Iceland Part II: Hostels

During our week in Iceland, we stayed in a different hostel every night. Prior to this trip, I had never stayed in one. When I told my mom we were going to be staying in hostels, she gasped and said "Ay no, como la movie?!"

Although none of the hostels were como la movie, each had its own personality, its own pace.

Kex Hostel in Reykjavik was large and busy, run like a well-oiled machine. In, out, in, out.

At night, the lobby would turn into a bar/restaurant (which, APPARENTLY, is not what 'breastaurant' is short for). People chattered out in the hallways until 2AM. I counted ten different languages before I passed out. This is where I started the habit of putting in ear plugs to sleep.

In Selfoss, the hostel was run by a guy named Viktor who pronounced his V's as W's so I thought his name was Wiktor (this V/W thing is common in Iceland, APPARENTLY).

Wiktor (Viktor) was wery (very) hospitable and offered to tell us Wiking (Viking) stories in his hot pot (hot tub). He might have been coming onto us, I couldn't tell. Selfoss Hostel had a cage with parakeets in the kitchen (ear plugs). Selfoss Hostel also had the warmest showers I've ever experienced. After spending a day hiking through snow and ice, I took the 4th longest shower of my life (43-minutes and 22-seconds).

Vagnsstaðir Hostel in Suðursveit was a quiet, two-story home with four rooms run by an old Nordic woman who spoke broken English ("Eh, wifi come and go, just wait, it work"). It was a few miles from Jökulsárlón, the glacier lagoon.

At 3AM, I woke up and went outside to see if I could catch a glimpse of the Northern lights. It was too snowy and cloudy to see anything, but the fresh snow amplified the eerie silence of the countryside. Every step resulted in a crunch, accompanied by the crash of waves slamming against the black sand beaches off in the distance. I walked about twenty-feet from the front door (crunch, crunch, crash) and tried to make out the Atlantic, but with no stars, all I saw was a black void. After a few minutes, I started seeing/hearing things. Crunching snow when I wasn't moving. Something darting behind snow piles in the darkness. A rumbling right behind me.

On our drive in to Vagnsstaðir, I remarked to the group that I could see why Iceland had so many stories about trolls and giants and ogres. The mountains and boulders dotting the country totally look like misshapen and disfigured monsters, waiting for tasty humans to stumble into their mouths. The dark of night only makes things worse.

I thought of this as I stood outside. Thoroughly freaked out, I went back into the hostel so that I wouldn't get eaten by Grýla, the Icelandic Christmas Ogress.

Despite their differences, every hostel was essentially the same. There was a kitchen in all of them. We had to put linens and pillows on our beds every night. Every hostel had communal bathrooms and every communal bathroom had hot water that reeked of sulfur (that first night in Reykjavik, Delma and I went to brush our teeth. I turned on the hot water and thought she had farted).

Because of these similarities, it was easy to fall into a routine.

Too easy, really.

By the third day, I had cemented my morning schedule.

5:00AM: Wake up.
5:05AM: Coffee.
5:15AM: Read (I found this book in a hostel and kinda just took it. Read it in like a day. You guys, this book is incredible. I cannot recommend it enough. I don't care if the dialogue is cheesy and the plot is unbelievable and there's no character development and also the writing is terrible. It's like the novelization of the worst, yet also best, action movie.)
6:30AM: Breakfast.
7:00AM: Pack up.
7:45AM: Head out.

If humans are creatures of habit, I am a hermit crab and my shell is composed of precise schedules and strict timelines (a habit hermit crab. Harbmit crab?). I can change shells when needed, but I need some sort of structure to be completely comfortable. Otherwise I feel naked, exposed. I plan my day meticulously and any deviation throws me for a loop.

I wasn't always this way. When Delma met me, I was very impulsive and flexible, doing whatever I wanted because YOLO. Once, I blew off a test to go to Galveston and eat a Whataburger breakfast taquito in the ocean. Just because.

Over the years, anxiety and stress have welled up inside and transmogrified me into this harbmit crab wearing the shell of who I once was (now I'm just mixing metaphors to be annoying).

Not counting those early morning hours, Iceland undid that.

The key to dealing with the type of anxiety that I have is distractions. If you allow your mind to hone in on one thing, it becomes obsessed and, pretty soon, snowballs into an uncontrollable physical manifestation of fear and worry. If you keep your mind distracted, it can't fixate on anything.

Here's the cool thing about Iceland: there are so many distractions! Everywhere you turn, there’s something incredible to see whether it’s a geyser or glacier or horses standing in lines. Whatever.

Once we left the hostels, I found myself reverting back to that carefree and impulsive child-like me that I was before.

Have you ever taken a dog for a walk in a park?
Have you ever taken the leash off the dog and let it loose?
Have you ever seen your dog take off after a squirrel, then another squirrel, then a balloon, then a guy on a bike?

In Iceland, that dog was me.

I was enchanted by anything that caught my eye which was pretty much everything. A big rock. A cool bush. A dirt trail that wasn't really a trail, but looked interesting so I followed it. Every whim I had, every fancy, I indulged without worrying about what would happen.

This could have ended very badly for me. Iceland has very few rules or fences. They just trust that you'll use common sense when exploring and won't act a fool when you're hiking around the edge of a volcano. Because, you know, you're on the edge of a volcano and you could fall and you could die.

Unfortunately, people (myself included) are stupid. There have been many tourists (mostly American) who have done incredibly dumb shit like this and this and this (I almost did that last one, but Delma stopped me and I pouted for about a minute before I got distracted by a huge ice rock).

While I didn't die, I did a number of stupid things which resulted in me twisting my ankle, getting my boots drenched, almost slipping off a cliff and falling into the ocean, and nearly crushing my wife under an ice boulder (not intentionally, I promise), among other things. Getting lost and separating from the rest of the group was a daily occurrence (or did THEY get lost? Hmmm).

But unless someone died, it was all in good fun.

And, at the end of the day, I knew we had a nice, warm hostel to go back to with pillows and linens and salami-cheese sandwiches and Wiktor in a hot pot.

Unless we died.

Which we didn't.

But we totally could have, you guys.

Seriously.

See if you can find me.