19 February 2011

Directions

I have noticed recently that I am asked for directions very frequently, I suspect more frequently than most people. Perhaps I'm just not often in enough of a hurry to avoid these questions. In any case, one odd, brief dialogue gives a bit of insight into the way people think.

I was in Vienna, wandering around Neubau, looking at old Leica cameras in a shop window on a quiet, somewhat questionable-looking street, sipping idly at my water bottle. An elderly, noticeably quirky lady walked towards me, her pig-pink, probably self-knit hat with its cheerful pompom quite anomalous in the general drizzly brown and grey of the scene. "Excuse me, where is the flea market? I know it's around here somewhere," she asked.

"I'm sorry," I replied, "I'm not from around here."

"Oh, really? You were drinking your water so confidently, I'd thought you must be."

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