Being on a hik­ing trip in the midst of nowhere in Iceland’s high­lands, on a path that is flanked by gla­ciers, vol­ca­noes, moun­tains, clouds of sul­phur steam and as many water falls as it needs to quickly lose one’s excite­ment, it’s not the best moment to injure one’s knee. A day’s jour­ney back to civil­iz­a­tion was the only solu­tion for my prob­lem. As you can ima­gine it was rather frus­trat­ing to stay in Reyk­javík for the last eight days of my trip, let alone I had to fig­ure out how to spend all that time in a city that has only 150.000 inhab­it­ants. That’s as much as half of the whole country’s pop­u­la­tion and given the fact, that this is actu­ally the estim­ate for the whole capital’s region of which Reyk­javík makes up only a small part, things seemed to get even worse.

How­ever, I some­how fell in love with that charm­ing, calm city where only the most cent­ral part – i.e. a single street and its sur­round­ing – is inter­est­ing enough for touristy needs. Laugave­gur or simply: “the long road” – makes up the city’s heart where everything of gen­eral interest is loc­ated. The rest of Reyk­javík being rather ordin­ary com­pared to Ber­lin expect­a­tions is not exactly what one would recom­mend. Any way, Reyk­javík 101 – that is, the postal dis­trict in the city cen­ter – is so incred­ibly dense with all kind of points of interest that it I had to curi­ously look around all the time and it was mere luck my neck didn’t fall into line with my knee. But in the end, after vis­it­ing all those gal­ler­ies and tiny artsy-fartsy stores, hav­ing flocked through all the museums and most of the fash­ion stores (which took not that long, remem­ber, it’s just a small town), I settled at Aus­tur­völ­lur, and let myself tickle by the green grass and the warm Nor­dic sun. Was it because of all the young and laid-back people that were around or of the relaxed mood that filled this place: I was reminded of Görl­itzer Park and the long and recre­at­ive even­ings I shared with my closest friends and – some­what – felt home here.

I became curi­ous of this pecu­liar notion and then it occured to me that Reyk­javík and Ber­lin had many other things in com­mon: Be it the Tjörnin or “That Spot”, Bæjar­ins Beztu Pylsur or Bur­ger­meister, the then tak­ing place Gay Parade or Berlin’s 1^st of May (May­day), Laugave­gur or Weser­straße, Kolaportið or the Turk­ish Mar­ket, Café Babalu or my beloved super-cozy Macondo at Box­ha­gener Platz – Reyk­javík was the Nor­dic coun­ter­part of Ber­lin. Con­cen­trated, slowed down and – the way I see it – cli­mat­ic­ally more appeal­ing, but aston­ish­ingly warm Berlin.

Reyk­javík breathes the same mood as Ber­lin but des­pite of being just a small town it’s sur­pris­ingly vivid. Bars, cafés, clubs, pro­ject spaces and the like seem to spring up like mush­rooms every­where. A friend from there told me, that gal­ler­ies and artists spaces would exist only for a year if that long until they’d fold and raise like a phoenix from the ashes some­where else. One can feel the vibrant spirit in every corner of the streets, stick­ing to the cor­rug­ated iron facades and being blown over from the cof­fee houses that the city is fam­ous for.

I always loved the Scand­inavian cap­it­als for being great sanc­tu­ar­ies when I was fed up with Berlin’s rapid mov­ing life. Retreat­ing to Stock­holm spon­tan­eously was an escape plan I always had recourse to because it comes with most of Berlin’s bene­fits minus the fuss and an extra por­tion of recov­ery but Reyk­javík topped it all: No other city I know could ever be that fit­tingly com­pared with my beloved Ber­lin in the face of the charm­ing cap­ital near the Arc­tic Circle. And guess what: The next trip is already planned. But this time, Reyk­javík wouldn’t take a back seat to my hik­ing trails.