One has to eat and as i am still not funded for my PhD project, i am pimping Iceland occasionally. Yes Iceland is my whore and i am exposing her flesh to eager French tourists. That a cool job. I live to pimp Iceland. I love to pimp Iceland. Iceland is an easy girl. She is both able to please tourists and give them a good scare. I am not going to list all the many
MERVEILLEUSES thingsto do here. The list will be endless. i would rather list all the many dangers one might expose oneself by coming to Iceland: Erupting volcanoes, floods, glacial surges, ghosts, bankers, witches, monsters, politicians, trolls, me and last but not least Icelanders.
There is a whole campaign right now in Iceland and outside Iceland to attract tourists. The crisis has rarefied the tourists. I guess people have less money to spend on overpriced holidays. Eyjafjallajökull's eruption has not helped either. Anyway...they are pimping Iceland even harder than me.
I have a cool job. I like to guide/pimp. It is fun most of the time . Tonight i am camping in a small town in the east of Iceland: Seyðisfjörður. 750 souls living in one pretty fjord. What is even better with Seyðisfjörður is that tonight they have some kind of festival "lunga". There is a lot of people for the festival. Many of them seem to come directly from the nineties, other from the nearest tanning salon (yes they do have one here). The program looks cool and if i did not had to feed 18 hungry tourists i would really like to go listen to some music. There is nevertheless one down side. This is free for people older than 50 years old. Once again, I am never part of the right crowd. In Reykjavik there is mostly free stuff for people with kids. I have neither an articial hip or a mini snotty thus i guess i have to pay.
People romanticize the guiding life, like they do with trolley trotters serving coffee on airplanes. Ok we go to many MERVEILLEUSES places but there is some serious downsides. I have so often to some boring places....
Geysir, for example. Do you know how many time i have this thing erupt? I have had received one króna every time Iceland geysir-ejaculates, i would be right now roasting my casper's white ass somewhere warm far far far away. If it was me, i would build a parking lot over the dam thing. One with a warm floor, heated thanks to hot water...
I am not even going to start to talk about Gullfoss.
Guiding is also a life learning experience. You meet all kind of people. The kind you will hopefully never meet again. Lately i have to say that i am learning A LOT.
Some days the guide needs to run away...just for an hour of two from the group, from its leader. This is what i am doing right now. I am a fugitive. I bet someone is right now gluing
I was borderline to add my name to the list of the many dangers you might encounter in Iceland.
Guiding has also many good sides. Yesterday i climbed a very nice volcano, Askja. I bathed in one of its crater. It was simply amazing. As a guide, i have notice that you can also let free your passive agressivity. People love it. This is one very good side of guiding.
The other good side is that it reminds me why i live here. If it was not for the mountain, the lakes and monsters, i would have taken my hubby the Viking far far away.
I have to go to sleep.
(BTW. While writing this post...I saw arrived in the coffee house where i ran away, few (local) models preparing themselves (with beer) for a woolly photoshoot in the coffee house...FIERCE ! (please notice the fashionables pink leggings)
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