Liz+Reykjavik+beer=tired-(sleep/dysfunctional)x Airports suck

Reykjavik is bad for sleep.

Of course I had to have one night of fun in Reykjavik! It's light out in the middle of the night... the bars don't close till the morning... what is Liz supposed to do? Liz has to go drink too much beer and stay out all night! I would have considered myself a total failure otherwise. And it's just so easy to stay up all night when it's not dark outside! Was this good for my confused and tired body and my sleep schedule? Of course not.

So out on the town I went, with three nice Australians I met in my hostel. I'm not sure what the deal is with Australians, but they seem to always be everywhere but Australia. I could be wrong. I've never been to Australia. But every other place I've ever been, there have always been strange numbers of Aussies around. Curious. But they are always cool, so I don't mind. It's just odd to be out in a group of Australians when I'm in Iceland.

Me drinking beer with Australians

But anyway, we went out into the bright night to drink lots of beer. We had fun. We went to a pub, and then we went to a club that I didn't think would let me in... I was not dressed to perfection like everyone else. I was my typical disheveled self. But they didn't stop me! We stayed all night, and I met some entertaining Icelandic people, most of whom were so nice it amazed me. Fun times.

Next day... sleeping. Then up all night again! Irish pub... was accused of being from Greenpeace and being there to criticize the country's policies on whaling. Which I was not even a little bit interested in. That guy ended up being my pal and buying me beers. And seemed like he was going to get into a fistfight with another guy who was staring at me. Whoa! Ok, maybe I should leave now! :)

Alas, I was off to the airport just a couple hours later. Sad.


Travel is bad for sleep.

The next day was difficult. I had an early flight to Frankfurt. The bus to Keflavik airport was late. We arrived to see an unending sea of people trying to check in. It didn't look good for me. It was the kind of line that I think you wait in in Hell. You can't ever see the front, and for some reason it rarely moves.

Did I do any souvenir shopping? Did I exchange my Kronur to Euros? No. I barely made my flight. When I finally checked in, the airline agent told me that I needed to run to my gate. She was very stern and clear about this. She didn't mean not to dawdle. She meant I must literally RUN the whole way across the airport or else they were going to leave without me.

I hate to run. I prefer to stroll leisurely. Even better than that, I really love a nice sit. And whenever possible, why sit if you could be laying down? That's what I always say. I am a lazy fuck. So running across the airport with my unnecessary winter coat and warm clothes and carrying my bag... well, it sucked. But I made my flight. I couldn't sleep though. :(

From Frankfurt, I was to make my way to Prague. I had no reservations. I had not checked schedules. I was fairly sure I was going to end up somewhere unintended for the night. But fingers crossed, I just showed up. I figured I could do a lot worse than getting stuck in Germany. Plus I've been in some wretched train journey fiascoes before and I survived. Hey, at least I wasn't in France. Right? Anything is better than that...

So I arrived and knew I was going to have to haul ass if I was going to make this work. So I didn't exactly run (I was still tuckered out from my morning sprint). But I power-walked the hell out of that airport and went straight to the train station. I was extremely lucky to learn that there was a train leaving in 7 minutes that with 2 very tight connections would get me to Prague that night. YAY!

Seven minutes. This would have been plenty of time. But remember where I'd just been. I was hungover, dehydrated, hungry, sooo thirsty, had to pee, and nearly dead on my feet. So I sprang into action. Bathroom now! Done! Buy water and anything at all to eat while on this 9 hour train journey! Done! RUN DON'T MISS THE TRAIN! Done! Success!

The whole day was a series of running, then being in an uncomfortable seat for many hours... repeat as needed. But I got to Prague. Door to door, it was something like 18 hours. And on these trains, I got almost no sleep, although I couldn't understand why I was awake. I recommend NOT staying up all night before an 18 hour journey across Europe. I also recommend that if you are going from Reykjavik to Prague, you just fly all the way to Prague rather than trying to save a little money. And 2 minute train connections, while completely possible, are very unpleasant.

After a mini-nightmare trying to get out of the Prague train station (not a cool place late at night, to be honest), and figuring out the metro ticket machines that were designed by the devil, some confused wandering of streets I checked into my hotel. I went to sleep nearly immediately. I proceeded to sleep for 18 hours.

I woke up at about 6pm. I was right on track to conquer my jetlag...