Parliament Delight?
- Vefstjóri Þórsgarður
- Nov 19, 2014
- 2 min read
When you decided to visit Reykjavik, you probably didn´t have a visit to the Icelandic Parliament anywhere close to the top of your to-do list, right? That´s a rhetorical question. Of course you didn´t! However, if you are sitting in your room on a weekday afternoon that is not Friday, and you have 15 minutes to spare for something not everyone does, you could do a lot worse than checking out how a parliament in a state with only 320.000 inhabitants works.
First thing´s first. No selfies! In fact, no photograpy of any kind so nobody will ever have proof that you were there. If that doesn´t knock your interest, then let´s do this! The parliament is in session four days a week. Mondays from 3pm, Tuesdays from 1:30pm, Wednesdays from 3pm and Thursdays from 10:30am. If you are not sure what time or day it is and you are reading this in your room right now, check the live feed online and see if you´re in luck. Press here to check :)
So, if you are in, just take a left out of the hotel and walk 5 seconds to the "brick" building and stand outside the door. Security will either talk to you through the speakers or open the doors immediately. You leave your jacket and phone etc. with them and off you go. You go to the 3rd floor and for the first time in your life, you can look down on politicians speaking a weird language with varying degrees of stress in their tone. Questions such as how can we ensure the poor banksters get their girlfriends a fur coat this year or how can we sell our natural water springs to Nestlé are unlikely to be discussed during your visit but hey, you don´t know that. Fill in the gaps.
Like we said, it´s a nice building with tiny room that should fill 63 parliamentarians but only about 5% of that are every present, but they have the live tv and radio feed throughout the house so you can be sure they are listening to every word so they keep informed......yeah right. You can do a lot worse with 15 minutes of your time. Candy Crush to name one :)
Gotta love democracy!
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