November in Reykjavik.

I know, I've become very lazy in updating my blog, but it's just not too much happening here right now. We spend most of our time at work doing the project and on weekends we are so lazy to do anything :P Anyways, here are some pictures I was able to take in November. Enjoy!

Saga Party @ Innovation Center. People were dressed as different characters from Icelandic Sagas - vikings, elves, witches etc. There was some traditional Icelandic food, like smoked lamb, dried fish and other, not necessary, tasty things; a lot of alcohol, singing and a realistic viking fight.












In Iceland during Christmas all kinds of shops are releasing Christmas line of products. They not only look different, but also sometimes taste different.




Hjaltalin concert @ NASA, Reykjavik.




Best burgers in town.


My 4th flatmate...


Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace Tower on the small island of Videy near Reykjavik. You can read more about this project here.


Sweet tasting in Innovation Center - Iceland cake :P


Because of the economic crisis, which struck Iceland very hard, people are angry on government, that they didn't do much to protect country from the after effects. Situation here is really hard for some people. A lot of them lost their jobs and because of the fact, that it was really easy to get a loan from the bank, they find it really hard to afford paying interests. Every weekend people are gathering on the main square in Reykjavik, in front of parliament and are protesting against Icelandic Government.

Walk around.

On Sunday the weather was quite good, so I went for a short walk. I took some pictures on the way :) Enjoy!

Our car.


Our flat.


Some sculptures in front of the house.


View on Reykjavik from the hill next to Mosfellsbær.


Mosfellsbær.




Yes, this picture is actually taken in Iceland :P

My next 3 months.

This company:


This "washing machine" :P


And this city:

Bloodgroup concert.

On Saturday (10.11) we went to a Bloodgroup concert in Akureyri. I heard this band first time on the concert in Reykjavik, during the Art Night Festival. I mentioned it already in one of my posts, so just to remind you, this is their MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/bloodgroup. They play good, "ear-catching" (I hope Magda, I can use your expression also here? :)) mix of electro-pop and alternative rock. They really kick ass on concerts, I bought their CD and also got their autographs :)


They had two bands playing before them as a support - first one was DLX ATX, a new formed band playing strange, but interesting mix of drum and bass. You can check one of their songs on YouTube:




Next one was Skátar, Icelandic viking rock band. They were wearing really funny clothes :)






And then the Bloodgroup - they gave a great concert :)


Small off-topic - picture from a strange accident which happened next to our dorm - apparently guy tried to escape from the accident he caused few minutes before that one.


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Rafting in Iceland.

On Sunday we finally went rafting. We were planning to do this for a long time and finally it happened! Just one word to describe it - AWESOME!

Guides were from Nepal - great guys. They actually do that all year long - during the summer they work in Iceland, and the rest of the year - in Nepal. They said, that they never did this at this time of the year here, they were going home the following morning :)




Zipping the dry suits required some help.




Some quick instructions.


Then we were rafting - great experience, I don't have many pictures, but we order a movie which the guy was shooting during the trip. I'll try to post it here when I get it. I hope they recorded our fall in the spot called "Green Room" - it had to look great.

Movie is here!


At the end of the raft we had opportunity to jump from the 8m rock!


Great thing to do here - I highly recommend it. The best period to do rafting is between June and July. Then the current is strongest and the water has higher level. You can also visit their website - www.rafting.is.

Simply the RES!

On Friday, 3rd of October, the Sprellmót - department fight - took place on University of Akureyri. Because RES is not so small school (in Icelandic standards) and we actively participate in students live at the University, we had our own team. We started from helping Stafnbui, friendly Science department, to protect their beautiful sex-doll from nasty Nurse department. So we gathered in one of the buildings and put some of our "dirty" thoughts on the doll :)


Then we went to the city center, where the screaming contest took place.








After that, all a bit drunk already, we left for the sports hall near Akureyri, to continue with other contests:
Beer relay.


Shot relay.


As you can see some of us were really thirsty :P




Tug of war...


...and eating competition with Iron-Stomach Pedro as our representative.




After that we had a small break for visiting Vinbud (liquor shop) and restocking our supplies for the evening. We went to Sjallin, nice club, in which the last two contest took place: singing and beer-bong competitions.


With this great song we won the singing contest!
The jury counted the points and we scored second in the whole day (we were also first in shot relay). Not bad for the first time, huh? :)

Winter is back!

Laugafell trip attempt :P

During last weekend we decided to go to highlands once more, to see hot springs in Laugafell and Aldeyjarfoss waterfall. We checked road conditions, the weather also seemed not bad, so we left Akureyri in the morning.

Mountain tops in snow.




Sign warning drivers, that they'll have to cross the streams on the way.




Well not only crossing, but actually flowing on the road :P


The higher we were going, the more snow was appearing.




On the top - it was starting to get really dangerous - the weather became terrible and amount of snow on the road made it almost impossible to drive on summer tires.


And as a result at this point we had to turn back.


Well, maybe we didn't see what we wanted, but I gained a lot of experience in driving and we learned that you shouldn't mess with Icelandic weather and sometimes it can be really dangerous.

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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