Travel WTF Moments
A Feminine Force
Shipmate
We've all been somewhere other than here and something entirely strange or unexpected has happened before us. Or to us.
Maybe we can share some of those precious, hilarious, weird, unforgettable moments of mirth or madness or absurdity or even terror we have experienced on our way to, from, or in another place than our everyday surroundings.
I'll go first.
About 20 years ago my husband, who is an Amsterdammer, and I were cycling around Amsterdam on a warm July day. Everyone was out on the canals in their boats and the feeling in the city was kind of like everyone was playing hooky because the weather was too pretty to be at work.
We had stopped for refreshment at a small terrace teetering on the edge of one of the canals when we heard a huge ruckus on the bridge just above us. People hooting and cheering at a guy with an orange painted face in a tee shirt and a rainbow clown wig. He was smiling and waving at everyone as he walked over the canal.
When he cleared the bridge we could see that the rest of his getup included a pair of flip flops and nothing else. His unit was painted bright orange.
Three hours later we stopped for a trappist dubbel in the Leidseplein and my huband said to me "Look over your right shoulder". There was the same guy, seated about three tables away with his friends. Still no pants. Being served.
The Dutch are a special breed.
AFF
Maybe we can share some of those precious, hilarious, weird, unforgettable moments of mirth or madness or absurdity or even terror we have experienced on our way to, from, or in another place than our everyday surroundings.
I'll go first.
About 20 years ago my husband, who is an Amsterdammer, and I were cycling around Amsterdam on a warm July day. Everyone was out on the canals in their boats and the feeling in the city was kind of like everyone was playing hooky because the weather was too pretty to be at work.
We had stopped for refreshment at a small terrace teetering on the edge of one of the canals when we heard a huge ruckus on the bridge just above us. People hooting and cheering at a guy with an orange painted face in a tee shirt and a rainbow clown wig. He was smiling and waving at everyone as he walked over the canal.
When he cleared the bridge we could see that the rest of his getup included a pair of flip flops and nothing else. His unit was painted bright orange.
Three hours later we stopped for a trappist dubbel in the Leidseplein and my huband said to me "Look over your right shoulder". There was the same guy, seated about three tables away with his friends. Still no pants. Being served.
The Dutch are a special breed.
AFF
Comments
LOL. It's not a contest. I just know that when we travel we really should expect the unexpected. Life is full of strangeness and absurdity and we tend to notice it more when we are out of our little hamster wheels.
I bet you have a story or two, if you look back.
AFF
It seems the most important thing was for them to be hospitable.
He met a workmate in the middle of Windermere when we were on holiday in York.
We bumped into one of my teachers at Cardiff airport who turned out to be going to the same hotel as us one year.
Isn't it strange how small the world gets once you travel. I've met Canadians from two towns over my childhood home while abroad, who I never would have met in Canada.
AFF
This is an awesome WTF. Like no one expects the Spanish Inquisition - with the comfy chair, tea and cakes.
AFF
My friends and I were on holiday there, six of us.
We were sitting in a corner cafe having a coffee when suddenly horses and carriages galloped by. All different sizes from little horses and traps to big carriages pulled by four horses. We didn't count, but there were at least sixty. The parade lasted about half an hour, all the humans were in Victorian and Edwardian period costumes. They were absolutely galloping, careering round the corner, about 5 ft from where we were sitting.
It was truly memorable.
It was my brother's restaurant- it closed a couple of months after his unexpected death later that year.
Small world!
What an absolute treat and so unlooked for. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
AFF
I was flying on one of my solo trips to France on USAir which arrives at Charles de Gaulle terminal one. It's the oldest terminal with the doughnut hole center and the people mover glass tubes going through the doughnut hole.
Anybody who has been there will recognize it from the cover art of The Alan Parsons Project's I Robot album.
I had been flying next to a very agreeable man about my age, and we were chatting as we debarked the airplane and moving through the airport towards the inevitable center.
I said to him, as we approached one of the people mover tubes "This is my favorite part. It's the Alan Parsons moment."
I swear as the words were leaving my mouth, and my foot was landing on the belt, the airport sound system burst out with the opening guitar intro to "Sirius/Eye In The Sky" by Alan Parsons. Not the same album but still ...
The man I'd been travelling with simply looked at me slack jawed. I was like Holy S***! I couldn't believe it either.
AFF
I had a week alone in Cairo, and so many memorable moments…
Holy moly like your guardian angel you never knew you had showed up as the chief of the Cairo police department.
AFF
Back in the nearest town, a local explained to us that what we had been smelling was the roast potato plant or aartappelbos, a small flowering bush called Phyllanthus reticulatus that gives off this powerful scent after rains.
My dad was at a conference where he met a Zambian priest. A little while later we were visiting an aunt in south east London and were walking through a small park and my dad saw a Black man in a dog collar coming the other way and did a double take, realising it was the same Zambian priest who, it turned out, had just been installed in my aunt's parish (she's not a churchgoer). A couple of year later, my university chaplain made reference in a sermon to a Zambian priest of his acquaintance by the same first name who it turned out, on inquiry, was the very same one.
We also get a lot of "small world" things relating to our current home island. For a population of 700 it seems like there are way more people connected to it than would seem reasonable.
I'm thinking how WTF this is not just from the experience POV but also from the POV of a system of nature that produces a plant that smells like a cooked tuber that is indigenous to another continent entirely.
Now I know this exists I want to smell a roast potato shrub.
AFF
Just as the tourists were getting in to the coach one of the men dropped dead. An ambulance was called which then set off for the local hospital followed by the tourist bus. A German doctor in the hospital was able to formally confirm the death and after suitable condolences to the now widow, the coach driver told me that we should get on with the tour.
This we did and came back to the hospital at the end. The widow was asked if she wished to continue with the tour and when she said no I offered her emergency accommodation in my house.
My schoolteacher wife had just left that morning for a visit to Paris with some of her pupils,so it was just the two of us. I had to go and register the death before any other arrangements could be made about a funeral and the widow gave me her late husband's identity card. It was difficult to answer the various questions from the registrar. In the days before mobile phones I had to keep phoning the widow to supply answers to the questions.
This all happened on a Friday and with the help of the German Consulate we were able to arrange a funeral for the following Monday. A couple from the local German church invited us for Kaffee und Kuchen after the cremation and again with the help of the Consulate we were able to expedite the cremation etc and the next morning the widow was able to return to Bavaria with her husband's ashes in her luggage,
Later that day my wife returned from Paris and I was able to tell her about my action packed weekend. I hadn't mentioned it to her as she had enough to do with her pupils in Paris.
A few years ago we were with a South African friend driving across the Karoo. I was completely unprepared for what we saw. It was beautiful beyond words.
@Stercus Tauri whenever people tell me they are flying to South Africa and staying only in Cape Town, I want to sigh because they have no idea how vast and spectacular South Africa is -- aside from the Karoo, there is the Kalahari and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park stretching into Botswana. Not the safest travel destination but somewhere with access to great lodges and campsites and so much wildlife and unexpectedness.
Though one chap I will remember was on a train in the south of France. It was fairly packed but his American accent was the only voice that everyone could hear. He kept asking if we were at Narbonne. He kept being told no. Eventually, he fell asleep. As we were pulling into Narbonne station, I tapped him on the shoulder to tell him. He looked me square in the eye and said "No French. Speak English." I felt this a little rude, but rather than my first instinct to say "what language does it sound like I'm speaking" I went with the more gentle "I am speaking English". He waited until the train was at a complete stop before starting to gather his things. I kinda wished, given how late he'd left it, that the train would depart before he got off. But he did get off. And there was a collective sigh of relief on the whole carriage.
Some time later, a lady enquired of the carriage generally 'Does anyone know when we get to At Henry?'*
*family legend*
This puts me in mind of when I lived in Tours, France, attending the Institut Touraine. I was walking past the train station and I was approached by a tall lanky man in a cowboy hat and his even taller blonde girlfriend.
He loomed over me and in his very best French with the broadest Texan accent ever he said "Excuszay moi. Oo ay ler laun-dro-mat?"
In my very best Texan accent I replied "Jer parle Anglay".
Needless to say he was relieved to receive directions in a language he could understand because I feel pretty certain even if he could ask the question, the directions would have been beyond his ken.
AFF
As I rounded a bend on the road out a crowd of people ahead began waving and gesticulating frantically.
I pulled onto the grass verge and moments later heard a whirring noise getting closer and closer. A cycle race whizzed past. We'd missed the warning signs on the approach to the village.
One year my husband and I booked a French gîte. It was one of three holiday cottages near a farmhouse where we were expecting use of certain facilities ( freezer, laundry etc). When we arrived the entire site was deserted. No other guests, no occupants of the farmhouse. Our gite contained only the absolute minimum of facilities, no TV or radio, no hot water. After a while a British couple appeared and explained that the occupants of the farmhouse, the managers, had recently suddenly left, abandoning their responsibilities but taking various things with them, including ‘our’ tv. This couple, who managed another site, lent us a radio and provided a very generous basket of food and wine and contact details if we needed further support. All very odd that the site owner had not forewarned us.
"Are you a lady or a little girl?"
I was just out of school and it floored me. "I don't know!" I stammered. She looked at me like I was an idiot.
"How old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"You're a lady." And got off the elevator. It was a revelation. I was a lady!
And from that moment I knew I was no longer pretending or dreaming.