Day 4, January 9

Ho-ly crap.

Iceland is great.

Today started off with the usual miserable weather, except then, lo and behold, it started snowing. For three minutes. And then the skies opened up and it was a beautiful sunny day in Reykjavik. There are mountains all around this city. I had no idea until the rain finally fucked off for a few minutes to let me see them. Nothing was dripping on my head, or anywhere else. So, I hopped on the bus and took a long bus ride to Vellir, which is apparently some rocky wilderness that the Icelanders are vigorously building condos on. Think lava rocks covered in the ubiquitous vomitous green moss (it's actually quite lovely really) and homes in the Danish modern style. If the Danes were to build concentration camps. That's one thing you won't hear me praise about Reykjavik. The architecture. It's uniform, predictable, and no-frills.

So, after my bus ride I went home and showered and then caught up with a guy from CouchSurfing named Dagur who was having a birthday party at his/his mother's house. He, Robert and I went to get groceries and prepare a little food for the gathering. Icelanders began pouring in after not too long, and the drunkenness begins. I did finally meet some Icelanders who suck at English, but everyone made an effort anyway, and were as friendly as can be. People must have asked every five minutes if I needed a drink, if I were enjoying myself, if I liked Iceland, all sorts of things. The guy who spoke to me the most was one of the worst at English, and that really meant quite a bit to me. Dagur and all of his friends are just awesome, the best people I've met so far in Iceland here.

(It kills me how smart Icelanders are, by the way.)

After that, Robert, Thorsteinn, Fridrik(?) and I went down to 101 Reykjavik (that's the post code for the center of town) for a show, a band called Sudden Weather Change. These incredibly competent young guys put on a great show. Cups were thrown, drums were kicked over, guitars were played using the ceiling, drums were played with guitars, and Robert hopped his happy ass right up on stage and sang along with the band. His steamy glasses and boylike appearance made it all the better. The look on his face was as blissful as I'd be if, say, Joanna Newsom called and asked me to come play harpsichord on her next tour. As far as the crowd goes, I haven't seen people that excited about a local band, well, ever. Jumping, screaming, moshing, Nordic elbows in my face, and they knew all the lyrics to every song.

After that we went around to a few bars. I won't belabor any points with details, but Reykjavik is fucking nuts. These people party like the world is going to end every fucking weekend of the year. All these stunningly beautiful Vikings completely fucked out of their minds dancing to American songs from the 80s and 90s, again knowing every word. These people are amazing. There's no room to move in most of these places, so you get around by shoving, hard. You have to push and shove to get anywhere. No one gets angry about it, it's not rude, it's just what you do. And when there's 5 people over 6 feet tall trying to push past you at once, you find somewhere else to stand real quick.

One of the things I love about Reykjavik is that these people are unspoiled. They know no sin, they know no wrong. There's no real crime here. There's hardly any drug problem at all. They're so sure that nothing bad can happen to them, really, and it's true; nothing really bad does happen here. They have to follow our news to get any of the truly awful shit.

101 Reykjavik. I see what they're talking about now. I'm not even social usually, but I joined right in, screaming, spilling beer on my own shoulders, pushing, shoving, dancing, moshing and otherwise trying to hold back the darkness.

Additionally, it's good there's only 300,000 Icelanders and that half of them are wasted all weekend long. These people could take over the entire world if they needed to. They're beautiful, brilliant, and they do everything better; dressing, eating, talking, driving, manufacturing surviving. They drink more, smoke more, eat more, everything is extremes here.

I must again reiterate how great everone I met today was. Iceland doesn't suck after all. I knew it couldn't possibly.