The Javu

It’s almost Christmas. So what about a Christmas story?

A strange one of course. The picture about this Christmas story was taken in June. Not the most Christmassy of times. And we are back in Iceland.

But once more, sorry, I’m not showing the amazing natural beauties of the country (I will do it soon, promise) but a hotel. And I didn’t even sleep there. I’m a budget traveller and I save money on accommodation. Do you remember the other post about Iceland? I think you do, it’s among the most popular I ever wrote.

This hotel is one of the most important things I saw in Iceland. But we need a flashback.

Back in the past, I used to gift all my friends with an amazing Christmas present: a short story. Those stories were written in Italian, my mother tongue, every December, and sent via email on Christmas day. They had two rules to abide.

First, they were set on Christmas day, but with the topic having little or nothing to do with Christmas. A bit like Die Hard.

Second, they were set in a place where I have never been before. I thought it would help me to keep everything more fictional. Every year I chose a place unknown to me: Thailand, Northern Finland, New Zealand, Iceland.

I wrote the story about Iceland in December 2012. It was a thriller, set in the long dark Arctic Christmas with characters coming back from some previous stories. The title was “The Javu” (a sort of wordplay with the concept of Déjà vu) and I needed a hotel in an isolated place. So I looked at the Map, did some research online and chose the city of Akureyri, the second largest in Iceland after Reykjavik and surroundings, with its astonishing 18,000 inhabitants. And among all the hotels there, I chose the Hotel Akureyri.

Then the unexpected happened. The following summer, I actually ended up travelling in Iceland. And when I planned the trip, among geysers and volcanoes and glaciers and waterfalls, I listed the Hotel Akureyri as a place to see.

And I did it. Early in the morning of a June day, I visited the hotel and told the long story of how I chose it as a setting for a piece that surely would be famous one day. The staff was very entertained, they offered me to see the hall and I even snatched some breakfast. Plus, I got the chance of taking a picture of myself, proudly standing in front of the Hotel Akureyri.

To be honest, the interior of the Hotel was completely different from how I pictured it. It was not somber enough for a thriller. But maybe in winter would have been different.

All this happened again when I went to travel in New Zealand, where I set the story from 2014, called “Il mondo fuori” (the world outside).

Once more as soon as I landed instead of Lord of the Ring filming areas and strange animals and fjords, I went to visit a small house in a specific address of Mount Eden, a residential suburb of Auckland where no tourist before me ever went I suppose. The main character of my story lived there: Tama Heke, a Maori man with Agoraphobia.

But Tama wasn’t there. In real life, the house was dwelled by an East Asian lady in her sixties with no fear of open spaces. Perhaps with some fear of a backpacker walking in the courtyard and taking pictures of her house. I rang the bell to tell her the amazing story but she was less welcoming than the Hotel Akureyri staff.

Tama Heke would have offered me a coffee for sure.

Ps: One day I will translate my stories into English, I promise. If you understand Italian and want to read them, you can send me a message.