iceland | Absurdia.Net

July 16, 2013

Cursed doors

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It’s three weeks now that the landlord says he wants to repair the apartment’s main door because it gets stuck at random, but today he mailed saying he cannot come this week because of “unforeseen circumstances”. I had been playing Cinderella for days to make everything as clean as a dirty dog allows, but it was useless. Next time I will spend less time vacuuming and more time stuffing tumbleweeds of inert dog fur into pillows.

It’s weird and unsettling that we can never have our doors repaired, no matter which country we’re in.

In Iceland we had a broken door as well. It was a bit different than a door that gets stuck at random, it was a door with a huge hole in it. Oh but… A hole is after all just void where wood is supposed to be, it’s not that serious. Because, who cares about break-ins in Iceland? We sure didn’t, even though we had an attempted one while we were in (but that was not regular criminals, it was Eastern Europe mafia; and they were actually trying to get into the neighboring apartment, not ours; and they got in through the window not through the door… well, OK, it’s a long story). The landlord of that apartment, a very carefree fella who plays in a popular Icelandic band, made the hole himself with his fist one night when he forgot the keys and was too drunk to come up with a better plan. Then he moved out and rented out the apartment. Twice. And he never fixed the goddamn hole in the door, even if he was sent reminders regularly. He promised he would, but he magically managed to forget about it for four years!

I don’t know why, but I’m starting to suspect there must be some voodoo curse on our doors.

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March 22, 2011

Mothers are a foreign country – pt. 1

How mothers can prove in less than 150 characters that they have no taste in music, no tact, and no idea about geography.

After almost a month of silence, my mother sends me a laconic text message stating she has received her birthday present. The present in question is a CD by Ólöf Arnalds — not the latest, the previous one. Mother’s opinion, in less than fifteen words, is the CD sounds like Japanese music, although of course she knows it’s not Japanese but Icelandic from the bits of text contained in it. She doesn’t know Icelandic, but she can tell it’s not Japanese because titles and credits — but I doubt she actually looked at anything besides the title on the cover — look like they are written with some sort of alphabet, although very bizarre; Japanese is written differently, of course, a bit like hieroglyphs, but without the fancy little birds and men with bobbed hair doing stuff. She doesn’t say if she likes the music or not: I can affirm from experience that this is evidence she doesn’t like it or, rather, that she doesn’t get it at all. She concludes her message saying she’s happy I’m living in Iceland instead of Japan right now, like they were close countries and one could end up in either of them just for a chance.

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January 28, 2011

Owl wants to go to prison

OK, so… I just learnt that inmates in Iceland get paid to study. If they want to study, of course. They can get paid more than $3 per hour, for up to five hours daily. Sure, 3 dollars per hour isn’t much, but I doubt you have many expenses when you are in prison anyway. Unless you are The Godfather, at least. Just for comparison, in Italy slave trad… I mean… employers pay the same amount — but very often less — to immigrants to do very hard work for 10+ hours each day. And after that, these people — the immigrants, not the employers — have to take care of themselves; with crazy rents and all that jazz, they end living in very shitty and dangerous slums, with no assistance or social rights whatsoever, etc. I’m not even talking about the situation of prisons in Italy, because it’s hopeless and disgraceful and very depressing. On the other hand, inmates in Iceland are said to be treated quite well. According to rumors, Icelandic prisons are more like hotels than like correctional facilities as we know them. I’m not sure about that, but from the outside some of them don’t even look like actual prisons.

At the moment there are 189 inmates in the whole country, which for Iceland’s capacity is a lot. Around 300 criminals are waiting to serve their sentences because there is no way room for them can be made. Basically, they are waiting in line till it’s their turn to be jailed. This will very likely be going on till another prison is built. Why is it so strange though? At these conditions, I would definitely want to go to prison too.

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March 21, 2010

It feels good to be here

A place for little things, a place where time has its own times and space its own spaces. Free from hypertrophies, the swelling illnesses of the self-indulgent egos. Free from the prejudiced denials. Distress and foreboding aren’t roaming the streets with indecent voraciousness. Possibilities outgrowing their shell. But it’s still too early to confidently surrender to this encouraging and tender benevolence.

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March 12, 2010

So much to do, so little time (here we go again…)

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A lot has happened during the last month. First of all the change of residence. Not anymore the land where all catastrophes are taken as a big joke, but a land where catastrophes are taken into consideration. And taken care of, when possible. Where not almost everybody is a clown or a selfish bastard trying to screw their fellow citizens over. Where morals have gone to hell a long time ago in favor of prostitution at all levels. From Italy to Iceland. Yep. Waiting for papers to be approved and everything in order to make the change legal and, for now, definitive. And whatever happens, even if something comes up and I’ll be forced to move again, I’m not going back! Adios assholes, as the wise man once said.
Traveling through Europe by car to get here was fun. Also fatiguing, but mostly fun. It took a week to recover from the three days of journeying by ferry across the northern seas, and I suffered from motion sickness… when I got off the ferry. Overall it was something I could do again though, despite lack of internet connections, lack of toilets at the right time and place, lack of collaboration from polar bears when I was expecting to see them.
Now I am staying in a guesthouse. We – my partner in crime and I – need all the necessary documents and an officialized kennitala in order to find a better accomodation. The most difficult thing will be getting used to the crazy prices of alcohol and to the lack of any imaginable vegetable in supermarkets. But these are things that hopefully will take care of themselves with the passing of time. It’s very likely I’ll get fatter. Like I care. Here people dress in a considerate and quite dignified manner, as I could see. You can find actual clothes in stores. Not every girl here is trying to squeeze herself into impossible pants hoping a stupid kiddo with a shaved head that cannot even spell his own name will pinch her butt.
We opened another blog to document our life in Iceland. It’s called Iceland Chronicles. A pretentious name. That’s what one needs nowadays when opening a site. So yes, here we have a pretentious name and we like it. Not a personal blog though. Something more about what’s going on here and what we discover in our almost aimless strolls.
Now I am going to have a VERY EXPENSIVE drink. A Martini will be nice. Stirred because in any case I don’t have a shaker.

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