Exactly three guys sit at the bar. Two to the right, one to the left. The left one being the husband of the barkeeper. In between two infidels – this being us, Hrefna and Tobias. We are in Bagdad.

Travelling was boring in California, so we thought: let’s go to where the action is, let’s take our truck to the Bagdad desert.

We arrived in the late afternoon after a long drive through the desert and after we took pictures of every single cactus we came along. No surprise that we were thirsty. And we found the one bar, where the local muezzin did not watch that closely whether alcohol was drunk on not. It was called “Cantina”.

The Bagdad citizens were welcoming us warmly. They inquirde where we came from and within no time we became friends, or even better: drinking buddies. Inscha' Allah. 

Terry, a nice guy, invited us for the next round and after this we slightly got drunk due to two reasons: 1) A birthday party was about to happen at 9pm, but it was only 5:30pm so we had to bridge some time and 2) Sean and Neal decided that we were not going to pay for any other drink that night. This however meant not that we did not drink anymore.

More and more people joint us. And they all seemed to like us. Maybe because we were not Americans. Maybe because they liked the Land-Cruiser. Maybe because of the sexy Islamic, ooups, Icelandic girl with me. There was Karaoke, there was Neal giving us a copy of his newest CD and there were many Bagdad folks who were just great to talk and drink with. We had fun, we smoked a cigar and at midnight some inner voice told me that this would be the moment to leave if I still wanted to be able to climb into the roof-tent.

Hrefna was sort of not too happy to leave due to all the charming fellows in Bagdad (see picture) but I was already on my way out to the fresh desert air. But something was in between the direct way to bed and me myself. A Chevrolet Corvette, silver and topless. And there was the owner, Mr. Cool himself. He offered me a ride and suddenly I forgot that I actually was tired and a slight little bit, arrhm, alcoholised. We raced into the desert and I realized that this car is cool. There is a lot of plastic, sure, but the noise it makes is wonderful, and the suspension, even though it’s still having coach springs, is much better than one would think. After some two minutes and 500 kilometres, Mr. Cool told me that I would be in the driving seat now. I argued that since I had more than half a beer this would not be a good idea but quickly I had to give in to his strong arguments. IT IS A COOL CAR. And a fast one, too.

We made it back safely and Hrefna was still there. After a short ride up to our camping side (this time the parking space of a abandoned motel) I thought it was about time to strike back: let’s loose off our fireworks. We don’t have any pictures of this great event since I probably aimed at the wrong direction when trying to take a picture.

When waking up the next morning in our sleeping bags this was proof enough that we somehow must have made it up and into our roof-tent.