Maybe I should have opted for the pizza

So we dusted off the passports this summer for a trip to Iceland, where tourists outnumber locals by about eight to one and they just held a funeral for the first glacier that melted away in the ongoing heat wave. Thoughts from the journey…

1. If you ever needed proof that we’re all the same: Our guide thinks he pays too much in taxes, spends too much time on his cell phone, has a child who appears to be watching the same YouTube videos as our grandson…and he’s absolutely done with that whole Baby Shark song. 
   
   
2. Most of the time, I enjoy the fact that we can travel anywhere without learning the local language. Of course, there are those moments when someone points at you, makes a comment to her friend, and the two of them laugh uncontrollably. Hmmm. Do I really want to know? 
   
   
3. There is no place in the world where you can escape American and British music from the 1960-90 era. If it’s nine o’clock on a Saturday, the piano player is covering Billy Joel, with an occasional classic from The Beatles. The Millennium? Never happened. 
   
   
4. For some reason, I think it’s fake when I see an ethnic restaurant in another country, but I’m fine with pizza and Mongolian beef in Chicago. While the Reykjavikians were chowing down on Buffalo wings and hamburgers, I insisted on sampling whale and puffin. Maybe I should have tried the pizza instead.  
   
   
5. Speaking of local foods, pretty much the first thing you learn in Iceland is that they consider their hot dogs to be a national treasure. Seriously. The most famous restaurant in the country is a Reykjavik hot dog stand where Bill Clinton sampled a local wiener in 2004. They brag about their hot dogs the way Katy Perry talks about her bosom, although I suspect Ms. Perry has more reason for pride in this particular competition. 
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6. There’s no pressure on men here to have sons to carry on the family name, because they don’t use family names. Children are named for their fathers, so Gunnar’s son is ____ Gunnarson, but that “surname” only lasts one generation. It makes genealogy projects much more complex, but the continual flow of renaming has an egalitarian charm. 
   
   
7. We wore jackets when the temperature was in the 55-60 range, but some of the locals were wearing sleeveless shirts as they basked in their summer heat wave. I should really be careful the next time I call someone else a weather wimp. 
   
   
8. Every culture has its historical touchpoints. In Chicago, it’s the fire. In San Francisco, it’s the earthquake. In the Westman Islands, it’s the 1627 invasion of Algerian pirates (The “Turkish Raid”). Don’t try to joke about it. Nerves are still raw here.
   

 
Speaking of broader horizons, we’d love to hear your pearls of wisdom about this whole travel thing. Share your comments with us and we’ll all be more sophisticated and worldly as a result.
 
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