According to Newseum, the Nordic countries have the most free news (freedom of press) in the world, and are the most democratic and least corrupt. They are also in the world’s top 5 for the highest newspaper readership. I think this is fascinating – my companion suggested that perhaps that is the case because they trust their media. I wonder what else causes high news readership?
It was outside there that I saw a protest targeted at the International AIDS Conference taking place in the city.
The other thing from today is that we had dinner in a popular restaurant that evening. As usual, at the beginning of the meal our waitress introduced herself and talked us through the menu. It was a tapas place so we chose a few things to begin with and then chose a few things later in the meal. When we wanted to order those our waitress was nowhere to be seen. We waited a little bit, and as she didn’t appear, we asked somebody else, who said she would, to take the order. When our original waitress re-appeared to ask how things were going (we had expected her to do so earlier), she seemed put out to hear it. “You ordered with somebody else?” She recommended another item on the menu and took our order for that. At first I thought we had committed a large faux pas by ordering with someone other than our assigned server, but then I had it pointed out to me that we had given her a chance and she had nowhere to be seen, so we did what was right.
An update on the safety thing – I have seen more crime here (yesterday I saw a man chasing another man, “Stop that man!” and the chasee finally stop and return an item; a block away, I saw a group of young people calling the police while one of them held fabric to his jaw). But that data might not mean anything at all.
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Have you a had a similar or very different experience? I'd love to know!