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September 5, 2006-Shop ‘til…

I think I have contributed to illegal activities. I bought a purse in Chinatown from the back room of one of those stores like I described in my first emails. I have a feeling the people working there are the illegals who we hear about in the news. They have to work to pay off their debt to the people who lied to them and told them they’d take them to real jobs in the U.S. The one thing I learned this time was that some of the back rooms are interconnected by hallways and doors leading to other “lairs.” Maybe one person owns the whole operation. My cousin helped at first. She’s a pro at this kind of shopping and some of the people recognized her. It was when I tried it solo I ran into problems. Some shopkeepers were reluctant to let on they had back rooms. I wonder if there was a crackdown recently. Some denied they had “extra stock” in the back and one lady freaked when I pulled out a cell phone to call our granddaughter Alex to confirm I had the purse she wanted. The son of a friend is very involved in trying to shut down the “knock-off” business in NYC. After we made the purchase I realized they don’t charge sales tax. Now that would really get the state of New York in a snit.

The shopping we did in Iceland was legal shopping. I forgot to tell you about what we found in the flea market in Reykjavik. I told David that if we looked long enough we’d find something Jewish. We did. There were identical brass menorahs. I asked the stall operator where she got them and she said she bought them in Denmark. I wonder what their story was? She wanted $160 each for them. At that price they stayed un-rescued.

The streets of NYC never fail to present interesting sights. We watched the taping of the TLC show Cover Story. It’s a makeover show. The problem was that we couldn’t tell if the woman getting out of the limo was the before or after. Someone should have told her not to chew gum.

Being in NYC at the end of a holiday weekend can be a challenge. Garbage piles on the curbs were as high as I am tall and as wide as the length of a car. The smell was memorable.

We’re glad to be home and had dinner with the clan. Rylee has filled out and is full of smiles. Talia is as effusive as ever and Alex was full of school news. Having one more child in the mix does change the dynamic and we were all busier cutting food and holding the baby. It was great to be back.

Toby

New York City

September 3, 2006-Homecoming

Happy Labor Day weekend to you all. Yeah! We’re in NYC! It was only a 5-½ hour flight but it was good to be on terra firma again. We had to get to the airport three hours ahead of flight time since we were flying to the U.S. There were all sorts of announcements about extra security for flights to the States. We expected to go through airport security then a separate check for liquids, gels, etc for U.S. bound passengers. Nothing! We did the regular check with shoes on and that was it. No one opened a thing to check for the “new contraband.” Maybe it will be different flying within the States from NYC to Akron.

The best part of the flight other than landing safely was that we flew over Greenland. It definitely was not green. The sky was cloud-free and even from 35,000 feet we could see the mountains and glaciers below clear as a bell. I even picked out a bright blue river with floating chunks of ice. They looked like dollops of marshmallows in a sea of Jell-O.

Our group of eight flew together and we’re all spending the night at the Hilton Garden Hotel near JFK. We had a snack and said our good-byes. Two couples fly to California tomorrow and one couple heads for Boston. We head for the Washington-Jefferson Hotel in Manhattan. My cousins will pick us up for lunch and take us to Chinatown. I told them we’d eat anything but fish.

This hotel won me over right away. They had a platter of warm chocolate chip cookies at the check-in desk. When we got to our room I found what looked like miniature towels in the bathroom. Then I remembered. They’re washcloths. We haven’t seen one in three weeks.

Now that we’re in the U.S. I can dare to tell you about my tooth issue. I had a check-up at the dentist before we left and there was a tooth that was bothering me. She smoothed out the bite and told me to call if it was hitting wrong. It started acting up in New York before we left for Scandinavia. By the time I got to Copenhagen it was unbearable. I spoke to Yves who asked if I could hold out until Oslo. There was a dentist he knew in the hotel there. I thought I could bear it for a few days but there was no way I would make it for three weeks. I started taking ibuprofen for the inflammation and hoped the pain was from grinding at night and not a dying nerve. I consciously started using my tongue as a bite guard between my teeth when I slept. It worked. I still need to see the dentist when I get home but the pain was from grinding. The ibuprofen did the trick. Yes, I have tried bite guards before with no success. This might motivate me to try again.

I don’t know what time it is for us. Our bodies think it is 2 AM. The clock here says 10:30 PM. We’re going to sleep.

Toby

Last Day in Reykjavik

September 2, 2006-Gods & Mythos
(photos:horse meat,
puffin meat,
whale meat,
Icelandic riding costume)

Today we did it all. We saw every last bloody museum there was. We stared with the National Culture Museum built in 1906 as the National Library and Archives. The entryway was a dramatic white double marble staircase. The exhibits were bi-lingual but much of the reading was down low. Most of the written history of the Viking Age (800-1,050) is contained in the Codex Regius. The Edda, poems about religious and everyday life, dates from 1200 and details the mythos of their gods: Odin, Thor, Loki, et al. They were composed by court poets and were sagas of written and oral history. The written Edda was illustrated by cartoon-like characters helping to illuminate the tales. The object and goal at the end of life was to reach Valhalla. It was the Great Hall of Odin where warriors who died in battle would spend the rest of time fighting by day and drinking mead and feasting at night. Men were buried with their swords, horses, dogs, and household goods to sustain them in the next life. If a man died in his bed he spent eternity with Hel the goddess of death. Canterbury Tales were written in the 14th century but Beowulf, written in 1100 in Old English tells about a 6th century Scandinavian adventurer.

There is evidence that Leif the Lucky was in Vineland (North America) in the late 1300’s. The original manuscripts housed in this museum were held by Denmark until 1971 when they slowly began to return to Iceland. This includes sections of The Book of Settlement followed by The Book of Icelanders written in the earl 12th century. They’re like a list of begats with pertinent details of who was who along with events that occurred at the time. Remember the guy who threw his carved throne posts into the sea? He was Ingolfur and is mentioned in the Books as the first settler of Reykjavik.

And now the biggest surprise of all. It blew my image of Scandinavians. I never knew that between 1855-1914 there was a large wave of immigrants to Salt Lake City, Utah from Iceland. An Icelander heard a Mormon missionary speak in Copenhagen in 1850 and converted on the spot. He convinced a friend to join him and they spearheaded conversions in Iceland starting in 1851. A huge statue of Jesus sits in the section of the Cultural Museum called “On To Zion.” It’s a copy of one near the visitor’s center in Salt Lake City.

Contrasting the previously described historical artifacts The Museum had a section for contemporary Icelandic fashion. I can tell you that big pants, tight pants under dresses, and raw hemlines are in here. I guess this was the part about modern Iceland.

I was still recovering from the Mormon connection when we left the building. We wanted to buy more of the steamed bread and were directed to a flea market. It was where we love to be in a foreign place. It was for locals not tourists. They were selling clothing, records, toys, and yes, socks. They also had a food section where we found not only the bread but also whale meat, puffin breasts, and horse steaks.

Plus or Minus

On to the next museum! The 871 + or – 2 Exhibit featured the remains of the oldest manmade settlement in Reykjavik. I loved the humor of the date (plus or minus 2 years). It sat where it was found and the museum was built around it. It was a great hall and was presented in a high tech way. Panels of screens came to life illustrating day-to-day events using ghost-like digitized people. Several interactive stations helped clarify the time the great hall was built. There was no doubt that other and older ruins lay under other areas of Iceland from earlier inhabitants. Vikings were slave-owning traders and raiders who probably left Norway for adventure and a better life not religious freedom. They ruled part of the British Isles, the Hebrides, and Normandy. Recent DNA testing determined that most Icelandic men came from Norwegian stock but most women were Celtic. Their ancestors came across from Asia on that same old land bridge in the Bering Straits. They migrated across the Americas leaving traces of Native American genes mixed with Celtic We walked on over to the National Museum. Our directions were to pass a large cemetery and keep going. I was reading dates on tombstones when I saw a Star of David. I guess there were Jews here. I don’t know if there are any now. There’s no synagogue listed.

We were pooped when we got there but the massive gray modern poured concrete building was impressive. The exhibits covered a lot of the territory we had already been over so we zipped through from pre-Vikings to Enlightenment to modern culture. There was a lot on the Reformation. It makes me sad when I see cultures disappear into the morass of conformity of a monolithic creed. There is so much energy to the differences.

Fishy Ending

Our final banquet was a cold fish buffet. David is doing quite well with that as long as it doesn’t look like fish. It cannot have vestiges of scales or any fishy pieces/parts. Tonight even I got fished out and ended up concentrating on my new love, curried herring. Dessert was new to us. It’s a curd made from skim milk cooked into a pudding. It tastes a bit like yogurt and is served with berries. It was quite nice but not chocolate. Ellert joined us but had a luscious looking lamb dinner. David was sitting next to him and had to restrain himself from sticking his fork into a piece of meat and stealing it.

I asked Ellert what happened in Iceland during WWII. He said that they were neutral but were occupied by Britain when it was thought the Nazis wanted to invade. So much for their neutrality. He didn’t seem thrilled that Britain was here. He thought neutrality was important. How can a country be neutral? That means they don’t care enough who wins to take sides. That means they’d have been as happy with a Nazi win as an Allied win. Well, they were all Aryans (including Sweden and Switzerland) so no worries there.

At dinner we also talked about lighter things like how the TVs work. Ellert didn’t see anything unusual in our struggle to figure out how to adjust the volume. It seemed normal to him. The remote doesn’t work at all even if the gizmo on the set is pointed at the hand held remote device. To turn the power on you have to push a button on the TV. To turn the TV on you have to push the unmarked button between the buttons marked with up and down arrows. You can now change channels with the up and down buttons. To adjust volume you must once again push the middle button. You may now use the arrow buttons to adjust volume. If you now want to change the channel you must push the unmarked middle button again. Then the up and down arrow buttons will once again change the channel.

Planning Ahead

I asked the people in our group what they thought of group travel versus independent. One woman said she liked the security of having the medical and evacuation coverage and assistance of a guide who knew their way around the health care system since they had health issues. That is comforting to us too. We seesaw back and forth. Maybe there’s a way to combine group and independent travel. We could stay on and rent a car and take off on our own after two weeks of organized travel. That sounds like a plan but our next trip will likely be to Ireland and Wales and that we’ll do all on our own.

We leave for the airport at 1 PM tomorrow and arrive at JFK around 7 PM. It’s a relatively short flight at 5 ½ hours. In anticipation of coming home we’ve begun to verbalize how our return to the U.S. is different this time. In the past we’ve traveled mainly in underdeveloped countries or in places less developed than ours. Then it was a relief to return to a better way of life. This time we are left with a sense that we’re returning to a place where the quality of life is slipping away. We’re becoming a second rate country. In contrast to Scandinavia our standard of living leaves a lot to be desired. Yes, their taxes are higher but when you factor in what we pay for health care and education the cost may be on par. And we get so much less for our money. It’s not only about the money and services. It’s about equal rights. They get it here. When they offer equality to all they mean it. All includes gays, lesbians, transgender, and bi-sexual people. All of our citizens aren’t even afforded basic human dignities.

But then we’re excited to come home because that’s where our grandchildren are. It’s where we know that if it’s Tuesday we’ll be having dinner with our family. It’s where on this Rosh Hashanah we’ll be with Wendy and Julian in Minneapolis and with Daniel and the kids in Akron for Yom Kippur. It’s where our hearts are. And that’s home.