Fuel Cells go to Reykjavik... again.

Fuel Cell concentration is a bit specific and different from others, that we have here at RES. Some courses are taking place in Reykjavik, so we have to go there quite often. This time we went there for two weeks. It's good to leave small Akureyri for some time and go to the "big city" :P
On the way to Reykjavik we tried to see Glymur once again (the highest waterfall in Iceland) and we finally succeeded :D The path was quite dangerous and hard to access for a typical, lazy tourist, but as we are pretty experienced in hiking we managed to get there safe :) I also found some eatable mushrooms near the waterfall!
We spent first week mainly visiting different companies. We had some fun too, in ÍSAGA, a company which produces different types of gasses, we had a show of what liquid nitrogen can do (nitrogen ice-creams are quite tasty).
We also went to see Stokkur and Gullfoss again, this time without any hurry.
On Sunday we attended a huge festival in Reykjavik, called Reykjavik Culture Night. There were many concerts all over the city, and also one main, on a big stage, with most known Icelandic bands, such as hjaltalín and Bloodgroup. There were also many exhibitions and events connected to any kind of art. At the end there was a big fireworks show.
We spent next week on courses in University of Iceland. We had some laboratories there and we got to know some methods of how hydrogen dissolves in metals.
But besides that, we also visited some museums and galleries we didn't have chance to see before. One was really interesting, kind of "skansen", with old houses, but you could actually touch and try everything that was inside of them. So we were able to play on a good, old Nintedo in Mario Bros., try our drums skills or check how the discotheques looked like in 60-s in Iceland.
We left Reykjavik on Friday, with a huge storm and very strong wind which made driving very hard, but after 400 km we reached sunny Akureyri again.



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Climbing Súlur.

On Sunday (with terrible hangover after the party, cheers Seba! :) ) we decided to have a hike to a peak near Akureyri - Mt. Súlur, about 1200 m over the sea level. Weather was perfect and I managed to take some good pictures. Part of the collection is also Michał K. work :)
In the slide show, there are also pictures from the week before the hike. Many things happen and most important we moved to a new dorm! Also Grand Princess, one of the biggest cruise ships in the world, came to Akureyri.



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Trip to the polar circle.

We planned this trip for a long time. There is an island, about 50 km north from Akureyri, on the open sea, laying directly on the polar circle - Grímsey is it's name :P Since the ferry goes there only on week days, and we don't have any vacations or holidays, our only opportunity was 4th of August - one of Icelandic national days, free of school of course. So we packed ourselves in the cars (we were more than 30, they had a discount for big groups, quite nice one) and went to Dalvík, from where the ferry was leaving. Along the way, we spotted some dolphins jumping near the ferry. Visiting the local toilet also payed off, as I noticed that pissoirs were made in Poland :P As it occurred, not everybody was sea-sick proof, but we got to the island safe and sound.
Grímsey is very small, with population of about 100 people, it seems a bit deserted. But not people are main inhabitants of this small island, but birds. There are millions of them, majority are Puffins and Arctic Tern. We spent about 4 hours on the island, and we managed to walk almost all the way around it. There is not much there - airport, some houses, one shop, petrol station (I really don't know why they need cars out there), bar, guesthouse and a post office. But the trip was a great experience and I managed to do some nice pictures which I present to you just below:



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And small off-topic - last week we had a workshop on electrolysis in one of the high schools in Akureyri - it caused some interest from the local and national press:
















Shot from the local newspaper ...


... and from Icelandic News.