Day One: Keflavik Airport. Very early morning. Wheeling luggage down the narrow terminal pas the lines for departing flight. We get our checked bags. We wheel them through the internatioal lanes and around several corners of the maze they always make you go through. Then a hall and several lines, for EU nationals and others. I get in a line and wait. I approach the booth and offer up my passport. A grarled old man of sturdy frame takes it through the window and looks down at it.
"Góðan daginn," I say, having rehearsed the phrase for many months. Actually it my first words of Icelandic spoken to a real Icelander.
Without looking up, and in crisp booming tones of a unique sing song, the old man repeats my greeting back to me. He was, I felt, teaching me the true way that ones says it while pssing a neighbor on a Sunday morning.
On the other side of the big door onto into the commercial area of the main terminal, we see through the big glass windows to the grey imposing sky. We watch as other passengers come through the doors behind us. There is a television crew of some sort, with lights and a small crowd. We look from off to the side, just savoring the feeling of arrival.
No comments:
Post a Comment