Fear Of The Dark

I'll be running. For weeks or years or months I'll be running but not going anyplace and somehow I'll notice that every day has become the same as the day before. I'll realize that I'm watching too much television again. I'll see something that makes me wonder why I'm doing it all, why I'm wasting my time, I'll see something that makes me realize that I've wasted my life.

The morning after everyone leaves I come downstairs and half a dozen empty wine bottles stare forlornly at me, trying to tell me something. And the house is empty. So completely empty.

I wonder, and I can't find, all those things that I believed in when I was still young. The cold beautiful silence of two inches of snow at midnight in 1992;--streets empty, except for me. Snowflakes falling like lies and landing with the sound of something that was never said.

The decision to leave came out of no nobler emotions than guilt and angst. Guilt that I'd never been to Europe, even though I'd just turned 34, and angst over my book coming out. I'd been trying to keep it on the DL and was looking to avoid being anywhere when it hit shelves.

So where to be? Somewhere cheap. $186 round trip to the Netherlands by way of Iceland was cheap enough. So we were gone.

Cast of Characters

And then there were four....

Joe 

 
Linda

 
Matt

 
Kyle

I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane

There are as many travelers tails of jet lag cures as there are for the hiccoughs. Before I left, advice was rained in on me from travelers and friends. From "eat oranges and banannas the night before" to "sleep on the plane" (good idea that one) and some crap about a "flashlight behind your knees", everybody had an earfull to dump on me. Philadelphia is GMT -5, iceland is GMT, and Amsterdam is GMT+1 meaning that between us and holland there was a difference of some quarter of a day.

"Should you not be taking those pills with alcohol?" Matt wants to know as I'm studiously swallowing a row of dyphenhydramine like ducklings and chasing them each with a shot of Jim Beam. I shrug and in 20 minutes I can't keep my eyelids open for money. Though somewhere within my plan is a fatal flaw. I go down, but not out. I'm lying in my airplane seat like a wounded animal -- completely unable to sleep, able only to ache and twist trying to find a comfortable position. There is none.

If only Boeing would design an airplane where the seats actually reclined, sleeping on a plane wouldn't be a problem. The difficulty is in sitting bolt upright for five hours sandwiched between two complete strangers trying to catch some sleep with your chin down on your chest, or even worse, with one of those ridiculous in-flight pillows forcing your head even further forward from the seatback.

Somewhere around hours of agony I peer out the window and see the northern lights to the west of a very large moon.

Iceland: Land Of The Free

Iceland's always been between there and here, it just took a long time to find it. In 870 C.E. a Norwegian Viking by the name of Ingolfur Anarson killed two prominent members of the royal family in a bar fight and was kicked out of his country.

Stripped of his land by an outraged earl (father of the bar-fight casualties), he loaded his boats with his family and slaves and every goat and chicken he could carry, he set sail for parts west.

My own reasons for coming to Iceland are somewhat similar but not as auspicious -- I want to avoid the fuss.

Vikings leave nothing to chance and Anarson was no exception. When he arrived off of the coast he threw two ornately carved pieces of furniture called chair pillars into the sea and asked the gods to wash them up in a hospitable place, there he would settle. In this fashion they functioned much like a corked bottle. Oddly enough he didn't follow the chair pillars as they drifted about but rather landed his boat in the nearest anchorage and sent his slaves out scouring the coastline. It took three years to find them, washed up on the shore of the best harbor in Iceland. Or so the story goes. There are so many awful places to live on Iceland I imagine Anarson wouldn't be above paying off a slave to find them in a nice place. I also can imagine a pair of slaves getting frustrated after ten months of walking along freezing beaches, shoes filled with frozen seafoam, smelling of herring and bird dung, having eaten nothing but strangled puffins and dead fish for nearly a year, coming across some driftwood and saying "Gee, how long do you think it would take to carve this into a pair of chair pillars? Less time than it would take to circumnavigate this damn island looking for the real ones?". Besides, Reykjavik was about the best place to live on the whole island anyway.

And boy was it ever nice, compared to the rest of the island. Hot springs mist broil up out of the water giving the appearance that it was on fire. Reykjavik means "Smoky Bay".

In the center of town today there's a statue of Ingolfur Anarson on a hill overlooking the bay where his pillars washed up.

The Land Of The Midnight Sun

It's pitch black in Keflavek when we land at 7:15 in the morning, local time. Reykjavík is 40 minutes away by bus from the country's only international airport.

Standing in line at the currency exchange to put some kroner on my VISA card it actually hits me for the first time: You're not in Kansans anymore....

"Dude," I say to Matt, "We're in Iceland."

We take a flybus owned by one of the local hotels for eleven or fifteen dollars. (The local hotels are actually mostly all owned by Iceland Air.) It seems we all pay something different in the morass of brightly coloured fish-enhanced Kroner we hand over to the conductor.

Galen tells us that he was just planning on staying up for the next 24 hours and not getting a hotel. I find this incredibly brave thinking and assume that fully fifty percent of my time in iceland I will most likely spend sleeping.

I'm trying to keep this to myself as much as possible since I don't think anybody else was glued to the television before we left. Not Linda, not Joe, and certainly not Matt, who has other things to worry about -- what they are I'm not entirely sure yet, but they probably involve girls and alcohol.

Ghosts Of The Island

Iceland is haunted. Everyone there believes it. Witches, ogres, and the fey live beneath the houses and stones. You can see their breath coming up from the ground. This month, December, Iceland belongs to Grýla, the great hideous ogre and her thirteen dread children: the Yuletide Lads.

No cutsy Christmas stories here in the land of sulfur and fire, no. Here we have ogres and kidnappers. Grýla, queen of the Yule is easily identified if you spot her crossing the tundra, for she has fifteen tails and is dragging bags of screaming, wicked children behind her.

Like the Seven Dwarves, the Yueltided Lads each have a name and a function:

Stekkjarstaur - who limps, Giljagaur - the ditch imp, Stúfur - the tiny one, Þvörusleikir - the spoon licker, Pottasleikir - the pot licker, Askasleikir -  the bowl licker, Hurðaskellir - who slams doors in the night, Skyrgámur - the yogurt eater, Bjúgnakrækir - the sausage thief, Gluggagægir - who stares through windows, Gáttaþefur - who waits outside your door sniffing through the crack, Ketkrókur - who's ghastly name means meat hook, and Kertasníkir - the candle beggar.

Over the years, like many grim tales for children, the Yuletide lads have been cleaned up and modernized so that now they're not as horrible as once they were. In the late 1700's things had gotten so bad as kids were crouching sleepless in closets with whale harpoons for two weeks a law was passed forbidding adults to scare children with tales of the Jólasveinar.

I can only imagine that it must be devastatingly oppressive to live in such darkness. Another thing that must make it a drag to live around here is how expensive it is.

The only thing they make in Iceland is lava. Everything else is imported, hence the capital, Reykjavík, is the most expensive city in Europe.

*

"Did we wake you?" I am always troubled by the obvious.

He pushes open a door on the third floor, and keeps walking upwards and upwards. "If you need me for anything, you will find me later." The pad of his feet disappear and we're alone in an eery silence in a country so completely alien to us that it shouldn't exist.

A couple weeks ago, Linda and I watched an Icelandic movie called Sódóma Reykjavík (the lame American title is Remote Control) the plot of which is odd, to say the least. It takes place in the summer and it's very strange to not be able to gauge the time of day by the sun. People get done work, it's daylight. They go to a bar, it's daylight. They close out the bar, it's daylight. They go to an after-hours party, it's daylight. They leave the after hours party and creep home, it's still daylight. The passing of days and nights in such a stasis must do something strange to the human animal.

It seems no one's up at 9:00 in the morning. I look out my window and can see a couple of shops, swathed in darkness but no sign of life. The sun's scheduled to rise at 10:30 or so. We decided to take a nap and let the sleeping pills finally work. I lay down in a sumptuous bed and am gone in an instant. 

We drag ourselves out of bed, feeling a little faint still from jet lag. I have no idea what time it is in Philadelphia and I don't want to know. We troop out with no destination in mind other than maybe finding lunch in one of Reykjavik's two vegetarian restaurants -- we wander aimlessly.

On the way, we find the harbor with the statue of Ingolfer Anderson looking proudly over his city. We walk down to the bay and I'm tempted to climb down over the retaining wall and shove my hands into the Atlantic to gauge it's temperature. In the end, sour visions of being dunked in near-zero sea water invade my mind and keep me from doing anything too rash. 

Tantalizingly, the headline of a newspaper lying by the cash register says something about the U.S. election, I can see the name "George W. Bush" but the rest is greek. We go off again wandering though the city.

We stop at the food mart across from the Hotel and load up on Prince Polo bars, bread and cheese. Prince Polo's are something of a national fetish -- like M&M's in the states. It's a tasty chocolate covered wafer made in Poland and shipped to Iceland by the barge full.

Needless to say, Iceland doesn't get much in the way of immigrants, it takes a hardy soul to live here. And as a result, Icelanders are the most genetically homogeneous group in the world. Nearly everybody on the island, it would seem is related to nearly everybody on the island. Not that that is such an incredible feat -- Iceland only boasts a population of about 230,000, half of whom live in Reykjavik the rest of whom are scattered around the coast in dinky little cities like Egilsstadir on the east coast.

We see a movie being shot on one of the main streets. Against the backdrop of a vibrantly painted mural a man dressed like David Bowie in 1963 (which is to say Mod Fashionable & no doubt The New Look) walks ten feet through a crowd of extras, stops, and looks over his shoulder. They do four takes. Then the the the actor and director jump into an SUV driven by a woman with a clipboard and a santa hat and are whisked away. The lights and are quickly loaded into a big truck and everybody's gone.

Everyone In Reykjavik Is Drunk

Linda wakes me up at 4:00 in the morning with a finger in the ribs, "I'm very hungry." I'm kind of hungry too, and now that I'm awake, I know there's no chance of me getting back to sleep. It's probably noon in Philadelphia. The guidebook tells us that there may or may not be an all-night eatery open a few blocks away. Who knows.

We decide to go and look anyway, since we're wide awake and the only thing on T.V. is some sort of Candid-Camera Iceland that for the life of me I can't figure out, some blond woman running around a mall assaulting people with a microphone. They all seem to think it's pretty funny but it might as well be crab fighting as far as I can tell. Outside, we immediately become aware that things are not as they seem. There's the not-so-far away sound of laughing and breaking bottles on a huge scale and before we've been standing in front of the door 30 seconds two Icelanders in long black coats stagger past us singing loudly and swaying back and forth like happy tops.

And why not be drunk in Reykjavik? There's a long tradition for it. In the land of the noon moon, what do you do apart from drinking? In Last Places, Lawrence Millman points out that in 1806 Reykjavik had only 300 inhabitants, 27 of whom were in jail for public drunkenness. While the percentage of the populace suffering from dangerous levels of inhebriation seems to have remained the same, the tendency to lock them up appears to have abated. Mobs of people on the street, with complete impunity, are breaking bottles and urinating on anything that stays still and a few things that are crawling away slowly. The absence of a police presence is conspicuous. This many drunks in one place in Philly would have attracted cops like dogs to a gut wagon.

Then starting at about 19:30, they all head out to a party or sit in their living rooms, get stinking drunk on tax-exempt schnapps and scoot off to a bar at about 23:00. Four hours later, the bars disgorge their festive contents -- like frat boys spewing forth potatoe chips and beer after the Superbowl -- and the party takes to the streets. This continues, unabated until the last person passes out, usually around noon the next day.

The only thing I've ever tasted worse than the brennivin, was the Reykjavik tap water, which tasted as though someone had put a teaspoonful of sulfur in each glass. Owing to it's rich geological history, an odor of rotten eggs broiled forth from the sink, shower, and toilet as though dead animals had been stashed in them. We brushed our teeth with Evian.

On the streets in the early morning we're gleeful and excited, there is an air of celebration. Over the course of two hours we're approached by four different people who greet us in the national fashion: "Do you ... have a cellular phone ... I could borrow?" sadly, we do not. American cell phones don't work in Iceland.

Icelanders seem to have mobile phones sewn to their ears at about the time they turn twelve and anybody with the bad luck to somehow lose theirs must wander the streets like the flying Dutchman trying to borrow one from tourists. Since the city is so small, I have no idea who they're all talking to.

Most everybody is very friendly and every one, astoundingly drunk. And why not? It's five in the morning and no one is showing any signs of wanting to go home.

Suspecting that we don't quite belong, two potted Icelanders come over and introduce themselves, "You are from America? I speak English. Hello Jerry. Where is the toilet? Close the window. My name is Thor. His name is Thor."

We buy a flaffel and a coke from one of the several stores still open and sit on the curb watching the spectacle. I've never been to Marti Gras but can only imagine that it's some pale imitation of this with people throwing beads from floats.

7:00 hrs And Another Airplane

We're just starting to have fun and already it's time to leave. We go back to the hotel, wide awake, and pound on the door of Joe and Matt's apartment. They're groggy and hang back from the dank light creeping in through the open door like startled vampires. I'm actually pretty startled that none of the locals were pounding on their windows, as they're on the ground floor, within easy reach of the drunks.

"Get up! Time to go!" We bounce into their room. They don't share our enthusiasm, but they crawl into their clothes and gather their luggage. We leave Reykjavik without really getting to know it.

You Are Thinking You Are Going To Amsterdam?

It's so early in the morning that God isn't up yet but I'm excited. We run into Galen on the bus on the way back, he made it to the Blue Lagoon and is full of laudatory praise for it. We must go back, he tells us. I'm already sure I want to.

We also find out that Galen's not the unemployed art student I'd suspected, but rather he's an Emergency Room doctor in London's biggest hospital.

"What kind of cases do you get?"

"Oh everything, like in any big city."

"Gunshots?" I ask.

"More and more," he says.

It's the Americanizing of Europe. Once they've got Baywatch, gun violence can't be far behind.

"The people in my district used to prefer to stab one another. Lately they've discovered pistols. What can you do?"

The flight out is unremarkable, four hours of ocean, tired and trying to sleep. Once we approach Holland that ocean is dotted by orange ships, dozens of them, freighters leaving Rotterdam which is as busy as an airport.

"There aren't any windmills," I say, "that's some sort of tourist myth." And sure enough, if for the next half an hour we see nothing but windmill after windmill after windmill. The country is boiling with windmills. And sheep. Wet sheep since it's raining.

The conductor comes through, looks at my ticket and says "You are thinking you are going to Amsterdam?" Off the train at the next stop, onto another train, back in the direction we came from. Another half hour of the same windmills. Matt's glued to the window like a kid. Everytime we pass one he says "Hey Kyle! Look! A windmill!"

"Hey," I ask, "Are you a diver?"

"Yes I am," the driver says.

"Holy crap!" says Matt from somewhere under a pile of luggage, "how did you know he was a diver?"

The cabbie waves his left arm in the air but Matt's not looking. He has his face glued to the window and is saying things like "Hey! Look! A boat! A church! A Heinikin sign! Look at that guy on the bicycle!" Joe asks the cabbie what do you dive in Holland?

"I dive in the ocean."

"Isn't it cold?"

"You pour hot water in your wet suit. You're fine.

"Lots of wrecks here."

"Why do you hate being a taxi driver?"

"People are assholes."

"These assholes at least will give you a big tip," Matt assures.

"Hey," the driver says, "you are my favorite kind of assholes."

We pick up the keys from Hotel Amstel and continue on to our houseboat.

"I think the address is over there," says the cabbie, dropping our bags on the curb and he's gone, big tip in pocket. For an inexpensive country, taxi's are expensive.

So we're standing in the pouring rain not quite sure which of half a dozen houseboats is ours. Everybody waits across the street like rubberneckers at an accident while I cross and start trying our key in doors. Luckily for me, it fits in the first one I try. I open the door and go in and immediately scared two inches taller by my reflection in a mirror at the end of the room.

Why Everybody Should Have A Camera Club

One of the Internet's chiefest charms is its ability to bring people together from disparate places because they share some interest or other. I've been rather lucky over the years to belong to the Leica Users Group, a collection of photographers and retired dentists who either own or use the cultish Leica cameras. It's an affectation I find it difficult to explain even to my photographer friends, mostly all huddled behind their Canon EOS's and Nikon F's. The Leica is not much of a camera for a significant amount of money. Sort of like having fountain pen or a solid gold toothbrush I guess. Basically, the technology on the Leica hasn't advanced much since 1954 but we mostly like it that way. When we get in I call Sander van Hulsenbeek, a Lugger from Amsterdam, it turns out that he only lives about four blocks from where we do. He says "It will probably be easier for me to find you than for you to find me. Sit tight." So we unpack and half an hour later, Sander arrives. He takes us to a local pub, the Oosterling, which is the Local Pub straight out of some movie, where we drink a lot of Jonnevier, the local firewater, which tastes a lot like gin but a little more drinkable, and the ever present Heinikin, which is brewed about 10 blocks away and is more common than tap water in Amsterdam. Sander takes us back to his house, where more Jonneiver is consumed, more Heinekin, some camera books are produced, we talk about Amsterdam, meet Sander's friend Jerry who is busy putting together a magazine he edits but stops up for a few minutes to shake hands, and then we're off to a Thai restaurant for dinner. Then it's a foot tour through Amsterdam; across the canals, the architecture, the palace, pointing out all the places we'd hoped to get to. By midnight we're beat, back to the houseboat.

If you're actually in my camera club, you'll be interested to know what I brought along. If you're not you should skip along:

I've got with me a Leica M6 with three lenses, a Minolta Rokkor 28mm f 2.8, a Voightlander 35mm f 1.7 and a Jupiter 85mm f 2. I also have a Nikon coolpix 900 digital camera and Linda has a Nikon f100 with a 20mm f2.8 Nikkor, a Tokina 28-80 2.8-5.6 and a 50mm 2.8 Micro Nikkor -- all of which I've been carrying (and by the end of which actually Linda will not have shot a frame with. So much for me traveling light.)

Amsterdam Is Made Of Bicycles

There are no fat people in Europe. The Dutch are all as skinny as New York supermodels. They have to -- otherwise they wouldn't be able to fit four people on a bicycle. The Dutch think nothing of riding four on a bike -- three is typical (the one sitting on the handlebars is invariably holding the umbrella), but four isn't anything to call the media about. To outsiders, it's something akin to clowns pouring out of a Volkswagen and we stop and stare every time we see three hundred and sixty pounds of Dutch on a rusty 1970's era bike tooling along to wherever these people go.

With the vague idea of heading over to the Anne Frank house and watching the tourists I start making my way West through narrow streets, constantly in a state of renovation, everything's being ripped up to make way for something else.

I pass a youth hostel with a sign in the window reminding the residents that the stoop is not a gathering place and the neighbors would certainly appreciate it if everybody either stayed inside or went somewhere else.

"Yes." I've heard people say that if anybody asks you what country you're from you should say Canada, but it would be pretty transparent. I can't name four cities in Canada.

"Nixon," I say.

"I don't know," I say. "The court is very States Rights centric, which would make me believe they're rule in favor of Gore, saying that Florida has a constitutional right to decide it's own election. But if they were going to do that, they wouldn't have agreed to take the case. So I don't know."

"It's a mystery," says Luke, who has one eyebrow that covers his entire forehead. He seems very stoned.

We have a president

The wait is over. CNN World News tells us that the Supreme Court in the U.S. has remanded Gore's request for a recount back to the Florida supreme court with a deadline to recount that has already passed. Essentially ending the election. Gore expected to make a concession speech this evening, which is some crazy time in europe. I have no idea when it's going to be on. We all breathe some sigh; whether it's of relief or angst who's to say. It's over anyway. And what a voyage it's been.

Wednesday Rembrandt and Van Gogh

I've never been impressed by Van Gogh and today's no exception. I have no patience for impressionists or post-impressionists. The Rijksmuseum is nice, though I find myself underwhelmed by their Rembrandt collection, an indication that Holland has been looted for hundreds of years. The national gallery in D.C. has a pretty stunning collection of Rembrants all somehow ripped off from Holland over the intervening centuries; but they don't have the Nightwatch.

"I thought we've been here like three hours," he says, looking at his watch, "it's only been 45 minutes!"

Previously Matt had told me he wanted to checkout some museums "because I have like zero culture."

He did like the Van Gogh museum.

Dancing With The Green Fairy

One thing I knew that I wanted to do while in europe was drink absinthe, the strange liquor that inspired Oscar Wilde, Hemingway, Van Gogh and a host of others, made illegal in the 1930's because, well, because it's poisonous. Exaggerated absinthe drinking has been linked to hallucinations, ringing in the ears, madness and death. It's all from the wormwood. And as Amsterdam is the Disneyland of vice and debauchery, you can get absinthe at the the Absinthe Lounge # 171 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal street.

I'd read about it on the Internet.

After years of anticipation and speculation, well, absinthe tastes terrible. It's like green uzo. It was a debilitating blow, but not one that was about to stop me. I ordered another. And another. And another. Damnit, if Hemingway can stand the stuff, so can I.

"I hear you talking, you are from America?"

"Yes."

"Haahaha! What do you think of your new president, George Wanker Boooosh?"

Despite having to get up early the next morning, Matt doesn't want to go, as he's making some progress with some girl sitting at the bar. He waves us off and we vanish into the night. I'm asleep as soon as I hit my pillow.

Matt's Ordeal

Matt's doing well with the girl from the bar, who's from Aruba. As the bar's closing, her boyfriend shows up and they start arguing loudly in some language that's not English. She scribbles her number on a piece of paper and clandestinely presses it into Matt's palm: "Call me, tomorrow," she says as her boyfriend drags her out into the night.

The bar closes, the bartender leaves with someone who's not Matt and he's out on the sidewalk in the pouring rain, drunk as a post. He flags a taxi and gets in.

"Where do you want to go?"

It is at this instant that Matt realizes that he has no idea where we live.

"I honestly don't know."

"How much money do you have?"

"Four guilders."

"Get out of my taxi! You are wasting my time!"

Back into the night, the rain, he starts walking, passing the same places every twenty minutes or so, nothing looks familiar. The Absinthe is at the antipodes from our houseboat. Finally after an hour or two, he stumbles across a russian speaking hobo who he'd run across the day before, bearings installed he turns towards home. An hour to the houseboat in driving rain only to discover that he has no keys.

"I don't think he could find Europe on a map!" one of them cackles, "In Sweeden a man like that could not get 1% of the vote."

I tell them I'm pretty sure he could find Europe on a map. It's a big target. As to whether he could tell Sweden from Finland, that remains to be seen. 

"Is the weather always like this?" I ask Sander.

"No," he replies, "never."

Parisian cab driver was rude to them, so as he drives away Matt shouts: "Just wait till you come to Deptford, I'm not showing you shit!" Everyone's tired. We sleep.

Greetings From Germany

The next day Tim Spragens, a LUGger from Germany comes up to visit. He brings a huge assortment of cameras and lenses. Everybody else is out somewhere and Tim and I sit on the floating picnic table moored to the side of our houseboat and photograph one another with wide angle lenses and lenses that photograph in low light. It is some sort of weird orgy of mechanics and optics.

After a while, Matt and Joe show up we meet Sander

Tim's brought with him some incredible Leica lenses, the coveted "Noctalux", easily a $2,800 lens, which opens up to f 1.0 (which is no mean feat), it's the size of a can of tomato soup. He's also brought a 15mm Voightlander wide angle. I try them out.

Eventually we head down to the Oosterling and Matt makes Tim and Sander smoke Cuban cigars. There's more Heinikin, some Jonniver, some baked almonds from a dispenser.

I've been a little lost lately. Lost in my photography, lost in my direction, lost in a lot of ways I can't really begin to understand. I've been buying a lot of stupid things off of Ebay.

For years now I've also been feeling weird because I've never been to Europe. In fact, I'm pretty much the only person I know who hasn't. I wish that I'd done it when I was 24, back when I was broke and things meant a lot less and I had more time and more time to be crazy.

Certainly travel makes you a different person and I'm certain now that everybody should spend their junior year abroad. Anywhere, it doesn't matter. Just so that you know what it's like to do laundry in a different country and go to the supermarket and get a hair cut and buy clothes and go to bars and do things that you're too responsible to do so close to home.

The Narcicism of Small Things

Freud believed that it was possible for people to live nearly identically, defining themselves with small differences. I've always had a fetish for odd things; fountain pens, Leica cameras, guitars with strange numbers of strings. Now we define ourselves by the places we've been and the things we've done as well as by what we've accomplished -- travel in and of itself has always been some sort of accomplishment, a guarrentee that we're not going to die never having left the village we were born in..

Iceland And Then Home

We return via the path of least resistance. A cab picks us up at the houseboat and takes us directly to the Airport. The driver is Jamaican and is recording the conversation in the cab. Matt asks him why, he doesn't answer. We tip like Americans, check in, and look for a place to eat.

The Dutch idea of a non-smoking section in a restaurant is a table without an ashtray on it. Cigarettes are everywhere. We actually find that we can sit in the smoking section and be further away from smokers than sitting in the non-smoking section. We eat french fries with mayonnaise.

Over Iceland the sky is peeled like an avocado, seven layers of clouds, seven sunsets as the plane comes in, each more spectacular than the last. The ocean, as we approach Keflavek, is dark green blue with foaming whitecaps, streaks of white and floating ice break up the vast, mist shrouded expanse. It's snowed since we left and in the vague light the tundra is stunning, a mixture of brown and black and white, it stretches out below us like an alien landscape.

In the airport I buy a case of Prince Polo bars, write a couple post cards and dream that our trip back is a third of the way finished.

On the plane to New York we find out that no, we are not a third of the way home. We'll be circling over somewhere for some time for some reason. I bang my head against the seat in front of me. At least if it were a turbulent flight I could cling to my seat and scream for five hours. As it is, I can only stare.

The Truth About The United States

America puts its worst foot forward. It's the most oppressive country to arrive in. Still two hours out over the Atlantic the stewardesses are handing out declaration forms which must be filled out by everybody, listing where we came from, where we're going, exactly what we're bringing into the country and, most inexplicably of all, an address in the United States. As though thousands of American's don't show up in Europe every summer with a backpack and a "Let's Go Europe" and two hundred dollars in their pocket and nowhere special to go. Perhaps it's because you really can't backpack through America. Unless you've a real hankering to see suburban sprawl up close.

Not only is America intimidating, it's ugly. Deplaning at JFK is like getting out in a lockerroom under a debilitated stadium from the 1970's. The walls are painted cinderblock, the light is bright fluorescent. All along the walls are warning signs, in English only. Two people in front of us don't have an address in the U.S. and a customs official takes them away to a little room where they will be tortured until they confess to spying or are able to think up something like "The New York Hilton!". We get in the "American's Only" line and breeze through. The official who stamps my passport says: "How did you like Iceland?"

"It was one big party, the whole place."

"Shit. I almost got stationed there, it was there or here. Next time. Iceland huh? Yeah. Welcome home."

We wait by a moving belt to pick up our luggage. I go to the bathroom. Above the trash can is a sign that says: "Do not dispose of illegal food or plant products here. They can endanger U.S. crops. You will not be penalized for turning over food or plants to a customs official." Like everything else, the sign is only in English.

We declare some tulip bulbs, an official peers into my bag, sees them on the bottom and asks: "Have they been pre-cleared?" meaning are they stamped for export into the U.S.

"Yeah."

"Okay.".

We leave New York in a pelting rain, about six degrees below freezing. We miss a turn to the bridge and cross New York the long way. Two hours later we pull into Matt's driveway. At this very instant, Matt realizes that he's locked his house keys in his house. Which would be absolutely fine with me had I not also locked my car keys in Matt's house so that I wouldn't need to carry them to Europe.

We stare at Matt's house. It's below freezing. Matt and I look for a window to climb through. There are none. I'm probably hallucinating, it seems like a hundred hours since I woke up. Ever thoughtful, Joe throws a brick through Matt's livingroom window, I don't hear a sound. Nobody cares. We leap through. Keys in hand, Linda and I drive away in a strange stupor. Through a shattered window, garbage bag and tape maybe, Matt yells behind us "I'll call you later!" Some other world this later. We were away, soon we will be back. I'm in danger of asleep at the wheel, "Hit me," I keep saying to Linda. She doesn't hit me but continually repeating it seems to keep me conscious.

40 minutes later the ordeal is over. We are home. Our luggage dumped upon the floor, our heads upon pillows, whatever time it is in Philadelphia, it is very late in Amsterdam. We fall instantly asleep with visions of fat, hungry birds in our heads.