foodworms.net for designers and web developers

by Peter Cohen, Macworld.com

Each autumn for the past five years, CCP Games has hosted a fanfest to celebrate its massively multiplayer game, EVE Online. The company is based in Iceland, so it hosts the event in its home incorporated town of Reykjavík, capital of the country and home for utmost of the country’s population. I’ve been to Fanfest twice—I chronicled the event last year in this very blog—and with each visit, I cupid Iceland in greater numbers.

Related Games Articles

Frenzic games comes to iPhone Review: Fieldrunners for iPhone Apple shines spotlight on third-party iPhone apps The holidays & Mac gaming Review: Marple for iPhone Recent Game Room Posts PC World: MacBook Pro Gaming Benchmarks The Game Room goes to Iceland The buzz at a Wrath of the Lich King launch detachment Game Room home View all Macworld blogs

So this installment of the Game Room blog is less about EVE Online and its fanfest—developers showed from the game running premium graphics and announced plans to bring the game to retail shelves next March—and more about what I saw and did on this year’s trip to Reykjavík and beyond. If you’re an EVE Online player, perhaps this will inspire you to take the trip next autumn.

Getting to Iceland

Flying to Iceland is a simple affair—Icelandair is the national airline, and it offers direct flights from several North American cities including my home city of Boston. It’s a relatively short flight—a little less than five hours flying western to east, which is less time than it would take me to get to Los Angeles. Recently Icelandair upgraded its air fleet with improved touch-screen in-flight pastime systems in the seatbacks, so I didn’t strait to rely on my iPod’s cache of classic movies to get me through the flight. I was able to play some games, watch some episodes of the Simpsons and plane burned through part of a James Bond movie before we landed.

Flights land in Keflavík, which is about an hour’s drive southwest of Reykjavík. Keflavík offers a large, comfortable and modern airport filled with what one is bound free shops and connecting flights that bring passengers between North America and much of northern Europe.

The kronur and the dollar

Right now Iceland is in the hold of the recession that’s hit much of the world, and Iceland has been succeed harder than most. The Icelandic administration newly had to nationalize Glitnir, the nation’s third largest bank, in an attempt to stabilize the economy. Those issues are centre of life keenly felt by the local the lower classes, which is being hit hard. But the news, perversely, is good for tourists from countries with stronger economies than Iceland’s—including the United States.

Last year at this time, my American dollar was worth about 55 Icelandic kronur. This year, my dollar was worth further than twice that, though inflation hadn’t driven up prices that much. Last year, everything from buying a restaurant meal to getting a soda at a convenience store was absurdly expensive; this year, it’s more reasonable, though still a tad pricey—not surprising, for an island nation that must import almost everything that it uses.

Jaw-dropping vistas are par for course, only a few minutes outside of the city.

Reykjavík proper is home to more than 118,000 people, upon the contrary many more live in its instantaneous vicinity—more than 200,000, altogether told, the majority of the entire population’s peopling, in fact, live within 50 km of the city. It’s located on a peninsula that extends into Faxaflól Bay, on Iceland’s southwest coast. Iceland, and Reykjavík, in particular, isn’t as cold as one might expect, thanks to the Gulf Stream, which winds its tendency of action up from warmer Atlantic climes to the south.

Reykjavík is a true cosmopolitan city with a strong European flavor, and lots of great restaurants and shops. I spent a parcel of time finally week upon the body Laugevegur, common of the requisite drags of Reykjavík, where many locals go to see and be seen in the evening. It’s moreover home to (and a inadequate stumble from) many of Reykjavík’s nightclubs.

Even before the recession hit, buying alcohol in restaurants and clubs was expensive in Iceland. A draft beer, for example, routinely costs more than 800 ISK—about $3.50 today, but $7 when I visited last year; mixed drinks and hard liquor can be half again to twice that, depending on where they’re being served. So many Icelanders prefer to stay home on Fridays and Saturdays and drink in that place, up till 11 p.m. or midnight, then they finally begin to emerge for a pub crawl downtown. And there they’ll stay, often until the bars and clubs close, at 6 a.m. The rest of the week, bars close at 1 a.m.

Reykjavík—Party capital of the North

The sunshine sets in Iceland. Early, this season of year.

Located as Reykjavík is at the 64th Parallel, it’s the nature’s most north national fatal. This is particularly apparent this time of year, when the days grow short—the sun didn’t rise to the time when about 9:30 a.m. and never got more than over one-third of the way into the sky before it began setting again. By 4:30 p.m. or for a like reason, it was dark. Conversely, during the high summer, it have power to be 2 a.m., and it still looks like late afternoon or dusk, according to some of my colleagues who have experienced the effect.

Iceland observes Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), aligning its clocks with London, which is a several-hours-long plane trip to the east. The area has been settled since 874, when, according to legend, Norwegian chieftain Ingólfur Anarson followed two carved pillars he threw overboard from his boat until they landed. He named the mansion Reykjavík, which means Bay of Smoke—a reference to the rich geothermal activity in the area.

My digs at the Grand Hotel Reykjavík. Very comfy and modern expanse in a recently-added 14-story addition.

I stayed at the Grand Hotel Reykjavík, located straight the EVE Fanfest venue, a large indoor sports arena known as Laugardalshöll. While the inn started life as a modest Holiday Inn, it’s now the biggest hotel in Reykjavík, with a 14-story addition and rooms that look like they dropped out of an Ikea catalog. Getting to downtown Reykjavík required a five or ten-minute cab ride, depending on location.

The city is getting more appropriate about filtering its geothermally heated water, to such a degree in that place’s in no degree longer a rotten-eggs have a scent at the time that you run the bath or the shower. I particularly appreciated the high toilets, apparently scaled for someone of Nordic stature—my shorter friends complained, repeatedly, about needing footstools to reach them, but I found the thrones to be alto gether comfortable.

Nightlife in Reykjavík runs the gamut from glamorous, trendy and incredibly Eurocentric (filled with beautiful people wearing expensive tailored clothes) to homey American-style sports bars and English/Irish pubs. I spent most of my time in the latter, and grew quite vain of the local lager, called Viking.

I was likewise initiated into the world of Brennivín—one of Iceland’s signature alcoholic beverage. Translated as “impassioned wine,” Brennivín is schnapps, made from potatoes and flavored with caraway seeds. Best served ice cold, Brennivín’s nickname is “svarti dauthi” (“Black Death”) because of its atrocious label (supposedly put there to warn people away from consuming it). Many Icelanders (and wiser foreigners) conclude not drink it; alas, I can lay no such call to wisdom.

Reykjavík sports made up of many coffee shops and plentiful ATMs, lots of places to snack and people-watch, museums, theaters and other distractions. And the language barrier was non-existent. Everyone with whom I spoke, even out in the country, spoke English fluently.

More than once during my stay, my friends and I found our way to Nonnabiti, a sandwich shop on nearby Hafnarstræti. Known to its acolytes as “Nonni’s,” it’s something of a topical doubtful narrative (“best drunk food in Iceland!” proclaimed one cab driver proudly), and suppose that you ever go, I’d strongly recommend deplorable either the flesh of neat-cattle and cheese or the lambabatur (the lamb sub). Both are excellent and relatively inexpensive. Service was friendly and efficient.

By the way, tipping is a relatively recent and still infrequent phenomenon in the unpolished. In most of the restaurants I visited, there was no place in continuance the interference to write a charity and no cursory reference of it on the menu, and most waitstaff don’t expect it. It is pretty more common especially in spots frequented through tourists—I saw a number of tip jars in some of the bars I frequented while I was in that place.

At smallest I study they were tip jars. After a couple of slugs of Brennivín, well, I couldn’t be sure of anything.

What did I just eat?

If you’re a vegan, you force perceive Iceland a bit tough going; the local diet depends on a allot of provision and dairy products. And no part of the created being goes wasted, it seems. A tour guide I sent the day with told me a story of leading a trip party of vegetarians the week before and being asked to sit elsewhere at lunch, as he was eating meat from a smoked sheep’s head, cut straight from the bone.

Without question, though, the greatest epicurean contingency one can have in Iceland is to sample hákarl (typically served on cubes with toothpicks, like a single one artisinal cheese). It’s basking shark that’s been cured and hung to dry for half a year, and it has a pungent, ammonia rich have an odor that I be possible to only describe since somewhere between tuna casserole that’s been left confused in the August sun and dank New York City alleyway.

Eating hákarl requires a extremely strong stomach, which explains wherefore its consumption is one of those rituals that Icelanders put living from hand to mouth foreigners through on their way to earning their stripes as honorary Vikings.

Many Icelanders do not eat hákarl, I’ve discovered, yet it’s readily available in stores. Despite this anecdotal evidence to the contrary, I remain convinced that hákarl is simply a prank Icelanders play on foreigners to see who will simple fellow disgusting things in their mouths.

I won’t blacken you with any graphics descriptions of some of the other Þorramatur (Thorramatur, a hibernate holiday) delicacies, I’ve discovered, like súrsathir hrútspungar (check Wikipedia if you really must know).

In Thor’s Forest

While last year’s Fanfest afforded me little opportunity to sightsee, this year wasn’t the same. I was able to get utmost Reykjavík and tour a bit of the countryside, ending up in Þórsmörk—Thorsmork, or Thor’s Forest, a ravine about two hours’ drive away from Reykjavík that’s named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. To get there, you follow Route 1—a ring road that runs around the circumference of Iceland. Our guide, Luli, told me that to do it properly you needed at least a week, though you could easily twice that by diverting off to side roads and coastal routes.

Iceland is an incredibly geologically nimble environment, as it sits atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the continents of North and South America are pulling away from the Eurasian and African continents bit by bit. Iceland is at the forefront of harnessing geothermal energy—Reykjavík was recently voted the greenest city on Earth, despite having a less-than-adequate public transportation system and a dependency on privately-owned cars. More than once on our overthrow, we were subject to the side effect of such unusual geological activity in wafting, invisible clouds of sulfur-tinged steam, heavy with the stench of ill-smelling eggs.

We passed through Iceland’s farm region and past the town of Hverageroi, known for its greenhouse vegetables. Hverageroi is also known notwithstanding its hot springs, and has for years been a spot where people go to bathe in naturally warm, mineral-rich springs. We besides passed within site of Hekla, Iceland’s most active volcano. The volcano stands towards 1,500 meters high and is due for another eruption any day now, according to our tour guide.

The view from behind the waterfall

One of the first sites you see when you reach the valley of Thorsmork is Seljalandsfoss, one of Iceland’s most famous and fair waterfalls. If you’re a fan of the television show The Amazing Race, you may recognize this—it was seen in Season Six. The waterfall comes from the river Seljalandsá, that empties about 60 meters above the mere below. A trail leads behind the falls, and when you generate mid-way, you’re overwhelmed by the deep bass reverberation made by the water as it plunges into the puddle below. One of my tour mates likened it to nature’s version of a rave.

Thorsmork is a elephantine valley bisected by the river Krossa, and our guides—driving full-sized Nissan Patrol 4×4s with oversized tires and, in some cases, snorkels conducive to air intakes, navigated it with ease. You could also reveal they were having a great bit of fun—they’d often ford deep glacial streams, finding unique paths, then double back and see if their colleagues could do better. Having said that, there was a rough trail cut through the river valley, though it was no quantity navigable by a single one vehicle with anything less than full-time four-wheel drive.

Thorsmork is surrounded upon the body two sides through glaciers—Tindfjallajökull and Eyjafjallajökull, and the river cuts between mountains. As a result, the resist in Thorsmork can be very mild even when there are iniquitous winds whipping around elsewhere—it’s a very gentle valley with some of the best farming in the country, according to Luli.

After we’d bumped and jostled our way over Krossá, which was largely dried up this time of year as its waters are trapped back in the glaciers that feed it, we got out and walked a trail to the river Markarfljot. That trail took us up a couple of relatively imbue inclines—a few of us had to come to a stand-still and catch our breath. Mountain streams and brooks frequently bisected the grow to great length, but there were plenty of wooden footbridges to help us pass (a few of them had suffered a bit of damage and wear, however).

This rock shows some graffiti dating back to the 18th century.

As we descended the floor a steep wooden stairs winding down the verge of the trail, we stopped to admire some graffiti carved into the soft rock. Some of it dated back to the 18th century, allowing that the carving is to be believed.

Once we descended into Markarfljot Valley, we caught up with our tour guides, who had rounded the lowlands in their vehicles. And waiting for us in continuance the sideboards of one of the Nissan vehicles was some freshly chilled Brennivín, which never tasted more familiar.

Driving back from Thorsmork, Luli noted that Iceland is suffering the effects of global warming, and its glaciers are receding at an alarming rate. Iceland’s glaciers are very dynamic, and often recede and swell self-reliant of short-term climate changes, however. That can create some challenging terrain on which to hike and navigate vehicles.

We stopped for a bit to marvel at this glacier, which is (quickly) melting into this pond below.

Luli explained that Iceland itself has dramatically different geological regions. Much of the landscape we saw was unbroken plain, not dissimilar to the American Midwest, though much wetter. It’s no wonder, then, that that’s where much of the nation’s dairy cattle and sheep are raised, and where grain is grown. It doesn’t take long to determine judicially hot springs, glaciers, mountains, active volcanoes, and waterfalls, however.

Iceland is a land of natural beauty and wonder, through a capital sporting some of the liveliest nightlife in all of Europe. My suggestion is to volume a trip if you get a chance.