Reykjavik, Day 1

The flight to Keflavik was not until early afternoon, so we were able to get up at a normal time, have breakfast, pack last things, clean the place, take out the garbage, and we still had time to spare. The taxi company called to see if the car could come early, so we said “Sure!” and were on our way.

BER was, of course, packed with people. But I had insisted on doing the check-in the night before. We waited half an hour until the Iceland Air counter opened, and indeed: the long line was the people who had not checked in online, we needed only 5 minutes to get rid of our bags. 

The next challenge was security. I had made a “reservation” for a time slot in an hour’s time. This is a new thing, the reservations don’t cost anything (now), but how am I supposed to know how long I will need to get checked in? I tried to talk my way onto that short line, but no deal. So we joined the masses (us wearing masks, many not) and waited. And waited. Took us a bit over half an hour to finally be able to get to security.

I told the people that I did not want to be in the naked scanner. “Oh, it’s a full-body scanner, not a naked scanner, see what the pictures look like?” I replied “Sure, but re-naming it and running the taken pictures through a visualization transformer doesn’t change the pictures that are taken and stored, just what you see on the outside.” But apparently I wasn’t the only one that day, they were not snarly or such when doing the body search. She complained only about my face mask in my pocket that had a metal hinge on it. 

My bag, however, was a cause for concern. I had two blocks of cheese for our cheese-loving friends in there. Apparently that looked like something nasty, so I had to unpack and show them what it was. The lady was friendly enough, oooh, she loves cheese, too, I should bring some for her next time.

So we made it through early enough, bought some exorbitantly priced food, and discovered there is nowhere to sit behind security until you know your gate. We checked the gate the moment it was announced and dashed to it, snagging two seats with a table. I enjoyed my Economist, WiseMan his book, and we finished our food. 

The plane ended up being fully booked, so we were late leaving and spent a good 30 minutes on the tarmac waiting for the tower to let us go. But we were finally in the air and were quickly served the meals we had ordered and paid for in advance. Dear airline catering people: Don’t put drippy sauces on food you serve! We can’t eat with our mouths over the box because the person in front of us has their seat all the way back. I managed, surprisingly, by keeping my other hand under the fork at all times, so only the hand got sauced. WiseMan missed once and ended up with mustard on his shirt.

We landed only about 15 minutes late. Goodness, the airport has gotten big! We seemed to walk forever, that was probably so that they had time to unload the bags. We could have shopped at the duty free shop, but decided to get out since we were late. Luckily, the bags both showed up soon and in good condition. Our friend was outside waiting for us, so good to see him!

On the way to Reykjavik he said that he had to go to an appointment, did we want to come along? Sure, I’m game for anything! It turned out we were headed to a book presentation by the President of Iceland, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson. He is a historian and was presenting his new book about the Icelandic Cod Wars, which our friend had edited. So we enjoyed soft drinks and licorice (!) while listening to him. I didn’t catch everything he said, as I don’t know much of the vocabulary around fishing :) It was rather cool that we were able to just drop in, not registered or anything, to listen to the president. No visible body guards, just a car (license plate: “1”) to whisk him to an interview. 

What an great way to start the adventure! I added the book to his Wikipedia entry, we’ll see if that stays in!