Once upon a time, there was a young (yes, young!), happy, friendly, but shy adventuring viking (might as well play the role while in Iceland right ?!) who sought to explore and this is a tale of Icelandic adventure and social bravery.
And so the tale begins early yesterday morning. It had been a long night sharing a dorm with 9 other adventuring souls, whose arrivals come with a crash at all times of the night and many who snore loudly once they are in slumber, that the young viking set out with swollen, tired eyes in the morning mist to find food.
Food, a heaping bowl of cheerios with a fresh banana filled her stomach but what she really found that morning was an adventure. A Dutch travellor, offered a 12 hour road trip through some of Icelands finest country side only asking for entertaining company in return.
As most know, from many tales, we are constantly reminded not to talk to strangers let alone to accept rides in rental cars. But it turns out, when solo travelling, if these things are done with cautious thought and eyeing up of the offerer (I could maybe take him in an arm wrestle? Maybe) sometimes these can make for great days.
So we headed off, to explore the snaefellness peninsula a jaw dropping 400 km loop filled with ocean views, icy water, thundering waterfalls, and the almost yeti like puffin!
As you may or may not know, this vikings stomach would normally churn at the idea of a 12 hour car ride with a complete stranger, especially without any opportunity to prepare a long long list of possible conversation topics. But, to her surprise it was a glorious day of exploring and riviting (OK, maybe just interesting) conversation. Yes, I survived a 12 hour car ride with a complete stranger and had a great time! Who knew that talking about travelling could provide several hours of conversation topic and just my luck when I had throughly exausted travelling stories it turned out that I had accepted an invitation for adventure from a Dutch physician working on his PhD. Eureka! Another several hour conversation topic... who knew I could talk about the kidney for so long.
But don't worry, I didn't make him talk about medicine the entire time so here are some possible conversation topics should you also ever find yourself in a car with a complete stranger for 12 hours and don't happen to have career similarities or have exausted the travel questions:
1) what do you do for fun?
2)what is your life story ( great opener once you know some basics) and provides numerous follow up questions for any vague areas...I learned so much about Japanese martial arts)
3) what are the traditional foods in (insert country here) helpful if you say the correct country... turns out you can get harassed for the rest of the trip of you ask about Norway by accident instead of the Netherlands)
*** highly recommend looking at a map for 30 seconds before you leave if possible so that you don't make embarrassing geography questions***
4) later on you may ask about politics/racism/ health care in Netherlands ( again not Norway! )
5) Or perhaps if you want to go deep ask about beliefs for life after death. ( this may only be appropriate if you have swapped intense medical stories already)
Those are just a few ideas to buy you time and open several cans of worms that should keep people talking for at least a few minutes.
So, yes, yesterday was a day in social bravery that was so rewarding not only for the epic country side but also the conversation. Did I mention, we hiked a waterfall, ran barefoot in dark Sandy beach into the cold artic temperature sea, and saw the yeti of a puffin. My new friend had never heard of a puffin before but believed me that I had a blurry photo of one on camera after a Google search and then decided to meet me in my excitement for an enthusiastic high five! Then the night ended with a midnight sun sunset... this my friends was breath taking and even after the sunsets the sky remains illuminated as if it was only 4pm! What a reward for staying up until 23:30!
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