Nordic Barista Cup Day Two Continued!
Search parties, call yourselves off: I am not in fact lost in the wilds of Iceland anymore (with a delicious thermos but poor access to internet and A/C power). I have been found! Found in pre-Coffee Fest Seattle, a mere shuddering, sniffling pile on the floor in severe, debilitating Nordic Cup withdrawl. (Or was it the being awake for 24 hours and following my cousin to a dance party…? Who can say, really.) Here is part three of the NBC 2009 roundup, with the final chapter to come later today.
I believe we last left off before the swimming pool. And swimming pool we did. A truly epic phenomenon this was: just a brief walk up a rural highway in the rain led the NBC teams and attendees to the nearest municipal pool. Now, I can really get down with a culture almost entirely built around swimming in and soaking in geothermically heated water at a variety of pleasurable temperatures. In fact, I think I must’ve been in some kind of pool or hot tub or lagoon every day I was in Iceland (it was hard to keep me out of the geysir, frankly.) A scene of epic pool proportions awaited us here: emcees dressed in Baywatch attire leading the teams through various competitions from swim sprints to fill-a-coffee-cup relays to synchronized swimming routines.
Denmark once again took the X-factor of the competition by showing up in straw boaters and old-fashioned striped bathing costumes…they looked somewhere between jailors and dandies, but boy did they ever look good. (Iceland’s choreographed acquatic routine to Bjork’s “It’s Oh So Quiet”, however, brought the house down…and by the house I mean all the people soaking in the 39 and 41 degrees Celsius hot tubs surrounding the competition pool. Can every coffee contest be in-water from now on, please? The Icelanders really have this stuff figured out.)
Post-swimtime everyone headed back to the Minniborgir huts for some barbecue, which was cooked in the rain (but it’s always raining) under an umbrella the chef held in his non-BBQ-tong hand. Very versatile these Nordic. The meeting house was nearly too crowded to fit every diner, many taking refuge on cases of beer or sitting on tubs of mayonnaise while they ate. We were tired and yet buzzing with countryside silliness, and there was a reattempt to capture the magic of the prior night’s hot tubbing (and a long political debate with the engineering students, always relaxing) before everyone realized we had to be up at 6:00am…
