I Came for a Hot Dog. I Got Geopolitics.

The day I landed, Iceland was voting on whether to resume negotiations with the European Union. Any eventual membership agreement would then face another public vote.

I met this particular moment in European history standing in line at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, the hot dog stand where Bill Clinton once ordered the same thing.

Learning Icelandic has started to change what I hear around me. Fyrirgefðu. Vinsamlegast. Hérna. Sorry. Please. Here. Words I have been practicing are turning up in conversations I am not part of, and I am starting to understand them as they happen.

In line, an Icelander was telling his friends he had just voted, pointing toward the old harbour. He noticed me listening and asked how long I had been in Iceland.

I told him I had just arrived.

He and his friends were fascinated that I was learning Icelandic. Why did I want to learn? The conversation went everywhere. One of them was a cyclist, so naturally I showed him my cycling stats. We went from language to bikes to the decision unfolding around us.

Then he asked what I thought. Should Iceland join the EU?

That was a much bigger question than it sounded.

I am a visitor. I do not live here. I am fascinated by Iceland’s culture, music and landscapes, and I am putting real effort into the language. None of that makes the country’s future mine to decide.

I told him the choice belonged to the Icelandic people.

He seemed surprised. Then he handed me a Já pin.

I had come for a hot dog. I got canvassed.

I have followed world politics for decades. I earned my European history degree in 2015 and was accepted into graduate school for it in 2016, when America was experiencing what we might politely call difficulties.

Studying history gives you a longer view of how things became the way they are. Sometimes that is useful. Sometimes it just means understanding exactly why something worries you. I already thought America was broken before Donald Trump took office. I do not need the laundry list.

Now I was watching another country weigh its future, with my president’s erratic behaviour forming part of the political backdrop. It is a strange thing to travel abroad and find American politics sitting inside someone else’s conversation about where their country belongs.

When the result came, the answer was Nei. Iceland had voted against resuming negotiations.

The next day, walking to a café, I picked up anger about the result around me. That was my read of the room, and I was very conscious of being American.

My thoughts went back to 2016 and the vote Americans have spent the past decade living with. I recognised the feeling of a result arriving while its consequences are only beginning.

I do not have answers for America or Iceland. How do we deal with the consequences of Donald Trump? How does Iceland navigate a Europe being reshaped partly by the same forces?

I doubt those questions get answered this week.

That was a lot to carry out of a hot dog line.