Monthly Archives: April 2009
Approachability
I must look like a friendly person. I get approached and asked for directions all the time. Despite the fact that a lot of the time I’m gawking like a tourist or have a camera around my neck. People swerve to the side of the road to talk to me in some foreign tongue. When I ask them to repeat in English they do and I usually have to inform them that I have no clue.
Just tonight in about a half hour I got approached by two people who asked me if I knew the way. One asked me in thickly accented English if I knew where the cinema was and so I pulled out my map and started looking around for it. He thanked me but said he’d rather just ask someone who knew where it was. Where’s the fun in that?
The next person who came up to me asked if I knew the way to eternal life. He was a Scottish Mormon. I didn’t know they existed. This is the second time in a foreign city that I’ve been approached by a missioning Mormon – the first being a kid from Utah missioning in Vilnius – and asked about my opinions on the meaning of life and everything. Maybe I just look like I know what I’m doing and they want to know my secrets.
You’d think that people would know better. I’ve usually got a beard, shaggy hair and am dressed like someone who buys his clothes in some kind of American thrift store or something. And yet Europeans still ask me if I know how to get to the movies and to Heaven. Go figure.
Oslo
Norway has quite a beautiful countryside. Rolling hills mingle with flat areas and farms abut forests. Oslo is a city of some 600,000 to 800,000 people, 25 percent of whom were not born here. Oslo is very multicultural, as I discovered trying to communicate with the bus driver who was of Japanese origin. During the 40 minute ride from the airport to the city I took in the scenery.
Today was gorgeous, created specially for the weekend by the Norse travel bureau for filming, I’m sure. Silky white wisps adorned the pale blue sky and though the sun blazed the temperature was in the upper seventies. It seemed the majority of the citizens had been drawn to the Karl Johans Gate street and the waterfront area along the Rådhusgata. Stairs became benches and the grassy park areas were picnicked upon.
And I have now decided that Norway has stolen the title of the most beautiful women in Europe. In Poland I observed that about one in every 10 women 18-30 could be a model, and that one in 100 would leave you dumbstruck. From what I’ve seen here today I’d have to say that about the same percentage could be models, but it seems that even the ones I wouldn’t consider model-worthy are more attractive than those in Poland. And the occurrence of being dumbstruck is more common here.
But Norway isn’t all good things. In the early 1900s the government changed the name of it’s capital from Christiania to Oslo. Roald Dahl said it was a shame and he didn’t know why it was done. I think it started as a snide remark about the service in restaurants. O so slow. You get better service in Hell (also a city in Norway). I believe the custom must be to stalk your waiter and club them to get their attention. I’ve left two restaurants today after not being approached within fifteen minutes of sitting down. I finally did eat in a restaurant but had to practically throw myself in the path of the waitress to get a menu. After that I was attended to normally.
And Norwegians are quite pushy in a bar. They don’t try to squeeze through or tap people, they just walk forward chest first slamming into whoever is on their way, not caring if they spill beers or give you whiplash. It would be annoying except that the women do this too, which is fairly pleasant actually.
German White Asparagus
It’s in season here now and is only fresh for only a month to 5 weeks so Germans eat it by the kartful. It is much larger than the green variety and is quite tasty but has the same effects as it’s green cousin, namely the overdose of smelly vitamins you excrete later on. Try it with schnitzel, ham or salmon. Gutten apetit!
meanderingwoods 