gleðilegt nýtt árbær

The only swimming pool open on New Year´s Day 2005 in the city of Reykjavík is the classy Árbær pool in the northeast outskirts. So, given my addiction to the swimming pool, I had to trek out there this afternoon. It was quite an experience, as the place had to accommodate swimmers from all over the city, in a short 1100 - 1600 window. It was mobbed, in other words, a difficult feat to achieve in a land of under 300,000 people. The locker room was a two-tiered changing operation, a forest of men in various stages of dress, and a scrub-brush layer of kids doing the same thing, all trying to occupy the same space. I waited for a while for an 8-year-old to vacate his locker, then swooped in, osprey-like, with my Bónus bag full of swimming gear.

The pools at Árbær are a beautifully interconnected series of regular swimming pools and hot tubs, both indoor and outdoor, with a waterslide corkscrewing overhead. I swam some laps in the main pool, then went to the hot tubs. There was no room to spare in any of the 4 hot tubs - people were packed cheek-to-jowl, and quite often kissing each other on the cheeks, greeting their friends and happynewyear-ing and talking shop. There was a warm vibe about the place, and mystical, too, as rising steam from the pools kept obscuring the perfectly clear sky of a 20-degree New Year's Day.