Jottings from the Granite Studio

It is day one of my annual migration to France. With luck and fortune it will be the last of these for awhile. This year fiscal prudence has forced me to abandon my previous habit of flying British Airways business class and turn instead to Icelandair. As a result, rather than relaxing in the Heathrow Business class lounge I am sitting in the transit deck of the airport here in Reykjavik. It’s the first time in many moons that I’ve been in a country where I had absolutely no knowledge of the language. At all. This is of course okay because Icelanders speak English better than I do albeit with a weird lilt that sounds a little like Britney Spears trying to effect an Irish brogue after three or four cocktails.

I may have to dodge the thunderbolts of Odin for saying this, but so help me, with the hardwood floors, white walls, and tasteful modern furniture, the waiting area looks like the Ikea in West Sacramento except for (down to?) the group of Chinese tourists taking pictures of themselves standing in front of the “Welcome to Iceland” sign.

Other notes on Iceland: I passed the bar and went to the coffee shop. This being Iceland, there were several hardcore types putting away vodka stingers at 6 a.m. I don’t know too many Scandanavians, and those I do know are the “Teaching in China Variety” which is a whole other weird cultural subgroup, but those Northern-types I do know like their grog. A lot. My roommate in college was from Sweden and could easily put away a bottle of vodka as “pre-drinking” before a party. No way can I compete in this league. I’m too fragile. Thus, I am drinking what is easily the hottest cup of tea ever. Even as I write this, geothermal tea is melting through the Styrofoam cup and is proceeding to eat its way “China Syndrome” style through the tasteful modular table on which it sits.

Also, with my new slicked-back “Bulgarian Watch Smuggler” hairstyle I look even less like my passport picture in which, as many readers may remember, I look like a Kazakh militia member after a three-day bender in Reno. The Iceland border patrol (which could, I guess, justifiably be called a ‘coast guard’ but whatever) gave me more of a once over than I usually get. I hadn’t been this scrutinized since I mocked the Japanese customs official when he asked me: “If I was carrying dangerous drugs. Like Heroin or Cocaine?!?!?”The poor guy. He looked like he was 12 wearing his Dad’s police uniform and now he was trying to Jedi-Knight me into some kind of confession. (”Do you have any dangerous drugs?” “These are not the ‘droids you are looking for.” etc.,) He was in any case just doing his job, a job which he took very seriously. But I couldn’t help laughing which, as everyone knows, was The Wrong Thing to Do. Took me two hours to get out of the customs area only to discover at the baggage claim that they’d gone and fed my luggage to wild dogs. Stupid gaijin.