Iceland. Expensive yet Priceless.

During our 6-month travel, Hans had one of his compositions played in Reyjavik, Iceland. It was the first time I went to this Northern Island. I had heard many good stories about it and was eager to see what all the fuss was about.

The first impressions already got to me from the plane while landing: Large stretches of molten, sharp lava rocks, surrounded by rough seas. There were basically no trees and the place seemed like another world. The Icelanders have a good sense of humour about their isolated and mistic country. When you take the bus from the airport to Reykjavik town you pass all sorts of fantasy-related villages like "elf-town", "troll-town" etc.

Iceland has a population of about 150.000 people. Every year more than a million tourist overtake the island like a tsunami. Since the fall of the Icelandic Krona the country became more affordable to outsiders. The Icelanders were however not prepared for these massive invasions and hotels were build rapidly to make the tourist boom profitable.

Years later even I still experienced that hotels are sold out by the minute and are often ridiculously expensive. Food in the supermarket is almost always important and therefore lacks quality and comes with a high price. Otherwise the country is calm. There is a village-feel everywhere you go and the surrounding nature is breathtaking.

Icelandic is a Nordic language and basically the same as old Norwegian. As I am living in Norway it was possible for me to understand some of it, but still I find Swedish and Danish more similar to the modern Norwegian of today.

Earthquakes and erruptions are not uncommon and most of Reykjavik gets their warm water from the geysers. So whenever you take a shower the water smells muddy and phosphor-like, and can be extremely hot.

I was lucky to have extremely good weather during my 2 week stay with temperatures hitting 25 degrees. As a traveler it is very difficult to get around. There are basically no buses and infrastructure is limited. Renting a car is a must if you want to get out of Reykjavik.

Fortunately the "Golden Circle" which has most of the natures highlights like waterfalls and geysers quite close to Reykjavik.

Iceland is a unique country. Isolated, unforgiving, rough and extreme. Still its people have an incredible sense of humour and tend to be very progressive regarding human rights and environmental technology.

If you have a couple of bucks to spend make sure you pay a visit once!