Icelandic Inspiration: here's one I wrote earlier

My first blog post wasn't the first thing I wrote this year.  The idea of writing the blog in the first place really stems from how much I enjoyed writing a short piece about Iceland, specifically the concert hall on the waterfront in Rekjavik.  Here it is for your enjoyment.

I’d never really thought about going to Iceland.  I had joked about it, when the economy crashed in 2009 – it had always been so expensive, so now was surely the time to visit – but I hadn’t planned anything in earnest.

Then one day I was in a tube station in London, I forget which, but I think I was on my way home from a trip to Paris.  I’m always particularly susceptible to planning new adventures as the previous one finishes, so when I saw the poster advertising cheap Northern Lights packages to Iceland I immediately resolved to look into it and knew exactly who I was going to take.  Within hours of getting home I had been on the website and was on the phone to my Mum; once upon a time I’d promised to take her on a Norwegian Fjords cruise to see the Aurora Borealis, but the time and the money had never appeared, so here was my chance to make it up to her.

This time, I booked it, and we were off to Iceland.  I didn’t even know how much it meant to her... until the excitement started to build and my 61 year-old mother was like a child again in the back seat of the car, barely able to contain herself as we drove to the airport on the much anticipated day of departure.  That’s when I learned about Surtsey, the island that appeared from the sea, and more of the land of volcanic wonder that had so long held my Mum fascinated.

Before we had even left the airport building, my fiancé was despairing as the two of us paused to marvel at the glimpses of mountains through cleverly placed windows and to stroke the beautifully smooth stones and superbly finished concrete.  We had hired a car, so we set off away from the tourist crowd (such as it was) and into the bleakness of the lava fields, on the way to the blue lagoon.  This uneven expanse of black boulders, spewn so recently from the inner layers of the earth, stands silently testament to the awesome fury of nature in this place where the crust is a fraction of the thickness of our own stable land’s.  Its otherworldliness is also a fitting introduction and backdrop to the steamy spookiness of the Blue Lagoon and its ice-blue, impenetrably cloudy waters.

We watched the sky begin to darken, and lights around the lagoon twinkle into life, before we made our way onward to Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik.  A town of less than 200,000 souls, it is hardly the bustling metropolis you’d expect of a capital, but it has an outpost charm, as we discovered when we explored it the following day.  You feel a long way from anywhere as you gaze out across the bay at the snowy peaks, backed by the brightly painted corrugated iron that predominates in the town’s buildings – apparently most of the early country’s building materials drifted in off the tide from more prosperous, more hospitable parts of the world.

 

 

Reykjavik’s waterfront has a new gem, however, that is all Icelandic and a million miles from driftwood construction.  Although the Harpa concert hall’s facade of tessellated glass hexagons purports to be a reference to the volcanic activity on the island (or so the website tells us), its situation next to the harbour and its fishing boats help it to evoke a much more fish-like image.  It positively glimmers in the grey wintry light, and stands in bold opposition to the natural backdrop of the bay without detracting from it – a feat not often successfully accomplished by modern architecture.  Once you’ve passed under the dizzying three-dimensional cladding to gain entry to the building, you enter a concourse space whose size is tempered by the projecting masses of the auditoria and the enclosing planes of the stairs and walkways that give access to them.  It doesn’t feel as large as it is, and the parallel walls of black concrete leading straight through the building to another perfectly framed view of the bay cause you not to care: instead you are drawn through for yet more quiet contemplation.  The route up through the building offers more of the same: spectacular views, cunningly accommodated seating areas on the skew stair that hugs the front wall, more walkways, more perfectly executed concrete.  The walls look like lava, but lavastone is too weak and porous to support such a building.  I imagine there is a volcanic additive used to achieve the colour, but in terms of a technical achievement these walls are truly remarkable (more detail available on request), with hardly a blemish on them.

 

The following day we set out into the wilderness which, in Iceland, is not in short supply even on the main tourist routes.  This is particularly true in winter, and we soon discovered why as the mist descended and we found ourselves enveloped in whiteness – land and sky blending into one with only the road ahead of us keeping us on track.  Eventually, following the guidance of a friendly local in the deserted coffee shop that serves as tourist centre for Þingvellir National Park, we left the car and made our way up into a fissure formed by the tearing apart of the Eurasian and North American plates.  There we came upon the Oxarafoss waterfall – we looked up at the river Oxara pouring over the edge of the North American plate and into the teetering plain of no-man’s land where we stood, a deserted borderland that is inexorably sinking away from the continental plates at either side of it. The water continued to steam and rumble as we pondered the existential crisis that this placed us in.

Further along we saw evidence of volcanic activity bubbling close under the surface in a field of geysers at Geysir.  The fascinating part was the range of effects we could observe, from the humble bubbling puddles of mud on the edge of the path to the roped off crowd-pleaser Strokkur that spouted 25m into the air with frightening regularity.  The steady wind blew the steam across the surface of the ground, lending the geyser field that same ethereal quality we observed back at the Blue Lagoon: perhaps it’s an intrinsic part of areas of geothermal activity, that because they’re so rare they appear mysterious and alien to us.

Finally, we pushed onward to Gullfoss.  This monstrous double-dip waterfall had created its own canyon in the ice... and there words fail me.  You had to be there.

We didn’t see the Northern Lights.  I almost don’t even care.  Iceland didn’t disappoint, and it’s hard to get stressed in a country so intent on getting you to relax and have a soak in their hot pools.

Still, I suppose I’d better start saving for that cruise...

On the Road with Jack, and the trouble with Istanbul

Today I feel normal, relaxed and for the first time in too long I am not tired.  It has been a peaceful Sunday so far: no alarm to wake me, freshly squeezed orange juice, coffee and a leisurely chat over breakfast, followed by an hour's pilates and a bit of Spanish study.  I've luxuriated in the novelty of having the time to do these things.

Perhaps fittingly, my literary companion for the dizzying whirl of international travel has been On the Road by Jack Kerouac. This is mostly about the heady excitement of drug-fuelled, nonsensical voyages to go and "dig" American cities and "get kicks".  For me it's not been easy to get into, or empathise, and the impact of prose style is I think lessened with its age - its own iconic status probably means there has been too much imitation since to make it stand out.  That said, I'm beginning to be won over, and there are flashes of descriptive brilliance.  There are some parallels between my struggle to like the book and my struggle with Istanbul, probably much more than between my style of travel and Jack's.


The hectic writing style undoubtedly contributed to my mood the day in Istanbul I spent walking through the darkening city after work, pondering what it was that I just couldn't like about the place.  Perversely, it was as I weaved through the commuting crowds and choked on the fumes of queueing cars that this changed; following this train of thought down to the Bosphorus shore I really began to fall for the city I'd been so keen not to return to.



It was the man with the bread in a bag on a stick that started it. He was walking amongst the cars, selling bread rolls to the motorists - a step above the 'drive-in' bread kiosks they have at every street corner. It amused me, so I took a photo.  What followed was a flurry of scarcely coherent note-taking and bad photography, that summed up everything I thought and felt about the place.







It went like this (with some editing into full sentences):

Man selling bread on a stick in a bag. Roses and water [also being sold to the motorists].  Sirens, bus queues and pavement bikers [one of whom in particular had mobile phone wedged between head and helmet].  Murky sunset and the heavy unidentified floral scent breaking through the traffic fumes.  Kebabs and tea and headscarves.  Massive signs for English schools.  Hills and more hills.  Ataturk watching you eat [his picture is everywhere, including our office canteen].  Broken pavements and wonky steps.  Unaccountably falling for a place once you've freed yourself of trying to like it.  Walking the wrong way out of the metro and trying to remember the words for yes and no.

Ferry bow waves splashing the pavements as an old man sells books on the floor, people fish and grown men try bike tricks.  Commuters stream towards the ferry terminal, onto buses and into cars.  Hard to string together a single coherent thought from the boiling mass, and work out what I'm trying to say about this place.

Travelling is too often this edited and sanitised version of the world.  I see that in Madrid when I walk the same stretch of pavement hundreds of times and see a hundred different faces framed in the same photo; I saw the same in Florence.  I've appeared in the background of who knows how many strangers' favourite holiday photos. 

That's not the Istanbul I've seen, which is not the same as the Istanbul I've heard people rave about. At root it's just a city like any other, the stage for people's lives, and though that has it's own magic it requires a different kind of appreciation, more tempered and considered.  Istanbul on a mundane level is hard to love - choked up with cars, you take your life in your hands every time you cross a road, and there are simply too many people.  However, it does just have this energy, this vibrancy, and as night falls the place just twinkles.

 

I came round to thinking that the sheen of tourism is ok, really.  People go on holiday to escape their day to day life.  Maybe the illusion that everywhere is better than home doesn't necessarily produce the ideal perspective for appreciating your everyday life, but I'm glad they enjoy their trips.  And I came round to Istanbul.