Unexpectedly, I joined the tribe of "digital nomads." That's what they call people whose line of work allows them to work remotely, and who take advantage of this to constantly travel the world.
I haven't plunged headfirst into the new world just yet, but merely touched it slightly. I lived in Morocco for two months, strolled around Barcelona for a few days, spent a night in Reykjavik, and right now I'm writing this post on a Wow Air plane.
It's not like a lot has happened over the past two months, but a mass of details still lingers in my mind, like grains of sand from the separator at the CosmoCaxia science museum in Barcelona.
Starting from the beginning is long and tedious, so I'd better start from the end. Today I'm going to have a very, very, or even monstrously long day.
I got up around eight Icelandic time (-3 hours from Latvia) and decided to take a walk while I had time before my flight. Knowing the spirited temper of the local weather, I wrapped myself in three layers of clothing, albeit thin ones, because I'm flying with carry-on only.
This helped me, but not much: the wind was again almost as creepy as during that most famous trip of mine. The rain was flying horizontally again, but this time, for greater effect, it was supplemented by salty sprays of ocean water from the fjord. As if that wasn't enough, the rain soon turned into hail and started pounding me on the tiny patch of my face that I hadn't covered with my hat, beard, and hood.
Deciding that this was already too much, I struggled against the headwind, made my way to the "Svitan" guesthouse, and brewed myself some Shu Puerh. Thoughtfully sipping the black sludge in the silence, punctuated by the clatter of the clothes dryer outside the window, I began to think about how to get to the airport. The thing is, the Keflavik international airport is five kilometers away from the town itself, and yesterday, when I arrived, out of sheer stinginess, I walked. A taxi would have cost 30 euros, and I would have had to wait two hours for the bus.
In such weather, I desperately wanted to avoid repeating the heroic feat, especially since I'd have to drag a suitcase behind me (a small one, but nevertheless).
I almost got tangled up in the time zones, and so it was only after double-checking that I found out my flight leaves at three, not at five as Google Calendar (living on Latvian time) thought.
Trying to make sense of the schedule printout for the regular bus number 55, I discovered that at the exact time I needed, it takes a two-hour break. There was no way out but to catch the nearest one. To my misfortune, that one was arriving at the stop in ten minutes. I was totally unprepared for such a turn of events: not only was I sitting in my long johns sipping tea, but I also hadn't found out in advance where the stop was, even though I had tried to look it up.
In a rush, pulling on my pants, I started trying to find out from a young Icelandic woman, who had come in to clean, where the stop actually was. As if two months of trials with Arab-French weren't enough for me!
Now I had run into the one in a thousand inhabitants of Iceland who doesn't speak perfect English, and the left-right or north-south directions were in Icelandic. Running with my suitcase under the hail, which was smoothly flowing into a downpour, I frantically searched for the identifying signs of route 55. A local guy in a tracksuit misunderstood me because of the roar of the wind and pointed to the village bus stop, which was of no use to me.
In the end, I was saved by my "zhuzhula" (that's what I call smartphones from now on) and the Android app of the local transport service -Straeto.is, which pointed the right way.
The driver was already closing the bus doors when I, flustered and dazed, ran up to the stop. Fortunately, once again I made it (the previous time was in Barcelona). Paying 4 euros contactlessly by card, which is more expensive than a taxi for the same distance in Morocco, a few minutes later, wet, sweaty, and windblown, I was at the Keflavik airport.
