Picture perfect day exploring Ålesund today. This town was destroyed in 1904 from a big fire when 850 houses were burned and 10,000 people lost their homes. It was in the middle of a big winter storm with temperatures of minus 25 degrees Celsius! 2 days after the fire the first ship with emergency supplies arrived, sent from the German emperor Wilhelm II. Many ships followed and the whole town was built up again, this time with stone houses, electricity and plumbing. And – here comes the best part – all of them in Art Nouveau style! I’m in heaven, remembering my first big thesis paper I wrote for Art History: Art Nouveau!

It’s almost 3.30pm and we are about to continue our voyage to the Orkney Islands, where we’ll arrive tomorrow morning 11am.

Ålesund made it into our “3-out-of-1” list. This is a list of places we like to live for 3 months before heading back home for the rest of the year. So far there is only one other town on our list: Bolzano, Italy!

So far, we’ve been to several different countries and all of them stood out in their own ways: by colors for example

Iceland was not cool. Iceland was freezing cold! And the German saying “there is no bad weather, there is only bad clothing” was not including Iceland. I was wearing everything I brought, but I got sick nonetheless. 1 day in bed, 1 day taking it easy and today at 7am we arrived in Olden, Norway after crossing the Norwegian Sea and I felt much better! We headed out for a 6.82 mile hike up the Husten hiking trail and had a great time!

Olden is a 500 resident town at the end of the 66-mile long Nordfjord. We had picture perfect hiking weather. Yuki & Bill are great company and we hang out together for almost everything we do. It is great to see Ted and Bill catch up those 30+ years they lost track of each other and Yuki (Japanese) and I (German) discover so many similarities in our culture how we grew up.

Now we are back on the ship where I’m treating myself to a special massage in the ship’s spa, followed by dinner with Ted, Bill & Yuki and a show at the theatre at 9pm.

🐑🍷🌎🚢 Life is good! 🚢🌎🍷🐑

Iceland is a fascinating country! It is 1/3 of the size of Germany and has only 339,039 people (Germany has 83 million more people!). It is very harsh here, extremely beautiful, clear, natural and freezing fucking cold – excuse my language, but an average of 12 degrees Celsius in summer, when the sun “shines” 24 hours a day, that’s the big minus! They should say the sun “is present” 24 hours, or the sun “shows up” 24 hours a day, but shining? Definitely: no way!

Iceland is the perfect setting for movies: Fast & Furious 9, Game of Thrones, Die Another Day, the Secret Life of Walter Matti, etc

Icelandic students have to learn Danish, starting in 5th grade. From 6th grade on they learn English. Danish is not very popular, the past was just too cruel and brutal… Btw, schools are used as hotels during the summer months! Most highschool students live in dorms at the highschool because they live too far away. And there are 3 universities in Iceland!

Police is not armed here. They do have a gun in a locked glovebox, and when they need to use it, they have to call their chief to get a code to open that glovebox. By then the criminal has run off 🤩 Crime rate is still very low! When you’re 18 years old you are a legal adult with all responsibilities. Drinking age is 21 though and you can only buy alcohol in a few government owned liquor stores.

Trees are rare here, but according to one of our tour guides, Iceland was covered with trees before the Vikings settled here in 900CE. The only native tree is a birch tree. Nowadays they have a variety of trees, but they are not very tall. In fact, there is this saying: What do you do if you ever get lost in an Icelandic forest? Stand up! 😆

The only native wild vegetable growing here is Rhubarb! Wild fruits are berries, especially blueberries. They grow a lot of things in greenhouses in the south of Iceland. In fact, our guide told us that Iceland is the biggest produce producer in the world – per capita 🤪

And tonight we will continue on to cross the Norwegian Sea to Olden, Norway. It is more than 600 miles to Olden, so we’ll arrive there in 2 days, Tuesday June 28th. And we’ll change the clock tonight again: 1 hour forward!

The Western Fjords we’re so minimalistic and beautiful, even the weather appreciated our visit! The north of Iceland around Akureyri is very different: trees, farmland, Geysirs and hot springs. And tourists, many tourists! And brutal weather: 2 days earlier it snowed, so we lucked out with 6 degrees Celsius, but with that nasty wind, it seemed to be 3 degrees. Great. So today, Yuki and I are both sick 😖

We ankered at Seydisfjordur today in the morning, after crossing the Arctic Circle again.

I’m not going on land today, taking it easy and sleep. The usual, if I’m sick, I sleep it off…..

Another night on the ship (this time calm) followed by another excursion. We did touch the Arctic Circle last night, which was a big deal for Ted!

It was very cold and windy today. I can’t get over the fact that this is normal summer weather!

Isafjördur is the little town where our cruise ship ankered this morning. Ted & I and another couple took a great tour to explore the Westfjords, which ended up as a 7 hour 4-wheel roadtrip and – yes, we needed that 4-wheeler! Mountains up and down, bridges and tunnels and miles and miles on dirt roads!

The landscape is incredibly beautiful, breathtaking! We really lucked out with the weather today, cold but sunny, almost no wind!

Packing is getting more challenging now since we (actually it is only one person of us) find those very important things we cannot live without. So the suitcase gets fuller and I have to pack mountain goat style…..

So far, so good.: We still operate with 2 suitcases! And off we go to our next adventure: a cruise on the Norwegian Star. We’ll sail around the north coast of Iceland, stopping three times for some adventures. Then the ship will continue to Norway, the Orkneys, Scotland and England.

The first evening was filled with a lovely dinner with Yoki & Bill, following a fun show in the Stardust theatre

The first night on the ship was shaky, but we are ok. Ted doesn’t get seasick and I took a Dramamine, a medication for seasickness. So all is good!

And now is Friday, June 24 and we are about to arrive in Isafjordur. More later…..

As we are packing our bags I’m reminiscing about all the interesting facts we learned about Iceland…

* The Vikings were peaceful sheep farmers. Only 1% were violent killers and they ruined the reputation (and made them famous)

* 50% of all food consumed ion Iceland is from Iceland, like fish, meat, dairy

* When the Icelandic people were convinced to be christened, they had 2 conditiones: they wanted to continue eating horse meat and the wanted to continue “taking out the babies” (release newborn babies in the wilderness, if they were born disabled, or a kind of “birth-control” if there were too many kids, especially girls in the family)

* It is illegal to bring horses to Iceland. They want to protect their pure breed and avoid contamination with any diseasesy

* Iceland used to be the poorest country in Europe, if not the whole world, but the literacy rate was always very high. Around 10% of Icelanders have written and published books. They have big bookstores with most books being written in Icelandic

* 370,000 people live on Iceland and 750,000 sheep = 2 sheep per person or 1/2 person per sheep 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑

* Iceland used to be covered in forests, but mankind needed ships and firewood = that was end of their trees, they were completely gone

* The average temperature in summer is 12 degrees Celsius, in winter it is 0 😵‍💫 🥶

* There were no humans on Iceland until the Vikings came from Norway and settled here

* The phone book (and any other name listing) is by first name. The last name is just whose daughter or son you are, so my name would be Edith Helenasdottir and Ted would be Ted Georgsson. If you don’t get along with your father or mother, you can switch. Then gu my name would be Edith Waltersdottir and Ted would be Ted Lailasson

* Since there are only so many (few) people here, incest is a concern. You might accidentally marry somebody too closely related to you. So there is an app where you can trace your roots and it goes back to 800 CE, to the very first settlers here. Our tour guide Lalli had a list of ~ 45 / 50 names of his ancestors, going back all the way to 800 CE. He had one list from his mothers side and one from his fathers side of the family

* Iceland has its own currency: Icelandic Krona

* Up until after WWII Iceland was very nationalistic. They believed that they were the purest race with the most beautiful people and nobody should ever marry an outsider. After WWII, American soldiers were here and women who started a relationship with them were put in an asylum as punishment.

* When American soldiers were stationed here, the US was asked to only station white soldiers on the island

* Society has drastically changed in the last 50 years: homosexuality, women’s rights, gender equality, etc – it took Iceland forever to develop into an open minded modern society, but they sure did a good job!

* According to Lalli, all good products come from somewhere else, Iceland never developed their own style. When they were ruled by the Norwegians, everything Norwegian was imported. Same when they were under Danish control

* The time under Danish control was the worst: they had to pay taxes to them and got 5 ships of merchandise per year (which, some years were less or none). The Danish controlled every detail of the Icelanders lives, which were challenged anyway. This only changed when Germany invaded Denmark in WWII and the Danish were too distracted to re-new the 25 year occupancy contract.

* After all the wood was made into ships or burned as firewood, people lived in mud houses, partly underground. Wet, muddy, moldy, dark and smokey – the health department would get a heart attack nowadays. But wait: it was in the 1980s that the last person moved out of those mud houses

Again: “Alles hat ein Ende nur die Wurst hat zwei” and we are about to leave beautiful but freezing Reykjavik tomorrow. We had another busy day today, starting with a “fancy history tour”. Our tour guide Lalli filled our brains with a ton of really interesting history, starting with the first settlers until today. He introduced us to the work of local painters, sculptures and photographers, he walked us around town to all important buildings and at the end, invited us to lunch. Splendid!

The whole afternoon we spent floating around town, drinking tea, shopping, drinking tea, and drinking tea…

Dinner was an excellent choice with great company again: Yuki & Bill

Walking home at midnight in daylight is fascinating. You feel tired and are confused about why; it’s not even dark yet and you want to go to bed now? Oh well, better switch off that light now: big day tomorrow!