Ode to the tourists...

I hereby wish to declare my eternal gratitude to my dear friend Anette, (to whose excellent blog there is a link on the right side of this page, btw), for helping me figure out a few slightly tricky matters in the layout of this blog of mine...

Now, with that out of the way, I also have to add the beautiful piece of information that I've got two weeks' holidays facing me, starting tomorrow!!! I'll visit Marit Skinlo at her parents' for a few days, then it's on to my cousin Silje's wedding Saturday July 22nd. Finally, I return to Enebakk with my parents for a few days, before work once again calls me back to Bergen. So, fun things lie ahead...

Work, as you may or may not be aware of, is at Schjøtt, one of the (better) souvenir shops at Bryggen in Bergen, in the center of town, where all the big cruise ships come in. This means that I get to speak French and English on a daily basis, along with whatever meager Spanish and German utterings and stutterings I can manage, to attempt communication with the surprising amount of Spanish and German tourists who don't really understand any English after all... Not to mention the lovely Japanese and Russian/Eastern European elderly, who seem to firmly believe that they don't need to speak another language than their own to get happily and easily about on the opposite side of the planet without their tour guide. (And believe me, there's always a tour guide, however absent they may be when most sorely needed to resolve any number of precarious situations that may occur in a little souvenir shop, due to misunderstandings, misinterpretations and an unbelievable variety of other kinds of mishaps!)

But I have to say that this is by far the coolest summer job I've had! I still haven't started counting the days left before I'm through; a point at which I've been by this time of the summer with all my previous summer jobs. My conclusion for today is that tourists can be incredibly (and mostly unintentionally) entertaining! No, I am not in denial, (just for the record), the nasty ones definitely do exist, but so far they are largely outnumbered by the sweet, pleasant and funny ones, and I can't see any reasons why it shouldn't continue that way:)
Good night, God bless!