Iceland calling

Inga was the second person I met in Glasgow (the first one was my flatmate) and the only one from Iceland. She had never seen an underground railway before, but in the first few weeks she exclusively journeyed by taxi because it was so cheap compared to Iceland – as almost everything else. Well, Glasgow underground isn’t very impressive, it’s just one single line going round and round in a circle. And I got very wet at least twice a day riding the second-hand bike I had bought for £20 – luckily it was stolen soon.
Even then, Inga knew much more about Scottish literature than I ever will, she later wrote her Ph.D. thesis on Robin Jenkins (by whom I’ve read only a single novel), and she could do something I won’t achieve in my whole life: a proper Scottish accent (only after a few glasses of whisky, though).
Inga once told me the story about the old Icelandic telephone system which I find so amazing I’ll never forget it, even if I get very old. The system worked like this: A whole village was connected by one single telephone line, so theoretically, everybody could talk to everybody else at the same time. Each household had its own call sign, so you knew when a call was for you – but you never knew if anybody was listening to your conversation. So you better refrained from making nasty remarks about your neighbours or telling secrets about yourself. The telephone was rather a means of public information than a private communication instrument. When it was going to be replaced by a ‘normal’ telephone system, people feared they wouldn’t be up-to-date on anything important any more. And this wasn’t the 19th century, it was the 1960s or 70s.
Meanwhile, in Iceland like everywhere else, the protection of privacy is a larger problem than the lack of information. – Inga, correct me if I got it wrong.