Gaman Av Drømmer

Less of a rant this time, I promise. Well, actually I'm not in a great mood so it may get ranty. Just to warn you. Despite it nearly being the first day of summer (this Thursday, in case you were wondering...) and having had a relatively dry winter, the ground water started rising in Area C at a distressing rate. It was like a flood of biblical proportions, furniture and driftwood were floating past as were attempted to trowel off more dumping layers. Two people were lost at sea, feared drowned, so something had to be done.

Area C, yesterday

The solution was this, dig a hole in the corner of the site with the machine and shove a pump in. This worked a treat until we realised we were actually pumping out the Tjörnin pond, in the centre of Reykjavik. Ducks were standing about on newly formed muddy islands. Also the bottom end of the site was being flooded even worse than the top end. Until someone shoved the pump outflow into one of the many conduits we can see on the edge of site. This seemed to work, the ground water dropped, nobody mentioned to anyone else about the drop in the level of the pond and somewhere in Reykjavik a Primary school had it's basement flooded with stagnant pond water.

Also yesterday we had a Norwegian Iron Working Expert come all the way from Norway to tell us the iron slag that we had found on site that was produced in iron working, was in fact, iron slag produced from iron working. I wish I had a job like that. Anyway he gave a lecture in the evening which I didn't attend. I have never in nearly ten years of Field Archaeology attended a lecture given about a site on which I have been working and I don't intend on starting now. First War Aeroplanes? First in line. Archaeology? Running screaming.

Viking Age Iron Working from Hals. as dull as it looks...

The arrival of a Norwegian Expert on Iron Working caused quite a stir in Iceland and the TV sent out their finest reporters to cover the story. Here is the report, unless you speak Norwegian or Icelandic there is little of interest until later on where you can see the kind of shit we get up to in Area C (when there is no water...) and the Spindle Whorl that I found and that caused so much hatred on Facebook:

New Report

One final thing, for those of you still unsure as to whether John Clay is a thoroughly nasty man or not, I allow you to be your own judge on this picture, taken before Clay attended his friend's Bar Mitzvah, I think the girl on the left is Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.

Photo removed due to Fascists.

Troll, Død Og Trolldom

I was out with Jo on Friday night, trying to drink away the week day blues. We were standing in the street as she was stuffing a Pylsur into her gob and we were talking about how small Reykjavik is and how she sees the same people out all the time. I was arguing the case that I never seem to see anyone I know. Just as I had finished my point the girl who works in the take away over the road from my house walked past and said hello. Nice timing love. Then I saw Una and a bunch of her mates in Kofi Tómasar Frænda. It was further pushed onto me the next night when I was out in Bar 11 and I saw two girls dancing surrounded by about fifteen salivating men. I thought I recognised one of the girls and finally worked out she was the waitress that works in the Diner we sometimes go to for lunch. Small fucking world. That' s the main difference between here and home. I can go out in Rotherham, a town that has the same population size as Reykjavik, and see the same faces and go to the same bars. If that gets boring I can hop in a taxi and go to Sheffield, a place with nearly three times the population of Reykjavik. Here you can't do that. Reykjavik is the largest place you can go to. It also occurred to me that for the same cost in Taxi fares I can get from my home in Rotherham to Sheffield (journey time approximately 25 minutes), or from Downtown Reykjavik to my flat (Journey time approximately 5 minutes). Where's the justice in that?

Reykjavik, it really is as dull as it looks...

OK I'll leave the dullness of Reykjavik behind and move onto this weeks film reviews. I haven't been able to see Watchmen as I was away when it was released and Atli couldn't wait a fucking week for me to come back before going to see it. It is only being shown in cinemas that require your own transport to get to and as my car is locked away in a garage in Rotherham it looks like I will be missing it at the cinema. So instead I have been watching a few DVDs. I watched Zatôichi The Blind Swordsman. I have seen it before, thankfully, as I didn't realise the only subtitles on the film were in Icelandic...

Being blind never stopped Zatôichi fucking up everyone that got in his way...

I also watched The Unforgiven, brilliant film, but I was left wondering why nobody during the entire film mentioned that Morgan Freeman was black. Now, before you start accusing me of racism, please bear in mind this film is set a mere twenty years after the abolition of slavery. It is full of nasty characters who would undoubtedly think nothing of attacking a man for his skin colour, at least verbally. Especially during the scene in the sherriff's office where Freeman is being whipped. I'm not a racist, but I do prefer my historical accuracy to overt Political Correctness. I'm not the only one that thinks this, John Clay commented on a similar thing in his Blog. It's a minor issue in what is an otherwise brilliant film.

The good old non-racist days of the Wild West

The other films I watched this week was The China Syndrome, a very good Nuclear thriller starring Jane Fonda and also Flyboys. Now if you know anything about me, you will know that I am mad on First World War Aeroplanes, so Flyboys seemed like a great choice. How wrong I was; I would rather be trapped in a burning SE5A falling from 20,000 feet than have to sit through those two hours again.

A far preferable fate than having to watch Flyboys again...

Gjallar

This weekend consisted of drinking heavily, which is what most weekends consist of in Reykjavik. It may sound cool and exotic to live in Reykjavik, but there ain't that much else to do. I headed over to Jo, Duncan and Roz's place after a disastrous attempt to get on the Internet at Tomas Fraendi. We were going to order pizza from the best Pizza Place in town (There is a lot of these here: the Best Pizza Place, the Best Ice Cream Bar, the Best Hotdog Stand, the Best Half-a-Sheep's Head Shop, the Best Buried-in-it's-own-piss-for-six-months Rotten Shark Stand). Bjarki and Hrappi had recommended it to us. They were having a ten year anniversary sale (The Pizza place, not Bjarki and Hrappi), with prices as they were ten years ago. We were told that there would be a two hour wait due to demand and the belt tightening economic crisis that meant everyone in Reykjavik was clamouring for ten year old prices. I later learnt that Bjarki and Hrappi waited for three hours for cold pizza and rock hard garlic bread that felt like it had been made ten years ago. I'd hate to know what the worst Pizza place in town was like... We deliberated for two minutes about the waiting time and called Dominoes Pizza. We had warm soft pizza within twenty minutes.

The Best Pizza in Town, om nom nom...

After feasting ourselves stupid we all headed down to Sodoma, the new bar that was opening that night. A live venue that Reykjavik desperately needs. Sudoku are also going to play there as well in couple of weeks, so I wanted to check the place out. To be perfectly honest I don't actually remember much about the evening, except seeing a Natalie Portman look alike and bitterly regretting not having talked to her and getting some guys number who was chatting Jo up. Why I ended up with his number and why I ended up putting it in as 'Cow Bell Ninja' on my phone is beyond my recollection. I think it may have had something to do with the bottle of rum we polished off before leaving the house, maybe the free beer at Sodoma, or maybe the bottle of nail polish remover that Jo dropped in the house before we left.

I should have talked to her...

I crashed on the futon in their front room and made my way slowly back to my own place the next day. I was out again on Saturday, it was the annual university dinner/dance and as most of the people from site were going I decided to head along myself. It was a good laugh in the end, the meal was good and plentiful, the dancing lively and the students chatty. There was an overall 'Hollywood' theme, I had been telling everyone that I was going to go as Marylin Monroe. In the event I couldn't find a dress that matched my eyes, so I just dusted off Becky's Wedding shirt. Not the shirt Becky wore at her wedding, but the shirt I wore at Becky's wedding, if you know what I mean?

Here is a link to the Google video of the full second show by Sudoku:

Sudoku Live!!

Finally, Jo was working on a song about archaeology, here it is, sung to the tune of Que Sera Sera:

When I was just a teenager
I asked myself what shall I be
Shall I be pretty
Shall I be clean
Here’s what I chose to be…

Archaeology…
How fucking insane of me
Its so very shit to be…
Archaeology

Later on I found out just
What the profession could offer me
Pretty much nothing
Nadda and nil
A life of lethargy

Archaeology…
my mediocrity
An eternal travesty…
Archaeology

After ten years of miserable hell
I finally realised what was the fee
Of all the minutes
Hours and days
Spent down on bended knee

Archaeology…
Will be the death of me
For it’s the psychology…
Archaeology

Of Forests Unknown

Some of you asked about the midden layers, so I'm going to tell you all about them. OK, so I'll assume that some of you reading this are not archaeologists and may not know what a midden even is. It is basically a dump of shit, dumped by people in the olden days, which is then covered up and waits for people like me to find it, using the cutting edge technology that is a JCB or a trowel.

We are using a Total Station Theodolite that has a sequential point number sequence. Which means as we continue along, the context numbers get larger and larger. So we have what look like unwieldy context numbers, but you soon get used to it.

The first layer was 67891, this was a reddish brown peaty layer, typified by it's firmness. The layer covered the North Eastern corner of the area C. Finds included an occasional amount of disarticulated animal bones, frequent charcoal flecks and moderate burnt bones. 67891 was laminated and gleyed. At it's maximum depth it was 0.13m deep.

Directly below 67891 was 68231 a greyish red silty turf. 68231 was soft and slightly friable. Localised in the North Eastern corner of area C it had a frequent amount of animal bones and medium sized stones. The maximum depth for 68231 was 0.03m.

Underneath 67891 but unconnected to 68231 was 69174 a reddish grey peaty turf layer. There was a frequent amount of fish bones and a moderate amount of stones. 69174 was a zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....................................

Atli found a tiny shoe at work yesterday, it was about four inches long. This led to a discusion about the significance of it. We formulated several theories.

1) There was a man in Reykjavik in the middle ages with one normal leg and one withered leg who lost his shoe.

2) In Reykjavik in the Olden Days there was a fairy.

3) In Reykjavik in the Olden Days there was a child.

4) In Reykjavik in the Olden Days there was at least half a child.

Choose your favourite. Mine is number four.

Here is some much more interesting news, I went to see Valkyrie on Sunday. Go and see it. It's excellent. I know what you're going to say 'Oh it's Tom Cruise, I don't like him, he's into that crazy religion, Scientisticus or whatever it's called.' Ignore that and go and see it. It's about the July Bomb plot against Hitler and Cruise plays Von Stauffenberg and plays it well. He is also supported by an excellent cast of mainly British actors, including a pretty good Eddie Izzard (a mediocre comic, but a decent actor...). Needless to say the bomb plot failed and Hitler survived to win the war in Europe and become head of a Master Race dominated Super Power. I'm sorry of that last bit spoils the end for you, just don't read it if you want to see the movie. Valkyrie is to me a Hollywood version of Der Untergang, which is one of my favourite films of all time. Valkyrie doesn't come anywhere close to the brilliance of Der Untergang, but it makes a damn good attempt. Also I actually got quite excited in the opening scenes where I spotted what looked like a Panzer IV F.

It does appear to be my fate that every time I go to see a movie in Iceland there is some part of it not in English. The Day the World Stood Still had a conversation in Chinese, Quantum of Solace had larges parts in Spanish. Valkyrie begins with Cruise speaking in German. In all these cases the non English parts were translated in Icelandic subtitles, so I sat there scratching my head wondering what was going on. I hope I didn't miss any vital plot lines...

Jo got back on Sunday, hooray!!

Heathen Foray

Well it seemed that most people enjoyed the last few posts, reminiscing is big business these days. I shall continue with this theme by reminiscing about the past week. Last weekend was Bjarki's birthday, so I went along with most of the people from site. We didn't arrive until quite late, mainly due to Hrafnkell being late with the lift. Despite it not being my problem I had to endure abusive text messages from Lilja, demanding to know where we were. We arrived in fine style just as Atli and Hrönn were leaving, thank God. There was some free booze, then a good bunch of us headed into town. I ended up dancing the night away at Kofi Tómasar Frænda, after introducing Angelos to some girl I'd never met before. She was walking past us so I stopped her and said 'do you know my friend Angelos. He's Greek.' Before heading off to the toilet and leaving them to it.

I was ill on Monday, a bit from drinking too much over the weekend (I had been out on Friday as well) also a bit from my feet. I didn't sleep much either, too much thinking, so I decided to stay in bed and rest me poor old plates of meat. Not much else happened down the week. Work was pretty much the same as ever. We are removing layers and layers of midden deposits with trowels so it's not very stimulating.

I was out on Friday again, this time, just Angelos and I. We went to a party thrown by Albina, for various reasons; moving in, someones birthday, someones new haircut, whatever. Again the free booze was a good attraction. Last night I went out to see a band with Duncan at Grand Rokk. They were called Deep Jimi, and guess what? They did covers of Jimi Hendrix (But no Deep Purple, strangely), Led Zeppelin (They even covered Heartbreaker and Livin' Lovin') and Cream. They were pretty fucking good and me and D ended up dancing like a pair of spastics by the end of it. Although, I do sometimes think that cover bands can be a real waste of talent. If you are a good enough musician it is not that difficult to do decent cover versions. Don't get me wrong these guys were great but I think there is something a bit sad about someone putting all that talent into SOMEONE else's song. I know the audience usually demand it and cover bands is were the money. People like to hear old shit they already know rather than challenge themselves with something new. I suppose, having said all that, it is good to hear songs you like being played live because the chance of me ever seeing Led Zeppelin or Cream play live is practically zero. Even less for Jimi Hendrix.

...The Ardent Awaited Land

The I re-read my last post and it wasn't that funny really, so I'll try to make this one better.

On Friday, I forgot to mention, Atli and I were standing on the site, gossiping, when Bjarki stuck his head out of the basement and shouted us over. 'Come and look at this cat!' he said. 'Ooooh' I thought 'I like cats, maybe one has got on to site and it's a friendly little mog that needs some love.' Atli and I hurried over to the basement excitedly to pet the little kitty. Imagine my disappointment when we were confronted with the sight of the Fish Bone Expert (or whatever she's called) cutting up the recently deceased corpse of a cat she'd found somewhere. It wasn't really what I was expecting. In fact I have no idea why a Fish Bone Expert was cutting up a cat, maybe to find fish bones in its stomach. Yesterday Igor told me she was cutting up the bodies of a duck and a swan, she'd procured from the pond. As far as I was aware killing Swans was illegal. At least I think it is in England, unless you're the Queen and you need their necks to wipe your arse on, or whatever it is she does with them.

Iceland has descended into anarchy, with the Government being dissolved, the protesters have won. Instead of going home they were all still out yesterday banging drums in celebration this time! Of course Björgvin was there, banging the lampposts like there was no tomorrow. This time without his scarf disguise, no need for disguises when Big Brother is no longer watching you.

I mentioned that I saw Elephant over the weekend (the film, not the animal, do try to keep up at the back.), it's excellent. I recommend it to everyone. If you don't know it's based on the Colombine Killings and has a largely unknown cast of kids. The direction is amazing especially the final tracking shot that goes on for maybe five minutes.

Duncan is back today so I handed over the reigns of frustration to him. It's now his job to tell people not to walk on cleaned areas, no matter how long ago they were cleaned. I can go back to listening to my MP3 player and trowelling endless layers of shit...

...As Long As Winds Will Blow...

Jo left on Saturday morning for a month. She's gone back to Auld Landan town, innit? We all spent Friday night watching Batman 'Dark Knight'. An excellent film, that I was wanting to watch again. I like Batman more than any of the other Superheroes. He seems more real than, say, Superman. Superman is just up his own arse. 'Oooh look at me, I've got all these powers. I can burn through steel with my eyes. Yeah, that's right my fucking eyes!' Batman seems far more human. It's not just him doing the crime fighting. He has a back up team. OK, so it mainly consists of the old fart Alfred, but at least he has help. I also like the Joker as a character and not just in the film. I used to have this old collection of the greatest Joker stories ever told. Right back from some of the first Batman comics in 1940 he was a crazy fucking murderer. No rhyme or reason to him. This is what Heath Ledger portrays much better than Jack Nicholson did. Obviously in the 1960's when Comics came under the crushing influence of the Comics Code Authority, Joker was stripped of all this menace, as was Batman and he became as ludicrous as the TV show of the same time. It was only after Watchmen that Batman and the Joker by proxy recovered. Arkham Asylum, Year One, The Killing Joke are all worth checking out from this period. Also any of the Legends of the Dark Knight comics series. Mind you, all this was made possible with the brain drain of British talent to the States, mainly from writers of 2000AD.

Enough about comics. I spent Saturday in town buying board games expansion packs and tidying my room and the bathroom. The bathroom needed it. No one had touched it for about two months and I'm sure there were things living in between the tiles. I could feel tentacles reaching out for my whilst shaving, like some Lovecraftian dank horror had bred in the filth. I headed out to TÞM to see Gone Postal play a gig for the release of their new album. There was three bands supporting them, I missed the first two, but managed to see Severed Crotch. I've seen these lads play before and I've a real soft spot for them. Ball crushing Death Metal, their singer is pretty amazing with his vocals. Both bands put on a really good show, but I can't help but laugh at badly translated songs. One of Gone Postal's tracks is called Void of Torment.I mean just think about that for a second. Void of Torment. What the fuck does that even mean? You are not being tormented? Surely that's a good thing? Why is a Death Metal band promoting good things? Or does it mean you're in a void, where you will be tormented? I'm confused, if anyone can help me on this one, I'd love to know...

After the gig, which was what appeared to be a youth club (No bar and full of teenagers... dear God help me...) I met Angelos for drinks in Dillon. I can't remember much else about Saturday night except I know some shots were involved, as was a chicken burger and a taxi ride. I woke up about two in the afternoon, so I'm assuming I had a good time. I spent Sunday recovering and fannying about all day.

Vanadis

I've been wondering why no one is commenting on this blog anymore. I know you're reading it, I've got stalker software installed on it so I can see exactly who (almost) is coming on and reading it. Please leave comments. It only takes an minute. You can even tell me this is a pile of shit and I should stop. Whatever.

This has been the first week back after Christ's Mass, James went back home on Tuesday after a meal at the East India Company restaurant which was fantastic. I promised myself a return journey to this place at some point. I like Indian food, very much and this was good stuff.

The rest of the week was dominated by work, as boring as this is. Trowelling off piles of dumping layers is not the most stimulating work I have ever done and I am dreaming of the days I can buy a fuck load of military books off Colin and start selling them. Mind you I made myself a little more comfortable on Wednesday by setting up a painting table and prepping some WW1 British Infantry. I may as well fill my evenings with something more rewarding than watching America's Next Top Model.

I bought Series 8 of Seinfeld yesterday, I bought it from the music shop up Laugarvegur, instead of Elko as I was advised by Margret and Lilja. Infact all week they have been on at me to buy all my products at Elko.

'I need new Headphones' I idly mused

'You'll get them at Elko' Cried Lilja and Marget

After I'd bought (from the same shop as the Seinfeld DVDs) them they asked how much they were and was told they would have been cheaper at Elko. I then went on to mention I was thinking of buying the last two series of Seinfeld that I didn't own. Where do you think I was advised to buy them? That's right... Elko. It's like they have second jobs working on the sales committee at Elko. I'm surprised they don't have Elko tattoos.

In other news, my so-called 'friends' have been writing a blog together (they are so dumb they couldn't do it on their own...). Yesterday the latest piece of shit was published and lo and behold who is in it as a minor character. Yes that's right, it's me. Here is the address if you wish to read this shit, but I wouldn't bother. You'd only be wasting your valuable time.

The past week was quite a long one, it seemed to drag on. Work was constantly interrupted by the rain. The problem with the rain is that because we are working on clay and peat, any amount of water makes a complete fucking state of the ground and all the hard work is very quickly undone. This can be very frustrating but we are supposed to be getting a new tent to cover the new area that has been opened up. Hopefully this will alleviate the problems some what. The thing with Icelandic archaeology is that when dealing with volcanic island we can quite quickly date deposits due to the documented fall of volcanic ash called Tephra. There are several years throughout Iceland’s history that volcanoes have erupted and laid down a carpet of ash. There is one from the thirteenth century, the sixteenth century, and most importantly the late ninth century. This one, from 871 plus or minus two years, is the settlement Tephra, and can quite precisely date a structure if the Tephra is found on a construction or within the turf used to build the structure. This spot dating certainly beats scratting about for bits of rubbish pottery like in the UK.

I went over to Thingtakk’s rehearsal on Tuesday night, along with Kipp. I have only heard them on CD and they blew me away live. They are all incredibly talented musicians, it makes me fucking sick. For the last half an hour I demonstrated some Sudoku songs: Ninja!, Ninja Is For Life and Do You Wanna Get Pumped? We have an idea to play live at some point; the main problem is locating Ninja costumes in Reykjavik. This is the first time I have heard Sudoku with live drums, being that we only ever played with a drum machine, and it sounded fucking brilliant. At least from where I was standing…

The latest edition to our crew turned up on Tuesday night. Jo has come from London after working for PCA for eight years. I didn’t get to meet her on Tuesday night as I was in bed, but met her on Wednesday when she visited site for the first time. After work, Duncan, Roz and myself took Jo to the local swimming pool. I spent the whole time in the hot tubs.

We have this three week old tradition on site where someone makes a cake on Friday. Last week Lilja made a cake and cookies, she raised the bar somewhat and then chose me to make one this week. So I spent the first part of Thursday night making a cake and some brownies. Jo found a box of icing pens in the house and I used them to write abuse all over the top of the cake, see my Facefuck photos to see the results…

After baking class was over, Jo and I headed over to pick up Duncan and head down to Dillon to see Thingtakk perform. They were supported by a TOTAL FUCKING METAL band, called, I think, Rimmer. They were excellent live and didn’t give a shit about being TOTAL FUCKING METAL!!! Thingtakk put on a great performance, they’re drummer is a fucking machine! I also met Brant Bjork, he was playing on Saturday and was obviously in town a few days before for some expensive beers. I was chatting to him about DAM Pedals.

I was pretty fucked on Friday, I can’t drink on school nights anymore, but I got through the day and I spent the evening in the house with Duncan, Roz and Jo, drinking wine.

On Saturday I was going to go on a Reykjavik Excursions trip on the Golden Circle, but Atli and Hrön offered their services and said they’d take myself and D&R around all the major sites that the tour has to offer, plus a couple of other places too. The first place we visited was the volcanic crater at Kerið, I fucking love craters. There is something so mysterious about them.

We passed a fairy stone that the road had been diverted around outside of Selfoss, and this led to a discussion about Fairies and Hrön telling us her Grandfather had seen one once. What do they look like? Asked I. Like us, but more beautiful and better dressed she told me. So your Grandfather saw a good looking man in nice clothes? I asked. No, they are smaller than us, she countered. To which I replied: So your Grandfather saw a good looking well dressed man, who was standing far away?

We drove on to the excavations on the Bishop’s house at Skálholt that both Atli and Hrön had worked on as students. It was quite interesting, but I am not too keen on Churches, so thankfully we didn’t go in. The most interesting thing was the detail of a painting of Skálholt in the eighteenth century showing the turf houses.

Next stop was Geysir, where all the Geysers in the world are named after. The big one hasn’t blown since the eighties when an earthquake shook it up and it blew off. The smaller Strokker still blows every eight to ten minutes and is amazing to see. As is my usual luck with cameras I was waiting for the fucker to blow and my batteries ran out. A quick visit to the shop for batteries and chips and we finished our tour of the hot pools of Geysir.

The next stop on the itinery was the waterfall at Gullfoss which was breathtaking. It’s at least two tiers of cascading water and falls for meters. The sheer size and amount of water that runs down them is mindbending. I asked Atli if he would consider going over it in a barrel, he said yes as long at it was a metal barrel, with an oxygen canister in it. And a TV.

Driving on a grit road over incredible Autumnal landscapes of lava fields we arrived at Þingvellir were the original Parliament met during the Viking period. It remained in use up to 1798 but was reused during the independence declaration in 1944. The site is set in between a rift in the North Atlantic ridge that rises up in Iceland. It’s the only place in the world where you can cross from Europe to North America in a few steps. It’s also cheaper than flying. Darkness was falling as we left so we threw some coins into the water and made a wish. I really wanted mine to come true so I fucked a handful of cash into the stream.

I got back to Reykjavik and had some food before heading out into town with Jo to go and see Brant Bjork and the Bros at Café Amsterdam. At the bank machine Jo got confused and withdrew 100,000 Kroner, wishing to get about £60 out she ended up getting £600 out… Being obviously nervous about having so much cash in her pocket she headed back to the house to drop some off, I headed into the gig as the first band had started. They were pretty good laid back American bluesy stuff, I wouldn’t buy anything by them but they were good live. The second band were called Brain Police and were fucking heavy. They ended up with a cover of a Kyuss song, which I had not heard for maybe twelve years. The really got the crowd going. Then Brant Bjork and the Bros took to the stage and they played a fucking amazing set. I am not really into them, but have heard most of their back catalogue at Dave’s house. They kept coming back on, and must have played for about two hours. Great value for money. Jo and I hung around in Café Amsterdam afterwards until about four when we headed home, drunk and satisfied with the evening’s entertainment.

Sunday was spent in a café drinking coffee, reading National Geographic, using the free internet access and then coming home to watch Enemy at the Gates.