Wow! It has been a while since i took the time to post something. Why is that? I don't know for sure. Didn't I go anywhere all that time, no of course i did : that would have been strange! :-)
Really worth mentioning was my New Years Eve in the Netherlands (hardly abroad, i agree, but still), which is spent with some good friends in a little house at the coast. At midnight we went to the beach and celebrated the coming of 2009 (see picture below). Personally i was curious what the year would bring.
I was hoping a little bit less travelling. Not that i started to dislike it, but i felt i was really hard to built up some kind of a life if you are never at home. In the mean time i had settled into my new house (i moved end of november), a small house that i bought by myself. And one of my plans for 2009 is to make it from a house into a home.
Up until now i went twice to Greece for my job. Both were nice trips and i enjoyed seeing my friend Mary again, who showed me parts of Athens.
The second time was an internal training, which was a very nice group.On the 7th of June, the day we had elections in Belgium (both regional and european), i was flying of to Iceland. A country that i was longing to see for a long time. I did vote and then rushed back to my house where a taxi brought me to the train station of Ghent where i boarded the train towards Schiphol Airport, near Amsterdam. In Antwerp i changed trains and then i was ona direct connection or so i guessed. Between Antwerp and Roosendaal, it was announced the train would go any further. I alerted a few japanese travellers who didn't understand the announcements and went on a search for the correct train. This one went to Den Bosh and i met there a very nice guy, originally from Morroco and living and working in the States, called Adil. We had some very nice conversations on varied topics and before we knew (and after ch anging trains yet another time) i was in the airport where i was on time for my plane.
The first week i was teaching for Siminn, the local incumbent telecom operator, in Reykjavic. The group was nice, they were the more social icelandic people i was going to meet. I don't complain, but icelandic people are not the warmest i have ever met. They are polite that is true, but that's about it. Reykjavic is a very nice town. It is rather small for a capital (around 100.000 inhabitants out of 300.000 in total in Iceland). And i enjoyed strolling around in the evening (it didn't get dark the whole time i was there, so i did have to worry about getting back to my hotel on time).
The picture above shows the darkest it got, seen from my hotel room.
When walking from my hotel to the city center i came across this lovely lake, with some wildlife. :-)
After my course, i spent the saturday in cristal clear water of 4 degrees celcius. Why, because of the amazing visibility but also because it is in Thingvellir, where you have the tectonic plates of Europe and North-America joining (Iceland pretty much evolved from the magma coming from underneath the plates while the continents are being pushed further apart each year (by a few centimeters). And to be honest, I just had to do it:
More pictures of the dive on my facebook account.
A colleague of mine, Tony, came along for the next part of the trip (he had even more trouble getting there and arrived somewhere around midnight).
The idea was to circle the country in 6 days, following the N1 (National 1), a round that goes around the whole of the island.
Day 1: Starting of the day by picking up the car (we were lucky to get a free upgrade) and drive towards Thingvellir, which i had seen the day before, this time to really visit the place itself. Apart from a geological important place, it is also the setting of the first 'parliament' of Iceland, called the Althingi, from around 930 where the law speakers receited the law to all the representatives and issues of justice were discussed. Important historical decisions where taken here, like the adaptation of chirstianity in the year 1000.
And it is also a very beautiful place to see:
With some bad tempered geese:
As I already knew from my dives there, the water is cristal clear, people also have the tendency to throw money into it:
Iceland had in those time a clan like structure (reminded me a bit of Schotlands history). And i bought a book on the Iceland sagas to learn more about it (to be honest i still have to read it).
After that we drove to the Great Geysir area. These are the first geysers that i ever saw. They have their own 'Old Faithfull', called Strokkur, which blows every few minutes. 
Even in this hotpot (with boiling water) people where throwing money:
From there we went to Gullfoss, one of Icelands most beautiful and certainly the most impressive waterfall (the word 'foss' by the way is icelandic for 'waterfall').
Through the beautiful landscape it was a nice drive back to the N1 which we continued up until Hella, where we stayed the night. It was a very small place with absolutely nothing to do even finding something to eat passed 9pm was impossible.
Even in this hotpot (with boiling water) people where throwing money:
From there we went to Gullfoss, one of Icelands most beautiful and certainly the most impressive waterfall (the word 'foss' by the way is icelandic for 'waterfall').
Through the beautiful landscape it was a nice drive back to the N1 which we continued up until Hella, where we stayed the night. It was a very small place with absolutely nothing to do even finding something to eat passed 9pm was impossible.
At Skogafoss i want to see how close i could get. The waterfall is pretty big and an enormous amount of water sprays from it.
I was nicely tucked into my raincoat but still got soaked to the bone (and the water was pretty cold). Then i wanted to see the waterfall from above. There is a little trail going all the way up, but if you continue just a bit further you go back down towards the actual ridge of the waterfall. The view there was stunning, impressive and a little bit frighting, since i was standing on a patch of dirt and grass of which I wasn't sure i was going to hold me, luckely it did: you have to spice up your life from time to time ;-) And that gives you a picture of the waterfall from a perspective that few people take:
And since i was in an adventurous mood, i went a bit offroad with the car towards the Solheimajökull ('jökull' stands for 'glacier'), my very first glacier ever (but not my last, see some of my next entries ;-) ). I went up the glacier for only a few hunderd meters, since it is too dangerous without a guide to do so, there can be cracks in the ice that aren't always easy to spot.
The driving was nice and we went all the way to Dyrholaey, which is a natural reserve famous for the great number of seabirds nesting there. Unfortunately the road to the actual colonies was closed due to the breeding season so we enjoy a short walk around the curious formation just next to it.
Closeby there is the little village of Vik, where we had a little rest (ate some soup) and get some gass (and bumped to back of the car into a little wall; honestly i didn't see it!).
The next part was magnificient, driving across a the Myrdalssandur floodplains and the seamingly endless lavafield or Eldhraun, apparently the biggist lavafield to have flown on Earth in historical time.
We stopped at Klaustur to see the Church Floor, which consists of small basalt colums that together form a kind of naturally created floor, very curious.
But to be completely honest i was more taken in by the cute sheep that where running aruond there :-)
Again the road was spectacular: vast tracks of black sandy desert washed down by numerous glacial rivers.
We stopped shortly at the Skaftafell National Park but unfortunately there was no time for a descent walk so we had coffee and some cake instead.
And there was more to be seen: Jökulsarlon, the glacial lagoon where icebergs, sculpted by the elements are broken of the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier.
After that we drove all the way to Höfn, where we had a lovely diner and enjoyed a good night sleep after a very long day.
