Friday 6 March 2009

Silence

At dinner a few nights ago, we suddenly had one of those unplanned silent moments, where all conversation, clinging of cutlery and chair scraping fades away to leave us with only the purr of the refrigerator.

"It must be 20 minutes before or after the hour", said the engineer. It was 20h32. "Well, that's what we say Greece, even though it's never accurate".

"When I was in France, the people said an angel passes through the room", says the Erasmus student. "And in Russia we say a policeman is born."

What does this tell us about the respective cultures?


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