Ferry Supermarket

Here are a few pictures I forgot to include in the previous post about the ferry.



The first one above is of a supermarket inside the ferry and the next indicate the ferry has 7 floors (decks) and carries some truck on it. Quite a big and impressive ferry, at least in standards I was previously used to. A tad amusing is that I didn't really know we'd be taking a ferry till the morning we started hitch hiking. Dana didn't know until a few minutes before. The element of surprise ;)

Copenhagen to Berlin

Hitch hiking is often a lot of fun as you can see:


Actually, it's more fun because of the really cool people you often get to meet while on the road. Admittedly, it can be frustrating when you find yourself stranded for too long somewhere but so far, I've had some wonderful experiences hitch hiking.

The picture above is from the ferry we took while hitch hiking somewhere between Copenhagen, Denmark and Berlin, Germany. We asked a truck driver at a gas station if he could take us and he agreed. We so met an interesting and wonderful person who eventually even hosted us at his house where he lives with his soon-to-give-birth girlfriend and dog. The night had some fantastic lightning storms as well. Such a great entrance to Germany :)

Third Post on NewsGeek - Tent Protest in Iceland

The third post I've written on NewsGeek (in Hebrew) has been published. You are welcome to read it and comment about it. After the second post was made, it seems like there might be a weekly column for me there. You are thereby welcome to subscribe to my feed on NewsGeek.

Dynjandi Waterfall in Westfjords

The Westfjords (they prefer west and fjords in one word) of Iceland are a remarkably beautiful area, very sparsely populated. You're welcome to check more factual information by searching for it yourself but know that in the tourist guide they write

"With only 7400 inhabitants in the area, each person has around 1,2 km2 of personal space"

This is a picture of the tent we've pitched in the camping area close to the fall.


On this one, you can see me trying to get some work done using mobile Internet.


But let's get on with it and see some pictures from the falls themselves

Hot Pool in Hofsos

Trying to make my blog posts shorter and with more pictures, let's start with a few pictures from the pool in Hofsos. This is actually from the day before taking the bus ride.




There are pool in virtually every town in Iceland. There would many times be a 25m swimming pool and much smaller hot pools, sometimes several pools with different water temperatures. So yes, one Icelandic experience is surely sitting in a hot pot while it's freezing outside. I was told it's even more fun in winter when your head gets covered with snow. Not sure I'll try that anytime soon.

Second Newsgeek Post

Seems my first post on NewsGeek got some good responses and now my second post has been published. My apologies if you can't read Hebrew as I'm certain automatic translation won't do my posts justice. You can still see the pictures there and click "like" to make my journey a public phenomena :)



The picture above has nothing to do with this post and was taken in Akureyri where a bucket full of bears seemed to be a good idea.

Time to Take the Bus

It's not easy to make this blog follow what I'm doing chronologically so let's keep it in bits and pieces. I'm now traveling with Dana who surprised me by coming to Iceland to celebrate my birthday with me. This is a good time to thank those of you who wished me happy birthday and to wish bad things to those who didn't :)



Why does the headline say "Time to Take the Bus"? Well, because I've only been hitch hiking here in Iceland. It's fun. It's fast. It's great. To be honest, I did take a local bus once in Akureyri but it was free and I got off it after 2 minutes anyway.

So this pictures are from a great guy called Ingvar who took an old bus from the 60s (that made 1.7 million kilometers so far!) and made it operable again. He took out the seats and made a 26 square meter apartment out of it. The bus now has a double bad, two bunk beds for the kids, toilet, kitchen (with stove and fridge), two tables with seats. Is that a party bus or what?


With his family he traveled this bus throughout the island of Iceland. Amazing vehicle. We spent three hours with Ingvar as he took us all the way from one place to another. Icelandic names of places (and often people) are really not easy to either pronounce or remember so I'll save you the trouble.

Newsgeek Post

This is a minor pre-post without anything in it but an invitation for all your Hebrew-readers to check out my post on NewsGeek. Its founder thought it would be interesting to the Israeli hi-tech / geek community to get some insights about my travels.

EDIT: the link was bad. This is a known problem when using Blogger with FireFox so not totally my fault. Read here: NewsGeek

Iceland - From Airport to Akureyri

Iceland is a beautiful country and the views in the town (or city, it's Iceland's second biggest city with a population on 17,500) are spectacular. Mountain tops are everywhere and you can also see the sea.



The way I got here was amusing as well. Instead of doing the normal touristy thing of changing some money at the airport and getting a bus or taxi to the capital, Reykjavik, I decided to hitch hike directly from the airport. Hitch hiking is so much better than using public transportation as you get to have interesting conversation and your plans can easily change. The only down side of it is if you get stranded or if you're in a rush to reach somewhere at a specific time. My initial plan was to sleep a night or two in the capital and then continue to visit my friend in Akureyri. So I took the trolley with my bags on it and walked about 50m to a junction where the helpful tourist info told me I'd have good chances.



It took about 10 minutes for a nice couple on their honey moon to pick me up. When I learnt that they go about halfway from Reykjavik to Akureyri (these are about 5 hours apart), I decided to continue and put my faith in fate. A short stop over on the way enabled me to buy a SIM card and call my friend who was happy I'm coming sooner than expected.



It's quite easy to hitch hike around Iceland as there's one "highway" which goes all around the island. It actually has only a single lane to each direction and you can try to stop cars almost everywhere. The next ride took about 20 minutes to get. Two Icelandic brothers kept me company for the next hours. It was actually the first time they picked up a hitch hiker.

While talking about different subjects, including the famous economic crisis, I learnt to count to ten in Icelandic. Yes, seems I gotta learn that in every language I encounter. An aspiring polyglot perhaps.

Icelandic language has consonants which were not trivial for me to produce. Furthermore, as it's so different from other languages I know, it wasn't easy to remember what I was told. Remembering many people's names here isn't trivial either.

Let me finish this post with two more pictures: one of me reenacting my tries to hitch hike while holding cardboard signs made for me by the guy at the airport's tourist info and the other of a nice view from the way.



I hope you liked this post. Show me the love by writing a comment here, ok? Yes, it's been too long since I actually updated the blog. There's a delicate balance between actually taking the time to enjoy everything and writing about it so although I was trying to get to it, I didn't till now.

Recently, however, I managed to create 3 blog posts on Frognector's journey so you're welcome to read about Frognector and the old meteorite. The two other posts about Frognector (still from London) will be released today and two days later.