The curious case of a window in Stavanger...

'A long long time back Per Inge Torkelsen was renovating his house, and sent the new house plan for the second floor to the municipal authorities. In the plan he also included two new windows, which were, rather curiously, rejected by the authorities. The reason given was this - 'your windows are too close to the ones in the neighbour's house and so you can pry into their house too.'

The infamous window...always peeping :)

Of course, Per Inge could do nothing about it, he decided to something very very cool as a mark of protest. He got a talented artist who painted two, very realistic, windows exactly at the same place where he had planned to. Not only that, he even painted the blinds in such a way that someone was peeping out of the window with a long cigarette, and constantly prying into the neighbor's house.'

Ok hold on. So who is this cool dude Per Inge (PI)? Well, I didn't know about him either till we passed his house one day and heard this story. He is actually quite a famous comedian, or a clown as calls himself, in Norway and is known for his quirky ways of life.

There are many more interesting and controversial stories about him, and maybe I will write about more later. Here is one famous one...

'Give the youth a bottle of liquor before they are lost to athletics.'

His house is beautiful...and stands out in red...

By the time TI finished telling us the story to PI, it was time to say goodbye. Me and my friends went off to a rather expensive shopping mall and bought supplies for the next few weeks. I bought loads of chocolates (dark, of course) and cakes, these things are always so irresistible. I have been eating so much sweet over the last few days, that all hopes of losing weight in Scandinavia have been put to rest. Despite my cold and frugal lunch everyday at work (lots of leaves, some cheese and bread), I am only growing in size.

If I continue to bloat at this impressive pace, there won't be any more selfies here or anywhere else. Hmmm...

Walking along...

 

Oh by the way, this is the first story of my mini-series, #StavangerDiaries - tiny stories of daily life from the Oil capital of Norway, Stavanger. And what am I doing here? Well, mostly working, but also collecting these snippets of life.

Random shot of a flower :p