The Iceland Experience.
I would like to start this epic tale with an apology to the Icelandic Team for not getting this up sooner, It is not a reflection on you or how much I enjoyed my time in Iceland. As most of you are aware, 12 hours after returning from this amazing experience my dad passed away. Having that thought at the back of my head while typing this story has made it hard to access the creative talents you have come to expect from me. I should warn you now, this is a mammoth of a post worthy of “Wish you were here, gamer edition” if they ever decided to do it. Enjoy!
My weekend getaway to Iceland started a lot like 90% of all internet booked holidays, the information given to me by the company was wrong...The flight number that I was given was nowhere to be seen and there was no flight leaving at the time that mine should have been. This did not put me in the best of moods...I called up the company only to find they out-source their call centre to India...this worsened my mood...Having them call me a liar because the information on their screen was the same as what I had on the info from them tipped me over the edge. After some rather aggressive words and comments like “are you saying that the departure board is wrong and your system is more up-to-date than Gatwick’s?” I hung up and thought I would find a help desk that would have the right information. After a 30 second talk with a guy at the help desk my flight had been located and I was on the move.
I wish I could say checking in was a breeze but they seemed to have an issue with me taking 2 carry on items. Their website clearly stated I could take 1 carry on and 1 laptop bag but the woman decided that I was lying. Luckily, being the geek that I am, I have a smart phone so managed to get their website up on my phone to prove this woman wrong once and for all. Looking rather sheepish, she agreed and gave me my ticket.
Next stop, currency conversion. Nice and easy you would think...but turns out Icelandic Korona are quite rare in England and so I almost bought them out of stock. 39,000 Korona (£150aprox) later and a £4 refund because they don’t offer the 0% commission buy back on them and I was set to pass through security and on to duty free
I had around 2 hours to kill before boarding the plane so I thought first things first, let’s get some food. I got in the queue for McDonalds and was in it for about 3 minutes when I realised they were still serving breakfast...this was not good! I took a seat outside Maccy Ds and counted down the minutes to 11am when their real food started being.
A burger or two later, and I was back to being bored shitless but nothing passes airport waiting times like listening to the Glee soundtrack. I slipped it on and twiddled my thumbs. An hour passed and next thing I knew my flight was being called. Jumping into the nearest lift to take me down to the gates I came across a rather angry woman literally yelling at the lift to go down because she missed the massive bright red down button.
A rather brisk 5 minute walk and I was at the gate ready to board. I could see that most people that visit Iceland are either in their 60s+ or young hikers. Needless to say, I am very sure I was the only one going with computer games on the mind!
On announcement of boarding they stressed how only ONE item of hand luggage would be allowed on the plane but luckily for me, the woman checking tickets was too busy making fart noises at a kid in a pram to notice my 2 bags! Argument avoided!
On the plane I decided to have a sleep and dream of the tiny country that awaited me.
I have never had to walk so far in my life at an airport before. Keflavik airport is massive for such a small country. Because of the delays I was half jogging through trying to get out into the open and on the road to lan. Of course, running though an airport and hitting customs first, without any other passengers in sight raises a few eyebrows. I was ordered to one side by a very manly looking customs woman and questioned. It turns out that me coming over to Iceland just to play games and not knowing where I was staying or even the name of the person I am staying with is acceptable in Iceland and I was let go without my bags or orifices being searched.
Looking back at it, I would have rather stayed with the rough customs officer for what awaited for me the other side the arrivals lounge was a horde of Icelandic gamers that had laid a trap for me. After a quick introduction I was whisked to the car park and had a drink thrust into my hand...I’m the adventurous type so after a quick sniff to make sure it wasn’t anything too bad I took a sip. Dear god it was horrible. It tasted like lemonade with no sugar and a shit-tonn of Haribo Sourtastics mashed together. Apparently it was a traditional Icelandic drink but if you ask me it’s used for population control!
After a speedy drive from the airport to the capital it was time to setup, meet more Rastas and get fed. Like all non sand-dwelling countries there was a KFC just down the road. Food I know and love and not overly expensive. I sat down to tuck into my Zinger Tower when I suddenly realised it was on brown bread! Luckily as in all KFCs the bread quality was terrible so it soon dissolved and I was left with a messy pile of chicken, hash brown and sauce which made it more homely.
The timetable for this lan was delayed like all lans, but this time it was a reasonable excuse...As the move to Orange Box was only a few days old at this point none of the servers were up to date and quite a few gamers were still on old versions too. Rather than head to the bar like we would at any normal lan, we sat and played games. It is very weird being at lan and being sober...the drinking age in Iceland is 20 and most gamers are under that so drinking is just banned outright.
After a couple of games I started to get tired but my body was arguing with my brain. It was still dusk outside so I couldn’t work out why I was so tired. I glanced at the clock and saw it was 11:45pm! Then it dawned on me that Iceland doesn’t get dark in the summer. It was very surreal though looking out, knowing the time but it feeling much earlier. Finally though, my first day came to an end. Bed time!
The next day the tournament started and we all had our game faces on. There were 2 Rasta teams at this event. The full Rasta» team and then a Rasta mix team that I was playing for. After a very shaky start that saw us drawn against each other on nuke where I had the triple embarrassment of going 14 rounds as T on -1-14 then finally getting a kill on the last round bringing me to 0-15! Then first round on CT failing a 4 man clutch, believe it or not I dropped 3 of them but then got out-gamed by Furious, and then finally, the team embarrassment of getting thrashed 16-0. Great start! Below are the scores for all of day 1:
RASTA» 5 - 16 !OI
RASTA» 16 - 6 TRY2STOP
RASTA» 16 - 4 KOOLIOS
RASTA» 16 - 0 RASTA.MIX
RASTA.MIX 16 - 5 KOOLIOS
RASTA.MIX 6 - 16 !OI
RASTA.MIX 16 - 1 TRY2STOP
I know you are expecting an epic write up for the rest of this day but sadly, nothing really happened. We were all focused on the games to do anything else and because of the delay we had one and half days worth of games crammed into one day.
Day 3 was the beginning of the end. It was a race to first place and everyone wanted it. Both Rasta teams made it through the groups and were eager for more games. The results were:
Round 1:
HEIMSKI FUGL 10-16 RASTA.MIX
RASTA» 16-10 ANARCHY
Round 2:
YELLOWBIRDS 16-1 RASTA.MIX
!OI 16-6 RASTA»
Round 3:
HEIMSKI FUGL 16-14 RASTA.MIX (eliminated)
RASTA» 16-3 ANARCHY
Quarter Finals:
HEIMSKI FUGL 6-16 RASTA»
Semi Finals
RASTA» 6-16 !OI (eliminated)
This brought us to the end of Gamer with Rasta.mix taking fifth spot, and Rasta» taking a very impressive third!
After all the delays the tournament finished just as the venue was closing, so it was a very swift packing up session before I was whisked off to a hotel where I would spend my final night ready for an early start in the morning to fly home.
The next day I caught a very rickety mini bus from the hotel I was staying at to the airport only to find that my 5am start was wasted. My plane had been struck by lightening in America so there was a 5 hour delay. Like all places abroad, they have no idea how to queue. I had a woman that started off behind me yet someone ended up almost in front of me. With some expert british queuing tacticts in place I managed to:
A) Keep her behind me
B) Get her behind the people that started off infront of me
C) Take a photo of her to place on here because so was the closest thing to a Klingon woman I have ever seen.
See what i mean?
Luckily for me there was somewhere to plug my laptop in at the airport so before I knew it my 5 hours were up and I was on a plane jetting back to England.
Overall I enjoyed my time in Iceland. The lads were 100% Rasta material except for the amount of booze consumed...but what can you do about some backwards law...Had an amazing time, thanks for putting up with my English and unique skill level
Here endth the saga! Congratulations for reading it all. Any corrections you want to pick up on, bite me. Like to see any of you compose something this big!
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| Unknown User | first of all, I feel really sorry for you. though an awesome text so i havent heared that much about the iceland team, so i enjoyed reading this text to get this team better known. third place seems to be really good and hope you had some phenomenally games with your mates there, including jokes and flames. the german rastas will be open to get some nice praccs, but first we have to complete our lineup. but as it seems, mcdonalds breakfast tries to frighten people away all over the world. last time I ate it was in america, where i lied on the street for 7 hours afterwards. oh man, in some mornings, im loving burger king. finally is to say, that when there will be any rastachief comming to germany, youll have to drink our special traditional drink, and not only once. | |||
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 Dude | blanks u legend :D i lol'd | |||
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 biggie | Epic write up blanks mate, really enjoyed reading it!! Sounds like you had an awesome time aswell haha, bring on the next LAN!!!! And kalk, I have no intention on drinking ur traditional drink as it sounds like it will leave me in a very bad way!!!!! Hahaha!! Gwan the Rastas | |||
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| Unknown User | yeah it could leave your body in a very bad way if enjoyed too much | |||
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 Nkayyy | awesome read up. this was your importan work yersterday ! :D This text let me thinking about my first lan and about future . Some passages are so amusing, i enjoyed reading ! But where are you on the photo ? ;) @ biggie i see you ve never heart about our traditional drink ?! :D | |||
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 foolio | sorry to hear about ur loss mate and glad u had a good time out there, all the pictures ive seen of iceland are pretty amazing tbh. | |||
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| biggie | tell me what it is nkayy and ill tell u if i know it haha | |||
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| Arky | i love you blanks. That is one of the best right ups ive read. Real nice insight into ur time there. Makes me jealous that i didnt go. :( | |||
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 diaz | really nice article! loved reading it! hopefully Rasta will be able to make a whole team from foreign players on next gamer looking forward to see you all -diaz | |||
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| capping | Glad you enjoyed your stay here, too bad I couldnt come meet you and a very nice read aswell :) | |||
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| Unknown User | omg!!! german speciality revealed BUSTED ON FESTIVAL!! http://www.ahgz.de/news/pages/pics/show/44084-org.jpg | |||
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| foolio | that icecream has gone bad. | |||
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