Café-Hopping in Reykjavik, or, Why I Couldn't Sleep on Wednesday Night

My battery was dying and there was a plug in the corner, but to get to it I’d have to confront the table full of English gap year students behind me who had been discussing the healing properties of the ocean and the epic night of drinking followed by vomiting they had the night before at length for the past hour, and the comfort of staying where I am was just not worth dealing with such an interaction.  I packed up and shipped off into the lashing Icelandic spring day.  I was caught at that awkward time when some cafés close and others with alcohol licenses remain open and slowly transform into a pub with the gradual descent into evening and inebriation.  I scuttled from café to café looking for one that would stay open long enough for me to finish my work, but as I’d forgotten the word for “closed”, I was left mumbling the awkward phrase, “At what time are you not open?” wherever I went.  


Generally my Icelandic is atrocious and I can only manage a few mangled words.  But in Reykjavik, where most of the foreigners congregate and everyone speaks English, I try stumble through basic conversation and am mighty pleased with myself when I succeed.  Although the polite smiles the waitresses give me are probably fuelled by pity at my lack of vocabulary or grammar of any sort, I like to delude myself by hoping that I may have them fooled into thinking I’m just a very reticent local.  In the café, I was able to order “Kaffi og kleina, takk” while the girl behind me conducted her order in English.  After I finished my coffee and a suitable amount of time passed, the waitress came up and asked something.  A master of context clues, I knew she was wondering if I wanted anything else.  “Nei, takk.”  Nice one, I totally had this.


When it came time to pay the bill, I passed the test by mumbling incoherently and making the international, “I’d like to sign the bill now” motion.  In the home stretch now, I was going to make it!  But then she asked me a direct question.  I smiled.  She waited.  I smiled again…she waited.  “Ha?” - “What?” in Icelandic; I could have just been hard of hearing.  Not that repeating it would help me any.  She asked in English, “Do you want the receipt?”  I looked bashfully at the floor.  “No, thanks.”  Defeated by a technicality.  Better luck next time.