February 27, 2012

Status Update

I just arrived in St. Croix, USVI, on a one way ticket with nowhere to be til mid April. My college roomate and best friend Ursula spent the last week with me getting into all sorts of trouble.

We met nearly everyone on the island in a matter of a few days, and made it to St. John for a couple days. Then we visited St. Thomas for a few days where I investigated my grandfathers’ life and history that I had never known. He was born in 1921, his middle name was Archibald, and he was a quarter black. That makes me a sixteenth black and I have 5 other aunties I know nothing about, much less their children, my cousins.

My 25th birthday was on Sunday and we rang it in at midnight on Saturday with a big bang. I had a boneless chicken-stuffed roti for dinner at Singhs restaurant in Christiansted, and Mr. Singh himself came to The Courtyard club at midnight to buy us a birthday drink after treating us to oxtail and doubles for dessert. The Courtyard owner did the same, and invited us out for a boat cruise, snorkel tour and unlimited rum punch the next morning. So I turned a-quarter-of-a-century with a big fat smile on my face.

I was anxiously awaiting my Phd interview results from Copenhagen and just got my rejection letter about 45 mins ago. I placed 14th out of 22 interviewees in which only the first 11 were offered paid research positions. Im a little disappointed, to make an understatement, and now have no idea what my plan or purpose is for the next 3 years. I just spent half an hour talking to a corrections officer/ dog trainer who has been been to jail 3 times in 3 different countries, and he’s convinced me that life isnt a bowl of cherries all the time, so Im gonna chew up this sour grape and spit out some wine.

Cheers 🙂

February 19, 2012

Amsterdam

Amsterdam was totally frozen over when I arrived there from the Irelands. The canals were frozen solid, for the first time in over a decade, and people were traveling by circles around the city center instead of weaving thru the zigzagging streets. The weather was +9`C a few days before so I only packed a light rain jacket, but I had to scour the street market in De Pijp for another sweater and some long-johns to layer up against the cold.

The frozen canals

I couchsurfed with a few different hosts the week I was there. The first was a big Dutch guy with curly long blond hair, then a Persian immigrant living in an ‘anti-squat,’ and finally an Indonesian-dutch Phd student. I also spent some time with a Greek guy born and raised in the Netherlands who knew a few squat locations for great eating, drinking and ping pong. I haven’t

My vegan meal at MKZ

quite figured out the logistics of squats and anti-squats, but they both create really interesting, atypical spaces to commune. The Persian guy lived in an abandoned office building with 5 other roomates who each lived in an office room, while the other 30 offices just stayed eerily empty. The squated spaces were a combination or restaurants and bars, one in an old film school campus where people screen movies and train in acrobatics. People from all walks of life and different fringes of society get together for ping pong tournaments with 30 players on one table and 3 course vegan meals for 5 euros. I wasn’t any good at ping pong and didnt bring my own paddle anyway, but the vegan meal was delicious and paired well with a 1 euro organic beer.

I spent my days trying to sight-see but could only bear the cold for a couple hours at a time, so broke up my walks outside with stops to the Van Gogh museum and visiting various cafes. I met

Van Gogh self portrait

a friend for lunch in the Surinamese neighbourhood and accidentally ended up eating Cuban food, and I stumbled upon the redlight district when I got lost trying to find central station.

Besides getting lost a couple times and making a few mistakes with packing (plus a few I made during the trip that I haven’t admitted to), the trip was slightly overshadowed by my upcoming phd interview so I used it as an excuse to sit still and stay inside. I couldn’t capitalize on the rare winter weather since I didnt have any iceskates, and was a little tired of the cold after a 6 week snow storm in Iceland, so I’ve decided I just have to go back to Amsterdam in the spring to really scratch under the surface of the  charming, slightly infamous city.

 

February 11, 2012

Northern Ireland

When I arrived in Belfast, I wondered if I was in a new country. I was advised by my various couchsurf hosts in the Repbulic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that I could safely count each Ireland as its own country, since counting Northern Ireland as a UK visit was like counting Scotland as the same place as England, and saying there’s only one Ireland is opening a whole can of beans that I dont know enough about to defend.

Welcome to Northern Ireland

I had the greatest host of all time in Belfast, Rob, who knew how to play the Irish flute and Irish dance and spoke with the greatest Irish accent. He had another couchsurfer from Romania at his apartment the same weekend I was visiting, and we went out to an Irish pub to listen to a session, a live music night where a bunch of random musicians come together to jam on their various instruments. There was a couple flutists, a fiddler, a guitarist, and some sort of percussionist I think. They played happy, catchy folk songs that made you want to tap your foot and slap your knee, and out of the guinness drinking crown, a guy stood up and started river dancing impromptu.

Later that night we talked to the river dancer, and turned out he was actually a river dancer, having toured with the River Dance show for ten years. He was “retired” from the show, at only 30-something years old, and was actually a Quebecois Canadian descendant from Ireland. Then Rob and him had a dance off as the bar was closing, and the bouncers had to stop their feet from clapping despite the few people left in the pub cheering them on for more.

Infamous Sandy Row

The next 36 hours I basically lived on Robs couch, having contracted some serious food poisoning or some stomach bug that crippled me with bouts of vomiting and the inability to eat for 2 days. He took care of me and checked up on me every hour, making sure I stayed alive and force-fed me some water and white rice. Needless to say I didnt get to see much of Belfast, missing out on a rugby match and an Irish dance social, but on my last day there I mustered up the energy to take a walking tour of Belfast. I strolled through the western districts and saw the politically and historically charged murals of Belfast. I also walked through downtown and Royal Avenue to see the impressive city hall.

Belfast's Murals

Finally I boarded my bus to the airport that took me on a scenic drive through the outskirts of Belfast, through rolling green hills and farms in the countryside, and I couldn’t help but notice how stereotypical it was for everything in Ireland to seem a bit greyish except for the fluorescent green grass that managed to grow everywhere, as lively and vibrant as a summer field in a scene from Green Acres.

February 7, 2012

The Republic of Ireland

 

 

The Royal Gardens at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, with the Wellington Monument in Phoenix Park in the far background

I spent a week in the ‘Irelands’, 4 days in Dublin and 3 days in Belfast, split between 3 couchsurf hosts and a handful of other local friends and couchsurfers. In Dublin, I stayed at a couchsurf house full of Irish students, and my host Griffin (what a perfect Irish name) had plenty of time to walk around with me. He worked some evenings at a Yoga studio and let me drop in on an advanced classs to partake in some well overdue detox and stretching. He showed me Phoenix park, and Kilmainham Gaol – a former prison which has played an incredibly important part in Irish history. We tried to go to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, just to discover no exhibits are open until 2013. He walked me through Trinity College campus, where I saw some of the most beautiful and oldest architecture in the whole city.

Kilmainham Gaol West Wing

We visited the famous Porterhouse, and sampled their large but weird array of beers. We had oyster stout, and some red ale that tasted like dirty gym socks. I forgot to sample the strawberry beer apparently so I´ll have to go back for that. I spent some time wandering around by myself, visiting the Guinness Store house and learning it takes 119.5 seconds to pour a perfect pint of that yummy stuff. I spent a day working on my phd proposal at the Art of Coffee cafe house, sipping on a never ending cup of tea on the edge of downtown Dublin.

Griffin´s roomate Hugh worked at Jameson Old Distillery, so I went with my next host Gary and couchsurf friend Marcin to learn about whiskey making and tasting. We tried whiskey ginger, whiskey sprite, whiskey cranberry, and irish coffee, and learned the difference between irish, scotch and bourbon whiskeys. I even got certified as an official whiskey taster, something I never thought or expected I’d achieve so easily.

 

Jameson certification

I met up with another couchsurfer named Flo who is what I’d call a German Gypsy recovering from extreme nomadicism. At 30, after years of hitchhiking from North America to Patagonia, he settled into a salaried job at Google, and invited me there for lunch to talk about it. Google Europe headquarters are in Dublin, and the 3 googly towers housing 3500 employees (mostly between the ages of 25-30) are full of mac computers, free food and drink, and quirky lounges to nurture creative thinking. I got given a badge and had immediate access to everything, and ate my belly full on what Flo claimed was the best food in Dublin.

119.5 seconds later

We had a lot of laughs to share after realizing our travel philosophies were much the same, but just at different stages in our lives. He had apparently gotten his position after being selected over 2,014 other applicants, and with a facial piercing and dreadlocks, you would maybe guess its the education and character he´s developed from seeing the world that overpowered to make him top choice. He said he got the job by accident, and its impossible to leave with the pay and luxuries he benefits, but after many months there, he´s getting the travel itch bad… ironically I sympathized with him in kind of the opposite way; I’m here trying to settle into a 3 year paid phd position so I can have the comforts and steadiness of a paycheck and a home, but in the back of my head I know I’ll probably be thinking the grass was greener on my side the way I have it now.

February 2, 2012

Glacier Walking & Ice Climbing

I went on a tour offered by Arctic Adventures called “Blue Ice” and had my first intimate encounter with one of Iceland’s glaciers, Sólheimajökull. I´ve seen lots of glaciers, touched a few and chewed some ice off one, but never really played around on one.

arriving to the Glacier

It was pouring rain and grey, but the ice was actually glowing blue. Our tour guide, Valdi, explained that it takes 7m of cubic snow to form 1 cm of blue ice. That´s alot of snow. And Sólheimajökull, “Home of the Sun glacier” is one of the fastest moving glaciers in Iceland, receding about 75 cm and growing 65 cm every year. It is decreasing in size rapidly, mostly from a 10 cm annual height loss, and every day the glacier surface changes dramatically.

cramp ons

New moulins and cones form, with melting ice and lava gravel constantly shaping the topography of it, and lagoons of water and underground streams always thinning the ice layer.

We walked with cramp-ons over the glacier, which makes you feel like a small person with oversized feet, and you never quite trust the ground – the ice looks slippery, and the cramp-ons are supposed to give you adequate grip, but you’re always half-prepared to fall flat on your face. The ice is also transparent, sometimes for a meter or two, and you see the ice bubbles below the surface that could or could not be a thin layer of soon-to-break ice.

Sólheimajökull

Once you get used to stomping around, and figuring out the right angle to place your feet when going up or down hill, you realize you’ve been staring at the ground forever and remember to look up. The view is impressive – a scene from the movie Ice Age. Just blue ice, white ice, and black sand forming a massive landscape as far as your eye can see, disappearing into the grey horizon into what you know to be another, larger glacier.

the ice wall

We did some iceclimbing too, clumsily using two ice picks and the cramp ons to try and crawl up a wall of ice. We went one by one, each attached to our guide by a safety line, and awkwardly tried our best to reach the top while the other 8 tourists looked on. Most of us made it half way or more, but you could see the exhaustion in every person when their legs began to shake (“Elvis legs” our guide called it), and the point when one just had to give up, as they couldn’t muster up enough strength to get the ice pick lodged into the wall for another step. I barely made it to the top, and my hands and toes didn’t feel like they were there anymore. Repelling back down was much easier, and on the walk back to the car, I realized walking on ice seemed like a much simpler task.

January 20, 2012

10 Important things that travel has taught me

1.) Time Management: I´ve learned how to guess what time is by looking at the sun; I figured out flights don´t wait for you if you´re late, and they´re expensive to re-book; and seeing Rome in 3 days is impossible, so save sleep for some other time

2.) Math Skills: different numeric systems and currency values have made me good at calculating exchange rates off the top of my head, as well as translating Celsius to Fahrenheit, kilos to pounds, cm´s to inches, km´s to miles, and using a 24 hour clock instead of this am/pm business.

3.) Lower your hygiene standards – shower less, drink dirty water, eat street food, and poop in poopy holes in the ground. Your immunity just gets stronger, and you´ll realize you’re less susceptible to contagious diseases or an upset stomach.

4.) When your pee smells bad, you’re dehydrated. Drink more dirty water.

5.) Have incredible patience and tolerance for things that, in any other situation, would be crazy and cause for incredible alarm.

6.) Pack less stuff. The more luggage you have, the more your material world starts to weigh down on you, figuratively and literally. You start to realize you have too much, need much less, and that your back freaking hurts.

7.) Leave your guide book at home; you´ll just end up going, eating and staying at the exact same places as every other backpacker does. And, by the time its published, its outdated anyway.

8.) If you´re really brave, leave your map at home too. You´ll realize how strong and reliable your sense of direction has become. Besides, its more fun getting lost in strange places than in a place where you´re supposed to know where you are or where you´re going.

9.) Don´t get stuck behind your camera lens. Its much more impressive to stare at the Pyramids of Giza with your own two eyes than through a viewfinder or 2 inch LCD screen.

10.) You´ll always run out of time and money before you´re ready to go back home, so embrace homesickness as a good sign that you´ve managed to stay traveling long enough not to run out of either, and keep on going til you do!

January 16, 2012

Lotourism: a new philosophy of travel

My friend Tom who works with the London Zoo created a new word that recently got added into the English Oxford Dictionary. He’s a post-doc researcher that works closely with penguins and became a self-acclaimed “penguinologist.” If you google the term, he’s the second hit.

Likewise, I had the idea to invent a new word. I have a dialect of English my friends call Katrin-speak, but this is isn’t a word I’m pulling from my bad English vocabulary – its more like a philosophy of travel that I’ve adopted. “Lotourism.” Its a theory of tourism that isn’t captured by any other, one word. After completing my MA thesis on the discrepancies between defined and actualized ecotourism, I realized the term ecotourism is a vague, green-washed term, whose definition is undecided among academics, and sometimes unidentifiable in practice.

I liked to think I was an ecotourist, also called an alternative tourist, sustainable tourist, or an environmentally friendly tourist. But then these terms lead us to more definition inconsistencies, since “eco” and “environmental” and “sustainable” are all buzzwords overused and often misunderstood.

I like to think I travel sustainably, but not just natural resource sustainably – Im financially resourceful, with minimal luggage, staying with locals, and traveling slowly but steadily over short-haul distances.

Im not really a backpacker, since I avoid hostels and hate being defined by the stuff in a bag on my back. Im not always a tourist, since I try my best to camouflage into my surroundings and see things from a local perspective. I’m definitely a traveler, but so is the American guy sitting in business class flying to Dubai for a 2 hour business meeting before returning to London via Dakar for dinner in England’s most authentic Turkish restaurant. So I’ve realized there are different types of travelers, doing different types of travel, and when asked how I travel, my new answer is “I’m a lotourist.”

Lotourism is, in a nutshell, is kind of like ecotourism, redefined and on a budget. It is travel that is low-impact, low-cost, localized, and lonely.

1.) Low-impact: your footprint on the natural environment is minimal, which means your carbon footprint is low, your use of exhaustible or non-renewable resources is low, you create minimal or no waste, you dont contribute to the degradation of natural environments, your touristic activities and choice of transport/accomodation/or anything else travel related is based on an educated, informed decision to be as low impact as possible. Your footprint on the local culture or host is minimal, which means you learn and engage in cultural exchange so far as you do not negatively impact any local traditions or customs, you are a low-profile and low-maintenance guest, imparting little change or judgement except for what is beneficial or desired.

2.) Low-cost: you travel on a tight budget, which requires you to avoid tourist traps like all-inclusive vacations, hotels, and organized tours. You avoid shopping and buy almost nothing but necessities, spend your money on simple travel (preferably terrestrial, like trains or buses, going short distances rather than long-haul flights), and stay with locals that you know through friends, family, or travel communities like couchsurfing.

3.) Localized: you stick around in an area long enough to know it, see every corner (especially outside the city center or touristic attractions) and the surrounding suburbs or country side. You stay where you want to be, living a day in the life there. You spend your money in such a way that financial resources go directly into the pockets of locals (locally-owned businesses, local guides, surrounding farms instead of imported/mass produced foods) and you support the local economy (avoid international tour operators or foreign-owned companies in all your purchasing decisions).

4.) Lonely: last but not least, travel alone. Travel by yourself to be better immersed in your surroundings, alone with your thoughts and feelings to fully take in, process, and understand your new environment. Be vulnerable, meet local people, avoid speaking your own language, catering to the needs of a travel companion, or doing anything that you don’t feel like doing or going anywhere you don’t feel like going.Leave your Lonely Planet at home and just ask people for help as you go, talking to as many strangers as you can. Don’t stay in hostels where you’ll get swallowed up into a group of other tourists, don’t travel with a tour group or on a big bus with “rich tourists, coming your way” printed on the license plate. Travel more spontaneously, irresponsibly even, at the mercy of a local tip, with the adrenaline-rush of taking the wrong bus or the long bus, ending up on the wrong train, showing up in a place you have no clue about, learning from scratch and not a guide book. You can go for as long or short as you want, book one-way tickets, have undefined destinations, a flexible schedule, and a trip planned only one day ahead at a time.

So, for any other lotourists out there, get the word out on the new word. And, if you get it and you like it, spread the word so more lotourism can exist in this traveling world of ours.

 

January 12, 2012

SportveiĂ°iblaĂ°iĂ°: 8 page article spread

Pick up the latest edition of SportveiĂ°iblaĂ°iĂ° to see the rest of this article. Its an interview with hunter Karl Kristinsson who I guided a horse-back trip for last summer for him and his friends to hunt reindeer in East Iceland.

a glossy 2 page article introduction

pages 7 & 8

January 9, 2012

Holiday Feasting and Dysfunctional Families

My parents had 3 daughters together, all of us born in Iceland, but raised most of our lives by our mother in Canada. Though we kept many of our Icelandic traditions and some Icelandic culture, we lost the language and became more Canadian. My mother is Guyanese, and imparted much of her British Guyanese influence onto us as well, so we grew up in quite the international, multi-cultural home. She dated an Italian, a Brit, most recently a Chinese guy, and married and divorced an Indian Guyanese guy during the time we lived in Canada. But we never really had a man around the house, since my grandmother helped raise us and we were barely allowed to keep male company without being chastised.

I went through a tomboy phase in my teenage hood, had only male friends, dreamed of having a brother, and wished I had a father. When I graduated university, I decided to move back to Iceland and be with my dad back home. Since then, I had the dilemma every year to decide whether I should spend the holiday season in Canada or Iceland, and always hoped the family could have just one more Christmas together.

my family feast on Christmas Eve

This Christmas and New Years was the first I spent in Iceland together with my entire family since 1992. My mom, dad, sisters and I had Christmas together in Canada in 1994, but it didnt turn out so great since my parents had just recently divorced and my mom had emigrated us all to Canada without telling my dad. I guess time does heal all, so 17 years later, they talked about things other than custody or money, and us sisters all grown up appreciated having both our parents in the same room to contribute to another happy family memory.

It was quite the dysfunctional occasion though. My parents get a long okay when we’re around, but they couldn’t be left alone since my dad has no patience for my mom and my mom didn’t think it was appropriate to stay at his house. They both know they’re excellent cooks and want to parent us, but now we’re all grown up and scolded them more than they scolded us. My youngest sister is engaged to be married and somehow acts like she can’t wait to start her own (more normal) family. My eldest sister wanted everything to go smoothly but is an unspoken, passive aggressivist, and I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to keep everyone busy and entertained… which wasn´t easy with record snow falls keeping us on the verge of getting stuck every time we had to go anywhere or park the car. But we only had a week and couldn´t let weather get in the way of or plans, so I was still the 24/7 driver, tourist guide, daily planner and phone secretary. However, I never minded since I was royally awarded with food feasts centered around family time every day they were here.

the first seconds of 2012

My mom has a sister in Iceland who married an Icelandic man and started a family here. My mom stayed with her and we visited our Aunty and cousins often for breakfasts, lunches and dinners prepared large enough for an entire army. We ate traditional smoked lamb with fixings, grilled leg of lamb with Icelandic mushroom gravy, lamb saddle and sheep head. On Christmas night we had lamb curry and roti, and Christmas morning we had Pepperpot, a delicious Guyanese dish made of oxtail and lamb

adding oxtail to the pepperpot

neck that takes days to cook. My friend Þráinn, one of the top chefs in Europe, came over and cooked some fine-dining langoustine for us one night. We tried every Christmas beer brewed in Iceland, and stuffed our bellies full of cookies and chocolate after every meal.

We visited our half brother, our old neighbours, and met many of my friends, including 3 hunters who fed us reindeer steak and reindeer carpaccio. We made it through the days with coffee and tea, leftover dinners, and hot dogs from hot dog stands. We rang in the new year with sparkling wine and almost got blown up by a wayward firecracker my cousin Svanur lit up too close to the balcony. We tried to make it to Vestmann Islands to visit our relatives from Dad´s side, but the weather wouldn´t allow it, or else we would have gotten to try some puffin and dried sea weed.

After a week of stuffing our faces and functioning like a family unit once again, we all had a great time secured by hundreds of photos to keep every moment of the holiday  memorable. I like watching Modern Family to remind myself we´re just one of many dysfunctional families, with an ever-evolving definition of family unit. I appeciate how unique my family is – growing up apart, getting divorced, getting engaged, living in different countries – and learnt that it doesn´t affect our family ties, since these are just the things that make us normal. I guess all families have some dirt under the carpet, with some weird element going on, so we’d be abnormal if we weren’t a little dysfunctional.