Day 2-travel to Bifröst University

January 6-As I mentioned in the last blog, we slept in this morning until 10 am. Given that this was our first full night in Iceland, and that 10 am here is 3 am in Colorado, I can't be too unhappy by this. Still, we needed to get going pretty quickly, because we had told the owners of the Rey Apartments that we would be leaving between 10 and 11. Complicating matters even more, we now had the two extra bags that we could not fit into the car at the airport the morning we flew in. I figured that if we reloaded the bags to make them more square and then if we simply filled trash bags with clothes, and stuffed the bags into the extra space in the car trunk, at our feet, etc, we might be able to get it all into the car, but this would take time. So, Joslyn and I began the process of repacking, while the others went shopping for trash bags. That's when the cleaning lady unlocked the door! And, to top it off, she is the only person I have met here who could not speak English! Luckily, we were ready to start moving stuff down to the car, so she helped with that and Joslyn and I put stuff in until Sally got back and she and the kids got most of the rest of the stuff into the bags. In the end, I don't think that we held up the cleaning lady for too long and we managed to get everything into the car, although it was pretty tight!


We had breakfast around noon and headed out of town for Bifröst. Incidentally, we finally found out the correct way to pronounce it: Beevroost. Actually, the ö is pronounced like in German, so like "i" in whirl. Throw that in and you will sound like an Icelander! We drove under one fjord to get near Akranes, around some impressive mountains, and then over another fjord to get to Borgarnes. From there we headed inland and the road became progressively more icy. I was glad we drove it during daylight (as it were) the first time, arriving around 3pm.

We wandered around the campus a short while before finding Sally's contact, Magnús, who took us to our new home, apartment 311 in Sjónarhóll. FYI, we still do not know our complete address, but we should get that figured out on Monday. As for the apartment, it has two bedrooms, a kitchen/living room, a bathroom, an anteroom, and a storeroom. One bedroom has a bed for Sally and me and the other bedroom has two single beds and a bunk bed. We unpacked the car and put all of our stuff away and, all in all, we seem to be fitting into the apartment pretty well.

Sally did some administrative stuff with Magnús and found out that she would be teaching her class Mondays 8:45-noon. We went to the small store on campus for the necessary staples, cooked and ate supper, and then settled in to our new digs. Sally hooked up the TV and we discovered that we have cable. While it is becoming less and less surprising to see how much English is used over here, I was still amazed to discover that half of the channels were English and that some come directly from the U.S., like Cartoon Network!

In this respect, I am beginning to view Iceland as more of a halfway point between Europe and the Americas than just in terms of geology and flight times. For instance, Lucky Charms was available at the grocery store on campus alongside Icelandic cereals and some from other Nordic countries. And, Lucky Charms was not any more expensive! The list goes on and on: marzipan from Germany; tortillas and hot sauce from the States; European cheeses; Icelandic lamb and cheap wool; German, Irish, Belgian, and Icelandic beers and liquor; etc. To be honest, I had hoped to shock the kids a little more than this: we could be in Boston or Brooklyn, dealing with foreign-looking and talking people with funny accents and living and shopping in close quarters for all they know. Actually, the kids have noted differences between Iceland and the U.S. and they will get more of a culture shock when they start going to school, so maybe these similarities will make the transition into Icelandic life easier for them. So far, they don't seem to be particularly fazed by any of the experiences.