There's been a lot of chatter in the news lately about the "fall of Iceland". I think that nearly anyone who has visited there has been saddened by the news. My best wishes to our friends overseas.

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It was December of 1999, and the Millennium New Year was looming before us like a big blade at the end of a conveyor. It was clear to many of us: the world was going to come to an end in some grisly fashion at the stroke of midnight on the 31st (time zone to be determined). Every conversation was rife with speculation. Perhaps men brilliant enough to split the atom lacked the foresight to tack two extra digits to the counters on their missile launch systems, dooming us all to nuclear annihilation. Others had it in their head that Jesus was going to make another appearance and beam his favorite people up to heaven where they could play with their dead pets, while the rest of us were left to fend off fiery demons on earth (rude). To quote the late Pope John Paul the Second: "There's just no two buts about it: some crazy shit is going to go down on this muthafuckah." So, a few days after Christmas, I hopped a plane to Reykjavik with a handful of my buddies to ride out the Apocalypse at the edge of the world.

One of my best friends at the time was an Icelandic house music DJ and composer named Holmar -- one of the funniest people I've ever met. Holmar loved to speak about his homeland, and when he did he would paint a picture of it that belonged in a storybook for small children on psychedelics. According to Holmar, Iceland is a place where magic mushrooms grow wild on highway mediums -- kids could just wander down the street and pop them in their mouths on their way to school, tripping their way through class. A place where every now and then polar bears would drift over on icebergs from Greenland and run amuck across the countryside, gobbling up people's dogs and cats. Where 90% of the population lives in one city. That Iceland had a 100% literacy rate, the highest number of artists and writers per capita, and as their ancestors were vikings who kidnapped most of them from Britain and Scandinavia: it was home to the most beautiful women on the face of the Earth.

Could such a place really exist?

I remember being over at Holmar's apartment and seeing an envelope with his sister's name on it. Holmar's last name is Filipsson, but his sister's last name was written Filipssdottir. He explained that in Iceland, a person's last name was their father's first name with "son" or "dottir" tacked to the end. I had to ask: "So, if everyone in Iceland has a different last name, how do you know you're not fucking your cousin?" "Drew," he said, "there are only 300,000 people in Iceland. We are all fucking our cousins."

Getting off the plane in Reykjavik, I would never have guessed it. The people were unbelievably gorgeous. Let me tell you: no matter how good looking you think you are: chances are you're the ugliest person in Iceland. I had known this to be true for some time. Every single one of Holmar's Icelandic friends that I'd met in New York were good-looking, incredibly artistic, and partied like rock stars. They were all extremely nice, and as soon as you'd meet them they'd embrace you like an old friend.

On this trip, however, we found most of Iceland to be in a very bad mood. We weren't the only foreigners in town that week, it seemed. The streets of Reykjavik were overrun with people from all over the globe, flooding the bars and restaurants, and their welcome was wearing extremely thin. No one seemed happy to see us, and many of the folks we encountered were downright belligerent.

Most of the animosity from the locals seemed to be focussed on my buddy Al like a laser. Al is one of the sweetest dudes on the planet, but he has a unique sense of style that people notice right off the bat. Al is sort of the Accidental Hipster. He looks like he's from the future: rail-thin with a shaved head and spectacles, and while we were there he sported a long puffy winter coat that looked downright womanly. We weren't out of the cab two minutes when a carload of kids rolled by screaming "Faggot!" at him. In English, no less.

This was not an infrequent occurrence on our trip. I befriended some rough-looking local fisherman at a bar that afternoon. They were raucous but welcoming, and we hoisted a ton of pints together, sharing dirty jokes and learning local songs. At one point, however, a dude put his arm around my neck and said "I like you, Drew. You're a good guy. But is this guy your friend?" He pointed at Al, two seats away. "Yeah," I said. "Well, it's a good thing, because if he wasn't we would kick the shit out of him." I put my drink down and we scrambled out of there.

During the day on New Year's Eve, we fled Reykjavik and took a tour bus to the countryside. Our moods were downright rotten because of our previous encounters, and no one was excited about returning for the celebration. The negativity quickly melted away once we left the city limits. Iceland was breathtaking. We visited inactive volcanos. Frozen waterfalls. Geysers in the middle of nowhere. We passed fields of cows that looked alien, with long hair like Snuffleupagus. It was a four hour trip that I wish could have lasted for days.

We returned to the city that evening not knowing where we should go. Holmar had invited me to a giant party at Bjork's house, but I was only allowed to bring two friends with me and I wasn't about to play Sofie's choice with all of my travel buddies, so we wandered the streets looking for something to do.

We were outside a bar having a smoke, when a random Icelandic kid chatted us up. He could see that were were having a bad time in his country and was determined to show us that our encounters with the local bigots were just flukes. "You will come and spend the evening with my family," he said. Most of us were pretty skeptical. We're New Yorkers, and it's not very often that a total stranger invites a group of ten foreigners back to hang with their family. But what did we have to lose at that point? We hopped into some cabs and drove up to the hills overlooking the city.

His family's house was nothing less than a palace on stilts, with the most perfect view of the city we could have hoped for. We were a bunch of freakish Americans, with piercings and weird haircuts and everyone at his parent's house were decked out in suits. They were just unbelievably hospitable. A bottle of champagne was put in each of our hands and we were introduced around the party like celebrities. This was the welcome we so sorely needed.

As the countdown to the New Year approached, we all gathered on to the large balcony overlooking Reykjavik. Our new friend patted me on the back. "Now you see how Iceland celebrates," he said.

At the stroke of midnight, from every single back yard in the city for as far as the eye could see, rockets shot into the air, choking the cleanest air on earth. I have never seen so many fireworks go off at once. In one blinding minute the entire sky over iceland exploded into a million plumes of light. The partygoers hooked their legs into the balcony railings, standing tall and showering us with champagne, just ROARING in celebration. These people looked mighty. These people were vikings.

The world, it didn't end then either.