pastry was invented due to an 18th century messenger that was rather too fond of the local booze and kept tipping off his horse and failing to deliver things on time. So an inventive baker came up with this fragile pastry, which the messenger was required to deliver intact along with the messages, a feat that was only possible if he remained sober enough to cling to his horse. Nice story but as a flavor it was like eating sourdough bread crust without all the chewy yum inside.

We returned to the car along the riverbank, and back at the winery we tried out the restaurant on the first floor of the building. I'd already been told that Germany specialised more in the white wines, but the dornfelder that we sampled there that night was unforgettable. Of course it could have been the pinkly descending dusk, the unexpected delights of finding such a charming (and inexpensive!) guesthouse, the perfect scale of Meissen, or the foamy cucumber soup with smoked trout we had as an appetizer. Whatever it was, the evening was divine, made even more delightful by the short "commute" back to the fluffy crispness of bed upstairs.

The next morning we went down to the cheerful breakfast room where our shy hostess had set our table with crested china and a heavy silver coffee service. A basket of fresh rolls stood at one side of the table, curls of local ham and a variety of cheese at the other side, along with grown-up grape juice (this was not Welch's by any means) and a locally produced wine jelly. We ate ourselves silly before getting directions to the Schloss itself, a frilly yellow marvel set among manicured grounds and surrounded by grapes.

That day's delights continued on, with more unexpected finds as we explored other small roads. We fell upon the hunt castle at Moritzburg, complete with a chinoiserie mini-castle surrounded by peacock breeding grounds, and punctuated by a lighthouse folly (and strangely, protected the the same huntsman statues as we'd found in a secluded corner of the Schloss Proschwitz grounds), and then as we penetrated further into the former GDR territories, the abandoned leftovers of decades of brown coal mining and neglected buildings. We visited a town now in two different countries, separated by a river that had been bridgeless during the GDR times, and ended the day in another confection of an overnight, the Cloister Marienthal.

This is but a sample of the awesome, leaving me resolved that next time the trip should be even longer, leaving more time to explore these eastern parts. It's not the easy-to-love charm of Bavaria, but the contrast between the abandoned remnants of the GDR, the incredible Baroque castles that survived all the impossibility, the lack of tourist gloss, and the interesting flavors of Silesian cuisine and Proschwitz wines have me definitely ready to go again.

so, Helsinki

We returned from the days in Tallinn to the mayday celebrations in Helsinki, a town that had not impressed at first view but grew on me quickly in the subsequent days. It's a bit like if you exploded lower Manhattan into a whole city, and sprinkled it with many more parks and better sea access. The buildings are heavy on the teens to Deco, and the bricks haven't gotten the coal-infused hue of London, so the overall impression was a gently colorful one. The clothing aesthetic, made somewhat notorious by a longtime favorite website, hel-looks, reminds me of my artist-nerdy high school taken on citywide. In general, there's this impression that everyone's very busy FEELING lots of intense feelings, but since Finns are notoriously stoic, they can't talk about them. Instead, they invest all this intensity into assembling interesting outfits and designing things, and more things, and a few more things.

Once again, we stumbled upon the most glorious of weather, so our trips outside the city were alight with arcing blue skies and the neon green of freshly unfolded birch leaves. We went to the home of Sibelius, Finlands most famous composer. The wood frame house was set among a stand of birches, and all around the lawn had grown velvety and rich, a tempting place to take a sunbath. The visit was followed by a private concert of some of the composer's pieces, then a delectable lunch at a nearby restaurant. We returned drunk from sun and brightness, full of music.

But the best experience from the trip was actually nothing to do with the choir group, but rather my friend DTW, a Finn who'd come to Iceland as an exchange student, and started reading my blog before he came to get a taste of life here before he came. He came to the concert we had in the rock church in Helsinki, and then on Saturday evening, another day drenched in sun, he assembled all the proper goods for a picnic and we headed towards a park on the sea. The route we walked took us through prosperous and well-groomed neighborhoods of Deco homes, all painted in Klimt colors of sage green, aged rose, and palest coffee. At the park we settled in a glade that offered a glimpse of the sea, boats, and the people strolling slowly along the esplanade, and DTW unpacked the treats. He'd bought all sorts of his favorite cheeses, the squeaky kind, the spready kind, and bread and fruit to go with. I'd also found some early-season strawberries at a street stand, and with a bottle of organic white wine, we had all we needed for a proper talknhangout.

It was that time of year that is impossibly magical, when the green on the trees and lawns is so fresh it almost aches, so optimistic and eye-searingly bright, a color forgotten in the long months of winter. This park was exactly where I wanted to be that night, and it seemed as if everything conspired to make it just so- the just-busy-enough vibe, the scads of people sprinkled about drinking in the sun, even the peach-colored hot air balloons that materialized further along the shore and drifted over the city.

Of course, we're still talking about northern lands in spring, so when the sun dropped behind the Baltic, chill set in and was time to move on. We took the coastline route home, watching as the sky became lavender and then navy. A perfect evening.

a nice sort of holiday

Shopping in Nice is an adventure if it's done properly, which has to include the Saleya street market. It's the kind of place where a smile will bring a special discount on your onions, where the barrel-chested North Africans selling celery sing songs as they stack their wares, where the bread ladies kiss half their clients in holiday greeting. It's where going to the furthest end of the market yields the best discounts, a whole aluminum pail of sweet, bright carrots for one euro fifty.

Stacks of radishes fan out like a modern art sculpture, and stalls selling nothing but dried fruits are a bonanza of slicked colors. Pass the spice stall and pause to allow the harissa, the coriander, and the dozens of different pepper varieties soak through your nostrils. It's like all the markets I love so much in Paris, but here the people speak with the similarly squashed a's of French Canadians. They're happy to offer advice on how to cook the locally produced handmade ravioli, which kind of stinky cheese is the best, and pass your bag of baby spinach to you with a flourish.

The wine shop is another adventure altogether, with a whole wall lined in vats. Bring your own bottle and they'll fill it from the spout with local wine for less than three euros. Sounds like a recipe for a headache but it goes down smooth and leaves just enough mellowness to really feel like you're on holiday.

My family's been staying in a flat in an ancient building in the center of the oldest part of town for the past week. It's got massively high ceilings and is in transition out of a series of unfortunate modifications, one of which involved fuzzy hallway wallpaper. Our flat is cozy and loft-y, making it difficult at times to decide whether the delights are greater inside or outside.

Outside the door though, is a whole medieval neighborhood full of wind-y streets, frigid and beautiful churches, and the sweeping Baie Des Anges (bay of angels) a few blocks over, so appropriately named. I climbed to the top of the bluff near the sea yesterday, marveling at how exactly right everything there looked- the scrubby pine trees arcing gracefully towards the water, the hillsides encrusted with sorbet-colored buildings, the impossible blue of the Mediterranean stretching south towards Africa. Even the light here is how it should be, saturated with gold and as warm as a wood stove. It's a pleasant change from the darkness of Iceland.

On the fringes of Airwaves

I did not go to any of the acts here over the weekend as part of the well-publicized Airwaves festival, but I did go to a few of the many hanger-on events that were scheduled for the same weekend, hoping to capitalize on the higher concentration of hipper-than-thou folk in town.

On Friday I went to the opening reception of the home and design show. Held in Laugardalshöllin, it was supposed to showcase the best and brightest of Icelandic design. In some respects it succeeded wonderfully, with a corner crammed with small objects- textiles, sculpture, tableware, and lights. The rest of the show was a little jumbled though, with exhibits ranging from hot tubs for the summerhouse, to Kaupþing (the bank), various big n splashy TV displays, an exhibit on new materials and construction techniques, and a toy shop for kids. As always with trade shows like this, there was plenty of champagne, chocolate, cookies, and sandwich-y nibbles, just like the fishing tech showcase, and the high tech expo I went to before. No fishing nets at this one though.

On Saturday it was all about architecture for the presentation of the first Icelandic building award. It was held in the Reykjavik Art Museum's Kjarvalsstaðir branch, an apt locale for the audience whose overall wardrobe vibe was blacker than Iceland in December. After a lot of rambling presentation-talk, the Prime Minister handed over the award to the people who built the Blue Lagoon's skin therapy spa, and the thing was over after some slightly thin applause. Since it was the first time for the event, it seemed a bit tentative on the whole, in spite of the champagne, but I could not disagree with the splendid venue, the great style-watching, and the licorice-topped chocolate squares.

Then off to swank lounge b5 where the whole place had been graffittoed out for the official launch party of the hot book of the season, Icepick. The author's a friend of a friend, and is one of those people who is way cooler than you will ever be, but is super nice about it. Her clothing store just down the street, Ósoma, has the kind of design that makes for a worthwhile souvenir- truly Icelandic, obscure yet not too much, and supporting the local folks.

The event had been very publicized to the Airwaves Press Pass crowd, who all showed up for the free lady-cocktails (pink or purple, an odd choice for the launch of so fierce a book) and the porcupine styled fruit kebab trays that were ringed with prosciutto-wrapped figs and various other not-from-these-parts delicacies. As with every event that weekend, there were plenty of people I knew there, but the high percentage of camerafolks made it seem like we were at something Really Huge.

I'm not sure now if it was Airwaves that made for the art-laden weekend or if it's just that fall is when it Happens Here. After the summertime of long and empty weekends stretching ahead, it's back-to-back Things To Do, and I don't want to miss any of it. This is why blogging has been a bit of a back seat of late. That and this ennnnndless rain that's making me gloomy in spite of myself. Hopefully no more will need to be said on that subject!

nerdtunes in austerity

I am a semi-big fan of 16th century choral music. When I was in college, I heard Victoria's Requiem on the radio the first time as I was supposed to be headed out the door for work. 20 minutes later I was still listening, my work forgotten, as I sat on the windowseat in my sunsplashed room.

Yesterday I got to relive the feeling with live music at a concert of this loved piece at Reykjavík's Catholic church-on-a-hill. Unlike the rest of the ecclesiastical architecture here, this church is almost old-world looking, with frilly multicolored floor tiles, an organ loft with elaborate woodwork, marbled balustrades, and a full complement of stained-glass windows that yesterday streamed with the blazingly frigid sun. The whole building is rather miniature compared to the Great Churches of Europe and still maintains the Scandinavian austerity by keeping the gold trimming down to a few framed paintings and only a saintly statue or two. The windows are also just colors- nary a crucifix or Ascent to Heaven in sight.

The Catholic consistency carries to the seats as well, which are properly wooden, properly uncomfortable, and pitched ever so slightly forward so you get a nice thigh workout the whole time or you end up giving in and genuflecting on the kneelers, the only padded surface in the place. It was even not really warm enough in the building, although not quite as bad as the completely unheated concert I went to in a tiny southern Czech town where everyone huddled in full outdoor gear, our breath steaming up towards the multi-story headless saints painted on the walls.

But I digress.. this was about music originally. The performers were a blend of English and Icelandic singers, only two or three voices per part, and even a man singing alto in proper Renaissance fashion. The crowd was more mixed than I would have expected from a concert of this type, were it to have been held in the US. Such a concert in the States would have been more gray hair than hipster-scarves, but here it's an all-types interest group, from the usual older Classical Music Lover couple, the politician-style guy with the enormously coiffed hair in front of me to the just-stepped-from-his-garage-band-practice guy in the sixth row. Something for everyone, apparently.

The performace was beautifully executed, and my kórstjóri S (who also attended, and apparently once played the organ there) was right in saying that the acoustics of this church are among the best in Iceland. I suspect it's partly because of that unpadded, uncarpeted aesthetic that creates just the right amount of resonance without adding too much of its own commentary. The voices were clear, the execution well-timed, and although I could argue with the pronunciation of some of the French lyrics, the mood took me straight back to that morning in college when Iceland was nowhere in my thoughts and I forgot about everything in the wandering voices.