Roy Sigurd Karlsbakks blogg

Yet another day is passing and I’m continuing to like this place. The weather has been everything yr.no has said it shouldn’t be, or at least it feels way better than what they report, so I guess we can conclude that weather experience is quite subjective.The day started earlier today, that is, I even got up before 10 and was able to eat breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast consisted of a slice of bread that was probably baked some time back, frozen, and then let lying around a day to gain some life. There were eggs there too, but not the usual soft or hard boiled eggs, just one basket with cold eggs that, when opened, had gained that green-blueish colour of eggs having been boiled for half an hour. There was some skyr there as well, but I didn’t notice until one of the hotel’s employees took some and blended some jam into it. Perhaps I’d better try that tomorrow instead of bread and eggs.

After breakfast was hastily interrupted, I went to meet Hildigunnur Rúnarsdóttir, an artist and composer I have never met before, just talked to her on IRC and MSN and such. She blogs (mostly in Icelandic) on http://hildigunnur.wordpress.com/. We had a long walk about Kreppan, some housing projects started but now laying dormant, and a lot more. During this, I discovered one of the most interesting bookshops I’ve ever seen. It’s a mess, and not just some books lying around, but a real mess. Too bad I don’t know Icelandic well enough to read books (I’ve read one so far, Elsku Mió minn, an Icelandic translation of the book Mio, min Mio (Mio, My Son) by Astrid Lindgren, but I cheated by using the Swedish original for backup, so I don’t think it counts.) Still, this bookshop has soul.

Then we went to Basil & Lime and had lunch. The place’s interior looks like a rather fancy (read expensive) restaurant, but for 1200 krónur you get an eat-as-much-as-you-like buffet with pastas, bacalao and more. Great place!

After this, I wandered around by random as usual and eventually found myself back at the area where the hotel is located, went by the hotel and sat down for an hour, and then back to town. I’m not paying thousands of kroner (Norwegian ones) to spend time at a half-star hotel (well, it’s not that bad, but it’s not really good either and that breakfast didn’t make it any better).

Now, at the time of writing, back in miðbær, Prikið again, I find there’s a football match (soccer, that is, if someone should be wondering) between Iceland and Norway, the ladies’ team and Norway is in the lead (ISL-NOR 0-1) six minutes before the end of the match, so I guess I might try to play English tonight :þ

Oh – and yesterday, after a tip from Hildigunnur, I went by a place called Rosenberg and there was a nice concert with a band called Trúnó with Tómas R Einarsson on the bass. See here for some pictures.

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