viva lars vegas or norwegian photo round-up

 I just wanted to take the opportunity to share a few not orphaned but as of yet unused photographs from our Norwegian adventure. On our way home, passing through Stavanger, I caught out of the corner of my eye a street called Lars V--, which naturally I dubbed Lars Vegas.
It was truly a fantastic trip and with a different motif around every turn, it is impossible to distill or censor ones impressions to just a few iconic images. Nonetheless, here are a few.

milkman or pfandtasic

For several years now, there has been a campaign against litter and to promote recycling in many parts of Europe by imposing a deposit on beverage bottles, from a few cents to a significant portion of the cost—like with bottled water when the empty bottles can be worth more than their contents.  This is called Pfand in the German Sprachraum. 

Generally, I am pretty cognizant of the culture that has developed as a results of these fiat containers, which are not like leaving bottles out for the milkman on the stoop—washed and reused, like the phenomena of driving around ones trash, keeping a hamper full of used glass and plastic, the people of all types and means that dig through dumpsters for a Guthaben tossed or couldn’t be bothered with, and even opportunities to donate one’s deposit to charitable organizations right at the supermarket, but on vacation my awareness is especially acute. In Norway, they employ the same system, though called pant there and it’s funny how this special minting influences shopping, not wanting to be laden with a bottle that one cannot return at home, sort of like the coinage that money-changers won’t convert. Someone ought to develop an applicant—although I suppose it would be like a coupon-scam, that could scan the bar-codes that the Automats read and print or etch the appropriate mask, since the bottles have all the same potentially intrinsic recycling value and stores selling them are just following a mandate towards that end.

Speaking of masking with bar-codes, as those QR-codes, able to tag one’s phones, are becoming more and more prevalent on billboards and signage, I began to wonder whether such inscrutable things are for one always connected with what they appear to be, could guerilla marketing be appropriating advertising space and redirecting people to a competitor or something completely different, and whether such codes could be made invisible and less voluntary, forcing one to like something just for glancing at it, tricking someone with crypto-sponsorship into buying one product over another for snapping a photo of some scenic view, in reality brought to you by corporate and not just nature or history. It’s a scary thought—to sway ones gadgets with subliminal messages and what is seen that cannot be unseen

from russia with love or ladies-in-waiting

Over on the side bar, are you seeing those solicitations for romantic services for those wanting to meet women from Eastern Europe, too—or is that just a glitch in my own marketing algorithm? Those advertisements are prejudicial and tawdry and I think reinforce negative and unwarranted stereotypes, and makes one wonder about the threshold for promotion and sponsorship quality. Still, seeing such ads made we wonder what people might say about the girls from this particular Ukrainian locality.

smoking is derpy