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My Cities: Reykjavík

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Street Scene in Iceland’s Capital City

It’s not a terribly large city, only about 140,000 residents as of 2023. But when you add in the outskirts, it becomes 248,000, more than half the population of the entire island. It’s one of the most expensive cities in Europe, but one of the most approachable.

No, you don’t have to speak Icelandic—a version of medieval Norse—to understand the people, most of whom under the age of 80 speak English. One of the most beloved eating places in town is the hot dog stand pictured below:

Bææjarins Beztu Pylsur: The City’s Best Sausages

Its most famous customer was Bill Clinton, who famously asked for a hot dog with mustard only. To this day, if you order a Clinton at BBP, that’s what you get. I’d rather order the works, which include mustard, remoulade sauce, ketchup, raw onion, and fried onions.

If you like American fast food, you will find plenty of it not only in Reykjavík but around the island as well. That includes pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs (pylsur), to name a few. There’s no McDonalds or Starbucks, but you will find Domino’s and Subway.

Where Are All the Skyscrapers?

Above is a view of central Reykjavík from a boat on a harbor puffin cruise. You can walk the heart of the city from one end to the other in about forty minutes. But I’ll bet you can’t do it without stopping a dozen places for coffee, books, souvenirs, ice cream, or beer.

I’ve been to Iceland in 2001 and 2013. I hope I can visit it again. It’s fun. It’s low key. And the fish is effing fantastic.

Of Mustard and Hot Dogs

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This Won a Rebuke for Me from the Hot Dog Vendor

This Won a Rebuke for Me from the Hot Dog Vendor

When I was a grade school student at Saint Henry in Cleveland, I started getting straight A’s after fourth grade. At that time, the Cleveland Press had a program to reward kids like me by giving straight A students seven pairs of baseball tickets for Indians games during the summer. Most of them were for weekday daytime games, so I usually wound up going by myself or with one of my friends.

I remember the first time I ordered a hot dog at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The vendor immediately smeared the dog with mustard, and I blanched. “Could I have one without mustard, please?” I begged. The vendor was plainly irritated. “Kid,” he told me. “There must’ve been something wrong about the way you was raised.”

Well, I certainly had a weak stomach; and, for some reason, I had a particular antipathy to mustard.

Around then, I made an abortive attempt to get into the Boy Scouts. I say abortive because I knew I could never advance to First Class because (1) I did not know how to swim at that time and (2) I had problems memorizing the Morse Code. But I did spend a weekend at Hiram House Camp with the Scouts.

It was not one of the high points of my youth. The weather was cold, so we had the fireplace going all night; and no one knew how to operate the flue. Consequently, we were gagging from the smoke all night. Then—horrors—the next day at lunchtime I had to help wash the dishes, which were liberally slathered with mustard.

Shortly after then, I dropped out of scouting.