Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Seascape with Tannenbaums

Hallo, dear friends! Here we are again, almost two weeks later and several eurodollars richer! It was not easy to post, though we did manage to hop hop on some of your websites and leave some comments here and there, which was fun.

Have we said already how thankful we are for the Mediterranean? The climate, the ancient civilizations, which have produced nutty people who talk in songs and who know what and how to cook? Yes, we have.

During this latest trip, we've made two new and important realizations:

One. Italians don't walk; they strut. They strut their stuff, like Little Jerry the rooster. We can't tell whether it's their shoes, or if they make shoes especially to bring out the better of their strut. The development of the two, shoes and strut, must have been the result of a mutual feedback process over the ages. We, for one, don't strut when we wear Italian shoes, or at least we don't think so. Do we?

Two. Santas look silly in the hot'n'sun. And we are not talking about Australian beach girls in red bikinis. Bearded, old, head-to-toe-in-red Santas in the sun look like a bad hallucination. Seascape with Cacti and Tannenbaum's.

Now this doesn't look silly at all in the sun:



Isn't this the perfect place for Sven to be! Naaaah... Knowing him, he prefers to hang out on our coffee table with RockFrog. Too much sun and too much family would get on his nerves and bring out the pricklier in him. Sven and RockFrog also like the Reading Hero Lounge and the DAFTS Gallery. Nature's not really their thing.

Frankly, as much as we respect it, nature's not really our thing either, outside the occasional romantic walk along obscenely non-virgin paths. There must be a reason why we don't live in caves anymore - but hey, that's us. We like our electricity outlets and we show them our appreciation by feeding them beautiful lamps. That is to say, we spent the better part of our fresh eurodollars on an Italian designer lamp. Never looked back. Always in the spirit of enjoying our money and our very, very bad eyesight while we can. Needless to say, we appreciate contact lenses too.

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The Mediterranean is all fine and well, as long as you don't find yourself amid a minor crisis, like, say, a flight cancellation due to bad weather (2min of snowfall) at, say, a small airport in the south of Italy. The local victims of the cancellation tend to raise hell in their big, round a's and o's and i's that can only spell “panic” or “you are all idiots”. Heavens forbid, they will reach Milan three hours too late with the next flight. But what if you have to connect to an international flight and you miss home soooo very much? The airport employees appear astonished that such a problem exists and that it's actually them, not the gods, that can do something to help you. The paranoia of the crowds and the seemingly lobotomized staff must have been the divergent result of a mutual feedback process over the ages. Where are the Germans when you need them? Nowhere. No Lufthansa employees to be found in the south of Italy.

Why do you think it took Ulysses 10 years to reach home? He was stuck in the Mediterranean.

Our famous cousin, Marina the Nut, had a near-Ulysses experience amid a minor crisis, namely a flight cancellation due to bad weather, at a small airport in the south of Italy.

After wedging her way through the “you're all idiots” opera, and trailing an AirOne employee “that looked as stupid as Nicolas Cage” for four hours (being a Mediterranean Nut herself, she knew what she had to do), little Marina the Nut managed to “get the hell out” of that stupid little airport and on a late flight to Rome, with a promise, via telephone, for a seat on the first Lufthansa flight to Germany early the next morning. She blew the better part of her then fresh eurodollars, to spend what was left of the night in the only hotel in Roma Airport, the Hilton “Bed and Shower”, as she likes to call it now. 180 euros, you do the math. It was the most expensive shower she's ever had.

3 comments:

Monica said...

Willkommen zurück :)

Fanton said...

For that price, it had better have been a golden shower.

By which I mean a shower made out of gold, OBVIOUSLY.

Roufa Tav Gosou & Mimi Lass said...

Me Lord, shame on you!!!

Danke, Monika - sorry - Monica.