Found love in an old power station

During a heat wave in East Iceland in May, in a temperature of fifteen degrees, a the journalist drove from Borgarfjörður east to Egilsstaðir. The mountains are high and majestic and the heath is wide and nowhere more perfect to enjoy music and the view of the scenery under the clear blue sky. A green shed by the roadside caught the attention of the journalist, beside which a small yellow pick-up table surrounded by a green lattice was placed. A car stalled on the roadside, and one woman was looking around. In the middle of the day, I was hardly expecting to encounter something that looked at first like the smallest coffee shop in the world but turned out to be a solar powered coca cola vending machine. I hit the brakes and turned around to investigate, encountering the German citizen Barbara, who knew everything about the vending machine. The reporter’s curiosity for the vending machine soon gave way to the woman herself, as it turned out she had a story to tell. This is how it happened that two strange women sitting alone together on top of the heath, one telling he other about her life.

Broke into tears in Iceland

Barbara is from München, Germany, and lived there for the most part. She worked as a flight engineer for Lufthansa, but when she was in her middle age, her life became increasingly complicated.

“You might say I was in a midlife crisis. The idea hit me, almost in the middle of the night, that I had to travel here and look around. At the time, I was living with a partner and we booked a trip around Iceland. I loved the land and felt that it was the home to my soul. At one point, I burst into tears and my mate looked at me in amazement, but I could not explain why I was crying like that. It felt like a volcanic eruption; I felt a deep sense of belonging and knew that I had to live here. I told him, 'I don't think I'll ever leave this island; I will never go home again,'" Barbara says, but mentions that of course she went home after the two-week trip.

“The feeling I had felt in Iceland was so strong that it didn’t leave me for the next four years. It took me these years to find a way to break out of my old life and come here. I had no idea how to go about this, having worked 28 years as an engineer for Lufthansa, a very successful company.”

I ended my relationship and resigned, and just then I found my dream apartment in München. For the next two years, I came here often, in all seasons, to see what it would be like to be here in winter. Then I sold my good old Mercedes and bought an old SUV and brought it to Iceland in 2015,” Barbara says, claiming that she knew that if she didn’t take this step, she would regret it for the rest of her life.

I have nothing better to do!

After a few years wandering the country where Barbara worked for a while, she found herself unemployed in Iceland. She thought to herself that this was not going to work: she was over fifty years old, unemployed in Iceland, and should just get back home to Germany.

“I planned the return trip and booked on the ferry with the car from Seyðisfjörður, but I had to stop at one farm where I had a bit of stuff. There were only a few days left when I met Jónas Benediktsson from Ljósaland, near the Fjord of Fáskrúðsfjörður. I had only met him before, but I didn’t know him much. He had previously bought Ljósaland, an old power station, from which Fáskrúðsfjörður’s once got all its electricity.  He wanted to get the station back up and running, and since I’m an electrical engineer, he asked me to look at this. We went to the power station and I immediately told him that the power station could not be restored. But he had also bought a good house and was considering opening a guest house there. After four hours of endless coffee and cake, he suggested that I operate a hotel there. I thought to myself,‘ Why not?’ I have nothing better to do!" she says, laughing.

“I told him I would go over the winter to Germany, but then I came back in mid-April 2017. We did everything and got the house in order and opened in July of that same year. There’s always the same question in tourism everywhere; where are the staff to live? Jonah offered me a small room in the house, but we soon found out that we were very good together and before long we became a couple,” says Barbara.

Painting watercolors and selling

After they stopped the welcoming of tourists in the house, Barbara began to feel bored and knew she needed something to do.

“I started painting and took a few courses in watercolor painting. I started writing, too, as I had to have something to do over long winters,” she says.

Now Barbara paints watercolors of nature and birds, which she has printed on cards sold around the world. She was on her way from Fáskrúðsfjörður to Borgarfjörður in the east with a map when she came across the journalist on top of a heath.

“The tourists buy my cards and I sold 400 of them last year,” she says, also selling her cards at the Gallery of Kolfreyja, where she works as well as the others who exhibit there, but the gallery opens in summer. She is also a member of the management team, and she will be exhibiting her work there from July 1-9th.