Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.03.2011, Side 5

Say your piece, voice
your opinion, send
your letters to:
letters@grapevine.is
4
Letters
Sour grapes
and stuff MOST AWESOME LETTERFREE GRAPEVINE TEE HEE HEE!
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Now, if you're in the market for free goodies next month, write us some sort of letter. Give us
your worst: letters@grapevine.is
MOST AWESOME LETTER:
Hi Grapevine,
sorry this is more of a rant about the Icelan-
dic postal system - my record for an overseas
item is 3 months... wonder if any readers can
top that?
I lost an ebay order last year, the item
was returned because it was a month before
I came to collect it. I was away on tour at the
time and the only days I was home were public
holidays. Is it not reasonable to allow a little
more time for collection? Or maybe a system
where you can acknowledge the item and col-
lect it in a time frame that suits you?
Now I have a remote control for my TV
sitting in customs since last year and nobody
thought to tell me. It was only when I wrote to
the post office to find out what had happened
to it. I can imagine the customs officers hold-
ing the TV remote at arms length saying,
"this is for a foreinger, what can we do with it?
Let's just leave it and see what happens... if it
is important he will claim it, if he doesn't we
will destroy it!!"
Now when I finally receive it I will prob-
ably have to pay the minimum import duty on
the item which will be higher than the actual
price of the object.
So, I pay $20 for an item which some
company has taken the trouble to find the
materials, assemble, quality control, post and
packaging. Then I pay the same price to the
Icelandic customs who do nothing except
hold it!! Is it me, or is this a little unfair?
When is Iceland going to change to a fair-
er, more efficient import system? Or is this
just to discourage foreign trading?
Best Underpants
Tony
Dear Tony,
You’re pretty much just preaching to the choir;
the postal system here sucks, and everyone
knows it. We think it’s probably due to them
not having any competition. They think they
can fuck with us all they like, and never have
to feel sorry for it.
Well, they’re wrong. Dead wrong. See,
what we here at the Grapevine like to do is
send small pipe bombs on a timer filled with
human faeces (preferably collected after a day
or two of only eating at Metro) to Bárugata 41,
and see how fast they deliver that shit with it
stinking up the office, only for them to find
out there is no Bárugata 41. It only goes up to
40.
We also like to send empty rolls of film
around in packages that tick and have wires
sticking out of them. When the postal service
x-rays them, looking for bombs, we say that
their x-rays destroyed our film, and demand
our money back.
We send roughly eighty taxis to the homes
of all the postal service supervisors every day,
and anywhere between twenty and fifty piz-
zas, along with loan sharks, TV repairmen,
Jehovah’s Witnesses and firemen, ensuring
a near-constant level of traffic to their front
doors, even in the middle of the night.
We often post packages with leaky contain-
ers of cat urine, and then release hundreds of
stray cats into post offices and weld the doors
shut with blowtorches. We like to watch and
laugh as the pheromones in the urine drive
the cats to mindless violence against all the
postal workers who handled the packages.
While some might deem all this a tad ex-
cessive, we here at the Grapevine believe that
a spirit of excellence needs to be maintained
by our public servants, and if they choose to
behave and perform their jobs at a quality lev-
el roughly equal to underfed baboons on dog
sedatives, we will treat them accordingly.
Grapevine:
Gargantuan "TAKK" for your editorial vision
to feature short fiction about Iceland's near-
and-far future by Kristín Eiríksdóttir, Eiríkur
Örn Norðdahl, Óttar Martin Norðfjörð,
Guðrún Eva Mínervudóttir, and Haukur Már
Helgason. It's important to me as a not-yet-
f luent reader of Icelandic to have access to
literary thinkers and writers in the country
sharing work á ensku. Grapevine's commis-
sion and publication supported texts of con-
siderable insight, foresight, and innovation.
Meira, takk!
Love og ást,
a.rawlings
Dear a.,
thank you! We were really proud of printing
stories by these great writers, and hope to do
more in the future. <3
Dear Grapevine,

I first want to thank you, before my speech
turns sour. Thank you for excellent paper.
I like your carefree attitude, not seemingly
trying to please anyone. Like your wit, your
choice of subjects. And the fact that if I have
hard time understanding something that is
going on in this society from the all the me-
dia, sea of information then you very often
have nose for summing it up. So I go like
"Ah, yes, ofcorse, bingo" and am more con-
fident forming and standing by my opinion.
Whether it is energy, Icesave, our immigrant
polocy, self image, country folk, Facebook,
psychology, etc. You seem so often be able to
talk about matters in readable way. Don’t take
your selves so seriously which is great. I love
reading everything your super team of music
lovers write. And here my grape is turning
sour. I read in your latest issue restaurant
reviews and it was snappy as expected BUT
giving Tapas Bar just three and a half Gs is
unfair in my opinion. I go to restaurants a lot,
especially now while up to my neck in work. I
am directing a documentary film about vision
traning and believe systems, wildly interest-
ing, but another story.
In my experience Tapas Barinn never fails.
The food is excelent as described so well in
named review and what I really apreaciete is
the service and atmosphere. Firstly the service
mysteriously manages to be good always, in
all the years I have gone there there has not
been one fail step, I have never stepped out
after a meal with mixed feelings, always hap-
py with a warm, joyous feeling in my stom-
ach. Like recently my prepaid visa card was
burned, didn t́ work, I had spend more than I
thought. Has happend before and will happen
again. I came for a quick meal at the end of my
workday around ten o clock pm, kitchen open
until eleven I think. And when I stood there
really tired and the damn card didn t́ work
the waiters smiled and said "never mind, just
come tomorrow"
It ś a secret I shall practice if/when I open
cafe/restaurant that if something goes slight-
ly off for the costumer or he/she has special
needs then that is an opportunity to show in
practice personal and warm service. As we
know the buzz works wonders.
I would describe the service in Tapas; charm-
ing, helpful, warm, personal and caring. All
in all outstanding. And secondly the atmo-
sphere nourishes you as much as the food,
nourishes your heart and soul. So dear couple
of tired but talented reviewers next time go a
bit later, not at 16:45, the place opens at 17:00
for god sake.
In the meantime I shall keep enjoying read-
ing Grapevine and look forward to read about
your second visit to Tapas Barinn, my all time
favorite restaurant in Reykjavik and I give it
four and a half G ś easy.
Love
Gudmundur Jonas
Dear Gudmundur,
thank you so much for all of your kind words.
They are most appreciated. It is the best praise
we’ve ever had (you are probably exaggerating,
though. That’s alright. We do it all the time)!!!
Now, about that review. We are prone to agree
with you on Tapas. It has rarely failed us. In
fact, if you take a gander through our back
issues, you can see that we have given them
many raving reviews. However, we place full
trust in our food reviewers’ assessment of any
given place (otherwise we wouldn’t employ
them), and if Catharine Fulton thought her
experience at Tapas merited three and a half
Gs, we don’t contest that (especially since she
argues her point well).
A lot of our readers are only in Reykjavík for a
short time, and will only dine at whatever es-
tablishment once. So it only seems rational to
base restaurant reviews on how an establish-
ment fares when a reviewer dines there, even
if he or she knows they usually do a lot better.
You know?
Anyway, it’s great to hear we are actively shap-
ing your opinions (you zombie!). Takk!
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