Yesterday's Sketchbook

[tealin]

Page One - On Sunday I listened to 'Fat Man on a Bicycle' (a segment I'd recorded off Saturday Night Fry when it was on BBC7) and felt a lot better. What follows are bits and pieces for a Statement.
Page Two - More bits.

Seeing V again tonight, this time with a friend from school. How many times will I need to refresh my memory, I wonder, before enough of it sticks?

Comments

Re: Brill

[thefordmustang.livejournal.com]

God dag og takk for svaret! Takk også for bilderne! (My Norwegian is not the best, sorry about that! I can read it, just not speak or write it well)

Those images of Arendal were nice! That small but loud comment was hilarious, too! :-) Yes, I have heard of the Great City of the South. How far are you from Drobakken? Actually, we did have a Norwegian here at work (she was from from Lillehamar)She moved back to Norway and now works as an Icelandair Sales Executive in Oslo. She lives in Drøbak and commutes to Oslo. I hope to be visiting her soon for some hiking.

Thanks for the invitation to read your journal. I will certainly do that and leave some comments from time to time.

Nice to meet you!

Re: Brill

[veronikamg.livejournal.com]

Nice meeting you too.

If my knowledge of geography is right, Drøbakk is about five hours from here. On that Google pic site there should be a map showing southern Norway with Arendal, Kristiansand and Oslo. Drøbakk is pretty close to Oslo.

How cool that you understand some Norwegian, as it must be one of the most obscure languages out there. Ha en fin dag!

Re: Brill

[thefordmustang.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the answer and the geography lesson.

Norwegian is actually a very, very cool and cool sounding language to me! I wish more people could learn it since it would not be hard for native English speakers to learn. I speak Icelandic so that helps me with knowing Norwegian (plus trying to learn it to impress a Norwegian guy I had a crush on - it does not work unless you also look like a supermodel :-))

Takk og bless!

Re: Brill

[veronikamg.livejournal.com]

Norwegian guys: Blech! (Not all of them, but those who are blech are very much so.)

Re: Brill

[thefordmustang.livejournal.com]

Yes, I would be inclined to agree with you there on the Nordic guys who are blech (though we have lots of blechers in the USA, too). I did find, overall, that Norwegian guys have been the nicest and most genuine of all the Scandinavian guys that I have met. (Though maybe since I work in special interest tourism I have a different experience and the men who work in this industry tend to be more open minded, down to earth and kind hearted than most guys would be).

The guy I knew was one studying in part of America where there were not a lot of Scandinavian guys so he got spoiled pretty quickly by flirty U.S. women to the point where he could pick and choose and, logically, chose the best of the best. In his favor, I would say that he did actually become very down to earth and even a bit of a social activitst (yea!), though he still always had drop dead gorgeous girlfriends. Ironically, I wound up doing tourism business with one of his relatives many years later at a conference in Oslo, so I heard about what happened to him. It was nice to hear that once he moved back to Norway he became even more down to earth and actually became a pretty interesting guy and a nice family man. Just being in America he got to be a bit of a superstar.

I do work with a lot of Norwegian guys in the tourism industry these days (and also a lot of Norwegian ladies, too) and most of them are really nice people who are very much down to earth family guys very proud of their wives and kids- I always like hearing about their families, too and often have met them when they come to the USA or I wind up in Norway. Perhaps, though, as I wrote before, a certain type of person is attracted work in Scandinavian tourism and so we tend to be more down to earth and nature oriented and family oriented overall. So you know, for Americans, Scandinavia (and Norway and Iceland especially) are considered ecotourism destinations- places that are very special for the nature and culture and people. It is expensive to go there but the idea is you also get a very nice experience so it is worth the high price and you want to help support the nature and culture. It also means that those of us who work in tourism want to show a more authentic and local side of places like Norway and Iceland.

Icelandic guys are really blech! The problem there is that so many women have moved to places like Reykjavík for the mostly service profession jobs there that there are literally 3 girls for every guy. That has made so many Icelandic men very, very arrogant toward women beacuse so many very beautiful women are competing for guys who have developed now a very cavalier attitude toward women. Ironically, in the countryside there are more men than women because the guys stay to work on the farms so there are a lot of nice bachelors who have no chance to meet a girl because all the women are in Reykjavík fighting each other to be with an arrogant, not so nice guy. Go figure.