I recognize I’ve been doing a lot of “place” name dropping lately… oh, I was in Beijing before the Olympics, oh, I was in Oslo a few years ago, and I wasn’t even that impressed, oh, I used to live in Iowa… blah blah blah… 

In the interest of humility, mostly so as not to alienate those of you who potentially find this annoying, I would like to share a story from a couple days ago at work… 

I’m standing there at the register, in my little outfit with my little hat (love the hats), :-\ and in come these two guys.  With just ever so slight an accent, they order their drinks and some scones, and when it comes time to pay, the one guy holds out a fist full of change and asks me to help him count out 46 cents.  This actually happens a lot, since we’re right off the Mag Mile and we get a lot of tourists.  As he held out his hand, he said, “Sorry, I’m from Norway, I don’t know these coins well yet.”  

“Oh,” I said, “Norway!” 

“Yep,” he said. 

“You know,” I said, “Edvard Munch is in town!” like, you should totally give him a call and see if he want to hang out and like, talk Norwegian or something! 

But he was nice, he said he’d seen ads and thought it was kind of funny to have a big Norwegian arts thing in Chicago while he was here too.

Oslo, Norway.

I said, “Where in Norway are you from?”

And he said, “Oslo.” 

And I said, “I was in Oslo two summers ago!” 

And he said, “… yeah… me too.” 

Guess he didn’t want to be friends.  Then we had a bit of a rush and I totally forgot to get their scones (sigh) and when they reminded me, after the rush was over, I felt so silly that I opted against telling him that I have the exact same Patagonia polartec hoodie he was wearing – maybe my best move of the whole exchange.  At this point, it would’ve been just creepy.

At least he didn’t try talk to me in Norwegian.  My Norwegian is about as… nonexistent, I guess, as his English was existent.  I did get a Scandinavian phrase book, from the bookstore off Trafalgar Square in London, before I flew out, but I left it on a train in Stockholm…

(To be totally fair, the whole time I was in Oslo, the weather was terrible, and it was at the end of my trip, and I was tired, etc., and I really did think some of their stuff was pretty funky cool, in a good way, of course.  This guy not among them.)