Roy Sigurd Karlsbakks blogg

Weather forecasts from yr.no and veður.is is quite worthless. The rain doesn’t seem to want to come, and the sun shines on. That is, it did this morning, but in the afternoon, we had some light rain. No wind to speak of and pretty mild.

Last night I found this wine bar. If you walk from the city centre to Alþingi, there’s a wine bar just behind that. As mentioned earlier, there really is no reason to go to Pósthúsið, even though they call it a wine bar. Rather walk in the street on the left side of Alþingi and at the next crossing, turn left, walk 20 meters and Vínbarinn is on your right hand side. The bar is yet the most posh bar I’ve been to up here, and I was afraid this might be a problem (I’m not posh). After tasting a few wines (yes, you can actually taste the wine before deciding on a single glass, she even opened a bottle to let me taste that), I ended up tasting what she named as their most expensive wine (at least per glass). This one, the full name being Casa Lapostolle Clos Apalta 2001, was better than most wines I’ve tasted. It was very rich and tasted earth and lava and perhaps some crowberries and I don’t know. The price was 2300 krónur a glass (NOK 110 or EUR 12,70), but after tasting it, I decided it was worth it. The waitress actually asked me twice if I really wanted it. As it turned out, the bottle, which was the last, was almost empty so I got something like 2/3 of a glass for 1000 krónur. Not bad! Later, today, I tried to find it on Rikið and later Vinmonopolet without much luck, so if anyone (Hildigunnur? Jón?) knows where I can find this and who I may have kill first, please tell.

Today started with another late breakfast at Babalú. (That place is great! I know I’ve said it earlier, but it can be repeated once or twice.) After that, I went to this city walk / theatre thing. It took a little more than an hour, a walk through certain streets in town and stopping every now and then to listen to the actor that led the show. In his introduction, he asked, in Icelandic, if there were any foreigners in the crowd, which created a little laugh. He looked like a little oops came to his face, but I had raised my hand already, so he just switched language and repeated most of the intro in English. We were shepherd around town and he (the one with the microphone) stopped every now and then to tell us stories, stories I somehow doubt is in any history book around. In the house in the back, there were people posing in different settings (too bad that’s not clearly visible on the picture) and he was talking about this farm that was down the road and the insufficiency of food for the poor and that one didn’t need to eat that much, just a little, but when Famine comes around (I think that’s what he meant, it was an Icelandic word, and I’ve forgot it), you’ll die. Keeping on telling stories, walking around, we came to a small house where we went in and saw the three sisters living there (the oldest had a habit of visiting the soldiers by the docks and… uh.. so…). Then up to Laugavegur, where the actor started raving around yelling at tourists and businessmen that did what they could to hide. He kept on, yelling out how brilliant Laugavegur had always been and at this display window (no shop now, there’s an old car parked inside) he told us there had been a brilliant club or bar. There were Mannequins on display, or so it seemed at once until they started to dance crazily, and then, suddenly to stop again.

At several places, like this, other actors were placed “on view”, some about stories were told, but most without. Behind this old and rather run-down house, a princess (or what else could it be?) was posing insecurely, moving her dress around, lifting it here and there. No story was given to this, just a visual effect. Walking further, we went through a kindergarten of sorts (with three old ladies playing around like kids) where we were told how he (the actor) had had so much fun with his friend (what’s-his-name) and .. well … very nice .. at nights .. erm … we must go on… This lead us to Skólavörðstígur, where, at some stairs, a choir was singing and somehow falling asleep and then to wake up (except her that was on the bottom that looked pretty much asleep all the time). Being led futher down Skólavörðstígur, the actor started jumping around crazily, startling even more tourists and businessmen, and doing some rather nice acrobatics before suddenly stopping and changing shoes to some that were placed on a bench. Following him, him dancing down to Laugavegur like Charlie Chaplin, we were met by music, something like brass musicians trying hard to sound evil, which worked well. Then, after a little speech, we were led into the second floor (or is that first floor? up one from ground level, anyway) and given pancakes with sugar and some cakes and coffee. The place was pretty crowded and after 10 minutes or so, we were asked to go down and out the backyard, where a concert was held. Some Icelandic classics and some more. Just 3-4 songs and then, goodbye. So far, this has been a most eventful day 🙂

At this point I feel a real idiot being Norwegian today. There are hordes of drunk football supporters in town. Football supporters are bad for a start and they don’t get any better if they go to another country with half the prices for alcohol. Let’s just home Iceland wins this match – ÁFRAM ÍSLAND.

It seems the Icelandic team did a good job – Norway started out well and scored early, but Iceland took it up. Iceland was pushing all the way and would probably have won if they had played the ball better. A draw was good for Iceland and disaster for Norway, ruining their hopes for the world cup.

roy