[Leica] our trip to iceland and holland part 4 of 4

[Kyle Cassidy <cassidy@netaxs.com>]

i urge you all to please visit this text on the web where all my fine
photographs are included:
http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/pix/travel/iceland-holland-2000/


Reykjavik Diary
An account, in some words but mostly pictures, of our adventures in
Iceland and Holland
during the last days of the century.
December 2000
kyle cassidy

part 4 of 4  



Matt's Ordeal 
Matt's doing well with the girl from the bar, who's from Aruba. As the
bar's closing, her boyfriend shows up and they start arguing loudly in
some language that's not English. She scribbles her number on a piece of
paper and clandestinely presses it into Matt's palm: "Call me, tomorrow,"
she says as her boyfriend drags her out into the night. 

The bar closes, the bartender leaves with someone who's not Matt and he's
out on the sidewalk in the pouring rain, drunk as a post. He flags a taxi
and gets in. 

"Where do you want to go?" 

It is at this instant that Matt realizes that he has no idea where we
live. 

"I honestly don't know." 

"How much money do you have?"
 

 A hand in the pocket reveals four pathetic guilders, not enough to go a
block. 

"Four guilders." 

"Get out of my taxi! You are wasting my time!" 

Back into the night, the rain, he starts walking, passing the same places
every twenty minutes or so, nothing looks familiar. The Absinthe is at the
antipodes from our houseboat. Finally after an hour or two, he stumbles
across a russian speaking hobo who he'd run across the day before,
bearings installed he turns towards home. An hour to the houseboat in
driving rain only to discover that he has no keys.


What to do? A lesser man would have crawled beneath the bridge and waited
for morning. Matt, however, decides to climb around the boat and bang on
Joe's window. Looking at this route the next day, in the cold light of sun
I was amazed we didn't fish him drowned out of the canal, but he managed
to climb around the boat in the rain without slipping off and falling in.
Joe pulls him through a window. He falls asleep in his wet clothes. 25
minutes later, the alarm goes off. It's time to go to Paris.

 
The next morning Linda and I get up to an empty houseboat. Eat breakfast,
feed the flock of miscilanious birds which have gathered, peeping and
honking, beneath our window, and off to the Anne Frank house. Much larger
than I'd expected, and teriffically well done. 
 
 
Then a foot tour of the city (read: getting lost) and finally laundry.
From there it's back to the Absinthe with Sander where a hotel full of
Swedish exchange students want us to explain how George W. Bush could get
elected. 

"I don't think he could find Europe on a map!" one of them cackles, "In
Sweeden a man like that could not get 1% of the vote." 

 
Yeah, here's another guy from a country with a Queen telling me that
America's government is screwed up. 

I tell them I'm pretty sure he could find Europe on a map. It's a big
target. As to whether he could tell Sweden from Finland, that remains to
be seen. 
 
 
We've yet to meet anybody in Europe who approves of our new president
(Sander came closest by saying, "no, the man is not an idiot." Though I'm
not sure if he was being parsimonious.) It's an exasperating feeling to
think the the world is pointing and laughing. We'll see what the next few
years bring.


"Are you going to stay here?" asks another, "ask for political asylum?"
They all think this is pretty funny. Linda, Sander and I leave at about
midnight, walking back in the rain which suddenly turns to hail. We step
into a doorway with four or five other people and watch for two or three
minutes as the ground is peppered with frozen gravel. We certainly picked
a fine time to come. 

"Is the weather always like this?" I ask Sander. 

"No," he replies, "never."
 

When we get home, Matt and Joe are just back from Paris, Matt sick the
whole way there, their train ran over a homeless man on the way out of the
station "he was still moving when they carried him away." Trip as
expected, 20 minutes on the Eiffel tower, rest of the day on trains and
cabs. 

The Parisian cab driver was rude to them, so as he drives away Matt
shouts: "Just wait till you come to Deptford, I'm not showing you shit!"
Everyone's tired. We sleep.


Greetings From Germany 
The next day Tim Spragens, a LUGger from Germany comes up to visit. He
brings a huge assortment of cameras and lenses. Everybody else is out
somewhere and Tim and I sit on the floating picnic table moored to the
side of our houseboat and photograph one another with wide angle lenses
and lenses that photograph in low light. It is some sort of weird orgy of
mechanics and optics. 

After a while, Matt and Joe show up we meet Sander. Tim's brought with him
some incredible Leica lenses, the coveted "Noctalux", easily a $2,800
lens, which opens up to f 1.0 (which is no mean feat), it's the size of a
can of tomato soup. He's also brought a 15mm Voightlander wide angle. I
try them out. 

Eventually we head down to the Oosterling and Matt makes Tim and Sandern,
smoke cuban cigars. We have  some Jonniver, some baked almonds from a
dispenser. The night is over.

We wave goodbye to Tim and Saunder at the Ooseterling and a sad feeling
comes down over me: The next morning we leave for home. 

I've been a little lost lately. Lost in my photography, lost in t of
stupid things off of Ebay. 

For years now I've also been feeling weird because I've never been to
Europe. In fact, I'm pretty much the only person I know who hasn't. I wish
that I'd done it when I was 24, back when I was broke and things meant a
lot end their junior year abroad. Anywhere, it doesn't matter. Just so
that you know what it's like to do laundry in a different country and go
to the supermarket and get a hair cut and buy clothes and go to bars and
do things that you're too responsible to doople to live nearly
identically, defining themselves with small differences. I've always had a
fetish for odd things; fountain pens, Leica cameras, guitars with strange
numbers of strings. Now we define ourselves by the places we've been and
the things we'self has always been some sort of accomplishment, a
guarrentee that we're not going to die never having left the village we
were born in.. 


Iceland And Then Home 
We return via the path of least resistance. A cab picks us up at the
houseboat and takes usto eat. 

The Dutch idea of a non-smoking section in a restaurant is a table without
an ashtray on it. Cigarettes are everywhere. We actually find that we can
sit in the smoking section and be further away from smokers than sitting
in the non-smoking sectian avocado, seven layers of clouds, seven sunsets
as the plane comes in, each more spectacular than the last. The ocean, as
we approach Keflavek, is dark green blue with foaming whitecaps, streaks
of white and floating ice break up the vast, mist shrouded ing, a mixture
of brown and black and white, it stretches out below us like an alien
landscape. 

In the airport I buy a case of Prince Polo bars, write a couple post cards
and dream that our trip back is a third of the way finished. 

On the plane to New omewhere for some time for some reason. I bang my head
against the seat in front of me. At least if it were a turbulent flight I
could cling to my seat and scream for five hours. As it is, I can only
stare. 
The Truth About The United States 

America putsic the stewardesses are handing out declaration forms which
must be filled out by everybody, listing where we came from, where we're
going, exactly what we're bringing into the country and, most inexplicably
of all, an address in the United States. As thouundred dollars in their
pocket and nowhere special to go. Perhaps it's because you really can't
backpack through America. Unless you've a real hankering to see suburban
sprawl up close. 

Not only is America intimidating, it's ugly. Deplaning at JFK is likng out
in a lockerroom under a debilitated stadium from the 1970's. The walls are
painted cinderblock, the light is bright fluorescent. All along the walls
are warning signs, in English only. Two people in front of us don't have
an address in the U.S. and g or are able to think up something like "The
New York Hilton!". We get in the "American's Only" line and breeze
through. The official who stamps my passport says: "How did you like
Iceland?" 
"It was one big party, the whole place." 

"Shit. I almost got stationed there. oh well. next time."

in the bathroom, over the trash can is a
sign that says: "Do not dispose of
illegal food or plant products here. They can endanger U.S. crops. You
will not be penalized for turning over food or plants to a customs
official." Like everything else, the sign is only in English. 

Wen pre-cleared?" meaning are they stamped for export into the U.S. 

"Yeah." 

"Okay.". 

We leave New York in a pelting rain, about six degrees below freezing. We
miss a turn to the bridge and cross New York the long way. Two hours later
we pull into Matt'house. Which would be absolutely fine with me had I not
also locked my car keys in Matt's house so that I wouldn't need to carry
them to Europe. 

We stare at Matt's house. It's below freezing. Matt and I look for a
window to climb through. There are none. Ever present of mind, joe
lobs a brick through Matt's livingroom
window, I don't hear a sound. Nobody cares. We leap through. Keys in hand,
Linda and I drive away in a strange stupor. Through a shattered window,
garbage bag and tape maybe, Matt yells behind us "I'll call you later!"

40 minutes later the ordeal is over. We are home. Our luggage dumped upon
the floor, our heads upon pillows, whatever time it is in Philadelphia
with visions of gooney birds in our heads.



  
end

certianly not the best writing i've done lately.