4 months of Erasmus exchange studies in the Northern capital of Iceland, Akureyri. Plenty of absolutely new and breath-taking experience. If you think about it - you can do a lot in 4 months. You can live every minute of those 4 months like it is your last one and get yourself in constant adventures. Or you can do nothing or read a pile of books and watch some hundred movies and all the seasons of your favourite TV-show.
And then you can be somewhere between fast and exciting stream of time and easy, calm days. You can end up in Iceland which is the story of me and hundreds of other exchange students that are lucky enough to be given a chance to live and study in the magnificent land of stunning scenery, fantastic people and unique way of living.
During my studies, I did and saw some things I would never see and do back home. And then again, from the other side, there were weeks of me doing nothing. That is the effect of the Icelandic nature that sometimes makes you want to explore it all, but sometimes calms you down willing to sit still and enjoy the grand power of the nature and solitude.
“See? You are in the middle of the Atlantic ocean!” were one of the first things our international coordinator kindly reminded when we visited the Uni for the first time. And I kept repeating it to myself several times during my stay. “Holy f**k, Justīne! You are in Iceland!”, I often told myself when things got surreal or were just too beautiful to understand. 4 months later, I arrived back home. My friends greeted me with big festivity and we concluded - everything is just the same as it was 4 months ago. I had not changed and Iceland started to seem like nothing but a well-memorized dream. Because there are so few things that I could actually bring home with me. Analogies and parallels between Iceland and any other country I have ever been are so hard to be drawn that few Facebook chats and pictures are my only remaining connections with the land that often seemed just too good to be true.
A small list of things that are ought to stay in Iceland (just bear in mind - most of those things can and are done elsewhere, but are just not the same as in Iceland. Also, remember that nothing’s perfect, even Iceland, the negative aspects just were not bright enough in comparison with the positive impressions):
Hitchhiking. My very first minutes in Iceland - the plane had landed and everything looked like in the movies of Ingmar Bergman - rough and rocky landscape, gray and rainy sky. And there I was - few hundreds of meters of Keflavik airport, trying to get a ride to Reykjavik. And that was where I knew - I will enjoy every minute of hitchhiking in Iceland. Never had I felt as safe and excited as on the stunning highways (OK, highway, I mainly hitched the main Motorway No 1) and in the cars of the lovely Icelanders that always carried a saga or simply an interesting story for me. 2300 kilometers of hitchhiking (mostly doing 400 km between Reykjavik and Akureyri in one day) and I will keep all the drivers in super-warm memory - from an old man who wanted to give me and forced me to take 90 euros so I’d have some breakfast and took the bus - to retired couple who were the ones to bring me to University on my first day of studies. Or two kids in the back seat who treated me with crisps and two ladies who were driving to the funeral of their friend and said that the day was so sunny in her honor. No truck drivers and a lot of female drivers stopping - that was something new in my hitch-hiker’s experience.
Nature. My vocabulary is probably too poor to explain the Icelandic scenery and its awesomeness. So I won’t. One has to be there to understand it.
Travelers. Lots of them. And all sorts. As a couchsurfer and CouchSurfing host, I met many many foreigners on my way. But they were not the typical tourists. In Iceland, you simply cannot expect to be carried around the city by fancy bus and a guide, ending your excursion at the local McDonald’s. Nope! Hiking, swimming, fishing, horseback riding, whale watching and trying to understand the rough nature are the main entertainments in Iceland and I am thankful for every open-minded and modest traveler I got to meet. Many friendships were created.
Safety. Unlocked bikes on the streets, no-curtains covering windows, open houses and cars. Unlike at my home, where you probably have to prepare to say a goodbye to an item if it is being left unattended and/or unlocked (especially a bike). Not in Iceland. I was never worried about my property or safety and I felt guilty for every sudden sense of distrust because I knew there was no real reason for anyone to harm me there. Of course, there are exceptions. But in Iceland they really are just exceptions.
Dumpster-diving. I am not going to explain all the system of how modern capitalism creates large amount of wasted food (you can google it, right?). All I can say that in Iceland this almost expired and visually defective food is widely available for people like me. Visiting the dumpster of the local supermarket saved me plenty of money (since everything is much more expensive than in Latvia and most of Europe) and provided me with good and healthy food. Don’t get me wrong - it was nothing close to digging in the dirty trash. It was more like taking food that was being transferred from one shelf to the outside containers. And even the cops and locals were fine with me and some of my mates doing that! Although I am still frustrated about the massive amount of foods being wasted, I am glad I was able to “save” at least a bit of it and persuaded few other people to follow me. Always keeping the fruit box full:
Aurora borealis. Uaaaaaaaaaah, northern lights!!!
The list could go on and on - about how they don’t change clocks to winter and spring-time in Iceland, about how they don’t sell alcohol in supermarkets in Iceland, about how you get superclean spring water coming right out of your tap in Iceland or about how there are no real forests in Iceland and more and more. But let’s be honest - those are just plain words and mean nothing in the comparison of that unexplainable sense of being somewhere in the parallel universe where things are just not working like elsewhere which is what Iceland feels like. Sjáumst?*
* See you? (Icelandic)