I don’t have a single Bjork song in my Spotify playlists. The closest I have to Icelandic music is Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. I don’t even know where Iceland is located, but I reckon it’s somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
And to this day, I wonder why the Volkswagen press office chose to introduce its Mk 6 Golf on a volcanic island covered with glaciers, and with a lot more sheep than humans.
Each household there has an average of 2.4 cars. Those vehicles, by the way, don’t compete with the national grid for expensive fossil fuel, because nearly 100 percent of Iceland’s domestic energy needs are met by its hydroelectric and geothermal power stations, powered by the inexhaustible and regenerative heat from the magma just a few kilometres below the country’s desolate landscape. There are thermal spas aplenty, dramatic waterfalls and hot geysers.
This jet-lagged journo had a great baby-lobster meal in a homely little restaurant facing the mighty North Atlantic Ocean.
Memorable, too, was the whole logistical exercise of Volkswagen’s Mk 6 Golf press presentation in Iceland. They built an elaborate pavilion headquarters out of basalt nothingness. They kept Icelandair busy by flying in/out hundreds of automotive writers back-to-back over a few weeks. They shipped over a fleet of brand new Golf test cars, and seemingly the same number of Phaetons to transport the journalists.
Best of all, the limousines came equipped with chauffeurs who look like part-time Hugo Boss models. And all the “imported” front-line staff were at least of Miss Germany quarter-finals standard, which was more than could be said for the local Icelandic girls, who all look like derivatives of Bjork.
It was fun playing Golf in Iceland.
