Blatant Commercial Plug

Last month's trip to Iceland cost me almost as much in winter gear as it did in hotels, airfare and guided tours combined. That fact still astonishes me. I'm amazed that I convinced myself that I needed special winter gear for a place barely colder than my home of Arlington, Virginia just because the country I was headed to had "Ice" in its name. After all, I spent almost 10 years in Syracuse and Cooperstown in upstate New York where it snowed almost daily and where the temperature sometimes would not exceed freezing for a month or more at a time. Heck, I used to walk between the two houses that served as the office where I worked in temperatures way below freezing without a jacket several times a day.

Who knows, maybe I'm getting soft in my middle (hopefully) age here and just have a need to stay warm all the time. Or maybe I was just skeptical that the insulating layer of blubber I've been working on for the last few years wouldn't stand up to a few hours outdoors walking on a glacier or something like that. Regardless of the reason, I decided caution was the better part of valor and shopped and shopped and shopped for some winter gear before heading north on December 10 of last year. I thought that my story here might be worth telling. I'll be very brief, I promise.

First let me say this stuff is difficult to shop for. All the people that work at the stores we went to are way into hiking or mountain biking or skiing or trekking or whatever (which automatically intimidates me because they are probably way fitter and more environmentally responsible than me) and there are so many shirt, jacket and bottom wear possibilities that I just didn't know where to start asking questions. The whole keeping warm outdoors concept seems to be one of layering but without context of past outdooring experiences (and let's face it, it's me we are talking about here) it's next to impossible to ask for help without any sort of prior experience. I just wanted someone to tell me what would keep a 205 pound, 45 year old man who generally runs hot what would keep him warm for a few hours outside at about 64 degrees latitude. Is that so much to ask? Apparently so.

REI. Patagonia. Eddie Bauer. Hudson Trail Outfitters. L. L. Bean. Arcteryx. Mammut. I checked out all these brands or places in an effort to find what I thought I probably didn't need anyway. All I needed was a few hours warmth out of my clothing. How difficult would that be? After probably altogether too much looking, I settled on a variety of brands (including a Washington Wizards knit hat purchased at the NBA store on line) for my trip. But I felt most comfortable going with Patagonia for my outer layers, which featured a Super Cell Waterproof Jacket over a Nano Puff Hoody up top and some Torrentshell Stretch Pants to protect whatever kind of jeans or underlayers I decided to wear. They were a bit more expensive but it seemed based on talking to about everyone in outdoor wear in northern Virginia that you got what you paid for. I felt this stuff would keep me dry and protected from the wind and would provide lightweight upper body protection against the cold. That was the theory at least.

Our first day in Iceland featured a three hour whale watching tour on the northern Atlantic Ocean. Of course, I came equipped in all my new gear which I was convinced would keep me cozy against whatever the icy sea had to offer. I was wrong. It was so freaking cold that I had to pack into a full body boat suit (for lack of a better term) provided by the boat which was pretty much like wearing three or four sleeping bags. I've never been warmer in my life, even if I did feel like I was ready for a cameo on The Deadliest Catch and there was some strange smell in there that I tried to ignore. I was finally convinced I needed some warm weather gear for this trip. I just wasn't sure it was what I bought. I was freezing in my new stuff.

But the next day we took a trip to Gullfoss (which translates to Gold Falls), a waterfall about an hour and a half northeast of Reykjavik. Considering our trip that day included four outdoor stops to commune with nature, including the falls, I of course wore all my new Patagonia stuff. I spent enough on it after all. When we got to the falls, it was just after noon, or about an hour after sunrise, and it was cold and the wind was howling. I mean really blowing hard, like you had to lean into it to walk straight and clomping down the wood staircase one step at a time was difficult because the wind threatened to take you, your companion or an article of clothing away in a particularly vicious gust now and then. 

As we approached the falls, which features two drops totalling just over 100 feet in height and which are spectacularly beautiful, it got so cold and windy that the spray from the falls froze in the air and the wind blew it right at you as if in an attempt to get you away and back to our nice warm tour bus. But amazingly I didn't feel any of that in my Patagonia gear. I mean I felt the pressure from the wind and I heard the ice mist hitting my jacket and pants but no wind got through those clothes I was wearing and I couldn't feel any wetness from the spray on my body. It was that moment that I thought I had made a good choice in shopping before this trip and that I really did need to do it.

I am sure most of the other brands would have kept me as dry and warm as Patagonia but I know for sure I'm sold on this brand. It's been pretty darned cold here the last week or so in the D.C. area and I can tell you I love my Patagonia stuff as much here as I did in Iceland. But I'll never forget that experience at Gullfoss. I'm glad I was well equipped. So thank you, Patagonia. Here ends my shameless blatant commercial plug. I feel it's deserved.

Gullfoss without me in the way. So much more beautiful.

The Best Hot Dog In Town

One of the reasons I love traveling so much is that it allows me to sample some food that I ordinarily wouldn't be able to eat in my sheltered little world around Washington, D.C. When I first booked my recent trip to Iceland and started hunting around for what new culinary delicacies I might encounter there, I was intrigued. While I had no desire to sample any hakarl (a type of kidney-less shark that has to be fermented for six months before it is edible) or rams' testicles, I thought I might get to try some puffin, some Icelandic lobster or maybe even some whale, although the ethical issues with whale meat might have scared me off. In my wildest imaginings, I had visions of McDonald's serving Puffin McMuffins for breakfast. That's before I knew McDonald's had come and gone to Iceland, apparently scared off by the country going almost bankrupt in 2008.

But between a packed itinerary for that vacation and a lot of other goings on in life, I just didn't see that a lot of research into food in Iceland would pay off much. So while I ended up sampling skyr, Icelandic meat soup, rye bread baked underground using geothermal heat and a bag or two of paprika flavored potato chips, I missed out on puffin, lobster, whale and some foods that would literally make my stomach turn. I regret not spending some time looking into restaurants before arriving since our one excursion to an actual restaurant, Icelandic Fish and Chips, was pretty much as disappointing as you could get.

But despite all that, there was one food experience in Iceland I was determined to NOT miss out on: eating a hot dog on the street. That's right, a street hot dog. Apparently, Icelanders are nuts for hot dogs to the point of it being a bit of a national obsession. And if you are going to have a hot dog in Iceland, you have to do it at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, a hot dog stand located in what looks like a triangular leftover parcel of land a couple of blocks from the harbor in downtown Reykjavik. There are three other locations in the city but the one to go to is the original at Tryggvatagata 1.

It has been reported that greater than 50% of all Icelanders have eaten a hot dog from Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, which translates to "the best hot dog in town." How someone came up with this statistic, I have no idea. In August 2006, the British newspaper The Guardian named it the best hot dog stand in Europe, for what that's worth. And if all that weren't enough, apparently Madonna, James Hetfield and Bill Clinton have all stopped by for a bite. With this sort of mythology surrounding it, and having already hit up Tail o' The Pup and Pink's on separate trips to Los Angeles, I knew I had to stop by before we left town.

As luck would have it, we stumbled upon the stand quite by accident on our first day in country after getting off our non-whale watching trip at a time when we were just looking for a snack to tide us over before our jet-lagged bodies gave out and we succumbed to sleep. It was cold and snowy and already really dark at 4 p.m. and either the weather or the hour had scared away the line that everything I had read about this place said we would encounter. Admittedly, two other people showed up right after we got there but when we ordered two hot dogs with everything, we were the only ones there.

Ordering with everything is supposed to be the way to go here so we complied with local custom. Everything in this case means raw onions, fried onions, ketchup, remoulade and sweet Icelandic mustard. About 15 seconds after ordering, I was presented with two hot dogs which looked decidedly not like they had "everything" on them. I had apparently missed the two applications of onions which were concealed below the frank but indeed everything was there. It all happened so fast. Finding the only table there covered with a thin film of snow, we elected to eat standing up.

The hot dogs we ate here were a quick cheap meal that provided a bit of warmth both in terms of the temperature of the food and the feeling that we were doing something uniquely Icelandic and they were very welcome. The taste itself was not as salty as a regular hot dog, either through a lack of salt in the sausage or through being masked by the sweetness of the mustard, which definitely shone through the sauces. There was also something crunchy in the toppings which was either the raw onions, or something in the remoulade. The texture was almost like tiny sushi roe combined with Rice Krispies. Not as sketchy as it sounds.

I've eaten a lot of hot dogs in my life. Possibly too many. And I'm just not sure I have a perfect hot dog. Most hot dogs I've eaten have been microwaved or boiled in my own place and slathered with mustard and sauerkraut. I just haven't had a lot of restaurant dogs. By default, this was without a doubt the best I had in Iceland. I'm not sure it beats Pink's for flavor but the no wait line here vs. the hour and a half wait for a hot dog on a hot Los Angeles May night was definitely better. More than anything else, I feel stopping by here was something that had to be done to feel like I really had been to Iceland and I'm glad we could fit it into what was an extremely packed agenda. I'll go back for another next time I'm in town.

Black Death

Sometimes it seems like half of what I write about in this blog is food and booze. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that. I wouldn't have traveled to Kentucky this past fall if it weren't for bourbon and I wouldn't have had the same memories of Bavaria if I hadn't eaten so many sausages and drank so much beer. And so I think it's appropriate that my recent trip to Iceland gave me a great story involving both food and booze. This post deals with the booze part of that couple; a post covering the food will follow very soon.

Different parts of our globe are often identified with the distilled spirits they produce. At least for me they are; I just can't separate the booze from the geography I guess. When I think Russia, I think vodka. Scotland has Scotch, Kentucky has bourbon, the Caribbean has rum, Mexico has tequila and mezcal and on and on and on. Six months ago, I never would have identified Iceland with a distilled spirit. After having spent about a half a week on that volcanic rock in the Atlantic, now I do. Now when I think Iceland, I think brennivin.

Two shots and a water, as recommended.

Iceland, like a number of other countries, has had an interesting history of temperance and alcohol bans over its history. Just like in the United States, the country experienced a period of prohibition beginning in the early 20th Century. The initial period of prohibition lasted from 1915, when all alcohol was banned (booooooooo!), until 1921, when Spanish refusal to purchase Icelandic fish unless Iceland imported Spanish wines forced the reinstatement of wine as a legal beverage. Way to go, Spain! Woo hoo!

The re-introduction of sprits to Icelandic society was next. A national referendum on prohibition in 1935 allowed the legal sale of distilled beverages in the country for the first time in 20 years and at that point, most of what the temperance movement in Iceland had sought to ban was now legal. This is where brennivin takes off, but I'll come back to that in a paragraph or so.

I guess once wine and spirits were legalized, both the drinkers and the non-drinkers quit arguing for a while, preferring the status quo to continued struggle, because the sale of beer remained banned until 1989. No, that's not a typo. Icelanders lived without legal beer, that most wonderful of all drinks, for an astounding 74 years and two months until March 1, 1989 (now known as Beer Day). Ironically, the straw that broke the camel's back there was the Minister of Justice's 1985 ruling that bars could not add liquor to legal non-alcoholic beer to simulate real beer. I guess the silliness of the whole endeavor was sort of obvious after that.

Here goes nothing. Skal!

Once the ban on spirits was lifted in Iceland, it was time for brennivin to step forward as Iceland's national drink. Brennivin is technically a schnapps, which is a fermented beverage where the base of the alcohol (in this case potatoes) is fermented with the liquor's flavoring as part of the fermentation process, as opposed to being added later. The primary flavor in brennivin is caraway seeds, although there are other herbs and spices in there, most notably cumin and angelica. Sounds yummy, right? 

Folks in Iceland started distilling brennivin as soon as the government of Iceland told them that they could but the packaging was a little bit different than it is today. The current packaging features a mouthwash-green bottle (brennivin itself is clear) with a black label featuring the silhouette of Iceland on it; the original bottle label was also black but it prominently displayed a skull and crossbones label. Both the black color and the ominous label were designed to discourage people from drinking it (clearly not the American version of capitalism). The label had the exact opposite effect to what was intended. Brennivin sold well and it ended up with the nickname "black death" which has stuck to this day. 

After learning about black death, I knew I couldn't leave Iceland without a taste, so on our first night in country, exhausted after an overnight flight which featured about five hours of uneasy sitting up sleeping, I walked into a bar on Laugavegur (Reykjavik's main shopping drag) for a shot (or two). My choice of establishments was Lebowski Bar, which as the name suggests, is dedicated to all-things-dude inspired by the Jeff Bridges movie The Big Lebowski. While I understand there are many folks out there who love this movie, I'm not a Big Lebowski guy so to me it was a bowling themed bar, complete with moving neon bowling balls and pins on the outside and Brunswick plastic laminate bar tops. I got it. But I was there for the brennivin, not the decor.    

Brennivin is kept chilled so it was not visible walking into the bar but I knew they would have it. My request for two shots of brennivin was granted, with a question from the bartender: did I want a glass of water with my brennivin? After asking if I needed one, and being assured by the bartender that he always keeps a glass of water handy when drinking brennivin, I agreed to two shots and a water chaser. Time to taste.

I have to say my expectations were pretty darned low here and they were exceeded mightily. I expected any liquor with a nickname like black death to be awful but I was pleasantly surprised. If I can paint any sort of picture as to the flavor, I'd say it was pretty much like drinking rye bread, a result more of the caraway than anything else; the cumin and other flavorings did not make themselves evident to my weak taste buds. While rye bread flavored alcohol might not sound that thrilling, I was really OK with it. I can think of way worse things to drink. And brennivin is 75 proof so its relatively low alcohol content makes it really drinkable with no burn going down the throat. I'm sure I could down a lot of this in a night in Reykjavik if I needed to prove my worth to Icelanders. And I did not need the chaser. After my two shots were down, I left the water as poured on the bar and walked back into the dark and cold, ready to return to my hotel confident I'd crossed one of the essential experiences off my Iceland list.

Oh, and they sell this stuff really cheap at the airport. I have a half liter chilling in my fridge as I write this. Come over and taste it with me if you are ever close by. Skal!

I like to stop at the duty free shop. At least I do in Iceland when there's brennivin to bring back!