Post by Grubb.
I always get a kick out of the absurdities of travel, especially the misunderstandings. While we were boating up the coast of Norway (a few days ago), we took a quick bus jaunt over the Lofoten archipelago.
Our guide, speaking first in Norwegian, then in English, was a middle-aged man who directed our attention to the sights in a measured monotone that was like an ironic soundtrack to the exciting surroundings. It didn’t help that when he mentioned the Viking longhouse “to our right” it didn’t appear until a couple of minutes later. So not only did we have a bad dub to our visuals, it was out of sync to boot.
So there we were motoring through a thick forest when he began droning on about something in Norwegian, mermaids, maelstroms, whatever it was it wasn’t visible yet, and then he starts shouting, “Noose! Noose!” And I’m in Norse mode thinking that he’s referring to Thor hanging himself (for nine nights, no less) and maybe there’s some tree out there signifying this, when people start jumping out of their seats to get a shot of a moose that has just crossed the road, not a big moose, but a baby, a calf that is nosing itself into a ditch to cower as we pass by tilting a little to the left to accommodate the scramble of cell phones capturing the moment of pure animal panic.