Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Zwarte Piet

Who the hell do I have to blow around here to buy a light bulb? I've been to 69 different stores in Copenhagen and not one sells 'em. If I wanted to buy a $23,000 toothpick, no problem. An autographed humpback whale disco shirt, absolutely. But a light bulb? Forget it. Asked a guy in a light fixture store and he looked at me like I had a contagious tumor. Things are different here, obviously, and I'm cool with that, but sometimes it's frustrating.

Same thing when in Amsterdam. Completely different approach. Take their Christmas celebration technique. Santa is actually really thin and called Father Christmas and super religious (not jolly). He rides a boat instead of a sleigh and has about a hundred midgets done up in black-face (called Zwarte Piet) doing his bidding. If that's not the most racist thing in the whole world, I don't know what is.