Ina on the road

„There are just so many tourists!“ Barbora is complaining again over her lunch. “They stop in the middle of the road, everybody is just driving 90, but they stop for a picture!” Katrin agrees. “My husband is basically the one responsible for the permits for geological research and he hates tourists, too! They just walk or drive anywhere and destroy the landscapes.” We bend over our food, but it seems as if the vets and vet nurses don’t count us into this annoying crowd of tourists. “It went from 500 thousand to over four million in just fifteen years. The problem is that it happened too fast” is Hrund’s view, and she immediately asks what we have seen so far. “Oh, the Westfjords are of course the best part of Iceland” she says and grins. “My family is from there.” Barbora hates not only the stopping cars, but also how difficult it is to find a place to live nowadays. “They build only hotels and all the apartments are turned into Airbnb, so where are we all supposed to liv...

The sun in my face and wind in my ears, I take a deep breath. Do I taste salt? Smell the sea or the moss? I can’t really tell what’s in the air, to me it is simply: clean. Clear. Unbelievable that I was breathing in the Thai air full of smog just one month ago! It’s also quiet. A car many kilometers away, and we leave the spot when a couple of tourists start talking. I take another deep breath before I get back into the car. This is Iceland. Lava fields and gravel. Moss on rocks. Mountains and the sea. Clean air and cold wind. Snow and sleeping trolls. After the ferry to the Western Fjords we are off to Látrabjarg, the westernmost point of Europe. But is it really? After all, we are standing on the North American tectonic plate. Anyway, we can watch thousands of seagulls and a couple of early puffins here and imagine Greenland behind the clouds on the horizon. The sun is still shining, it’s only nine p.m.  We spend the night in a guesthouse in Patreksfj...