Iceland

Today I saw Iceland. Admittedly it was from 11 KM's above but nonetheless I saw it.

Remember that to a lad growing up in the antipodes places like Iceland, Scotland, Germany and France seemed unimaginably far away. Probably as unimaginably far away as Australia or New Zealand might seem to a Scotsman.

So it was with a certain amount of delight that I rubbernecked my way from Frankfurt across the North Sea, seeing Scotland far off to the left. I wrote[^] some time ago about how my grandmother, being Australian born in the days when Australia was still a collection of British Colonies, thought of England as 'home' even though she'd never been there. I find myself not entirely devoid of those sentiments, though the thought was provoked by watching, from a great distance, the South of Scotland pass by. Well, I'm pretty sure, based on the 'map' that what I was looking at was the South of Scotland. The great grand paternal side of my family originated in Peebles. Was the land I was seeing the land my great great great grandparents had known?

I upgraded from economy to business for the flight. When I checked in at Nice I asked for a window seat and got one from Nice to Frankfurt and again from San Francisco to Phoenix. But all the window and aisle seats on the Frankfurt to San Francisco leg were taken by then. The thought of being stuck in a middle seat for 12 hours just didn't appeal so I used some of those frequent flyer points to upgrade. What else am I going to do with them? Here in the states you get two weeks leave a year and the only place I'm likely to use my points to travel to are Australia. I already have enough points for two more return trips and we both know that with this job spending 15,000 points for a business upgrade means nothing much; by the end of 2005 I'll have travelled enough to replace em. Heck, I'll have replaced em just by travelling tomorrow to Manila!

So I got a business upgrade and a window seat. And there, far below was Iceland. It's the northern summer so I accept that it was black. My wife expressed surprise; she'd expected it to be permanently covered in snow. I had to tell her that was Antarctica! One of these days I'm really going to book myself a flight to Keflavik just so's I can say I've been there!