Life on the NATO Base in Iceland during the ’90s – Interview with Mike Dell: Ep. 61

This week I am sharing the lovely chat I had with Mike Dell. He is a former U.S. Air Force officer that was stationed in Iceland during the 1990s. We talked about what it was like for him to live in Iceland as a military officer, how he was treated by Icelanders, what he enjoyed about the country and more. Similar to my last episode, I was connected with Mike in a rather unusual way.

I use the service Blubrry to host my podcast and when I made the switch from the url fromforeigntofamiliar.com to allthingsiceland.com, I had to reset up my podcast rss feed so that Apple Podcast, Google podcasts and all the rest of the places that play my show will get the new episodes that are being published on allthingsiceland.com.

Well, I ran into some issues doing it myself and I reached out to Blubrry for help. Dave and Mike, both work for Blubrry in their customer service department, were extremely helpful. While I was talking to Mike Dell via Zoom he asked me about my podcast. When I told him that I talked about Iceland he was delighted to share that he had lived in Iceland while he served in the Air Force. Of course, this totally piqued my interest. It was fascinating to hear what it was like for him to be in the country as a military officer and what he thought of Iceland.

Not Sponsored by Blubrry 🙂

For the record, I am not sponsored by Blubrry and I happily pay fully for their services because they do a great job. If the show is ever sponsored by a company in the future, I will make that crystal clear. Lastly, the cool thing is that Mike is one of the hosts of Podcast Insider, which is Blubrry’s podcast and he interviewed me for their last episode. We talk about why I started the podcast, why I moved to Iceland, what equipment I use, which to be honest, I am a minimalist, but that is what works for me, and which of my own interviews I like the most. Here is a link to the Podcast Insider interview where I am featured.

Questions I asked Mike Dell during our Chat:

1. What was it like living in Iceland as part of the U.S. military?
2. What was it like interacting with Icelanders? Were they friendly, hostile, reserved or a mix of all of those?
3. When you did interact with Icelanders, did you notice any interesting habits that were unfamiliar to you?
4. In a separate conversation, you mentioned that you like the Icelandic hotdog (pylsa). What about the hotdog appealed to you?
5. Did you try any of the traditional Icelandic food?
6. Did you travel to other parts of Iceland? Do you have a favorite place that you visited?
7. Did you learn any Icelandic while you were here?
8. What are your fondest memories of Iceland?

I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of the All Things Iceland podcast. If so, please make sure to leave a review on whichever platform you are listening to this show on, and share it with someone who you think will find this episode interesting.

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Þakka þér kærlega fyrir að hlusta (og að lesa) og sjáumst fljótlega

Thank you kindly for listening (and reading) and see you soon!