Together with @ceybiicien we met in Gdańsk, Poland on March 20th, just a few hours before our departure to Iceland. We barely met at the Gdańsk Wrzeszcz platform, and already panicked that we wouldn't manage to get on the flight - it turned out that I took the hour of baggage check-in as the hour of the end of check-in, so instead of going by train we took Uber driver in great stress. It turned out that we still had a lot of time before the departure, and the whole fuss was caused by the fact that I fly very rarely. After 2 p.m. we were already sitting in the plane that was rising in the north-west direction, where we are about to spend our next 6 months...

The Very First Moments

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The island of Iceland emerged from the dense white clouds after several hours of flight. We were flying over the largest Icelandic glacier called the Vatnajökull ("water glacier"). The wonderful sun that accompanied us over the clouds quickly disappeared from our eyes as soon as we started landing. Cloudy weather will be with us for the next several days. After a while we walked around the airport in Keflavík, where we could hear more Polish than Icelandic in every corner of it. No wonder, after all, apart from Poles arriving on the island, most of the airport employees are also our compatriots.

Glacier from above

Keflavík is about 45 kilometres away from Reykjavík, so we started hitch-hiking as soon as possible to be there before sunset. It went quite smoothly - after about an hour and a half we found ourselves in the capital of Iceland. We managed to catch a Pole who works at the airport, two Icelanders, including one real, old-school fisherman (the smell in the car told us everything), and a Bulgarian car rental company worker. In the center of Reykjavik we were expected by Maks, a friend of my good friend (also a hitchhiker) with whom I lived for several years at university.

At Maks's we met a few great Polish boys who welcomed us as one of their owns. One of them seemed strangely familiar to me and it quickly turned out that... we had met 5 years earlier at some house party back in Poland! What a coincidence it is! This is all the more strange as he met Max just a few weeks earlier!

Golden Circle

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The next morning we thanked the boys, bought Icelandic SIM cards, prepared our CVs and hit the road to implement our plan - to find a job spontaneously, while enjoying what this land has to offer at the same time. Our main target were hotels, hostels and guesthouses, which are naturally located near the tourist routes. Close to Reykjavík is the so-called "Golden Circle", a route that includes several places worth seeing, which are of course quite heavily crowded by tourists. These are usually the first attractions seen by tourists after leaving the capital. We got to the first place - Hveragerði, a little town which is famous for its nearby hot (geothermal) river, which unfortunately we were not able to see.

Tourism is, apart from fish industry, Iceland's most thriving branch of economy, so in each of these small towns there are at least a few hotels and several guesthouses. We tried to visit each which looked more than a "family business" and of course with a smile on our faces we asked about work for the summer season. There were two types of answers - either they did not need employees anymore or there was no manager who could decide (at that time we left our CV in the hope of receiving a response).

Hitchhiking in Iceland works very well, despite the small traffic we didn't have much problems with catching the ride. Very often hitchhikers are taken by tourists who ride their almost empty, rented cars. And because there aren't many roads and directions here, they almost always go exactly where you go. The weather is really crazy though - in 30 minutes you can experience rain, sun, storms and even snow.

Another goal was Geysir, or simply a geyser, from whom the name was given to describe this type of phenomena all over the world. Next to Geysir there is Strokkur, another geyser who nowadays causes more spectacular outbursts than his famous brother (currently the biggest active geyser in Iceland). There are several hot springs in the area, the temperature of which can reach up to 100 degrees. The omnipresent steam gave the impression that it was a magical place where clouds are being formed, and everything would be beautiful and just like in a fairy tale, if not for the fact that there was a captivating smell of "old egg" around it, caused by the content of sulphur in the water. This is exactly how hot water smells in most places in Iceland including tap water! For some it may be shocking that such a modern country has "smelly water", but the hey, it is almost for free here!

Every few minutes the geyser threw water up several meters, so there were several people lurking around (Americans, Asians and some Poles) with their phones and cameras in their hands, waiting for that right moment. Personally I was more delighted with the colours that were breaking through from the springs than with the "ejaculation" itself, and also the vicinity of this place was really phenomenal.

After we checked the hotels near Geysir, we stood by the road hoping to get to the next place, the Gullfoss waterfall. Unfortunately, it has already started to get dark, so we decided that it would be better to see the great Gullfoss in the light of the morning sun and we started to look for a place to sleep. We were already going to get off the road and set up a tent somewhere in the green wasteland, but we saw something nearby that looked like a tempting, abandoned building.

Indeed, it was abandoned and served us as a shelter that night! We were lucky because it was raining all night and a night in a tent would not have been the most pleasant one. The house looked like it used to be inhabited, it had a kitchen, a bathroom and a division into rooms, but they were incredibly cluttered. However, it was relatively empty and clean in the attic, although it looked as if it would collapse with a stronger stump - it was composed of some thin wooden boards and polystyrene. But after careful preparation of the place for the night we slept there in quite good comfort. Before going to sleep I realized that Maks wrote to me that in the hotel where he used to work there are some vacancies. "Great manager, pays well", he added and gave us a direct email to him.

The next day, after a short e-mail exchange, we had already been arranged for a job interview in Reykjavík. We hadn't thought for a long time and decided to turn back after seeing the Gullfoss, a monumental waterfall of an unusual shape.

Thus Reykjavík!

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Maks and the rest of the guys hosted us for two more nights in their merry house, and the next day we went for an interview. We still had to wait a few days for the answer from the potential boss, but he provided us with a small, modest, unfurnished, but also (relatively) cheap apartment in the center for a dozen or so days, so we had time to look for a place to live. The next week we slept on our camping mattresses on bare ground, enjoying the fact that we had a roof over our heads at all.

A harsh morning

Our first little den!

Eventually, after a few days of fighting with the local real estate market, we managed to rent a pretty nice room not so far from the city center. And it has a sea view! In fact, we agreed on the very first offer which took us into account (!). So the hardest thing to do - to find a place to live - is behind us!

Speaking of employment, I got something temporary and after a few days @ceybiicien got a permanent job at the hotel. The place I applied for long-term is to be vacant in the middle of May, so by that time I have to find something for short-term.

So we stay in the capital! We only visited a small piece of Iceland, but our priority this time was simply to find a job. Life in the capital is certainly different from living in the Icelandic countryside, but it will certainly be something worth writing in the coming months. An opportunity to visit Iceland will come sooner or later, anyway we will not let it go! In the meantime, however, we are slowly getting used to living in the new place. More about Reykjavík, Iceland, Icelanders soon!

Harpa - the architectural symbol of Reykjavík

The road to Hallgrimskýrkja - the church that is the third highest building on the island!

We learned from the young Icelanders who took us that most of the Icelanders are irritated by Björk, and the young ones love trap music.

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