MAGIC         PORK

I went on vacation to Iceland. When I say that to people, their reaction 99% of the time is two words: “Why Iceland?” While I understand that it’s not the typical place you’d expect someone to go on vacation, it still gets annoying having to answer that question every time. No one ever follows the statement “I went to France on vacation” with the response “Why France?”. It’s a place to go, OK? My friends Mike & Jane went there four years ago and loved it. I’m tempted to just start making up stuff, like saying I went there on assignment for Gillette. There are a lot of unshaven men in that country and they want to break into that market. Oh Gillette, how many times must Magic Pork sing your praises before you show me some love and send me a little cash? Or free razors at least.

I created a Flickr account for my photos and created a page that links to them. If it proves too complicated for you to click over there, here’s a link to my Iceland photos. Easy enough?

As you browse through those photos, you may notice a blonde woman in some of the pictures. That’s Guðríður, this cute Icelandic girl that I met at the duty free shop in the airport after my flight came in. She was impressed that in the U.S. we have vibrating razors with five blades. She offered to show me around and we ended up having a great time. OK you got me - her real name is Kim and I imported her from the states. Guðríður is just some Icelandic name I found online. I don’t even know how that’s pronounced or what the heck those funky letters are. But I like that story so I’m going to go with it.

Little known fact that I learned in one of the museums I visited: Remember when Prince changed his name into a symbol? That was actually an Icelandic name, we just didn’t know how to pronounce it. He wanted to honor his Viking ancestry. It’s true!! “When Doves Cry” was about the rare “crying dove” that nests in the hills along the south shore. It has a mating call that sounds remarkably like synthesizers. Look it up!!

It was 24 hours of daylight this time of year. It would turn to dusk late at night but never get dark. That’s pretty cool to see but tended to make us lose track of the time. That and the fact that we didn’t have watches and our cell phones weren’t displaying the time there.

I made an effort to sample some Icelandic cuisine, such as:

• Skyr: Kind of like yoghurt only (”not as good” if you ask me / “better” if you ask Guðríður). Guðríður thinks there would be a big market for it in the U.S. and she’s probably right because it’s healthy and all that. And people do apparently love this stuff even though I didn’t see what the big deal was.
• Some sort of breakfast/lunch dish that consisted of sardines, capers, horseradish, uh… were there beets in there?.. I don’t remember what else was on it, but it was all on top of rye toast and came with raw egg in a half-shell that you were supposed to pour over it. I’ve never eaten a raw egg before and thought perhaps it would be disgusting but it wasn’t at all. I wouldn’t gulp it down like Rocky, but the whole dish was pretty good. I looked around for hints of how others were eating and saw a woman daintily cutting up her food and bringing the fork up to her mouth with her left hand in a graceful arch. I tried such an approach but I was really clumsy eating with my left hand. I also couldn’t get enough food to stay on my fork with that approach. I like to try to get a little of the different flavors in each bite. So I gave up and figured they probably can see I’m American anyway, might as well eat like an American. So I ate it much like how I eat a good old Rochester garbage plate - chopped it up, switched the fork to my right hand, hunched over my plate and shoveled it in. I’m exaggerating, I wasn’t quite that bad.. but almost.
• Meat soup: I had to ask what kind of meat was in the “meat soup”. It’s lamb. I don’t care for lamb all the much - don’t hate it but doesn’t do much for me and that’s how I felt about this soup.
• However, I had another lamb dish at a tapas restaurant that was very good. It had this licorice sauce on it that was tasty. I know lamb isn’t specific to Iceland but they eat it a lot there so I say this counts as local cuisine.
• Puffin: Yes they eat them. It’s just another type of fowl so it shouldn’t be a surprise but for some reason it just seems so badass to me so I have to respect them for that. If your reaction to a tourist’s “awww they’re so cute” is “..and tasty too!” - that’s badass. Unfortunately I did not like the puffin much at all. I got it at that same tapas place, with some blueberry sauce, and while I ate most of it out of some weird matter of pride, I didn’t care for it. No it did not taste remotely like chicken, it tasted more like fish.

I think that was about it for the local cuisine. The rest of the time I allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted - for example we ate Indian food one night. I love how there’s no tipping in Iceland. You pay what’s listed on the bill and that’s that. You don’t have to worry about which person is “your” waiter because they’re not working for your tip. This was a great change of pace from the U.S. where you’re increasingly expected to tip people for just doing their jobs. My friend told me that he saw a tip jar at a Subway. Never. You’d have to be one damn good “sandwich artist” to get a tip from me. I particularly hate the “Tips Appreciated” sign you often see over those jars… appreciated by you maybe, but certainly not by me.

I think it would be boring to go on & on about everything we did in Iceland. Here’s the gist of it: went to restaurants and bars in Reykjavik, a few museums, a couple bus tours (from whence most of the pictures come), Blue Lagoon. If you’d like more details feel free to post a comment or email me.

I will say a little something about the Blue Lagoon though. They claim it’s all healthy for your skin but I don’t buy it. (And I literally didn’t buy it - they sell a whole line of skin care products too.) I think that’s just a big marketing gimmick they came up with. But it was great nonetheless - the water was really warm and relaxing even if the weather wasn’t nice that day.

A question I’ve gotten from a few different men (some of whom are married and did so in a conspiratorial whisper - don’t worry your secret’s safe with me!) was whether the girls are as gorgeous in Iceland as they’re rumored to be. I hate to shatter your dreams, but no. That’s not to say there aren’t some very striking blonde girls there, and maybe if you have a particular thing for blondes you’d be in heaven there, but overall I wouldn’t say the general female population in Iceland is any more beautiful than here in Rochester. (What up Rochacha ladies!!)

As far as the guys, I didn’t think they were anything special and neither did Guðríður. Why do you think she hooked up with an American man? But guys, you better watch out for these Icelandic men. I was at a bar with Kim… I mean Guðríður.. and stepped into the bathroom for all of four minutes. When I returned there was an Icelandic dude leaning in and talking to her. Later, Guðríður told me that he said something along the lines of:

Where are you from?
You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful.

or something like that. Point is, it wasn’t the most sophisticated pick up line but he was descended from Vikings so gotta give him some credit there for not just dragging her away.

Iceland generates most of its electricity - something like 95%, but don’t quote me on that - actually go ahead & quote me, it’ll be good exposure - from geothermal and hydroelectric sources. That’s what they claim at least, but I grew suspicious. We were walking around Reykjavik one day and Guðríður made some comment about how there’s no homeless people. Now maybe it has to do with their social programs but I think they’re using the homeless as fuel! You’re telling me there’s only 316,000 people in all of Iceland? Yeah right - you’re probably burning a good 30,000 homeless people a year. It’s frickin’ cold in Iceland in winter - they’re probably dropping off left & right. I made sure not to voice my suspicions to Guðríður though. She might have alerted her Icelandic overlords that I was on to them and the next day another American tourist would have had an unfortunate geyser “accident”. I also have to wonder about that skyr now that I think of it… “skyr” might be the Icelandic version of “soylent green“.

I can’t end this post without a brief parting blow to air travel. It sucks. That’s all I’ll say because everyone knows this and I won’t bore you with the details. But I agree with Richard Roeper who made the observation in one of his columns that no one likes to travel, they just like being in other places.