Reykjavík Grapevine - 26.08.2011, Síða 4

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Licensing and
registration of travel-
related services
The Icelandic Tourist Board issues licences to tour operators and travel agents,
as well as issuing registration to booking services and information centres.
Tour operators and travel agents are required to use a special logo approved
by the Icelandic Tourist Board on all their advertisements and on their Internet
website.
Booking services and information centres are entitled to use a Tourist
Board logo on all their material. The logos below are recognised by the
Icelandic Tourist Board.
List of licenced Tour
Operators and Travel
Agencies on:
visiticeland.com
Say your piece, voice your
opinion, send your letters to:
letters@grapevine.is
Sour
grapes
& stuff
MOST AWESOME LETTER
FREE GRAPEVINE TEE HEE HEE!
There's prize for all your MOST AWESOME LETTERS. And
it’s a scorcher! Whoever sends us THE MOST AWESOME
LETTER each issue will receive a cool new REYKJAVÍK
GRAPEVINE T-SHIRT, featuring the majestic G that adorns our cover.
So you should make sure to keep writing us fun and/or interesting letters
This new Grapevine tee surely is the SHIZNIT (whatever that means)! It was designed by our
very own art director man, HÖRÐUR KRISTBJÖRNSSON, and it’s good for posing in front
of a mirror, impressing folks with your impeccable taste or picking up men or women of all
ages (no minors). DON’T PANIC if your letter wasn’t picked AWESOME LETTER. You can
still get a tee for a low, low price over our website, WWW.GRAPEVINE.IS
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:
Hello (we would like to request that this let-
ter be read with an Icelandic accent, it’s fun-
nier that way).
We love you guys.
Ok so, we have a couple of ideas and
warnings.
Thing is, we were sitting on a Sunday
evening with some gypsies and opera sing-
ers drinking ginger juice as one does.
Suddenly it came to us, something was
going on. Hold your horses, it has to do with
sheep, the Iceandic nation, the future, our
possible extinction and the evil plots of the
sheep. Did you know that there are ca. 900
000 sheep in Iceland. 3 to 1 person. They
know.
We believe that they have Geirfinnur.
We think they are responsible for Eyjafjal-
lajökull.
And as if that wasn t́ enough.
We started looking around us, and we
saw a lot of shady birds, basically everywhere
(spying? You tell me). We think that the
Sjálfstæðisflokkur is responsible for the bird
problem or birds responsible for the Sjálf-
stæðisflokkur problem.
We believe that the travelling birds from
South America are drug-trafficking. Nobody
knows these things, it ś disturbing to say the
least. You can imagine how excited we were
to realize this, and scared. The operasingers
were under suspicion for a while cause they
were tweeting (like birds) –turns out they
were just enthusiastic and super nice also.
We think the best thing to do is, get rid of
money, put it in Silfra a giant treasure chest.
We can turn Iceland into Niceland and Ic-
esave into Nicesave, it will lead to Lifesave.
Problem solved and the birds will have to
find other places to plunger. We can keep the
kría and a couple of other harmless species.
Or not, it’s just a modest proposal. Ram-
blings. Just for fun. All for laughs, laughs for
all. With a serious undertone ofcourse.
High five. Klessiðann.
Lína and Rob
Dear Lína and Rob,
OK you win. You get a t-shirt. You clearly
want it hard enough. Just give us a drag of
whatever you’re smoking.
Good day,
I wanted to express my dissatisfaction with
your recent review of Thai Reykjavik, sneer-
ingly titled "Blah Reykjavik". To begin with,
the accompanying photo does little justice to
the cozy atmosphere of the restaurant, es-
pecially when juxtaposed with the polished
picture supplementing the article on Res-
taurant 1919 (the photo attached to the Thai
article depicts a waiter awkwardly bending
behind a bar table). I have dined at Thai Rey-
kajvik since they opened, and I have never,
NEVER, encountered a hair in any one of my
dishes, and I find it suspect that the reviewer
didn't point this out to one of the waiters,
who I am guessing would have indemnified
the grievance with a new dish. The service
is excellent and the food is better, and I have
been waiting for Grapevine to review the
restaurant for a while now, since most ev-
erybody I know has been delighted with the
place, and so I was downright angered by the
blatant ridicule and rudeness of the author.
Hopefully, the review doesn't deter any fu-
ture customers, which would be a shame
since the place kicks major ass.
Regards,
Ragnar Hallgrimsson
Dear Ragnar,
thank you for your letter.
Now, the thing about restaurant reviews is
that they are almost entirely anecdotal data;
the personal experience of one person at one
point and time. A food critic does not and
cannot speak to anything other than their
personal experience at an establishment.
Naturally, different people are going to have
different experiences at different times that
they visit the same place.
We can accept that sometimes a restaurant
just has an off night. But a food critic takes
this into account, delineating between what
might have been a one-off, and what might
indicate an ongoing pattern. We believe this
review achieved this. Of course we'd love
to believe Thai Reykjavík was having a bad
night, and we're also happy to hear you and
others have had a good experience there.
Here's hoping they can turn this criticism
into an encouragement to do better.
Hi,
I just want to say thank you for extruding
the racist comments in the horrific story of
the blond-haired-blue-eyed-thirtysomething
professional who won the most awesome let-
ter in June. I cannot believe there are people
like that! I am black-haired-black-eyed-twen-
tysomething and does that make me liable
for detention? Just look at what the blond-
haired-blue-eyed-thirtysomething Oslo
bomber did. Maybe this sort of misjudge-
ments is what leads people to say: "Hey, he's
blond, how could one possibly think he will
use a gun to kill more than 80 innocents
teenagers and bomb a city? Don't you see he
is a European citizen from one of the most
peaceful countries on earth". She tried to
make us think that Icelanders should be
ashamed for thinking that an American
blond-haired-blue-eyed-thirtysomething
person would ever do that! Even the UK's
Daily Mail joked about the Oslo bomber with
the headline: ''It's safe to come out, you'll be
saved... I'm a cop!' How blond, blue-eyed
killer lured teenagers to their deaths".
Then according to her one should be arrest-
ed on the grounds of looking like a terrorist
and acting like a criminal. I hope that what
happened in Oslo teaches us that regarless of
ones race and cultural background there are
people who will inflict good and others who
will inflict evil on others. I invite the blond-
haired-blue-eyed-thirtysomething Ameri-
can citizen to read the American Declaration
of Independence where it says that "all men
are created equal".
Jonathan
A black-haired-black-eyed-twentysomething
man
But Not a terrorist or a criminal.
Dear Jonathan,
thank you for your letter. You are entirely cor-
rect in most of what you said. But don’t be too
hard on that woman; as a native of the West-
ern hemisphere (and one that can afford to
travel to hard-to-reach, peripheral places like
Iceland) she has been raised (like the rest of
us reading this) in a position of such incred-
ible privilege that she probably has lost all
perspective (like the rest of us reading this).
We could all do well with contemplating what
“all men area created equal” really means.
And then trying our darndest to live by it.