Top Five: The Silly Edition

Today is the last day that I’ll really be talking to you about Mum and my travels in Europe. That’s a little sad for me, to think that it’s finally over… so I wanted to do something fun, something that would cheer me up a bit. That being the case, today’s final episode of Top Five is one that I’ve been working on for a while, one that I actually started compiling while we were on the trip, and that I never really found a place to share before.

Top Five Funny Things From Our Trip To Europe

This might be a little difficult to recount, but I’m going to do my best. Some of these things were definitely “you had to be there” moments, but they were still hilarious and I wanted to take the opportunity to share them with you.

As always, they’re in no order in particular, except that the last is the one I found the most amusing.

American Accents

This one took place in Dublin, and probably wouldn’t have been so funny except for the accent in which it was spoken. See, we were staying with an Italian man and his Brazilian wife, while staying in Dublin. Stuff like that happened a lot. But this place was the only one where our host actually provided breakfast for us every morning. One of those mornings, we got to talking.

For the sake of brevity and anonymity, I’ll call our host M.

M, being from Italy, speaks with a thick Italian accent. He rolls all of his r’s and he tried very hard to pronounce things in English very clearly, so that we have the best chance of understanding what he’s trying to say. Well, apparently that’s a two way street.

Our next stop, of course, was to be London. And according to M, Londoners are incredibly difficult to understand.

Now this is the part where it’s funny, and where I’m going to have to take some writer liberties to make it make sense, but in M’s words…

“You just can’t understand them. They don’t pronounce their letters. Everything is just ahhh… ahhhrrr… where is the r? What happened to it? Why can’t they speak plainly?”

And neither of us could contain our laughter.

Apparently, New Mexicans are easy to understand. Woo! 

But the new phrase in our house is that British people just say "ahhhhh" 

Asians and photograph etiquette

Those of you who have traveled in the States, to places like Vegas, for example, probably have an inkling of what I’m going to say here. And I want to begin by saying that I in no way mean any offense by laughing about this. It was legitimately amusing to me, and I saw nothing wrong with the action, at all.

Everywhere we went, we were surrounding by people from Eastern Asia. Especially the bigger tourist locations, like the Tower of London and Versailles. But when you’re trying to take pictures in these places, that’s where you realize just how funny it is.

See, here in the States, we’re used to trying to keep a low profile. At least, where I live. So we try not to get in your picture. But the tourists in Europe couldn’t care less about your picture, and it’s hilarious. Half of your pictures end up with someone’s arm, head, or even camera phone somewhere in the lower half, if not in the whole image.

The other thing I noticed, is that the few that travel alone often ask other people to take their picture. Not so weird, right? Except that they tend to ask everyone, and it’s freaking adorable. They’ll run around asking everyone to take their picture while they stand next to this semi-cool looking thing, and they get so excited to see the picture! It’s great fun, really, and can be a good chuckle as well.

Backward

This one actually happens in the States as well. I know from experience. But it became more of a problem in Europe, where the crowds were dense and there wasn’t much breathing room, even on some of the sidewalks.

People walk backwards, without looking what’s behind them. Well, I don’t want to say people… um… well, okay, it’s usually men. You know who you are. My dad is one of them. Mum and I are often preventing him from running into people because he’s backing up without checking his rearview (i.e. turning around to walk the other way).

It happened all the time. I literally cannot count the number of men who backed into me, nor the number of them who had backpacks on and didn’t consider the fact that they’re now bigger than they usually are.

Amusingly though, it’s nearly always men! I don’t know, maybe it’s that women are used to carrying a bag, or that we’re used to making sure we don’t run into people? I don’t know. But it’s men. Sorry guys, it’s you. And after a while, it just starts to get ridiculously funny. Especially when you’re slightly sleep deprived.

When all else fails, push

Unlike the last two, this one was a specific event, and happens to be one that we’ve continued to talk about since we’ve been back. See, as you know if you kept in touch with what we were doing while we were in Europe, we walked pretty much everywhere. That should've meant that we got very good at glancing down every so often to make sure we weren’t about to step in something… unseemly. But, of course, sometimes that was hard to do. There’s just so much to see!

Allow me to set the stage.

Mum and I were in Paris, on our second to last day in Europe, and we were looking for something. I don’t remember what. But I should also note that in London it had been rare to see very many dogs. I think we were in dog-free zones or something. I know they were there, because I saw dog fur on people and things, but I didn’t see the… erm… other evidence of doggies being around. Paris, however, was different.

Maybe London spoiled us a bit, but we got slightly more used to looking up and straight, and not looking at the ground. But we were walking along, talking about nothing in particular, and I glanced down just in time to see the pile into which my mother was about to step.

What do you do in such a situation?

Time slowed.

Stretched out.

I watched her foot inching toward the pile, my eyes widening.

And I did the only thing I could think to do:

I pushed her.

You should’ve seen the look on her face! She looked as though I’d just done her some severe dishonor by pushing her one step to the right, when in reality I’d saved her from stepping in a pile of… well… crap.

I laughed. And laughed. And laughed. So hard that it took me more than a few minutes to explain what’d happened.

“They come in packs?!”

The final, the most hilarious thing that happened while we were gone… starts with a Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring movie quote.

You remember that part of the movie where the hobbits are at the prancing pony, and Merry comes back to the table with a pint of ale? Pippin’s next line is, “It comes in pints?! I’m getting one!” And it happens to be one of the most quoted movie lines in my family. Seriously, we say it all the time, for no apparent reason. We don’t even drink that much!

Now, to Europe. Dublin, to be precise.

We noticed something interesting, amongst the majority of men in this town: they don’t travel alone. And I don’t mean to say that they’re all coupled up. I mean to say that they travel in groups, or packs, as we liked to call them. Usually packs of three to six men.

Funny thing was, if they came across another group of men, a resounding chorus of “Eyyyyy!” (the Fonz style) filled the streets, and the two packs became one conglomerate pack.

It happened everywhere! I even saw it happen with guys in a car, passing a pack of men outside a bar. “Eyyyyy!” they shouted as they drove past, only to have the men in the bar shout right back at them, smiles on everyone’s faces.

Even funnier thing was, most of these packs contained not only men, but freaking gorgeous men. Seriously, beautiful men. Rani was very happy in Dublin.

And thus we reach the butt of the joke:

“They come in packs?! I’m getting one!”

Thanks, guys! Next week we’ll start getting back into our regularly scheduled programming. :)

[love]

{Rani Divine}