Date Posted:Mon, 08/25/03 5:21am Author: Ylva Subject: Re: General question In reply to:
kangi
's message, "Re: General question" on Fri, 08/22/03 2:01pm
I suspect none of the people driving by were locals. We still have lots of tourists from big cities here renting rooms or houses from locals in little villages. You can tell by the plates where they're from. As I was busy helping the children, I didn't have any time to look closely at plates, so any assumption would be useless. It's just that I know which cars belong here (in the corner of my eye I didn't recognize the colors) and how our locals drive.
I've seen many tourists drive too fast before. For instance there's a family from Hamburg who owns a house here they only use for summer. Our house is in a bend; the main road is one long winding narrow "snake" as the village is old and all roads are based on where horses pulling waggons walked a long time ago, so you have no clear view, also because the houses are relative close to the road. Anyway, the father of the family from Hamburg never slows down in the bend at our house, which is the worst bend of all, he just beeps - "out of my way!"... I think it's arrogant. Other cars already have collided at that spot.
It would make no difference if I'd write anything in a paper here. Those who ought to read it don't live here. And Oneida is right - it boils down to that most people don't care anymore. That is exactly what my husband said too when he came home last Friday and we spoke of what we experienced during the day. He thinks it's sad too. "That's the way people are", he said.
Then I told him a tourist and I almost collided while I was heading down to the main road after I helped the children. A very young man with a very young lady by his side drove a little too fast into yet another of all our bends and cut it (wow, how manly! - *be ware of my bitter irony*). I stopped. No problem. I always "sneak" through our village. The guy stopped too, eyes wide open. I couldn't go further right, and if the guy from the opposite direction ends up on the left side of the road he'll have to see to that he gets back on the right side. My husband's comment was a tired: "It's about time the tourists go back home".
So it's the hectic of the big cities that clashes with the lifestyle of the countryside. Once tourists phoned the police to make a farmer stop harvesting. It was a warm and dry summer night and the tourists renting a little house felt disturbed by the sound of the threshing machine. It was 10 pm and the police came and told them he could do nothing 'cause out in the country the weather rules and not watches and clocks and people's excistance depends on it.
But some farmers know how to get their sweet little revenges... A group of them, all ordinary family fathers, have a hobby in common: they have Harley motorbikes. So every once in a while - when they don't have to harvest - they dress up in their black leather clothing, put on their shades, boots and helmets, gather and drive up and down down by the beach and let the motors sing to the tourists.
