Tales of Iceland part 2: about driving and my roommate

The last time I was writing about my experience with coming to live in Iceland. Here are some more stories from Iceland. This time about my German roommate and about my driving experience in Iceland.

Stories from Iceland: My German roommate

Geysir Stokkur is a very popular place to see when visiting Iceland. I Also have stories from Iceland from that place.

This deserves a special episode. I liked Nika, she was a lot of fun. However, she did a lot of crazy things. Example? I didn’t know anyone in Iceland, but she had had friends over there. So once, when the owner or the stable and the hotel, where we were both working went for a sleepover to his family, she decided to take his car and drive to her friend. It is a dumb thing to do when you don’t know the Icelandic roads and especially dumb when you don’t even ask if you can. Well, anyway, I thought she was fine, but she managed to completely crash the car and while doing so, she broke her arm. And yet she didn’t want to quit and go home. In some way I admire it, but it wasn’t the only thing.

Two weeks after her crash, the owner asked me, if I can drive with her to the hospital. Sure, no problem. And I wanted to be nice and take her on a little trip on our way back. So I drove to a famous Geysir nearby, to see that place. And it is a very nice place to watch nature going wild. When you are careful… When you are not, like Nika, you will manage somehow to try, whether Geysir is really hot by trying it out on your self. And when I say try it out on yourself, I mean her only healthy hand. I cannot describe the look at our employer’s face when I come back with my roommate who at that point had two hands in a bandage.

Besides this,s it was quite fun to argue with her about the temperature of the room. I love warm and so I would usually turn on the radiator because even in Icelandic summer it was rarely warmer than 18 degrees. Which is about 5 degrees less than my favorite room temperature. But she preferred to be in cold. And we never directly argue about this, but our day looked like this: I woke up to go to work at 7, so before that,t I would turn on the heater and left. Because she worked, later on, she would turn the heater off once she woke up and then she left. Then I come fora work break and turn it on. Later on, when she came for a break, she would turn it off again.

And this is how we went after each other every single day. It was quite a fun thing though. Once it was so warm for her, that she left even the doors to our house open. Which would sound normal, but in Iceland, there are sheep everywhere. And so once when I come home, I saw our little living room filled with sheep. To make this funnier for her, I just made them go to her room, so she would appreciate the new company J

Stories from Iceland: Driving in Iceland

There are beautiful sceneries all over Iceland.

I have mentioned driving in Iceland several times. And truth is, driving as a big thing in Iceland. It is a country, who people cannot really live without it properly. My employer had even 3 cars. One normal city car, the Jeep for some hardcore terrain and monster truck for extra adventures, when he had to go to the highlands.

He was kind enough to borrow me a car everytime I had to go somewhere. Most of the time, I got the small one, but several times, I got a monster truck. „Just don’t drive into a fence or a water and you will be alright with this car,“ Raven told me about this car, when explaining me the safety of driving with Monster Truck.

And he was right. You can go everywhere with this car. My favorite (and kind of sad) story of driving with the monster truck was when I went to Langmannalaugar. Highlands on the southern part of Iceland. I took a hitch hiker because I hate driving alone. And we drove quite slowly – like 60km/h. But at some point sheep were running around the road. And I was sure that I break in time and that little boop on the street was just another rock in the road. Well, it was not. I felt terrible about it and we drive to find the closest farmer to tell him, that we probably kill his sheep.

His first words were literally: „Did you kill my sheep?“ „How do you know?“ „Well, I have only three kind of people coming here – my family and friends, postman and people who drove into my sheep. I don’t know you and you don’t look like a postman.“ Even the situation was horrible, this was quite a funny reaction. He charged me some money for the sheep and show me where to wash the car. When I drove back to my owner, he asked me if I wash the car from the sheep. Apparently, all Icelanders know each other so the farmer just calls him to tell him what happens. Those are kind of things that happen only in Iceland.

I also remember once when I accidentaly create a traffic jam. The sun was in a position that just got in my eyes and I coulnd’t do anything about it. Monster trucks are huge cars and so I drove quite slow. On the very next day, there was a post on Icelandic facebook that went kind of viral, talking about maybe first trafic jam in Iceland. Well, turns out, I was the first in that line.