A Night in Reykjavík

The dark at the end of the tunnel

Not five minutes after the trunk of the taxi slammed closed on my luggage and we took off towards the airport, I got the message that my flight was going to be delayed. Immediately, I knew what that meant for me — I had only an hour layover in Iceland on my way back to the US. Unless my next flight was late too, there was no way I would make it.

“How many flights per day can there possibly be between Reykjavík and Detroit?” I wondered to myself, fearing my chances of getting home today were not looking great at all.

After more than two months of chaos that spanned across five countries, a failed mission to reinvent myself, an embarrassing knee injury, the awkward downfall of a short lived situationship, and several ears of corn boiled in a kettle, I had had it up to here. A few more hours in an airport seemed a lot more daunting than it should be under the circumstances. I cast a yearning glance out the window of a Toyota Prius which shocked me in its ability to pass the required vehicle inspection and set my sights on the dwindling streets of Berlin, unknowing what fate I was about to meet.

I don’t know what it is about airports that makes it feel like every surface is contaminated with disease, bodily fluids, or both, but I was sick and tired of it already. When I dropped…