Iceland, Day 1 (Or, better said, Night 1)

As crazy and inappropriate as it sounds, I decided to take a long weekend in Iceland.  I'd love to have at least 2 weeks there, but 2 weeks were simply neither in my budget nor in my work schedule this year with 4 weeks in Michigan coming up and hopefully (I hope I hope I hope) a couple weeks on the Canary Islands this winter.  I did this over the Pentecost weekend, from June 6-8, with Monday off as a public holiday to recover.  We absolutely lucked out, and everyone told us so:  the weather forecast when we booked the flights called for temperatures of about 15°C/59°F, but in reality we had sun and about 21°C/approx. 70°F the whole weekend.  Initially I'd just planned to kiss fun in the sun in Germany goodbye for the weekend and have fun visiting my great writer friend Patrick (http://patrickryanfrank.com/), but as luck would have it, we even got into some trouble on a beach and got sunburns!

But let's go back to the beginning: midnight sun! 

I hadn't even thought about there being nearly 24 hours of daylight in Iceland in June, but there certainly are!  I was completely excited when, after having left a dark Germany around 9 pm, it just kept getting lighter and lighter as we neared Iceland.  Just as we could see land again, we could also see the sunset at 11:30 pm.  It never got really dark after sunset, there was just a little touch of twilight, and a couple of hours later, the sun came up again.  Despite being completely exhausted, my body just said: "Keep going!  It's light outside!"  We even saw people going about their daily business, such as working in their yards and gardens well past midnight.  And that for 3 days.  No wonder I fell into a sleepy coma upon our return, dozed for a full day and am still a little bit fried.

We got hopelessly lost searching for our tiny hut (in German it was something like a 12m² Gartenlaube).  It was actually only about a ten minute drive from the airport, but it took us about 2 hours and a trip back to the airport to find it.  The directions were less than thrilling.   But before we embarked on the search for our tiny hut in someone's backyard, we got the ride of our lives in the car rental bus.  We'd rented a car from the cheapest car rental in Iceland, I believe, and it was not only cheap, but also highly entertaining.  A chubby, rosy-cheeked young man who appeared not over 20 arrived at the airport at least a half hour after our plane landed, after everyone had fetched their luggage, and after several people had called the office.  He seemed a bit flustered, tried to round everyone up and have them wait in a quiet corner of the exit hall at the airport, but no one was having any part of it.  Particularly the couple travelling with an infant!  This young lady practically jumped on the poor guy and asked if there would be enough space in the van because they were travelling with, and I quote, "an infant, and we have lots of stuff." She repeated her mantra about 50 times, and upon returning to her mate, I was forced to guffaw.  At least half of their "lots of stuff" was a shopping cart full of beer.  A small shopping cart, I admit, but still a full shopping cart.  Apparently they'd also heard that the cheapest beer in Iceland was at the Duty Free shop in the airport.  For the record, we decided to travel light and do without any adult drinks on this trip.  Why waste our time in this wondrous country on liquor?  Silly me, my main concern was getting some milk and cream for our coffee in the morning, but much to my dismay, the Duty Free does not carry these items.  I did, however, witness pilots, flight attendants, and the average Joe stocking up on cartfulls beer for what they seemed to feel was the Apocolypse coming.  Or just a trip to Iceland.

But back to our very, very sad car rental.  The young man driving the pickup van was not fazed by the young mother and her infant, he nonchalantly said, "Well, you could just wait for the next bus."  I wish I could be that cool.  In the end, she sent her mate to get the car, and boy, did he seem upset the whole time.  On our whole entertaining ride to the Quonset hut that housed the car rental, he didn't speak a word, and upon arriving, he was the first to get a car, wordlessly pointing out the countless flaws on that sad, sad car.  Then he sped off to pick up his beer, infant, and maybe even his wife.  I'm getting ahead of myself, though, the ride to the Quonset hut, while only a few minutes long (at normal speeds it may have been 10 minutes) was one of the most entertaining rides of my life.  The young, rosy-cheeked fellow squeezed us all into the rusty, dented van, hurriedly clearing seats of jackets and papers to accommodate everyone, and once we were in, he sped off.  He was driving well over the speed limit, while not looking out the windshield, but out the side window, admiring the pretty fog rising from the fields.  "Do you see that fog?" he asked us.  "It's kind of cool."  As much as I hate drug clichés, I started wondering just what this guy was on.   We were quickly approaching not only a roundabout, but also a much slower car ahead of us.  My husband, renowned fast, crazy driver on the famous, partially speed-limit-free German Autobahn, had white knuckles and nearly started hyperventilating.  I was cracking up the whole time, this was one heck of a start to a ridiculous trip.  Our rosy-cheeked driver tried to make some small talk with the passengers, but for some reason everyone was silent.  He pointed out the town of Keflavik, and while no one was interested, I asked him if it really was known as "Little America", as a friend had told me.  He had never heard of this, but went to tell of the unemployment, crime, and drug problems there.  He'd grown up there, much to my surprise, because I'd actually thought this guy was American.  His English was incredible!  But I suppose due to the long military presence in Keflavik and the plethora of English language entertainment options, it probably shouldn't have been such a surprise that he spoke flawless English; in fact, everyone we met in Icleand did.  During our conversation, I also registered some comments from my husband to the effect of "I hope he doesn't roll the van."  Oh, come on.  The guy must have some idea of what he's doing.  Or maybe I was just hoping not to be the first tourist he killed with his driving skills.

During the ride, he told us some of the rules of their car rental agency.  For example, you get the car with an empty tank and return it with an empty tank.  On the keyring were a couple of chips, these entitled us to a discount at a couple of the gas station chains, one of which he pointed out on the drive, but it was just a shimmer, or maybe a blur describes it better.  Finally, after the ride of our lives, I was thrilled to be milling around outside a Quonset hut, home of the rental agency; we were, after all, on a former US military base.  Of course there were Quonset huts!  After waiting for the Asian tourists to get their car and figure out how to drive it (it did take a moment, I'm not being catty here), it was our turn.  The rental agent came out and proudly escorted us to their newest car, a 2002 (this is 2014!!!) Honda CRV.  It paid off to go for the 4-wheel drive and request an automatic transmission after all!  The bumper was interestingly cracked and crooked, and missing some small components, of course there were dings and scratches, and then the doors didn't open!  "This doesn't make me very happy," said the rental agent, "Maybe it's because I locked it today."  I told him it doesn't make a difference to us, all the doors on our car at home don't open, either!  After some fiddling around, we did somehow manage to get the doors open, throw in our suitcase, and take off.  The engine was making a kind of ticking sound, sort of like our old Ford Scorpio after someone (not me!) never once checked the oil and it turned out that there was no oil left in the motor, and sometimes it didn't really want to shift into gear, but hey, who cares?  It got us through our 3 days.  And left me with a great story!

Oh yeah, and while we were getting our car, the Asians returned, looking puzzled.  The driver hopped out of the car, pointing at the gas gauge.  Yes, the car was nearly empty. But it's supposed to be that way.  Apparently they hadn't been listening (maybe they'd been hanging on for their lives and praying to somebody or other instead) when our rosy-cheeked young driver informed us, "You get it empty and return it empty." 

Iceland and whales

I am a vegetarian, but not for ethical reasons, I simply don't like the taste of meat.  That said, I am not going to protest about people eating meat, whatever kind they may choose.  Iceland does commercial whaling, and has for a long time.  A lot of people are against whaling, I know this and respect it, but found it fascinating that no one batted an eye when asked "Where can I get a whale steak?"  Of course I was not asking this question, because I am not interested in meat .  Anyway, no one batted an eye, they were much more likely to whip out their smartphone and start searching for a whale steak for you. 

We ended up at Seabaron in Reykjavik right by the harbor.  They seem to have had the most affordable whale steaks, and even veggie patties and veggie skewers, all prepared on a grill.  And free ice water!  You get free ice water wherever you go in Iceland, of course, they are very proud of their water and every restaurant or even Taco Bell will happily offer you a glass of free ice water and a smile.  But back to the whales.  You can eat them.  And many people did, and do each day.

You were actually allowed to choose your food right from the fridge:

There's the whale on the plate:

I'll stick with the ice water!

Right around the corner from the restaurant, you could see this:

Quite a mix of different standpoints.

Luscious licorice from Iceland!

After a year, the white rabbit is back!  It's been a while due to our move to the Floßhaus, and if you're interested in our crazy old house, please do visit us at flosshaus.net.  I'll continue to use this blog for anything and everything unrelated to the house, which has consumed my life over the past year. But finally we went on vacation again, albeit a short one, to Iceland!  I've been wanting to go to Iceland for some time, and when this opportunity presented itself, I couldn't resist.  One thing that completely fascinated me were all the licorice sundries available in this wondrous land.  Here we go on our licorice tour!

There is a giant Bonus Supermarket (or was it Hagkaup?) in Reykjavik that has bulk candy--this was the first time I've seen bulk candy in a long time, bulk foods are not a big thing in Germany--and better yet, it's 50% off on Saturdays.  The moment I heard this, I knew I had to make the pilgrimage to "Candy Island".  It was crazy, and as big as a bulk candy section in a Meijer store in Michigan, if you've ever had the pleasure.  I'd estimate that there were at least 100 bins of candy, and people everywhere packing their bags full of it. I jumped in to do the same.  Most of the people there seemed to be experienced in their quest for half off candy, and made a beeline to their bins of choice.  I, however, was a newbie in this wonderland of candy, some of which I recognized, and some of which I could only guess what it was.  Some kinds I knew from the United States, for example blue gummy sharks, but these were not my focus. I'll be able to get plenty of those in 6 weeks.  No, I was there for the exotic licorice.  There was licorice in all forms, from sweet to salty and spicy.  Some was gummy, some was covered in chocolate, some was in ball form somewhat like a jelly bean without the jelly. Some was even like caramel!  I couldn't read what was what, and could also not even get an inkling of what kinds of licorice these different items could contain because I haven't got a clue about the Icelandic language, nor do I have any experience with related languages. So I was lost in a sea of licorice.  Here's what I ended up with:

 Licorice shark...

 ...colorful licorice octopus...

 ...chocolate filled licorice tube...

 ...licorice/cherry chewy smily guy...

 ...super strong licorice skull...

...licorice pistol...

...and there was more:  a super strong spicy (like chili) licorice guitar for example, or bean shaped things filled with caramelly licorice, it was all pretty exciting.  

To top it all off, we even came across some black licorice ice cream in Reykjavik!  What a trip!

One member of my party couldn't help but ask, "What's up with the concrete-colored ice cream?", but when informed that it was black licorice, got all pouty and wanted to trade.  Because I didn't want to ruin our trip, I did.  But it was difficult, because this stuff is great!  When ordering, I thought it was either going to be horrible or wonderful...it was more than wonderful!

OK, just one more licorice treat:  a bar of licorice covered in chocolate!

Please be patient, dear readers...more about my 3 days in Iceland is on its way!

High Water at the Floßhaus!

I can't really say that this came out of the blue or anything, we pretty much banked on having water in the basement after seeing the house and noticing that there was NOTHING in the basement, and the furnace and whatever scant supplies were down there were elevated.  Here it is, the water! 

 So there's just a couple of inches of water in the basement, thanks to the pump that's been running since this morning.

The quiet little stream that comes from the forest across the street has turned into roaring little river. 

 The waterfront has gotten closer to the Haus!

 Those trees are usually on dry land.

Here's the view from where I'm sitting now. 

The real danger appears to come not from the Zschopau, but from the forest across the street.  I just noticed that there is lovely clear water trickling down the path directly across from the Haus, and have heard that this can also turn into a roaring waterfall.  I didn't just buy a house here, I bought a whitewater adventure!

And a pretty one to boot:

So far we haven't been hit so hard, the people in Neudörfchen a little closer to town have more water in their yards.  In Chemnitz, where I was teaching today, there was hard rain most of the afternoon, Neukirchen was half under water, and on the way back to Mittweida a farm in Ottendorf was completely under water.  So right now we're hanging in there pretty well, let's see what the next 2 days of rain bring.  I heard today that the water will reach its highest this weekend. 

"I'm the one who's suffering here!"

Finally it seems like someone is interested in our crappy little hole of a garden, so I made the trek out to the garden club today to show it to her.  Upon entering the garden I knew I was going to face some trouble from the neighbor who lives next door.  The weeds were mostly about knee-high.  Last year he freaked out because a couple of little sprigs of oats and wheat came up between our rows of plants, this year the whole garden is full of so-called weeds. 

What was my greeting?  A hollered "When is your husband coming?"  My answer?  "I don't know."  Neighbor who lives there, aka drunken truck driver, kept increasing his volume and angry tones, demanding to know when we are planning to weed the garden, threatening to get us in trouble with the board (ooooh!), yelling at me that HE'S the one who's suffering from OUR weeds.  Pardon my French, but what the f$/§)`?  If that makes you suffer, then something is wrong.  He continued harassing me, demanding to know if we'd picked up our bill for the yearly lease, if my husband had informed the club of our new address and all I could say is that I don't know.  Because I don't.  And I really don't care.  I have enough other things to deal with, and that stupid garden was and is not my baby.  I hated it for 2 years and never want to see it again.  I tried to love it, and I did like the vegetables and the flowers, but the garden itself?  No thanks.  I told him repeatedly that I have nothing to do with the garden, and finally yelled "THIS GARDEN IS NOT MY PROBLEM!" and stalked off.  He continued yelling even after I was out of sight.

I would love to add my entire vocabulary of expletives and a few new ones for good measure here, explaining exactly how I feel about the situation in the garden this afternoon, but that wouldn't make the situation any better.  It would just make me look stupid and immature, and that's not what I want. I'm not usually a screaming, foul-mouthed emotional mess, but some things can push me in this direction.

Normally, I'm pretty relaxed, patient, and can keep my cool even in ridiculous situations.  There are not many people who can drive me to yelling, I can think of 3 or 4, and drunken truck driver who lives in the garden colony is now among their ranks.  So congratulations, drunken truck driver, that's quite an achievement.  And have fun dealing with my firing squad.  If you harass me, I will release the wrath of Sauer Kraut upon you.  You got a little taste of that on the phone this evening.  Enjoy. 

The Attack Swan at the Schwanenteich

We've been having some fun exploring our new town, Mittweida.  All in all it's a cozy, very pretty town with a good library:  my test was a search for David Sedaris and Wladimir Kaminer books, both were present.  Yes!  Even the Cashbags have played here.  Regardless of everything, our awesome Floßhaus can't be beat.  But last week's adventure was pretty cool.

The weather has finally warmed up, so we aren't freezing in sub-zero temperatures any more, but rather, we're feeling quite summery.  I decided to get some ice cream bars with the kids and check out the famed Schwanenteich (Swan Pond) here in town.  It was better than I could have imagined:  not only are there swans, ducks, and geese, but there's also a voliere with exotic birds and peacocks and even some deer!  The main attraction was the swans, though.  First we noticed how friendly the ducks seemed, they were coming out of the water toward us, probably because they were hungry for our ice cream.  After watching the ducks a bit, I noticed one of the two swans swimming faster than I'd ever seen a swan swim ever before.  Hmm, that's strange, I thought, and observed it a little longer.  Upon further observation, it became clear that this swan was duck hunting.  Any duck that came within a three-meter radius of it, or actually any duck that it happened to swim near for that matter, became a target. The swan would start swimming really fast, tip its wingtips upward, and when it got near the duck, it would lunge and snap.  I wondered if this was a one-time thing, but no, the swan circulated around the whole pond, speeding, lunging and snapping away.  I decided to take a few photos, because I'd never seen anything like it before.

Fast Swan swimming...

...swimming...

...lunging...

...snapping!

Was this duck (also seen at the Schwanenteich) a victim of Fast Swan?  Friedrich didn't think so, he said it just flew too fast and crashed into the rocks.  We will never know what his true demise was.

Now coming to you from...Mittweida!!!

Dear Readers,

I know it's been a while.  It's been a very stressful, crazy time since October, when I found this gem on ImmobilienScout: 

The Sunday evening I found this lovely shack I had been searching for houses or even apartments in or near Dresden.  I found nothing, nothing and nothing.  My frustration grew to a level I'd never reached before, and just for fun, I typed in Mittweida.  And there it was, the Flosshaus.  I fell in love immediately, and could think of nothing but this house for the whole week.  On Friday we went to look at the house, expecting to find some horrible problems with it, some reason that nobody wanted it.  It seemed too good to be true.  But no, it was fine.  Over the weekend, we more or less moved into the house in our minds.  Our time in Dresden had come to an end. 

We called the real estate agent on Monday to tell him we'd take it, but the people who'd looked at the house after us were also of the opinion that they'd like to buy it.  He told us we were too late.  That day we fell into a black hole, we just couldn't imagine living anywhere but in the Flosshaus.  We couldn't imagine our lives without the Flosshaus!  This would eat away at us for the rest of our days.  But by some act of someone, somewhere, the owner decided to sell to us a few days later. 

So now when I'm preparing my lessons or doing translations, I'm sitting here in my office with a view of the Zschopau River.  This room also used to be a whole different kind of workroom.  The Flosshaus is well known in Mittweida as an adult establishment.  Word on the street has it that the previous owners were operating a type of, ahem, club here before the flood in 2002.  It appears that the high water ended their business venture, and tenants moved in.

Three weeks ago, we moved in.  I am absolutely thrilled with our new location and our new town.  I'm also lucky to have the best of both worlds:  I still can work in Dresden a few days a week, so I can get my dose of city life, but when I go home it's like a little vacation every time.  On the way home I drive along the river on a curvy road, then the house appears on the horizon.  The kids and I cheer every time we pop around the last curve and see the Haus.

This is the start of a whole new chapter, and a whole new set of adventures.  We've got a little land, what will we do with it?  We sure did get a lot out of our garden, which was not even a tenth of the size of our land here.  Plus, we can have animals here! On my list are cats, bunnies, chickens and Indian runner ducks.  An ostrich would be quite a novelty, but a bit too eccentric and sensitive.  I suggested a cow today, to which Wilhelm replied:  "But then we'd need a creamery!"  But before all of that can happen, it needs to turn into spring!  We seriously need some warmer weather.  We thought we'd have a nice time to move in, when the heating season was drawing to a close, but no, it's freezing, and we have to heat with coal and wood.  Oh, yeah, and our wood shipment?  It's completely wet.  There's no burning that.  So last week I brought home 900 kilograms of coal in three trips.  On my last trip, the guy at the store started to help load the packages of coal into the trunk after he'd gotten down my pallet of coal with the forklift, and I think he was a little surprised when I so matter-of-factly started heaving the coal into the trunk myself.  He made a sort of surprised noise, and I said "You're welcome to help, but I loaded the last 60 packages into the car myself".  He seemed a little miffed, parked his forklift then came back and helped with the last few packages.  He was also impressed with how exactly 30 packages of coal fit into the trunk of the car.  I probably could've transported more had my lovely car not suffered so horribly during the move: 

Just to set the record straight, this was not my doing.  My poor, pretty red station wagon's days are numbered now.  It still drives okay, but the crasher drives it now.  I took his car, which is even bigger than my A6 and a pretty smooth ride, except that the heat doesn't work. And there we are, back at the heating issue.  Spring, please come soon!  I've had enough of the sub-zero temperatures and ugly gray weather!

That's all from here for now, I'm sure there'll be more soon!

El Hierro!

  After our first week of vacation, we jumped on the Benchijigua Express and ferried over the El Hierro, the smallest and furthest west of the Canary Islands.

  Here's the car line before the ferry arrived and before we could drive on.

 We're on our way!  We've actually taken this ferry before, back in 2007 over to La Gomera.  That's a trip for lightweights, it only takes about 30 minutes from Tenerife to La Gomera.  It takes 2 hours to get to El Hierro.  And not many people make the trip:  the boat was pretty full on the first leg of the journey to La Gomera, but cleared right out when we got there.  We had a relatively quiet and relaxed trip over.

 There you can see La Gomera and Tenerife behind the boat.  The water was really calm and the air was super clear, I think this view is unusual.

 

Puerto de la Estaca, El Hierro.  on the right side you can see the Fred Olsen Express on which we came.

El Hierro is much smaller than Tenerife, which you certainly can feel after you've gotten used to following maps in Tenerife.  At first I often expected a relatively short drive to take at least twice as long, despite knowing the scale of the map.  My first impressions of El Hierro were that it's very quiet:  there are very few tourists. Also, it seemed to be more "original", meaning that in Tenerife you can find a lot of British and German products in the supermarkets, and in La Palma and La Gomera we came across lots of products made by German expatriates (bread, sweets, tofu products), whereas we didn't spot any of this in El Hierro, just lots of Spanish stuff!  This isn't to say that it's not there, we just didn't notice any.  I really liked that, because it really felt like I was away.  When I go on vacation, I don't want things from home, I want to try different things, and this was a great place to do it. Herreno cheese, Herreno cheesecake, lots of delicious fruits and vegetables, yum, yum, yum...

Another very pleasing aspect of this island is the small population:  about 10,800 people live there!  On the whole island!  That's about 40 people per square kilometer.  It was quiet, the nature areas weren't overrun, even the "tourist towns" were very civilized.  I instantly fell in love with this little island, even though it doesn't have any of the heavy hitting major attractions like Tenerife with El Teide, La Palma with the Caldera and Cumbre, etc.  In a way, it's almost like a mini format of the other islands without the extremes.  Even with the small population, however, I found the capital city to be pretty hip, with lots of interesting shops and cafes.  El Hierro definitely has its own flair, and if you want to go off the beaten path, I'd say that this is a great place to do it.

 We stayed in Casa Elvira in the town of Isora, which was relatively centrally located.  It wasn't too long of a drive to get anywhere.  The only trouble was that the house is about 700 meters above sea level, which we didn't expect to be so questionable, but it was.  The first couple of days were gorgeous...

 ...the orange tree was blooming and smelled fantastic...

 

 ...from Casa Elvira we could even see La Gomera and Tenerife.  We read in our travel guides that you can't usually see the other islands, and thought this was a joke to keep the tourists away, but it seems like we were very lucky on our first 2 days and our last day.  In between there was an awful windstorm and it was gray and cloudy.  It wasn't possible to sit outside and it was even relatively cold inside because the house was pretty drafty.  The real downside:  the fireplace didn't work, it just smoked up the whole house, and when we turned on the electric radiators, we kept blowing fuses.  That was unfortunate, but I think these problems can be avoided if you don't stay at such a high elevation, at least in the winter.  On the coast it was always at least 7 degrees warmer, even if it was windy.

 Here's a view from La Restinga, on the southern tip of El Hierro, to the ocean.  La Restinga is one of the tourist towns on the island, and it was just my style of tourist town:  not at all overrun, pretty calm and civilized.  This town also seems like the one to be in to avoid the windstorms...maybe we'll stay there next time!

 As usual, we did some creature watching, and even found a crocodile this time!

We got to witness quite a sunset in La Restinga.

Tenerife: Igueste

We returned to one of our favorite small towns, Igueste, where we remembered being chased down by Esther two years ago (http://sarahonearth.blogspot.de/2010/12/feliz-navidad.html).  This time around, we got her phone number, because not only does she peddle mangos from her garden, she has a couple of vacation houses in town that we'd love to stay in next time. 

 In Igueste.

 The fruit and vegetable gardens in the barranco, right in the middle of the town.

 The coast by Esther's house.

 Creature watching.

 More creature watching. 

 We continued our very relaxed day with a trip to some beaches.  Our first stop was Playa de las Gaviotas, which was actually closed.  There was a sign from the main street stating that it was closed, and when we drove in we reached a large metal gate which completely closed off the street.  This did not bother the beachgoers, however, some of the bars on the gate had been simply cut out, so you could still walk through, around a few more curves in the street and to the quiet black, sandy beach.  Above you can see the remains of Casa Charly, which appears to have been a snack stand on this beach.  It must have been a nice and well-frequented public beach, there was a relatively large abandoned parking area, too.

 

 Judging by the graffiti around the gate and around the beach, it seems that this property has been sold and is now private.  So in a few years, there'll probably be a big, fancy-shmancy hotel development on this lovely, quiet bit of coast that is otherwise far away from the tourists.

Our second stop was Playa de las Teresitas, probably one of the more famous beaches of the island, which we'd never visited on our previous trips.  It's a really big beach with white sand shipped in from the Sahara.  We were pleasantly surprised:  it was well-frequented but not too crowded, pretty quiet, and the kids had a great time.