Leaving today (Wednesday) for an odd trip. Fly to Copenhagen this morning for an all day workshop, from there to Helsinki tonight where I will stay at the Kalajastorrppa Hilton. Leave tomorrow morning to fly up North (and you thought I was already North!!) to a town called Levi for a 3 day executive conference between my company and Microsoft. I of course will be the only non-executive there but the project we are doing is so fundamentally changing the way our customer deals with Microsoft, they want me there to talk about what it is we are doing.
On the subway platform this morning, leaving for the trip referenced above, in walked a group of 4-5 college age looking people in blue jumpsuit/coverall (not sure if there is a distinction there but its a single piece of clothing covering arms, legs and body which zips from navel to neck) covered in patches and with various bits of metal attached all over making them a jingling bunch. Each was carrying a box like the kind a ream of copier paper would come in. For it being 6 AM they were quite happy and boisterous (all strange things for Swedes) but definitely speaking Swedish. I moved down the platform to ensure that whatever 'wacky' pastime they were engaged in would in no way involve me. This proved to be the wrong strategy when from the other side of the platform came 6 more groups each in a matching color of navel-neck zip suit (yellow, blue, pink, red, green and orange) and each carrying the same box. I was closest to the yellow gang and got to inspect them more closely.
2 guys and 2 girls and I noticed later another girl holding a box, standing near but not in uniform. Not sure why. The guy most into character had all sort of belts, hooks, caribners etc. on his navel-neck zip suit. To these he had 2 pair of rusty looking and very old handcuffs, several of the springy lanyard things that elementary school teachers use to keep track of their keys (you know the kind, they tend to wrap them around their wrists when not in use) and easily 25 bottle openers each connected via a string to one of the many attachment points. Long hair, short goatee, beret (whether you are being serious or ironic w/ this outfit the beret is the obvious choice) and a Danish beer company towel half wrapping him around the waist like an apron. I could not make out the origin of the patches covering every inch of his suit but they were in many languages and appeared to be travel related.
The train had 6 more minutes and I could not stop myself asking the non-uniformed girl (had to be her, too large a risk of weirdo contact talking to one of the others) what the deal was. Her English wasn't great but evidently they were selling magazines for school and it might have been to fund a trip of some kind. I bought one and flipped through and its some kind of kid's (maybe teen) magazine.
We all took the train to the next station and it finally dawned on me that they had the big-foreheaded eagerness of band kids. Don't ask me why I associate big-foreheadedness with band kids but its a strong connection for some reason. Clearly they were selling these magazines to fund a band trip. College band kids are just kinda sad. My all-time favorite though was the flag guy from UA. He was in the line of flag girls for football games and I recall that he was quite hairy and always barefoot. Also he was the only guy out there and wore the weird fish-scale inspired leotard thing.
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2 comments:
Band Geeks around the world, UNITE!!!!!!!!
I guess Vincent Vega was right when he said that they have the same s--t(now that I am a father, I am trying to cut down on the swearing) over there that we have over here. Over there it is just a litter different.
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