The Icelandic hot dog.  How do I begin to sing the praises of this most satisfying of foods?  How do I begin to describe the wonderful flavor of this consummate culinary creation, this paragon of pork presentation?  These hot dogs are so good that I now consider the words “tveir með öllu” (“two with everything”) a form of praying.

I awoke at 6:00 AM to the sound of someone entering, an unknown voice and Jeff’s voice.  At that point, I had only been asleep for 3 hours, but I was now wide awake.  As Jeff’s conversation with this mystery person continued, I noticed that there were not one but two voices.  Hmmm.  Now, Jeff can talk a good game, and probably deliver on it, but two people seemed a little bit more than he could handle.  Then I realized that, based on the conversation, these two men were straight.  Interesting.  Patrick started to stir, and he asked what was going on.  I gave a general overview of the situation.  Patrick had to urinate, so he went to do reconnaissance and relieve himself.  He came back with a brief report.  Eventually, the two straight Icelandic men departed, and then we got to pounce on Jeff to get the story out of him.  I will not elaborate on said story here, because the character henceforth known as the “Dark Lord of the Sith” shall come up in another entry.

Today’s adventure involved puffin watching.  When Patrick saw the pictures of puffins at the BSI Bus Station, his face did this very cute thing.  He kind of purses his lips and makes this very endearing growl like sound.  It’s the sound he makes when something is very cute or adorable.  It’s usually reserved for small animals, and puffins fit in that category.  Steini wanted to come with us so he came over around 1300 or so.  I learned from Patrick that he had a date planned for that evening, so it was no surprise that he was a little nervous when he came by.  We immediately began trying to pull information from him about this person, and Steini did not disappoint.  It was a great example of using the internet as a dating tool, one that I wholeheartedly recommend.

We headed out early for the tour because Patrick wanted to purchase a 66° North jacket.  We started our march to the Reykjavik Old Harbor, stopping at the store.  We found a wonderful jacket for him, one that was different from the one that I had or Jeff had.  It has this cool little hood, and actually has a part that covers his face.  He looks like a ninja when its fully zipped up.  So with his brand new and super-warm jacket, we headed down to the Harbor.  I paid for our tickets and shortly after we walked to our boat.  Jeff was a little bit afraid of getting seasick, and when we boarded he looked a little worried.  It settled down once we made our way out to the sea.  It was a short boat ride from the harbor to the main puffin island.  Once we got there, we were a little bit surprised that there weren’t a hundred puffins sitting on the beach drinking tea and waiting for us to arrive.  However, Patrick quickly spotted puffins flying in the sky, and we started to try and take pictures of them.  This is a quite difficult, actually, and we weren’t very successful.  Finally, we noticed that some puffins were floating out on the water and we were able to take snapshots of them on the water.  They were very cute.  We watched one of them try to take off from the water–he was unable to take flight.  As Patrick said, he looked like he was bodysurfing.

After about 45 minutes, we started to head back to the Harbor.  After we disembarked, Steini lead us to a hot dog stand that he had been going to since he was a kid.  Like I said, there’s nothing quite like an Icelandic pylsur.  Two were very satisfying.  We then made a quick stop at a WC and then headed back to the apartment.  Steini departed to get ready, and Jeff and Patrick laid down for a nap.  I decided to do the sun salutations and opening asanas from the Ashtanga first series, and then laid in a shavasana that was part active imagination, part nap.  I then curled up on the couch and slept for a little bit.

I woke up a little bit cranky–the usual outcome when I’ve had little sleep.  Steini was on his way over, and we were all in boxers or shorts and t-shirts.  When Steini arrived, we talked with him about his date, including trying to give first date advice.  All of this advice was entirely inappropriate and unhelpful, exactly the type of advice designed to be ignored.  Of course, you can’t do much when your friends are telling you when you can finger someone (am I right?).  We also had some semi-serious discussions about gay relationships and coming out.  I felt like I was missing all the good discussions, since all of my toilet and shower activities seem to overlap with particularly interesting topics.  Nevertheless, we had a good time and left pretty late for our next event: the Gay Cruise.

As I think I mentioned in a previous entry, I am not one for “doing Pride.”  Going to all these events for Reykjavik Pride has been very, very fun, though, and is making me rethink my aversion to Pride events back home.  Clearly, Reykjavik Pride puts a lot of thought into its events, and it is very much appreciated by its gay and straight residents.  Steini, Jeff, Patrick and I headed out.  Steini was accompanying us because we were on his way to his date (go Steini!).  We left him about halfway, and then headed down to the harbor.  We didn’t leave ourselves a lot of time, and Jeff was fretting that we weren’t going to make it.  With the equanimity generated by vodka and tonic, I told him that everything was going to work out.  We made it to the ticket office, and there were 5 tickets left (whew!).  We paid, and then headed on to the boat.  We launched shortly after we boarded, leaving me feeling both vindicated in my vodka-induced wisdom and the fact that we weren’t standing around waiting for the thing to start for an inordinate length of time.

Because I know that there are various visions of what a gay cruise could be, I will say that this is not one with a buffet (but they did serve beer).  The boat was pleasantly full.  We grabbed some drinks and headed up a deck, where we could enjoy the wind and the views.  People were in a festive mood, and we ended up meeting Daniel, who figured into Jeff’s first night out at Barbara.  We chatted with Daniel for a bit, and then hang around the ship, talking amongst ourselves and dancing to the relatively out-dated club music.  Other passengers were also providing entertainment, as two others guys put on fisherman’s gear and started performing near the bow of the ship.  Eventually, we started to circle back to the harbor, our one-hour tour coming to end.  I was sufficiently inebriated to still feel the gentle rocking of the ship while on land.

Now back in an area with a selection of bars, we headed to a bar with Christmas theme (go figure).  Christmas music playing over the speakers and elves working the bar put me in an appropriately festive mood.  We had connected with a guy who was the DJ at Barbara the first night we were there, and he was buying rounds.  I partook–minimally–of this generosity.  We then crawled over to another bar that was seemingly miles away (it was uphill and I was intoxicated).  This bar was tucked away in such a way that you would never know it was there without knowing it was there.  It was like the magical land of Narnia — just around the corner if you know which coatroom to walk through.  And given the fact that this was a leather bar, I might very well have seen an S&M Mr. Tumness, or at least a naughty little satyr.

There were no twisted woodland fawns, but there was a pornographic movie playing on a TV screen and a doorman dressed all in leather.  If C.S. Lewis had been a disciple of Tom of Finland, he would have written a book about this bar called the Leather, the Whip and the Porno.  We did run into Steini and his date, which seemed to be going quite well.  We dutifully interrupted their chat and introduced ourselves.  We also found Daniel and a person that I understood to be his ex-boyfriend.  His ex-boyfriend (Gunnar, I think) and I began an in-depth discussion regarding learning Icelandic, and I have to marvel at how overly philosophical I get when I’m tipsy.  (I also have a “maudlin” setting and collection of really great dance moves that is a train wreck waiting to happen)  After another drink, we headed back the way we came (how redundant) to arrive at Club London-Reykjavik, the site of the Boy’s Dance.

When we arrived, I ducked into the WC and Patrick handled the coat situation.  The coat room was not staffed, so Patrick worked the room like a pro.  We headed upstairs, to what seemed like a fairly sparsely attended party, given the number of gay people in Reykjavik.  We saddled up to the bar, me for my last drink of the night.  Once again, we ran into Steini, and although this was not surprising given the nature of the evening, it seemed like we were stalking him.  I waved hello and we headed towards the dancefloor area.  The DJ was slowly warming up, it seemed, for the big event.  The first few songs were pretty tame and little underwhelming.  But just like I would back at home, I rode the wave of good songs and not so good ones and stayed on the dancefloor for most of the evening.  We met up again with Daniel and Gunnar, and we danced along to European and American hit songs.

Eventually, I noticed that Jeff had disappeared, and that Patrick and I were ready to leave.  We grabbed our coats and headed out into the night air.  In typical fashion, we grabbed pizza, and I found, much to my dismay, that my credit card was declined.  I suppose that WAMU had decided that, even though they knew that I was in Iceland, the steady stream of credit card transactions were becoming suspicious.  I don’t blame them — a bunch of small charges at bars begins to look like a pattern of fraud (or alcoholism in the making).  Luckily Patrick had his card, so we paid, ate our once slice there, and took one a piece back to the apartment.  We talked about the night and, sans Jeff, turned in for the evening.

I will say that so far this experience in Iceland has been amazing.  Although I would not know what to do with myself if I moved here–all places and spaces have their good and bad points–I must say that seeing a different perspective on how to live life and live love has been a wonderful experience.  Plus, I’m starting to get the whole Icelandic perspective of how to not be personally insulted by words or actions.  And with that, the second day of Pride faded into the bliss of a good night’s sleep.