It's wonderful when you can fit everything you need in your backpack and just hit the road. Everything else just works itself out. With this idea in mind we started hitchhiking, traveling through 6 countries for over 1800km, to catch our plane from Gdansk (Poland) to Iceland.
22.06.2015
After hitchhiking through Europe, we arrive in a mythical kingdom inhabited by elves – Iceland. Arriving in this distant and barely known land, you feel like you have fallen in an endless fairytale. The arctic energy is everywhere around. Wind, rock, fire and ice compose an unbelievably beautiful symphony. It seems like time has stopped and all the elements of nature work in harmony and keep creating new wonders. Erupting geysers, arctic storms, silent fjords, bubbling hot pots, melting glaciers, singing winds… and all that under the indescribable dance of the Northern lights (Aurora borealis).
Except for beautiful nature, Iceland is also rich in history, literature and art. We have all read and watched movies about the Vikings and here we can tell you the story of one of them – Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson – one of the first visitors of these lands. Around 870 AD he sailed here with the hope of starting a new life on this then uninhabited island. Instead he faced a long and cold winter, which killed his cattle. Hoping to find a better place for his farm, he climbed a high mount in the northeast part of the country only to find a fjord full of ice. Bitterly disappointed, he named the island Iceland (Ice Land) and immediately sailed back to his home in Norway. Since then Iceland has its name, whether well-deserved or not.
To give you a better idea about the country, we can share a bit more interesting information with you. The time zone in Iceland is +0 GTM all year round. The local currency is Icelandic krona. Iceland has a territory a bit smaller than the territory of Bulgaria (102,775 sq.km. compared to 117,000 sq.km.) and its population is 22 times smaller than the Bulgarian – only 329 100 citizens according the last counting in 2015. It is considered that even the sheep exceed the number of people – according to unknown sources the sheep in the country are around 450,000. The official language is Icelandic, but most of the people also speak English. The total number of tourists, who visited Iceland in 2014, is more than a million, which is three times more than the local population. The country is becoming a more popular destination among tourists, travelers and adventurous from all over the world.
Now, let’s go back to our adventure. Our good friend Tuomo from Finland welcomed us at the international airport in Keflavik and gave us a ride to our current home and workplace, where a room was already waiting for us. The next morning we had a meeting with one of the bosses, we had a short discussion about the job offer their company had for us (they offer campers for rental and rooms in a guesthouse), which we accepted without wasting any time and started working right away. We would have a lot more time and opportunities to travel around the country if we have a job and campers we can use.
Our workplace and home were in the same building in Keflavik – a small town with 8,000 inhabitants (2009), located in the Reykjanes area in south-west Iceland. The only international airport in the country is located there and the distance between it and the capital is only 46 km. These 2 factors help the town develop and get a lot of visits from arriving and departing tourists. In 1995 Keflavik and 2 more towns - Njarðvík & Hafnir – were combined into Reykjanesbær with a total population of about 15,000 people (2015).
From the very beginning Café Petite became a favorite place to spend some free time, its motto being ‘Your home away from home’ – and the atmosphere there really is very cozy.
*****
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