Tap on a tube

I did something pretty silly at work today. A real Norway´s Funniest Home Videos moment. Ok, so at the bakery I work at, at the sink we have, what I like to call, a "tap on a tube". Just like a garden hose really. The handle sticks up out of the sink top, and when you lift it up, the tubing follows it. It´s quite a clever system, thats linked in with the normal tap on the sink. You turn the normal tap on, then squeeze the handle of the tap-on-a-tube and so the water gets diverted and comes out there instead. Well, you see, what I did was this. I turned the normal tap on, then went to pick up the tap-on-a-tube. But this is where I went wrong. Instead of picking it up, pointing it downwards into the sink, and then squeezing the handle, I instead sqeezed the handle WHILST picking it up. Now this sent a lovely powerful squirt of cold water RIGHT into my eyes and face. My "fight or flight" reflex kicked in, and I thrust my hands down to disarm my attacker, in doing so directing the water flow from my face, down my neck, over my shirt and down the legs of my pants.

All of this happened in what, 2 and a half seconds? I just stood there dripping and stunned for a good few minutes afterwards.

Crawling with tourists

Bergen it seems, has opened its floodgates now to the summer tourist flock. Germans, Frenchies, Americans, Brits, Dutchmen, eastern europeans, and the occasional Australian. I was offered up a soup of nationalities and nationality stereotypes yesterday at work. The spanish tourists -"Español, Español!", the rigid unsmiling Russians, the camera toting, tourist headphone wearing japanese, the frenchman in his see-through green mesh muscle shirt which shows off his upper body muscles, but sadly reveals his lack of abdominal muscles and rather fleshy stomach, the enthusiastic American´s who asked me "Snakkar du engelsk?" (if there was really any chance that any Norwegian wouldn´t´speak English), the pensionist Brits who commented on how good my English was ("Oh really?! Do you think so? Thank you! I´ve been practicing hard since I was about 1 year old!"), the bank teller lady from Perth who just complained about the lack of accomodation, the expensiveness of Norway, George Bush, and Bill Clinton (who is visiting Bergen right now), and the nice Norwegian bloke who I chatted to for a good while at work about friluftsliv and the various hiking trips we´ve been on, and the various hiking trips around Bergen I must do whilst I´m here. Oh and the old Germans who speak at me in a babble of German thinking I understand whilst I stand there vaguely nodding my head with a bemused smile painted across my face (I meantioned the war a couple of times, but I think i got away with it!").

Complete lingual confusion

I have reached complete lingual confusion. I know this because I started speaking broken Norwegian to a British customer today, promtly turned around and spoke broken English to my Norwegian colleague. Needless to say, neither really understood what i was saying.

Add to the mix a blending of german, spanish, japanese and dutch speaking customers. I am stuggling to pull up a few basic words in German that I remember from school. Basic, such as zwei and danke shonn. It´s crazy how much german I have forgotten in just a few years. Hopefully I´ll start picking some up again.

Well, tomorrow I have my first horror day. 9am to 3.30 at the flower shop, then 4 till 8.30pm at the bakery. 12 hour day. Lot´s of money though! And i get a free dinner at the bakery. And a free loaf of bread to take home so I´m not complaining! And tomorrow night should be fun. The 16th May. The day before the Norwegian national day. The last day of "russ" celebrations. A night of partying, drinking, and foolishness. I´m quite looking forward to watching the russ on their last night. It should be, well, interesting to say the least!

Wish me luck....

How to spend 23 kroner to walk through a city

First. Ask a friendly Norwegian bus driver which bus to take. They may seem friendly, but really, they´re all plotting and scheming to send foreigners astray, waiting to laugh evilly at their fate!

Second. Ask a friendly Norwegian bus driver which bus to take to Haukeland. Pronounce it not Haukeland, but maybe Hokeland, Håkeland, høkeland, Howkayland or some vaguely related version!

Third. Think that a sykehjem (sick home) and a sykehus (sick house) are one and the same, ending up at Haukeland sykehjem, not Haukeland Sykehus! Just using a hospital as a landmark in the first place is stupid. They´re cities! They go on for miles and miles, you can start in one town at one side of the hospital and end up in another!

Fourth. Use the Haukeland Sykehus as a target, when really it isn´t all that close to where you want to go!

Fifth. Mistakenly think that a graveyard is the dead centre of the city (hohoho). There ended up 3 graveyards within a couple of kilometres from eachother sending me round in circles!

So yes, I ended up exploring bergen a little bit more, using 23 kroner on a bus which didn´t take me exactly where i wanted to go! Always nice to see new things though!