Party at the Top of the World

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Well! It's been a bit quiet on the site this past week because I've been traveling. I'm still not home - I'm waylaid at JFK - but I at least have a stable internet connection now.

I was invited to go to Reykjavik for the annual EVE-Online Fanfest. Okay, I'll admit right now that I am not an EVE-Online fan: I find it too cold in space. But the community really intrigues me, as does the company that creates the game, CCP. And how often do I get a chance to go to Iceland? Not often enough!

Iceland really is amazing. We got in around 6 in the morning and it would still be dark for a couple of hours, but I could still see enough of the landscape to be a bit breathless. It's like nowhere I've ever visited - the volcanic ground broken up by pools of water, rocks covered with moss and scrubby grass. No trees. It's like living on the moon, if your concept of the moon was from the fifties.

The culture here too is interesting. It's a very homogeneous gene pool - like Japan that way - so outsiders really stand out. Still, there were a lot of tourists in spite of the extremely high cost of everything (a beer was considered a "deal" at 500 ISK - about 8 USD) and the rather extreme weather conditions. It wasn't the cold so much - okay, it was the cold, but it was also the high winds. I mean think about it - Iceland is a rock, essentially, dropped in the middle of the North Atlantic. The weather just sweeps down here with no buffer straight from the Arctic. It's bracing.

And everyone sort of knows everyone else. There's only 117,000 people in the city, so as one young Icelander explained to me, chances are you know someone else. "Have you noticed that everyone looks at you when you go into a bar?" he asked me. "That's because they think they might know you - you are a cousin's best friend, or my kid's kindergarten teacher, or someone you went to school with." And indeed I met a group of New Yorkers on their way to have fun in the city and ended up running into them while we were all out Friday night.

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The evening we arrived, we were invited to go to the famous Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa located near the airport. It was dark and hailing when we left the hotel. I was a bit worried.

With, as it turned out, good reason - the wind got harsher over the hour it took to get there, and when it came time to strip, it was whipping pellets of pure pain (i.e. rain) into our faces. When we got to the water, it was even harsher. Because it's all natural, the water is not consistently warm - you have to find the good hot vents and defend your territory once you do, for the rest of the pool is lukewarm. And all the while, the wind is picking up waves and spray of sulfur-water and flinging it in your face. I had also neglected to tie my hair back so that too was whipping in my face like straps of wet leather. Ouch.

Still, I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. It was exhilerating.

I've got to go catch my plane soon. More later.... Posted by jane at November 05, 2007 06:54 AM | TrackBack