chapter new

The past three months have been an abrupt shift in quite a lot of my life parameters, and although late November was a rather rough phase, the outcome so far has been far better than I could have imagined. I'm working for a new company now, with people I've known almost as long as my time in Iceland, and I'm pretty sure a better group of colleagues can't possibly exist. They're smart, reliable, funny, interesting people whom I've seen through many thrilling years are completely trustworthy as well. I feel extremely lucky to be part of this group and doing such interesting projects.

 New job also means new office, and also more frequent trips to Akureyri to sync with the team up there. The office in Akureyri was previously occupied by an investment firm, and although the entire building is now empty, it feels more like they're just out at lunch than they moved out. The company letterhead and official stamps are still in the supply closet, the firm's name is on the wall, and the ladies room is better stocked than at a fancy hotel. Perfume, makeup remover, hand cream, hair pins, and hairspray are all neatly lined up on a glass table beside a fancy lamp. I'm the only woman who occasions the place so it's a very luxurious experience.

The building is a lovely old one with thick walls, a huge brick chimney in the center, and an elegant pre-2008 renovation inside with frosted glass walls etched with the names of the now-disappeared banking divisions. From the windows the view is pure Akureyri- a vast sweep of fjord and in the darkness, the pulsing heart of lights someone put on the opposite side of the water. Mornings there have been my favorite, especially the day I arrived this week. The fjord was hung about with clouds, but as the sun rose, the undersides shown rosily, and a beatific light poured in the windows and shone on our development manager.

Lunch there is rather fun, since there are only a few frequented spots among the working crowd of the north. The daily menu at Strikið is usually good value, and I'm sure to run into a few of my former colleagues who've found work at other nearby places. After lunch we can stop by and visit some others who set up shop together and inherited the famous foosball table.

The post-work time's also as cozy as I've come to expect from visits to Akureyri. My new boss's wife works in tourism, so she recommended a guesthouse as a possible home-away-from-home, and she didn't steer me wrong. The place feels like being at home, with a dining room stocked with all the necessary crockery, free use of the kitchen, tea supplies, and even candles and a lighter so your room is properly home-like. With the wooden floors and furnishings typical of Icelandic homes, it's no hardship to spend a night or two here.

In the mornings I can just cross through the center of town to get to work, along a route where people leave their cars unlocked, idling, and empty while they pop into the bank, or dash into the bakery for their morning cinnamon bun. It's that kind of town, Akureyri is, and visiting it always reminds me of why it's so good to live in Iceland- the views, the air, the cozy feeling, the people I've been so fortunate to have in my life.

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.

two sides of the story

This morning dawned perfectly October so I strapped on my rollerblades and went out along my favorite route by the sea. A bright blue windless day, it was the perfect time to enjoy the autumnal colors of landscape- the orange kelp thrown up on the beaches, the wheated grass, the mossy color of the seaweed, peppered with eider ducks. Across the bay, Esja slumbered stoically, unchanged in the chaos. The best bits of Iceland are still here. I didn't come to buy a no-money down Mercedes jeep with a loan in Euros, I didn't come so I could spend my weekends in shopping malls, and most of my friends are not that sort either. We're here, going about our daily business, having coffee, preparing for new babies, going to work, reading, talking, swimming, running. In the meantime, I've been collecting info from anywhere and everywhere about what to do now, reading everything I can, absorbing Icelandic financial terms, quizzing my dad (a voracious newspaper reader and all around clever guy).

A few say that heads will roll and are extremely depressed, predicting massive fuel shortages and a dark and gloomy time ahead, others say that there'll be some unemployment (inevitable when the such a major sector collapsed), a lot of restructuring and some discomfort but the future's bright. Time for fish, time for manufacturing, time for increasing the farming production, time for getting on with things, doing what Icelanders know how to do and get creative. Maybe the þetta reddast spirit will prevail. I think we all have to hope it does, since there really is so much to love about this place.

I had a long talk with HK, an economist friend today, and she said it was high time this happened. The foreign labor that came to work on the construction sites will go home, and no longer be sending their incomes out of the country, the economy will have to diversify, the people get creative. There's been an incredible pulling-together of people here, as the nudd-pottur in Laugardalslaug is full to bursting every day, people talking about what's happening, what should happen, what we can do. Most people I know are NOT going crazy buying as much food as they can, most are not storing their cash under their mattress. It's wait-and-see mode for now. The scale of activities at work now is such that we can only watch and keep doing our usual stuff, praying that the credit cards will still work when we go to pay the grocery bill (so far, so good).

Of course, everyone's got a story of someone who did something foolish, taking out a loan in foreign currency to buy stocks in one of the now-collapsed banks, only to then lose his job at said bank, someone else who invested their entire life-savings in a single bank, also to find themselves penniless. There's stories that the suicide rate over the weekend was alarmingly high too. But as HK pointed out, these are the things that every economist learns first off to not do- don't take out a loan in another currency than you're earning, don't put all your eggs in one basket. We may have all gotten by in the past by not being economists but maybe now it's time to start a bit more, be a bit more careful.

I would also like to point out that in spite of what it may have sounded like in my last post regarding the Iceland-for-Icelanders group, this was a small, much derided group, and not at all the general feeling of the populace. My experience with Icelanders continues to be a positive one. I've got some wonderful Icelandic friends here, and the people I work with are the sort to be truly proud to stand beside. The team spirit where I work is excellent, and after my boss spent an hour and a half yesterday explaining various economic ins and outs, the future of our company, and all the great ideas he had, I could only think, "this is worth sticking around for".

northern summer

Once again in my second home in Norway, it's been a week of the most perfect weather I could imagine. A balmy 75f/25c has made everyone relaxed with positivity, from the security and check-in people at the airport to the waitresses at all the restaurants I ate at this week. There may not be a lot of incredibly hot weather here but it does seem that everyone enjoys it tremendously. The sidewalks have bloomed with women in colorful dresses and little open sandals, while men go bold and shorten their trousers to knee-length.

It made working inside very difficult, but every chance I had after hours, I was outside. I walked along the river in the village where I'm staying, following a bike path that twined through the carefully mown riverbank and ended in one of the tidiest neighborhoods I have seen. Norwegians seem to know how to do organized quite well.

For dinner, my options for exploration were slightly more restricted, as I was staying in the in-between town of Lilleström, known for two things: being at the halfway point between Oslo and the Gardermoen airport, and for the largest conference center in Norway. The latter reason has generated a cluster of gassy conference-goer steakhouse type restaurants, but just beyond that, amidst the ubiquitous kebab and hamburger shops that crowd Norway, there's a delightful little restaurant that I first went to at coworker M's suggestion to try the moose steak. The Swedish waiter was incredibly friendly during that first visit, and since the restaurant was nearly completely empty I got extra-nice service. I went back on Wednesday for a leisurely dinner where the same waiter greeted me and remembered the strange toasted vegetable that I loved so much at my last meal there three months ago. When he brought my salad he brought a bowlful of the peculiar specialty as an extra side. The food at this place is not complicated and the menu is short, but when it's enjoyed with crisp white wine in a haze of sunshine, what more in life does one need?

And now I am at the airport, with my usual pre-flight pasta salad lunch, experience a new kind of sensation- being in a large public building that appears to have no air conditioning. Sure, it's a bit hot, but in the euro-traveler appropriate summer dress, I feel perfectly comfortable. It's summer. There's no need to freeze us all with overefficient AC.

Norway does not feel like it will ever be my home, but at least it's a place where I'm finding some element of happiness and balance. I do feel privileged that it's been part of my working life, that I've basically experienced this place for free, as a requirement of my job. Up next week, Leeds, England!

(does anyone know about Leeds?)

high times

One of the staples of any Iceland resident's social calendar is árshátíð, the annual company party. This is not an awkward Office-style gig where you buy a couplea cheap paper tablecloths, a jug of booze (if your company even deems it appropriate to have alcohol), and some deviled eggs, but rather an all-out extravaganza of those guys you only see in jeans and socks-n-tevas wearing ties and suits, and the ladies shake out the ball gowns, shimmery eye shadow, and impractical shoes.

Apparently the usual season for árshátíð ("year's-high-time" if translated literally) is in the spring but my company has always been dangerous and different and gone for the September celebration. The first year I was in Iceland the gala happened 4 days into my new job and was held in Poland. As a way to arrive in your new job, a free trip to Warsaw is not too bad, but it set a pretty high standard for future events.

This year, like last year, it was a more local event in a function hall big enough to hold the some-200 people that make up the Icelandic portion of the company. Just like events in college, the pre-party was an essential part, where everyone stood about, felt a little awkward in their fancydress clothes and tried not to talk about work. Then off to cocktail hour where they lubed us up with glasses of champagne so everyone was feeling festive as they were ushered into the main hall. Pre-dinner everyone got a number for door prizes, which, since I work in high-tech, was all printers and other gadgets.

The dinner itself was hosted by a Personality, some actor who gets a little extra coin for coming up and being amusing between courses at grand dinners. Since we are talking Iceland here, there was also a participatory singing portion of the evening. As I am sure I have mentioned before, Icelanders+alcohol+time=singing. After dinner it was dancing, drinks, and proper mingling. I discovered that a French guy I met at a party last year is the husband of someone I work with, I met lots of wives of the guys I work with, I got to see face-to-face all these people from the northern office who are almost exclusively MSN/Skype relationships.

The first time I heard that it was a Big Fun Deal to party down with your boss I was a little skeptical, since at my last job I almost never socialized with the people I worked with, but it's a different story here. Maybe it's because people here are so often kind of buttoned-up that it's fun to see what happens when they start to become chatty, or because it's a close community and the lines between work and play are a little more blurred as a result.

Part of why these things are so extravagant is that a portion of the money that pays for them actually comes from the staff, in the form of a small monthly deduction from your paycheck. It's used for árshátíð, the equally essential and Icelandic óvissuferð (secret trip), and the third element of the work socializing Triple Crown, the jólahlaðborð, or Christmas Buffet. It might seem odd that your own money goes to this kind of thing but it does make for a closer work environment, which for the most part is a great thing. I am not sure if it is allowed or even possible to opt out of this bit of money being taken out anyway, so might as well enjoy it!

all the tortoises in Athens

My oldest brother lived in Athens for some time, and he once wrote me a postcard telling me that there are lots of tortoises living there. This was to be my Fun Factoid Insider Information about the place for future cocktail party conversation. That's how I feel about all these random things I've learned so far about Norway. I've sampled from both rival sushi restaurants here, and my personal jury is still undecided as to whether Nippon Art or Alex Sushi comes away with the Best Ever prize for this city. I've learned that Norwegian floor drains are more thriftily designed than the Icelandic counterparts (why have two floor drains when you can have just one?) which sometimes causes inconvenience. In the first hotel I stayed at, the shower water flowed through a hole in the side of the shower stall, streamed halfway across the bathroom and through the only drain in the floor. Don't leave your socks on that floor!

I've learned about why shrimp from different shrimp boats can taste so different, what makes Telemark notable (other than the skiing technique) and where the Norwegian summer went this year. This information is stashed in some corner of my brain with Useless Things I Know, along with the location of the go-go club and related colorful characters down the street from where I last stayed, in the middle of downtown Oslo.

I've been there four times now and for some reason I just don't have a ton to say about it. Maybe it's the nature of work travel that limits your knowledge of a place to the flag that snaps outside the window being a different color. Maybe it's the odd mixture in the areas where I have been, the drug addicts mixed with the enchanting sorbet-colored 17th century buildings, the people walking the streets that resemble stretched-out versions of Icelanders (facial features are similar but everyone seems taller here) speaking Another Language, the "late night commercial activity" going on along these immaculate streets, the enchanting looking villages I've whizzed by so many times on the trains.

I just came back yesterday from yet another trip, again having seen almost nothing of the place. Maybe next time I'll make it north to visit my friend, but until then my experience will probably be more about the people I travel with and the work I do, rather than rambling through those temptingly rolling fields that spread below as I fly in and out.

northern winds

Am reporting today from the almost-Arctic town of Akureyri. I arrived yesterday with a plane full of co-workers, and although half had intended to fly back yesterday, everyone got stuck here overnight due to high winds. The airport here is on a little flat of land that juts out into the massive fjord where the town is located, so the combination of cross-winds and tiny planes meant we were all isolated. I'm told that this can happen often, and we discovered several others in the same hotel that had been similarly grounded by the weather.

Sadly, it was also very warm and cloudy, so the famous snow was dingy and gray, and the roads full of ice. Everyone had good times sliding up the hill to swim after work though, then back down again afterwards. We dined at Strikið, the top-floor location offering views across to the tiny lights on the opposite side of the fjord in one direction, and the illuminated facade of Akureyri's iconic church the other direction. The wind continued to howl as we ate, bending the windowpanes, jangling the christmas lights strung along the stairs to the church and making the stars suspended over the streets below sway crazily.

Later we had coffee at M's house, full of wood trim and red-checked curtains. We had freshly-baked Icelandic Christmas cookies, the rare and special kind with the chocolate top, the buttercream filling, and the almonded bottom. Everyone keeps telling me about how annoying and difficult they are to make, and yet everyone keeps on making them. My Icelandic speaking abilities are still to the level that makes me mostly a spectator but after a day of only-Icelandic meetings I was saturated enough to be keeping up with almost everything, jokes included.

It's hard to explain the surreal feeling of being there in that house, knowing that outside the massive snow-covered mountains loom all around, the wind sweeping down their dark and uninhabited slopes. This was ordinary life for the others at the table but for me I couldn't stop mentally comparing to the other life I could have had, and did have, in a place where the weather doesn't hold such sway over daily life, where I'm not infused with this ancient language. Two years ago I didn't know a word of Icelandic, and now some element of it will never not be a part of me. Soon I might even be able to participate in the conversations, but for now I'm happy to at least be able to follow along.

It's 11 am now, and the rising sun is just turning the clouds above the mountain out the window to golden peach. The wind's still sending the clouds surging across the fjord, and I can see the water churning angrily, even though we're miles away from the open ocean here. In only three hours, the light will again be fading, and a few hours later, if the wind releases its grip on us, I will return to the chaos of Reykjavík.

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.