Whoever is old enough to remember the game Doom (yeah, the very first one) has a chance to figure out what the next part of my story is going to be called. And to understand why it's going to be called that, you don't even need that much.
When we drove out of the campsite in the morning, the sun was still shining, and the wind was quite tolerable. An abundance of tourist signs sprouted on both sides of the road, but we had no desire to study every single one. The reason being - the plan for the day was quite tricky: we'd most likely have to spend the night outside a campsite, though there was a chance we could make it to one.
Nevertheless, a signpost pointing to a power plant with the enticing word “Exhibition” inexorably triggered my urge to turn, which is what I did. Andrey grumbled as usual (it's hard to always share interests on a trip like this), but where could he go – he had no comeback to my usual argument: “you yourself blame everyone for not looking at anything.” Of course, the real problem is not that people don't look at anything, but that everyone has different interests. When people want to drink beer instead of visiting architectural monuments – that's something you can still get upset about. But when Andrey wants to go to Armenian monasteries and wouldn't set foot in Icelandic wooden kirks – that's his business, but then there's no need to bust my chops about someone supposedly not looking at or seeing something. People's interests, desires, and motivations are all different; understanding this is easy, but actually feeling it is hard, yet necessary.
Anyway, on the way to the hydro power plant we found a reconstructed farm, and we dropped in there for a tour too, even though we had to fork over about $6 in coins on the counter.
Iceland Cycling - day 4
EveryTrail - Find trail maps for California and beyond
Inside — a long sort of room where 30 or more people lived, and several isolated storage rooms, accessed through narrow, low corridors. Only the chieftain had a semblance of a private room, and even then just a semblance, since it was located right in the center of the main room.
Overall, the visit to the museum-farm was worth it, if you vividly imagine what it was like to live in a huge commune with coughing, farting, and chomping residents, with no windows and a smoking fire in the middle. And where to have sex is completely baffling — summer in Iceland lasts only a few months, and even then the temperature is 14-16 degrees Celsius.
The service part of the power plant
Upon leaving the farm, the weather had noticeably worsened: the sky grew dark, the grass was rustling more and more actively, and dark spots from sparse raindrops started appearing on my jacket. It was just a short ride to the hydro power plant: a mere half-kilometer or so, but while we were getting there, an obsessive thought kept creeping into my head. It was that surely energy companies don't count their pennies, and so right now we'd walk inside, and they'd be handing out hot free tea. Where such a fantasy crept in from is unclear, there was no reason for it, and therefore mystically inclined citizens will accuse me of telepathy after the next paragraph.
Together with a cheerful bearded Italian on a bike, we infiltrated the inside, where a Half-Life-esque automatic door slid open before us. Inside, a triumph of techno-future style awaited us: black and gray glossy surfaces everywhere in dimmed lighting, in the center — a huge touchscreen table with information about the hydro power plant and Iceland, on the left — an interactive mechanical installation about how the station works, and on the right — the coveted free cocoa and juices in a stylish shimmering dispenser. How I foresaw this, I still can't figure out. As if all this wasn't enough, right opposite the entrance, at the reception desk, sat two charming young Icelandic girls, ready to serve us in every way. Honestly, we were so amazed by all this splendor that we almost pitched our tent right there inside — and really, where else could we bail to in bad weather, when such silence, peace, and beauty are right under our noses?
A touchscreen table, and a sweet girl as a guide
A mechanical diagram of how the station works, water flows through a pipe through the rock
When we had fully enjoyed what I just described in the lobby, it turned out you could also go to the right and see the actual generators.
There's a fire truck parked for aesthetics, and photos hanging on the walls
An interesting door — without a wall
Next to the valve there's some water — look closely at the label to see what year it's from
A pure techno-cataclysm game
A working installation about the generator
At the push of a button, you can let in actual real water from the river, which will spin the generator blades, and light bulbs will light up from it. The water flow can be adjusted, and you can admire how they dim or shine brighter.
But the creators of all this beauty weren't satisfied with just the first floor of the station, there's also a second one! It's totally awesome up there — an incredible game about supplying a village with water throughout the year by adjusting the generator's power and building dams. No computers — everything's in real life: you turn the knobs, place dams, the liquid flow tries to bypass them, there isn't enough power, the panic builds!
That very game-installation
This thing delighted me so much that I played it three times, the first one together with the Italian. True, I shamefully lost all three times. Andrey showed no enthusiasm, which gave me the impression that wherever you have to do something or think practically, he doesn't want to participate, but only wants to run around and gawk without straining his brain, or else metaphysically fantasize about abstract topics.
To be fair, the punk did listen to a lecture about a bright eco-future — if you aren't completely naive, you can guess why the power plant has all this tinsel that has no direct relation to its operations. Naturally, it's counter-propaganda against the dominance of the “greens”, who are constantly interfering with building new plants, whether justified or not. That's just how the pendulum of balancing economic and non-economic benefits swings — an eternal struggle, and capitalism usually wins. But in countries of victorious socialism, essentially the Scandinavian ones, it happens differently, hence the energy corporation's such attention to the details of the station's interior. They even hired a design studio — called Gagarin. Which proves once again that even good ideas (power plants in Iceland are geothermal or hydro, it doesn't get greener than that) require smart marketing (i.e. presenting the material in a beautiful and accessible form).
But no matter how long this pleasant mirage lasted, we had to leave it. When we were already getting ready to return to the cold and darkness outside, the seasoned Italian asked the girls about the weather, since there's internet everywhere here. “A storm is coming,” they informed him. He replied in the spirit that he'd rest for a couple of days then. And I proudly declared: “we have a plan, what can you do.” “Please be careful,” the electric fairies showed their care. I admit I was somewhat naive, and didn't take their words about the storm seriously. Big mistake.