There’s nothing quite like commuting on the London Underground to test the patience of most of us. Those who are more creatively-inclined have found an artistic outlet for their stresses. These are shamelessly lifted from Fotoz Up.
All credit to the mischievous travellers who created them – and those that snapped them with a chuckle as they were held at yet another red signal.
I don’t drive but am fairly confident that, if I did, I would avoid this particular mistake. Even with a GPS…
Flanders News reports the rather amusing/alarming/entertaining case of a Belgian who, wanting to drive to Brussels, programmed her GPS and ended up in Zagreb:
The woman identified by Het Nieuwsblad as the 67-year-old Sabine Moureau told the paper: “I was absent-minded so I kept on putting my foot down.”
Sabine started her journey in Erquelinnes on the morning of last Saturday week. “I was going to pick up my friend in the Brussels North Station” she told the paper.
The journey should have taken just over an hour, but she ended up 1,450 km from her starting point.
Sabine continues her tale: “I switched on the GPS and punched in the address. Then I started out. My GPS seemed a bit wonky. It sent me on several diversions and that’s where it must have gone wrong.”
“I saw tons of different signposts, first in French, later in German, but I kept on driving.”
Sabine had to fill up twice and slept a few hours by the wayside, but claims she never really caught on to the fact that she might be on the wrong track.
“It was only when I ended up in Zagreb that I realised I was no longer in Belgium.”
Oops!
Commuting is a strange activity.
The journey in has become an opportunity to catch up with friends around the world, using the wonders of modern technology (I am still trying get my head around that – sitting on a train to Fenchurch Street and chatting away to a friend thousands of miles away as if they are the other end of the carriage). The journey home is an opportunity to order my thoughts, perhaps write a personal email or two or, if I have a drunken, leering prat next to me, to pretend I am asleep. (Just occasionally, it is a good chance to catch up on sleep!) The tube is often a hassle, people pushing and shoving and I try to lose myself in a Blackberry Sudoku.
Commuting has its own routines and, with iPods, Kindles and iPads becoming a part of the regular commuter armoury, we become very defensive our own little worlds and find intrusions into it intensely irritating. (Is it irrational for me to be extremely wound up at people eating fast food on late evening trains – something which strikes me as an unnecessary intrusion into my nasal cavities!).
I don’t know if it is our traditional British reserve, but we get very suspicious of the stranger who starts talking to us as we journey together to another place. I’ve had that reaction, too, which is odd, as I’ve always enjoyed public transport abroad precisely because people seem much happier to talk on buses, trams and trains. Let’s face it, Jonathan Harker would have been in a lot more trouble with The Count if he hadn’t struck up conversation with the Transylvanian locals in his horse-drawn carriage.
Every now and then, though, something happens that makes me smile, shakes my reservations and reminds me how much fun it can be to lose our inhibitions and be a little more human and a little less robotic.
A friend shared this link with me – and I am sharing it with you.
Well done, Adam Street Singers. If they need tenors, perhaps I’ll join…
Vodpod videos no longer available.
So I have always loved my cool cousin and not just because he is called Kit. Which is definitely cool.
It turns out that he likes German – and for his year out he is working at the Hotel Gasthof Stern in Gößweinstein, where he seems to be having a whale of a time. Bernd and Heike run Gasthof Stern with all the love and attention they would expend on their own home. Kit seems to be fitting right in and will be looking to help see them bumped up from a four to five on Tripadvisor.
Anyway, the main reason for writing this post was to give a plug to Kit’s blog. Funny, well-written and well worth checking out, he seems to have been keeping this talent for word-smithing very quiet.
Hope you enjoy his musings.
Fragments and Reflections 