Reykjavik's Nightlife: Ruffies & Ghostbusters until 6am

On Wednesday morning, September 8, Siobhan left for her volunteer camp in the Westfjords of Iceland, where she will spend two weeks cleaning up the area and prepping it for winter after the busy summer tourist season.  She was nervous about heading out there without knowing anyone, and unsure of what to expect, but got ready and headed out nonetheless.  That morning we said goodbye as she departed to meet her group, and I settled into the reality of two weeks on my own.

(I will spare everyone the suspense about her volunteer camp.  She has been able to send a couple of emails, and it's very clear that she is having a wonderful time out there.  The people in her group are all very nice, and as the only native English speaker, she has been doing a lot of translating.  From what I can gather, her group members have come from different parts of Asia and Europe, and she has a Swedish roommate.  Their group has been doing a lot of painting and cleaning, but they have also had free time for hiking, horseback riding, and relaxing in the hot baths, among other things.  She said that the food is amazing, some of the best she has ever had, and she will be trying to get some recipes.  On Tuesday night she saw a wonderful display of the northern lights, and has promised a lot of pictures.  We will be sure to have a blog entry detailing her experiences once she has returned and had the time to organize.)

That same Wednesday night, I heard from my suite mate, Anca, that the University was having a discount student night at a bar in town.  I joined her and her friend Tom, who is from England and appears to be her boyfriend as far as I can tell, and we headed out to join the party.  At the bar I met a lot of her student friends, who were all pretty nice and talkative.  There seemed to be a particularly large German and British population in the student group, and someone told me that I was the first American they had met.  I was impressed/surprised with everyone's knowledge and enthusiasm for American music.  Practically all the songs the DJ played that night were from America, yet everyone knew all the words and even the dances.  My personal favorite was the Ghostbusters theme song, which received a mixed reaction from the crowd, but certainly loosened up my dancing.  Everything seemed fine that night, but I found out the next day that someone had put ruffies (or something similar) in Anca's drink.  She made it home safely with Tom, but felt pretty ill for the next couple of days.  Evidently even in a (relatively) smaller city like Reykjavik, and in a country with a reputation for safety, you still have to be careful.

On Friday night I spent some time with my other suite mate, Andy, and three of his friends, who are all Canadian.  They are all in Iceland to study various aspects of Icelandic literature and language, and the four of them comprise the entire graduate department at the University in that area of study.  Everything happens late in Reykjavik on the weekends, so after spending some time at our apartment we headed to the downtown area around 11:00 or so.  We went to a few different bars, and by 3:00 in the morning I was the only one ready to head home.  They did not stay out much longer, but many bars in Reykjavik stay open until 6:00 AM, some even 7:00 AM, on weekend nights.  As expected the streets of the city are deserted on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and most establishments do not open until 10:00, at the earliest.