Prague Blog, Day 1: Oslo Edition

Here is my first Prague blog, which, as you will no doubt guess, was written in Oslo.

My final destination is the Prague Fringe Festival, where in a few days I'll be performing in a show. But for now, I sit in the Oslo Gardermoen airport, which contains all the amenities you would expect, namely:

(a) large quantities of blond European people, and
(b) comically priced sandwiches.

As an American, I find nothing quite so disconcerting as buying a sandwich and being told it costs "one hundred two." But that is the sort of monkey business that goes down around these parts. Then you leave the restaurant, and the employees share a rollicking good laugh, and you find you have overdrawn your savings account.

So yes, this place is fun, but soon it will cloy. You see, I'm stuck in here for the next 6 hours, or in blond European time, 789.3 metric hours. In these situations one must make one's own fun, as evidenced by the airport men who ride around on a motorized chair, trailing a train of luggage carts. Oh sure, they look as though they're Hard At Work doing Important Work Things, but in fact, they are just fulfilling their little-boy dreams of riding loud clattery things through a large public place, making loud bodily-esque sound effects and preferably mowing people down on the way.

But I don't have my own cart-train, so I just bought a sandwich. Naturally it was slathered in mayonnaise, because in Europe no sandwich is deemed fit for consumption until it is caked in enough sauce to baste your average quarterback.

The other main activity in the Oslo airport, at least so far as I'm personally concerned, is noting cultural differences from the good old U.S. of A. Here are a couple examples:

(a) this screen, which asks you to rate how smiley or frowny you find the restrooms,

and

(b) this screen, stating how long it will be until the restroom's next cleaning.

That's right. Can you IMAGINE money being spent on this technology in, say, New York City? Well, okay, I guess that's not totally fair. New York might install the liquid readout screen, but only so it could say, "This bathroom will be cleaned in: F**K YOU."

There is also this:

Yes, you can get Hel pizza here. Satan's favorite. This is what makes Scandinavia great, besides the Moomins. And of course the aforementioned restrooms, which, for the record, I found to be smiley.

Next I'll blog about the Prague Fringe, which, as I understand it, is located outside of Oslo. Stay tuned.