Liquid (gas, currency, and water)

Two quick train of consciousness issues, as I'm really not all that interested in the financial situation of EATCS.

I was stunned when I saw that diesel was 192 ISK (Iceland kronur) - I had the rough translation in my head of 75 ISK to 1 USD, and that meant diesel was under $3. Then I remembered I was outside of America, where liquid is measured in liters. Some quick Google conversions say that this translates to about $9.50 a gallon. Of course, Diet Coke is about $2.25 per liter, so that's a similar scale of price increases. The ISK has fallen in value against dollars and euros, a good bit in the last year, so that's good (for me). They just mentioned this fact in the business meeting, actually.

Taking a hot shower smells like hell - literally. Brimstone. Everything in Iceland is either permafrost or volcano or somewhere in between, and Reykjavik is somewhere in between, so if you drill down a bit you get volcano. If you pump water down to volcano and then pump it back up, you get plentiful, environmentally friendly, egg-smelling hot water. I was worried that the water would taste like sulphur too, which kept me away from the tap for a day or two, but that water tastes fine (great, actually), so either they have parallel systems or they keep the hot and cold water apart well.