I quickly settled into that not unpleasant state of mindless that tends to overcome me on long journeys.
an unfamiliar mixture of excitement and exhaustion and intense optical stimulation. Everything seemed so vivid and acutely focused and new. I felt like someone stepping our of doors for the first time. It was all so different: language, the money, the cars, the license plates on the cars, the bread, the food, the newspapers, the parks, the people. I had never seen a zebra crossing before, never seen a tram, never seen an unsliced loaf of bread(never even considered it an option), never seen anyone wearing a beret who expected to be taken seriously, never seen people go to a different shop for each item of dinner or provided their own shopping bags, never seen feathered pheasants and un... (查看原文)
it occurred to me then that there are certain things that some nations do better than everyone else and certain things that they do far worse and I began to wonder why that should be.
Sometimes a nation’s little contrivances are so singular and clever that we associate them with that country alone – double-decker buses in Britain, windmills in Holland (what an inspired addition to a flat landscape: think how they would transform Nebraska), sidewalk cafés in Paris. And yet there are some things that most countries do without difficulty that others cannot get a grasp of at all.
Bill Bryson. Neither here nor there: travels in Europe (Kindle Locations 462-465). HarperCollins. (查看原文)
They are notoriously red-necked......
A roar of laughter passed across the room. Gerhard showed a flicker of smile. “Zey say zat perhaps zey should also make us to eat of zer horse dung.”
“Oh, swell,” said Katz. “As if I haven’t eaten enough shit on this trip already.”
My head swivelled like a periscope. Those cheery smiles had become demonic leers. A man opposite toasted me again and gave me a wink that said, Hope you like horse shit, kid.
I turned to Gerhard. “should we call the police?”
“I sink zat man over zere is zer police.”
“Oh, swell,” said Katz again.
“I sink maybe we should just go to zer door as quietly as we can and zen run like, how you say, zer clappers.”
We rose, leaving behind unfinished beers, strolled casually to the door, nodding to our would-be assailants a... (查看原文)
