Showering in Reykjavik

Despite being an engineer, I'm an extremely non-linear thinker. Tonight I found myself laughing hysterically in my car while driving home after a nice ski.

I was totally rockin' out to the latest Mars Volta disk, and there was some lyrics that mentioned "sulfur." Rather than thinking about chemicals and chemistry, I was immediately reminded of Iceland.

Everywhere in Iceland smells like sulfur--two continental plates are drifting apart, and sulfuric gases from earth's core escape into the water. Even the cleanest water still retains the sulfuric scent, particularly warm water--which outgasses any dissolved gas since water has less solubility as it increases in temperature.(this is also why cold water yields cloudy ice cubes) In this case, it's Hydrogen sulfide gas escaping into the air. So when you're showering, you're essentially cleaning yourself with water that's smells like rotten eggs.

Anyway, I was staying in Reykjavik's hostel -- a really nice place, and I highly recommend it to anyone travelling in Iceland-- and there was only one bathroom at the end of the hall. There were sets of showers on either end of a row of sinks in the center.

The first morning, I stepped in, surveyed the empty room, saw the sinks, and one door connecting to the showers. It had a picture of someone showering, showing a little buttcrack on the bottom of the illustration. I giggled, and walked into the shower area, where there were 2 stalls.

Illustrations were fairly common in Iceland -- when their words for simple things such as "Police" are Lögreglustöð, they have to figure out some way for everyone to understand simple concepts. (Although I'm fairly sure a few girls in my room couldn't understand them, given their odor.)

Anyway, I showered, got dressed very discreetly in the dry area next to the stall, got going, running into nobody. I did this 2 more days, showering on the same left side. The fourth day, all showers were going, except for my one default shower. I hopped in and did my business. I dried off inside the showerstall, and stepped out into the sink area. Immediately in front of me, there was a young woman who had apparently just showered next to me. Across the way, there was a guy.

And then I noticed something I hadn't before. The illustration across the bathroom from me was also of someone showering, but decidedly Male. I turned around and looked at the illustration behind me.....which was of a woman showering.

I briskly, nonchalantly, & inconspicuously stepped out of the bathroom. I don't recall if either of them noticed me at all. To this day, I don't think that encounter has crossed my mind since it happened.

In my defense: This was the first hostel on my trip in which I stayed that didn't have co-ed bathrooms. In all the hostels in Norway, I just walked into the bathroom, grabbed an available shower/stall unit and hopped in, changed, and finished my business in front of the sink.

Apparently, there's different rules in different countries.

.......Some people are weird, man.