We also went to the Reykjavik Art Museum, which has as many as three buildings. We visited two of them, and got our fill of art up to our eyeballs. The impression we got was positive, often the installations are interactive or have technological/scientific elements, just the way I like it.
A knitted house, no joke, a whole army of grannies put in the work
Knitted house is so knitted
Volcano cake
Andrey
Staring into space contest
Stockpiling bioenergy in copper rings
You can also make the famous tinfoil hat. The bourgeois are in on it too
A cassette with cartoons
This cassette was watched by KGB guys during some important summit between the USA and the USSR in Reykjavik in 1986, and dudes from MIT begged it off a Russian colonel decades later. The summit could have led to all nuclear weapons being eliminated altogether, but, of course, we didn't get that lucky, although they did sign a treaty on some arms limitation.
The museum was converted from a port warehouse, there was a photoshoot going on inside
You can relax near the cafe in the museum: read books, play chess
I liked the painting, looked at it for a long time, it radiates peace
The painting is called Untitled, by Georg Guðni.
We chatted about this painting for a while with a lady from the US, forgot which state
The painting is called "Winter Landscape", the author is a very famous Icelandic painter Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval, so famous that he is depicted on the 2000 krona banknote.
The lady saw quantum interactions in the painting, and was surprised how the painter could have sensed such groundbreaking concepts back in 1960. I liked her interpretation, but still wanted to say that it was a long shot. That's what's great about Americans — they are not shy to come up and chat, share and ask, push some topics. Everyone else just walks around staring blankly, not sharing their feelings.
We had a fruitful chat with this lady about the fusion of science and art, and she asked me to BE OPEN. I told her that I'm already too OPEN, it scares me sometimes. We did mean somewhat different things, though.
I liked this painting more, all that's written about it is Hellisheiði. That's the name of the largest geothermal power station in Iceland, and the second largest in the world. Make of that what you will.
I talked a bit about it with some young tourists from Europe passing by, but the conversation slid to our bike ride, and I was kind of tired of nodding to phrases like "Oh, you are so strong" by that time, so the chat fizzled out.
Also an excellent painting, it's called "View of Mount Skjaldbreiður from Grafningur"
Soaked in Jóhannes Kjarval's interpretation of Icelandic nature, we headed back downtown.
As I already mentioned in the first post, things are totally fine with mushrooms in Iceland
With graffiti, too
And secondhand bookshops are doing alright as well
Punk was gloomily walking around the city, displeased with something again, and I went to the Phallological Museum. The museum is small, but packed wall-to-wall with alcohol-preserved and dried exhibits.
This one belongs to an Orca
And here's a story about how long a dick must be to legally satisfy a wife
I think I make the cut, but I can't say for sure, those kinds of questions interested me about 10 years ago.
Casts of the organs of Iceland's handball team, silver medalists of the 2008 Beijing Olympics
While I was looking at this exhibit, a middle-aged woman walked up, burst out laughing and started actively discussing with me the fact that the Icelanders' sizes are a bit lacking, whereas her ex's was whoa. Then we got to jokingly bantering about relationships between the sexes. It turned out she was from California, lives in Paris, and just can't bring herself to dump her boyfriend from London, keeps going back to him, even though he's an asshole.
I'll leave out the rest of the personal details from our conversation, except for one funny one: it turns out she had made a cast of her boyfriend's phallus too, as a keepsake. They say men can't even understand why women keep photos of their exes, and here we have the next step in evolution.
At the tourist center, I asked where I could finally eat some rotten fish. For those who aren't in the loop yet: it's a traditional Icelandic dish: shark meat fermented in the ground for several months. This is necessary because fresh shark is poisonous, whereas the slightly rotten one is perfectly fit for consumption.
The girl kept asking me again and again what I meant: maybe dried vobla? Her coworker caught on, and asked: you mean the shark? Then you need to go to the Icelandic Bar.
And so that's where I went. The lovely young female bartenders poured me a glass of local caraway-flavored potato schnapps called Brennivín, full to the brim, and served a few pieces of shark and a toothpick.
I had to drink it, tradition. It went down surprisingly smoothly, as if it wasn't 40 degrees. The shark was disappointing: not nearly as stinky and pungent as expected. Beaver musk went down way harsher when I tried it in Dviete nature park, the terrible taste lingered until evening.
Punk went to a restaurant. In Iceland in any restaurant even one, the most plebeian dish like "fish mash" costs more than 10 Ls. So I went to a bistro with a certificate of honor, where they serve traditional Icelandic food. I figure it's something like our "Vesma". There I had a two-course lunch for 10 lats, soup and fish cakes. Everything was very tasty.
Chatted with some Singaporeans about the automatic crapper
The toilet in the photo is self-washing inside after every passenger. The wait is long, it looks battered, but at least it's free. Washing hands there is inconvenient, and washing clothes is completely impossible.
By evening we finally made it to the botanical garden, a big one full of exotic and not-so-exotic plants. It's located right next to the campsite, which is why we came late. Luckily, it turned out they don't close it for the night, and considering the white nights in Iceland, you can walk around until morning. How all this beauty grows at +14 degrees is a mystery, they probably heat it with thermal water.
Maplus giganticus
There's also a rock garden in the park, by the way
In the evening we returned to the campsite, and I must say a few words about it, too. Life is always boiling there, a hangout spot, there is laggy Wi-Fi, a kitchen with a stove and a kettle, and the best part — boxes of grub left by previous occupants. They have everything you can imagine: pasta and rice, salt and sugar, various spices, you even come across margarine and bread. As for drinks, there's tea, coffee, and instant Nesquik cocoa. There is plenty of vegetable oil, and some people were even frying pancakes from the right kind of flour. Don't even get me started on the packet soups and ramen, or the ketchup and mustard. A real feast for the budget tourist!
If you're in Reykjavik and have nothing to eat, feel free to head over to the campsite, you can score some dishes there, and have a hearty meal, all for free.
In similar free boxes nearby, there is plenty of gas for burners, mugs, plates and other household items, you even come across boots, so you won't perish here either.
In some Icelandic banks on a cold rainy day you can warm up with a cup of coffee, with cream and sugar, free of charge
The day, as you can see, turned out to be action-packed, it's even surprising how much we learned and saw. The most memorable thing was the heart-to-heart with the Californian woman, but the lady in the museum was also no slouch, because art is power!