Egypt Day 3: Alexandria

Off to a fairly early start this morning for a tour of Alexandria.  Alexandria is about a two and half hour ride from Cairo. Evidently there are two roads between Cairo and Alexandria: the agricultural road and the desert road. We took the desert road, but that's probably a bit of a misnomer since it's appears to be flanked with farms along most of the way (yea irrigation). On our way out of town our tour guide shared some venerable Egyptian tax dodges with us.  Near the Nile it’s common to see a certain kind of concrete/brick apartment house with the top unfinished.  Usually they have vertical support beams on top of the last floor that terminate in an array of rebarb poles.  He said that these were "farmer houses."  Evidently it's a story of the unintended consequences of incentives.  After the revolution in the 1950's the government gave farmers 5 acres of premium farm along the Nile, to you know, farm.  This land was in a prime location, and as they say in real estate, location is everything.  So the farmers started to build on their land instead of farm it.  He said that each building housed a family.  The parents got the first floor.  An additional floor was build for each son.  The unfinished top floor serves two purposes.  First off, if you end up with another son you can just add another floor.  Second, the tax rate for unfinished buildings is different than finished structures... so there is actually an incentive to not complete your building.  Another bit of tax related information he told us is that as we drive between Cairo and Alexandria we're going to occasionally see mosques in the middle of nowhere.  What purpose could those possible serve?  It turns out that land with a mosque on it doesn't pay taxes... so it's common for people to build mosques on large tracks of land in the middle of no where to avoid taxes.  Clever.  Our tour guide didn't seem to appreciate the wealthy so adeptly avoiding their tax burden.  I guess "job creators" aren't as highly prized in Egypt.      

Two and half hours is how long it takes if your tour guide's van doesn't break down along the side of the road in the middle of the desert.  Which ours did.  Fortunately it wasn't too long of a delay.  I think we blew a fuse and our driver managed to hard-wire the circuit with a bit of spare copper wire along the side of the road.  The fix seemed to work well enough to get us to Alexandria. 


Along the way we kept seeing these odd towers near just about every building on the road to Alexandria. Our tour guide explained that they were pigeon towers. Evidently eating pigeon is pretty common in Egypt. People build these big bird houses so there is a ready supply of our feather friends.

My first impression of Alexandria was not very positive.  We were driving down narrow streets chocked full of people, horses, and donkeys.  The center of the streets were one long continuous pothole and the edges were strewn with garbage.  Our goal was the Catacombs of Kom El-Shuqafa.  Alexandria isn't known for Pharaonic archaeology sites like Giza or Luxor.  Alexandria is known for Greco-Roman sites, which kind of makes sense being it was named after Alexander the Great and all.  The Catacombs of Kom El-Shuqafa are Greek/Roman catacombs from 2nd through 4th century AD that were lost and then rediscovered in 1900 when a donkey fell into the access shaft.  A translations of Kom El-Shuqafa means "mound of shards."  Our tour guide told us that when the catacombs were active visiting your dead relatives was an all day affair.  The catacombs had a dining room for eating, but eating with the dead has always been a grim prospect, and it was considered bad luck to reuse the plates and service-ware.  The solution was to provide disposable service-ware in the form of cheap clay plates.  When you were done eating the tradition was to smash the plate.  The clay shards were collected and thrown outside the entrance to the catacombs.  Do that for a couple of generations and a sizable mount of clay shards forms.  

Alexandria has always been a melting pot where Egypt mingled with it's European neighbors.  This is another site that forbid cameras, which was a real shame because the cool thing about the catacombs is it does a good job of capturing how the Egyptian death traditions were mixed with the Greek and Roman traditions.  The paintings in the tombs mix both Egyptian and Greek elements.  There are Egyptian-style statues wearing Roman clothing.  There are carvings of Roman/Greek soldiers wearing Egyptian headdresses.  There were Greek style columns with Egyptian agricultural elements (papyrus and lotus) worked into the column's capitol.  This is the kind of place where Romans were mummified and Egyptians cremated and stored in urns.  Our tour guide said the tradition of Egyptians living together with Greeks and Italians had carried on until the 1950's (after the revolution) when things became difficult for foreigners living in Egypt.  The tour guide then added that the mixed European and Egyptians generations were gorgeous and until this day you are very lucky if you can date an Alexandrian girlfriend.      

Next up was Pompey's Pillar, which actually has nothing to do with Pompey.  It's was erected some 200 years after as a 99 ft high red granite shout out to the Roman emperor Diocletian as a thank you for being cool with a failed rebellion.  The emperor quelled the rebellion in Alexandria, but instead of responding by slaughtering 20,000 people as punishment (which is what happened last time Alexandria had rebelled against Rome), Diocletian sent them food and supplies and decided to patch things up.  The site also included an underground shrine to Serapis, the bull god of Alexandria.  Another interesting mix-match of Roman and Egyptian culture.  Romans preferred to worship gods in human forms, the Egyptians preferred animal formed gods.  So Serapis accommodated everyone by having two forms, both man and bull and donned whichever form was appropriated for the situation.  We had seen his two forms in some of the tombs at the catacombs earlier in the days.  Actually, those catacombs supposedly contained some of the remains of slaughtered victims from the previous rebellion, but our tour guide told us when they examined the bones they realized that they were mostly horse bones, so the newer theory is that was where really respected race horses got to be interred.  

Next we visited a site I was pretty excited about, the site of the former Lighthouse of Alexandria.  Two wonders of the ancient world in two days!  The lighthouse isn't standing any more.  Built in 300 BC, it was damaged by an earthquake in the 900's and two more in the 1300s AD.  It was pretty much the tallest man-made structure on earth for centuries, but after the earthquakes it had lost its tower and only the base remained.  During the 1400's the base was converted into a fort.  That fort still remains today, although today it's just a tourist attraction along the Mediterranean.  Located in a very pretty part of Alexandria it was cool to see this ancient landmark.

Speaking of ancient landmarks, our next stop was the new Library of Alexandria.  I didn't know anything about this project before the tour, I just knew that the original library burnt down long ago.  The library was commissioned by Ptolemy I and finished by Ptolemy II, just like the Lighthouse of Alexandria.  Those Ptolemy's were not shy of ambitious projects.  At one time its mandate was to collect all the knowledge in the world.  In 2002 they decided to build a new Library of Alexandria on the same site as the ancient one.  Instead of some cheesy looking imitation of the original they had a design contest and a Swedish firm won with a very modern design (also the original library was huge, they would have had to confiscate and level a bunch of buildings to get the footprint right).  The new smaller library makes an striking architectural statement and has provided an interesting public space that the hip citizen of Alexandria seem to enjoy and flock to (the tour guide said it was a good place to go on a date).  Unfortunately we didn't get to go inside. Apparently after the revolution last year government services have been pretty flaky and the library hours are now erratic.  It was closed when we got there.  I was kind of disappointed because the tour guide said that they had an Espresso book printing machine there and I was curious to see one in person.

الإثنين

Carolyn got the day off from school to take us on a tour of Alexandria. Our tour guide, George, is very politically opinionated. That adds an interesting color to his commentary. As we are heading out of Cairo, he points out other enclosed communities. He refers to them as desert reclamation projects offering housing outside of Cairo for commuters. He has already told us that the population of Cairo ranges from 19 to 23 million depending on what time of day it is. I’m not convinced this kind of sprawl will do anything to solve the traffic problems of ever increasing population in the city. The advantage I see is that these are areas where the lack of government resources isn’t affecting basic services. Assuming you can afford to live there.

Between Cairo and Alexandria the van broke down, but the driver pulled some wire and a screwdriver out of the glove box and was able to fix it. I expect every tour to have one bad food stop and one crazy attraction that tries to take my money. We stopped for coffee at an attraction that is trying to be part zoo, part amusement park, and part circus. It’s serving decent coffee and doesn’t appear to be selling anything. In the late morning, it’s mostly just sad looking animals in cages. Clean, apparently well cared for, but still in small cages.

Also, an angry Ostrich tried to eat Carolyn.

Pigeon coops everywhere along the sides of the road. George claims the people used to eat them, but now are more civilized. I don’t mention dinner last night.

Did you know that if you build a mosque on your property here, you don’t have to pay property tax? Not for Coptic Christian churches, though. Did you know you only pay taxes for a completed building, so if you have an unfinished roof that may become an additional floor, you don’t have to pay taxes. Also, with the revolution, government services have gone from poor to nearly non-existent. Small government heavily tied to religion, pretty much the far right’s paradise.

Our first stop was the catacombs, no cameras allowed. The main tomb has three levels below ground, but the third is under water and parts of the second have water seeping in. Niches are carved in limestone walls with lots of erosion. Since we can’t take pictures, I am forced to reference Whiterun's Hall of the Dead.

This complex was originally built for a wealthy family, but once there stopped being visitors to those few, the city opened it up to the wider populations. The size and location of the niches indicates socioeconomic standing, with some middle class mummies in larger ones and the cremated remains of entire families sharing some of the smaller ones. Currently, they are all empty. In the entry area and larger chambers of the original occupants there is a mixture of Greek and Egyptian iconography that is really interesting. I hope Bill tells the story about the pottery because I am already fuzzy on the details.

Next was this pillar that is the only remaining part of a temple. They’ve pulled several worn sculptures and remnants of pillars out of this site and left them on display.

There were some underground excavations at the site that we walked through and took some pictures. Similar to the catacombs, but these nooks were previously filled with books instead of urns.

There were also some well-preserved sphinx statues that may or may not have been in a part of the ruin tourists are allowed. I decided that since I could see lots of footprints and the rope didn’t completely block access that it was fine. They guys hung back, so I had to take my own picture with one of them.

Next stop was the remains of the great lighthouse which is now a fort. I’d never seen the Mediterranean before. Getting there involved a traffic jam so bad that a police officer had to come by and direct traffic. It was kind of exciting. The pictures are insufficient. George used it as an example of how things are worse now than they used to be.

We followed this with a very late, not very good lunch. Looks like it should be great, right?

Our final stop of the day turned out to be the first instance of last year’s revolution actually effecting our travel. We were supposed to go to the new Great Library, built on the remains of the original great library, but its hours have been totally unpredictable so it was already closed for the day when we got there. We still wandered around outside, which was fantastic as well, but I didn’t get to use, or even see, the espresso book machine.

As bad as traffic seemed today, George claimed that it would be worse tomorrow because of the Pope’s funeral. We stayed in for a lovely chili dinner and made some preparations for tomorrow night’s flight to Luxor. At some point I suppose I should try souvenir shopping.

الأحد

Last night we had dinner at a small outdoor cafe walking distance from my grandparents’ apartment. They’re living in a small access controlled community of only 200,000 people with their own shopping, restaurants, schools.

Today, my grandfather is playing tour guide for some of the local sights he’s visited previously. I had mentioned that watching a travel special about Cairo had done an excellent job of convincing me not to rent a car here. His response was that they had one for the first few months they were here, but taxis are cheaper. Have I mentioned that he’s a bad-ass? They use the same taxi service every time, so all the drivers know them. The one we got today knows very little English so most interactions involved a cell phone call to his polyglot boss.

Everything you have heard about the drivers here is true. There aren’t traffic signals at intersections and the dotted lines on roads are basically decorative. The strangest part may actually be that pedestrians don’t even seem to notice the number of near death incidence that happen to them as they cross the street. And by pedestrians, I mean people, donkeys, horses, dogs. Yet it all works out to fairly predictable driving times because in spite of the appearance of chaos, it is actually a system which most of the drivers understand.

Our first stop is the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo, next to Tahrir Square. The halls are stacked with sarcophagi, base reliefs, statues in various states of preservation. We only saw a small portion of what was on display in our two hours of wandering. Along one wall we could view hieroglyphics on relief adjacent window with a view of the remains of a building burned down during last year’s revolution. I got to check out something I have wondered about for a long time: the insides of sarcophagus lids are also ornately carved, but those carvings aren’t ever on display. One partially restored sarcophagus had some Plexiglas panels and a bit of space between the box and the lid so I could get on the floor to see under. There are a lot of mummies on display upstairs. Including creepy mummified children with realistic faces painted in front of their heads. There was also a mummified animal exhibit that included a fish I expect to have nightmares about for the rest of my life.

We next headed across the river to Giza to see the pyramids. Wow are the guys offering tours and camel rides aggressive – pounding on the car window on a few occasions trying to make sure we are aware of their services.

The pyramids are so much bigger in person. I know we got a lot of pictures that include people and animals for scale, but they just aren’t conveying how enormous these structures are. We walked around the area for a while ignoring camel ride offers before heading down to the Sphinx at the base of the hill. I think morning would have been better because the sun was in just a terrible place. Morning would have been a lot colder and windier, though, and the few times the wind did pick up were educational on the subject of why sand storms are bad.

Dinner was pigeon stuffed with frik. Dessert was something called pumpkin gratin which was grated pumpkin cooked in a sweet sauce with dried fruit and nuts and topped with a crème brule filling. Egyptians smoke a lot.

My brain keeps trying to read Arabic as though it were cursive writing viewed in a mirror.

Stop it, brain.

Egypt Day 2: Museum and Giza

After a much needed night of sleep we're ready to strike out and see Cairo.  First up is the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.  Dawn's grandfather, who has been living in the country for a number of months, accompanies us.  He has developed a relationship with a local car service that drives us around Cairo for the day.  I am certainly glad I don't have to drive.  In fact, I need to take a moment to talk about Egyptian driving.

There are no traffic lights in Cairo.  I'm being literal.  I'm not saying that there are only a few traffic lights, I'm saying there are absolutely none.  How do intersections work?  Well the first (or the most aggressive) driver pulls out and everyone else honks and only nearly hits the vehicle.  There are also many roundabouts... but the rules about yielding the right-of-way aren't observed.  In fact, I'm prepared to say that "right-of-way" is a completely foreign concept to a Cairo driver.  Instead they honk because you're right in their way.  There are lines suggesting the presence of lanes on the roads, but they are considered merely suggestions.  Roads can swell to as many lanes as you can fit cars and bikes side-by-side.  Then everyone can honk until they get to go the way they want to.  People also honk to alert other drivers that they are there, like when they're planning to spawn a new lane adjacent to them.  I remember hearing about this tribe in Australia that exclusively used the cardinal directions to describe the locations of things.  To be able to effectively communicate you had to know which direction was north at all times, even indoors.  As a consequence of this cultural predilection, researchers discovered that they carried a top-down map in their head of their current locations.  That's how they managed to always know where north was.  I think Egyptians driver might have developed a similar top-down map cognitive device, because I can't imagine keeping track of what's happening on all side of the vehicle at once, while honking, frequently toggling the hazard lights to indicate rapid deceleration (how quick can you find your hazards switch....do you have a reaction to reach for it?) AND talking on a cell phone.  It's phenomenal.  The truly surprising thing is how calm the drivers actually are.  The driving is aggressive, but I didn't witness any rage like symptoms.  It was managed madness.

The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities is located on Tahrir square, yes, that Tahrir square.  It houses the largest collection of Pharaonic antiquities.  Its roughly ordered by time periods (Old, Middle, and New kingdoms), but many things aren't labeled, and lots of cool things are just kind of scattered around.  Like giant stone relief carvings, or statues, or sarcophagi.  I would love to include photos, but cameras are strictly forbidden in the museum.  Seriously, sarcophagi are piled like 5 deep all around the edges of the rooms, not really on display, but just kind of stored that way.  There is a lot of seriously cool stuff if you take the time to wonder around and decide to focus on a particular item.  

One understated item that caught me eye was a collection of clay tablets that represented diplomatic correspondence between Egypt and neighboring civilizations.  The tables were written in cuneiform.  You always read about cuneiform in history books, but its something else to be standing before a pile of cuneiform tablets.  The collection had a short description on yellowing paper that looked like it had been type on a typewriter in the 1950’s.  It said that the tablets where inscribed, then baked to dry them.  Then they were wrapped in another layer of clay and baked again.  When diplomats received the little clay bundles they had to smash the outer clay layer with a hammer to get to the inner tablet.  Neat.

Afterwards we contacted our driver who picked us up and took us out to Giza to visit the pyramids there.  I found it to be a surreal experience.  Since grade school I've seen pictures of these pyramids.  Practically everyone knows about them.  They're part of our collective consciousnesses.  It's another thing entirely to be standing there right before one of the Wonders of the Ancient World.  I kept looking out into the desert and then would turn around and... bam!  Ginormous pyramid.  It surprised and delighted me every time.  Less delightful are the souvenir sellers and their camel/horse ride co-patriots.  My experience is one way or another they will exact a price out of you.  From the moment you near the pyramids people start trying to sell you things.  Like pounding on the car while its still moving aggressive.   On foot they follow you around repeating their pitch and trying to engage you in haggling for their good or service.  Their pitch is the result of a kind of producer/non-interested consumer arms race.  They have learned that being polite and friendly is an excellent way to strike up a conversation.  They ask people where they are from.  Then tell you that they love that country and offer to give you an item as a gift. etc.  Or perhaps even though they're holding an armful of souvenirs they aren't actively selling you anything they are just being friendly... until they start selling you something.  As a result tourist walk around and actively ignore the people following them around being friendly.  At some point it really started to bothered me that I was making a concerted effort to ignore the friendliest person in the world who just wanted a scrap of conversation.  Even worse, I was ignoring a entire set of people.  Is this who I am?  Someone who would spend the money to travel half-way around the world but wouldn't give the locals, whose country I'm a guest in, the time of day?  I suppose so.  In the end we all lost.  They didn't get any of my money and I felt like a bad human being.  Perhaps buying a trinket would have been a win-win solution... At least for one such encounter.  While I found them annoying I fought the urge to think too much about wishing they weren't allowed to be there  After all, this is a tourist attraction and I am a tourist.  It seems like its only fitting that the home team makes the ground rules.

Here’s an interesting thing I didn’t know about the pyramids.  Where you’re right at the base, so close that you can reach out and touch the pyramid and you look up... it doesn’t look so big.  It looks like a sizable, but not enormous pile of stone.  If however you walk a bit away from the pyramid and look back... whoa... it’s the biggest thing ever.  Strange how it plays with your perceptions like that. 

After spending a good while walking around, between, and amongst some of the best know landmarks on the planet... we followed a path down a small incline and visited another famous Egyptian landmark - the Sphinx.   I guess technically it’s just a sphinx (there are lots of sphinxes in Egypt), but because it’s the largest and best well known I feel ok giving it a definite article.  It goes without saying that the Sphinx’s profile is probably one of the most famous faces in the world, which is why it was so odd that Dawn was so interested in its butt.  I guess her logic is everyone knows what the Sphinx’s head looks like, but how often do you see a picture of its butt?  That’s the sort of thing you have to be a world traveler to experience.  Until now.  Ladies and gentleman with out the means and/or inclination to visit the Sphinx may I present to you its cute hinder.

Egypt Day 1: Departure

Three-thirty is not a time in the morning to wake up.  The body rejects the reality of the situation.  The mind reels with semi-conscious fury demanding to know why it is being punished.  It is the time we must rise in order to make our first flight.   Besides some check-in shenanigans, the flight to Dallas is uneventful.

As we are waiting to disembark our plane at the Dallas airport Dawn consults her mental knowledge-base of airport creature comforts and announces that we are arriving at the terminal which is as far as it can possibly be from the terminal we need to depart from.  Additionally, she adds that when we exit the plane we will be very close to both a massage place and a Dunkin’ Donuts.  I don't know if her gift is astounding or sad.   

We have a few hours to kill waiting for our flight to Dubai which we spend in the international terminal.  Dawn threatens to maul a kid and I ask her to behave herself.  She counters that the international terminal is just like international waters and no laws apply here.  She can do whatever she wants.  To support her claim she points to the Duty Free store and says "see you don't have to pay taxes in international water or terminals."

As we wile away our time I decide that traveling with opened-toe shoes is a transgression of propriety and the perpetrators of this travel crime should feel deep and abiding shame.  I'm sure they don't, but they should.  Sure enough the passenger that sat next to Dawn on the 15 1/2 hour flight was wearing opened-toe shoes and it was all of 30 minutes before she curled up with her bare feet on the seats.  Wrong wrong wrong.  Although, to her credit, other than being a shoe-less travel criminal she was pretty much the ideal 15 1/2 hour airplane companion.

I find it so very odd that the restaurant we ate in the international terminal of Dallas gave us metal forks, metal spoons, and a plastic (although silver colored) knives.  I think they over estimate the threatening power of a butter knife.  The fork is much more menacing.  I’m sure there were a hundred more dangerous things on sale in the terminal gift shops, but such is the mania of the appearance of airplane safety.  Their frivolous safety gesture was all for naught though because Air Emirates arms all diners in the air with honest-to-god metal butter knifes.  I heft the forbidden silverware in my hand and try to let the surge of raw destructive power go to my head.

I've only had one or two 30 minute cat naps in the last 24 hours.  I'm feeling the effects.  My head is pounding and my brain feels like it's unspooling.  Stringing coherent thoughts together is becoming a struggle.  One more flight to go and who knows how many more hours before a proper shower and rest.  I have no idea where I'll be sleeping tonight, but I assure you - it will be the most comfortable bed I've ever encountered.  

انطلق

This time we’re heading to Egypt to visit my grandparents and do some sightseeing. Most of my recent knowledge of Egypt is gleaned from Penn & Teller and Anthony Bourdain. And yet I still want to visit pyramids and camels. Maybe even eat camels if the opportunity arises. Egypt is in the news quite a bit for something or another these days – I assume that something is negative because good news isn’t news and I have gotten such interesting looks from anyone who hears that’s where I’m heading. My response has uniformly been that if my grandparents can handle living there for a year, surely I’ll be fine for a week. Never mind that my grandfather is a retired Marine who has lived all over the world and my life can be described as devoted to avoiding exercise and sunshine.

In planning this trip, I did an excellent job early on, assuring we got our passports renewed (they expired 2 weeks too soon for the entry requirements), checking that the length of our stay didn’t require any special paperwork or shots, that sort of thing. Then I procrastinated until all the good flights were gone or too expensive. Then I let a few more months pass, realized it was almost time to leave, and threw some tours together kind of at the last minute. So last minute that here I am in the Dubai airport waiting for our connection to Cairo and there’s still one tour I haven’t gotten confirmed. If this all works out, I’ll have a travel agent to recommend.

Travel tip for those of you who think Egypt is an intimidating destination: maybe a layover in Dubai isn’t for you. The flight path crosses the tip of Syria before running most of the length of Iraq and gets really close to the Iranian border. I didn’t have a camera handy to photograph the on screen flight path, which is unfortunate as it was nice to see a map of the Middle East in the context of something other than war coverage.

(Also, a little travel tip for total strangers standing in line at the AA self check-in kiosks in Huntsville at five o’-fucking-clock in the morning: if the kiosk has a giant warning message with an exclamation mark on it that says wait for an attendant and other patrons are standing at it patiently waiting for an attendant, don’t stick your credit card in it to see if you can fix it. YOU ARE NOT HELPING, ASSHOLE. You are just making my morning longer. Asshole)

We don’t have a long enough layover to actually go into Dubai so it will remain, like Dallas, Dublin, and other destinations starting with D, a place I only know through its airport. One more flight and we’re meeting my grandparents in Cairo.

Iceland Lessons Learned (And Not Learned)

Sulfur | OCDs | NASA Recruiting

I'm not sure if it's the tourist or the locals, or both, but Iceland is the ancestral home of the cargo pant.  I'm not saying they reach of a one-to-one ratio with jeans, but it's closer than I've witnessed anywhere else.  The streets of Reykjavik are pretty much a non-stop outdoor wear add.  People walk by in North Face, Columbia, 66 North, and Cintamani jackets (the last two are Iceland made outdoor wear brands). 

One hallmark of being in Iceland is turning on hot water and getting a whiff of sulfur.  It doesn't happen everywhere, but if it does you can be sure that the building your in is fed hot water form a geothermal source.

Restaurants.  There are two cultural things to know about restaurants in Iceland.  One, water will be provided one of two ways.  There will either be glasses located on a central table with a communal water jug.  You are expected to help your self.  This is common in cafes.  The other common way water is provided is a carafe of water on your table so you can help yourself.  I am quite fond of the carafe method being I consume a lot of water while eating and this relieves the waiter/waitress from keeping up with me.   Two, you are pretty much expected to find the register and pay there.  We've only had one check brought to our table while eating in Iceland.

Another hallmark of Iceland that I shall not miss is the doors.  Door are routed here on three or four sides so that they can lay on top of the door frame.  The result is when the door is closed it protrudes out form the frame about half an inch.  As someone who is used to doors laying flush with the door frame this weirds me out and sets off all sorts of OCD alarms.  I find it very disconcerting.  I wonder if it's a design feature left over from before modern weather stripping.

Iceland had a weird prohibition.  You'll read about bits and pieces of it and they won't make any damn sense. You'll eventually figure out that they had a short American-style prohibition.  Then for some reason wine and spirits were OK but beer wasn't.  Beer wasn't OK until 1989!  The Wikipedia page for Icelandic Prohibition gives some historical reasons for the weirdness.  This pamphlet I found in a cafe is also illuminating.

(Clicky to make larger)

Speaking of that pamphlet, it also had this great advertisement for a night-club in Reykjavik called Nasa.  Dawn and I never visited it.  If we ever figure out what our space program is doing and need to start hiring young engineers, I think NASA could just use this ad and their college recruiting would be taken care of.

That page also has fun facts about Iceland's national liquor, which is caraway schnapps.  Here's the thing that confuses me.  If they put the skull and crossbones label on Brennivin in 1915 during prohibition, why were they selling the stuff?  Seems like the skull and crossbones rules out medicinal purposes.  I wonder if this all boils down to a case of "I don't think that word means what you think it means."