Page 11 - 2000 ICELAND

MEETING THE FRENCH

The alarm got us up at 7:30 for the breakfast that would turn out to be “the
usual.” But it’s good and hearty fare and you certainly don’t have to get up

from the table hungry! Following breakfast, we went downstairs to the tour
office and paid to rent sleeping bags and liners for the two weeks. Then at

9:45 we went down to the street to be picked up for our “Mountain
Highlights” tour with the G-J Icelandic Tour Company.

At the front door, we met up with Pat and Lynn again (the Canadian cab

sharers) and when the bus pulled in to get us, we discovered a large crowd

already on board. Even though they had spread out all over the bus, when
they realized that there were four more of us, they graciously grouped back

together so that Pat and Lynn (who are sisters-in-law) could sit with one
another and so could Kay and I. Imagine our surprise, no, our shock, when

we realized the only language we were hearing was French! That’s right, we
had been grouped with 30 French hikers because not enough English

speakers had signed up! The bus was certainly large enough for the 36 of us

(Oskar our guide and Magnus our driver made up the full complement) and
we learned later in the day that our group was even larger by three.

However, these three, Racka the head cook, Selena her assistant, and Halli
the driver, would be riding in the cook bus that would follow us all through

our journey!

We could see that translations might be a little awkward but more
troublesome for Oskar than the rest of us. However, Oskar was quite the

linguist and soon showed us his proficiency in both French and English. He

has good enough command of them both so that he can joke and pun which
was very impressive. He told us that he had lived a year in Newton,

Massachusetts when he was 14 so that’s where he got the English. He
presently lives part of the year in France so that explains his excellent

French. Another part of the year he lives in Germany where he teaches
Icelandic language to graduate students in a German university; so he is also