By DAVID IZRAELEVITZ
Los Alamos

Our boys were in their mid- to late teens when we decided they were old enough to appreciate a family trip to Europe. Aside from experiential learning about Italian and Spanish sights and culture, we wanted to instill in our three children a sense that foreign travel was something they could enjoy and should do as the opportunity arose. We learn so much about ourselves and our world when we can compare our living circumstances to how others live.

To make this life lesson as obvious as possible, we decided to travel with just our backpacks, stay at a range of accommodations from youth hostels to regular hotels, and travel via trains and buses whenever possible. Some of these overnight stays, like the youth hostel near the Rome train station, were a little too rustic for comfort, but I assured our boys that once we arrived in Venice, I had made reservations at a veritable Venetian Palace. After a long train and bus ride from Florence, we finally reached our beautiful Venetian Palace, only to be escorted down multiple stairs to a windowless basement studio, the only room that would accommodate all five of us. It was a while before I stopped hearing complaints about Dad’s reservation of a Venetian Palace Dungeon.

I am thinking about that wonderful trip as we fly back from Iceland where we spent the last two weeks. We stayed in mostly quite comfortable apartments as we drove around the whole island, no need to relive that hostel experience, but I felt again introspection as we compared Icelandic life to our own. Like twenty years prior, visiting Europe felt like being transported to one of those Spider-Man multiverses, close while different enough to our world that comparisons are begging to be made. It turns out that small hotel rooms, and even smaller bathrooms, work just fine. One can get used to roundabouts instead of traffic lights, especially after the tenth roundabout in about as many kilometers; universal language-free traffic signs, are a good idea. However, charging a desperate tourist to use a toilet is just cruel. Give me a (bathroom) break!

Since Spanish is my first language, and I can fake a little Italian, that fateful trip with the kids was relatively language accessible. Icelandic, however, is as familiar to most non-natives as the Klingon language. Even other Scandinavian speakers have trouble with Icelandic, as it is closer to a medieval Nordic dialect than any modern cousin. Since town and street names are unpronounceable, we resorted to abbreviating them via the first few letters, as in “We are approaching Kirkj,” rather than “Kirkjubæjarklaustur”. This was enough for our purposes and navigational commands turned into a series of grunts, preceded by “turn left at” or “straight  past”.

Fortunately, Icelanders begin to learn English in kindergarten. Even more helpfully, most foreign workers recruited for the tourist industry speak excellent English and rarely develop fluency in Icelandic, so other than reading a map, or (heaven forbid) the automobile owner’s manual, there was little need to learn more than Hallo (hello) or Takk (thank you). Even more helpful, we found that most Icelanders spoke with an American pronunciation, even though British English is taught in school. Perhaps because of Netflix and YouTube, Americans get the last word (get it?)

Iceland is fascinating for so many reasons and in so many ways. As a New Mexican, I appreciated the pervasive presence of water, in so many forms: crashing waves on black beaches, glaciers, with their descendant ice-cold streams is tempered by hot springs, the original Geyser and its mates erupting to the delight of surrounding photographers, even bubbling ponds ready to blanch any of those tourists paying more attention to Geyser than to their footing.

Iceland’s natural beauty is matched by their society’s incredible race to modernity. It was first settled around the  9th century, and for the following ten centuries, Icelanders mostly lived in turf houses that they would share with their sheep, with the sheep getting the master bedroom. However, in the last 100 years, and especially since its strategic location during WWII and the Cold War, it turned into one of the most modern and vibrant European countries, with cheap energy from hydro and geothermal sources, close to universal cell phone access, and cashless transactions the norm.

Terry and I look forward to further adventures on our way to satisfying our post-COVID travel bug. No heavy backpacks, thank you; car rentals and comfortable hotels are now more our style. But as I reminisce about that memorable trip to Europe, where we hustled from bus to train, I realize that Iceland became our latest destination based on the recommendation of two of our boys.

I guess the Izraelevitz wanderlust did rub off, and now I can’t wait to take our grandchildren on overseas adventures. Dark dungeons in interesting places are waiting for us.