Letters-head: The January Issue’s Letter Page

Say your piece, voice your opinion, send your letters to: letters@grapevine.is.

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This issue’s most awesome letter!

Hello My name is Julian Fox and I am 12 years old, in the 6th grade. I live on Cape Cod in the state of Massachusetts.

I am looking to find a Pen Pal to share about our lives in different countries. We could share music, art and other interests via e-mail and regular mail. Do you know of anyone who might like to do this? At the end of April I will be visiting Iceland with my mother for one week during spring break vacation. I would like to learn more about Iceland before we go and maybe I could meet with that Pen Pal when we visit. My email address is: [REDACTED—write to letters@grapevine.is if you wish to become Julian’s pen pal]
And my home address is: [REDACTED—again, write to letters@grapevine.is if you wish to become Julian’s pen pal] Thank you so much and if you can let me know that would be great!

Hi Julian,

You sound really nice. What a nice kid you are. Not like those rotten millenials. Nope. You represent a new breed of human, a brand new generation. Exciting times, we’re living in! Generation Nice, we’ll call you guys.

Anyway, good idea you had, getting a pen pal. Turns out Generation Nice is also Generation Smart! Pen pals are great, you know, because unlike real, physical pals, pen pals can’t steal your stuff. The only things they can take from you are intangible, useless and boring—like your hopes, dreams and innocence. Nobody cares about that stuff, it will only get in the way of your career advancement when you eventually grow up. So, yes! Great idea! We applaud you!

Sincerely: Good luck finding a pen pal, young man. We hope you learn a lot and have a great time when you make it to Iceland. We’d write to you ourselves, but since you want to meet up when you arrive here, we figure it’s better if we keep our distance, so as not to disappoint you. Adulthood is hard on both body and soul, but it doesn’t even come close to what working at the Grapevine will do to you. From the bottom of our long-since putrified hearts and the shrunken core of our grey, shriveled souls, we urge you: keep clear! Stay away!

Also, we get way too many effing letters as is.

Stay cool,

– Your Friends At The Reykjavík Grapevine

(PS—you get a prize for being an exemplary member of Generation Nice: A cool Grapevine t-shirt that will surely serve to impress all of your friends back in Cape Cod. Just drop us a line to claim it.)

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Hæ, I live in Akranes and although I drive I sometimes have to look at the bus schedule for friends. I have been shocked to see that the website bus.is only has storm warnings or information regarding buses that are cancelled due to bad weather on their Icelandic page and not on the English page. This means that immigrants and tourists are not getting vital information and often are waiting at bus stops in drastic weather as according to the English page everything seems fine.

I’ve sometimes had to rescue such folk and put them up in my home until the bus service resumed. I’ve written to the bus company several times about this problem but they have not even acknowledged my emails. Considering that we are expecting a great storm today, I wonder if Grapevine would get better results from Stræto? Can you please ask them why they don’t have warnings about buses that are cancelled due to the weather on their English page? I’m sure it is just an oversight, not that they are deliberately trying to have tourists die of exposure.

LoVe, Pauline

Hey Pauline, thanks for writing, and for placing your trust in us. We will make a modicum of effort to not let you down too hard.

Anyway. Yes. We agree. This is no good, it’s a case of bad—or at least extremely sloppy—organization.

Hopefully things will get sorted out at Strætó at some point, although we must note that they are traditionally rather hard to get a hold of in general—heck, a teenage girl with severe developmental disabilities went missing for seven hours in one of their vans last year. Yup, that’s an actual thing that happened. But they’ve been getting better lately, we hear.

While you await word from Strætó’s Director of Public Relations, here’s a great tip for how you can check the weather: take a look outside. YOU’RE WELCOME. #lifehack #wow

Best regards,

-Your Friends At The Reykjavík Grapevine