【正文】 instinct to consume hamburgers with a knife and fork. To my continuing amazement, many of them also turn their fork upside一down and balance the food on the back of it. I’ve lived in England for a decade and a half and 1 still have to quell an impulse to go up to strangers in pubs and restaurants and say, Excuse me. Can I give you a tip that39。ll help stop those peas bouncing all over the table?6另一方面，英國人則不能領(lǐng)略吃的基本要領(lǐng)。證據(jù)就是他們本能地使用刀叉來食用漢堡。更令我驚訝的是，他們大多數(shù)都把叉子顛倒放置，將食物擱在它的背上。我已經(jīng) 在英國居住了 15年，但我仍不得不壓制這種沖動(dòng)，想要走向酒吧或餐館里的陌生人說：“打擾一下，可以允許我告訴你一個(gè)小技巧嗎？(此文來自袁勇兵博客)那樣你就不會(huì)把豆子散落在整張桌子上了。 are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let in on the invention of the motor car.7德國人被幽默困擾，瑞士人對(duì)樂趣毫無概念，西班牙人絲毫不覺得在半夜吃晚飯有什么滑稽之處，而意大利人從不，也絕不會(huì)讓別人告訴他們汽車是如何發(fā)明的。 of the small marvels of my first trip to Europe was the discovery that the world could be so full of variety, that there were so many different ways of doing essentially identical things, like eating and drinking and buying cinema tickets. It fascinated me that Europeans could at once be so alikethat they could be so universally bookish and cerebral, and drive small cars, and live in little houses in ancient towns, and love soccer, and be relatively unmaterialistic and lawabiding, and have chilly hotel rooms and cosy and inviting places to eat and drinkand yet be so endlessly, unpredictably different from each other as well. I loved the idea that you couldnever be sure of anything in Europe.8這次歐洲之旅帶給我很多驚奇的小事，其中一個(gè)就是我發(fā)現(xiàn)世界竟能如此多樣化，對(duì)于本質(zhì)上相同的事物處理起來卻方式各異，比如說吃喝或是買電影票。有趣的是，歐洲人有時(shí)可以突然變得如此相似——他們普遍好學(xué)而理性，開著小車，住在古鎮(zhèn)的小房子里，喜歡足球，不怎么注重物質(zhì)生活，遵紀(jì)守法，而且他們住寒冷的賓館房間，去溫暖舒適的地方吃喝——然而卻同時(shí)擁有著如此琢磨不透、永無止盡的差異。在歐洲沒有什么是百分之百肯定的，對(duì)此我十分贊同。 still enjoy that sense of never knowing quite what39。s going my hotel in Oslo where I spent four days after returning from Hammerfest, the chambermaid each morning left me a packet of something called Bio Tex Bla, a minipakke for ferie,hybel og weekend according to the instructions. I spent many happy hours sniffing it and experimenting with it, uncertain whether it was for washing out clothes or gargling or cleaning the toilet bowl. In the end I decided it was for washing out clothes it worked a treatbut for all I know for the rest of the week everywhere I went in Oslo people were saying to each other, You know, that man smelled like toiletbowl cleaner.9我仍然享受著對(duì)事情進(jìn)展的未知感。從哈默菲斯特返回后，我在奧斯陸的賓館呆了四天，女服務(wù)員每天早上都留給我一盒叫做Bio Tex Bla的東西，說明上說是一種 “minipakke for ferie，hybel og weekend”。我不清楚它到底是用來洗衣服的，還是漱口的， 或是用來淸洗抽水馬桶的，我通過聞它的氣味，并試驗(yàn)它各種可能的用法，度過了好幾個(gè)快樂的小時(shí)。最后我判定它是甩來洗衣服的——它的確有效——然而就我所知，在奧斯陸度過的剩下幾周中，無論我去哪兒，都聽見有人互相議論：“你知道嗎?那個(gè)人身上有馬桶清潔劑的味道?！?I told my friends in London that I was going to travel around Europe and write a book about it, they said, Oh, you must speak a lot of languages.10當(dāng)我告訴倫敦的朋友，我將周游歐洲并寫成書時(shí)，他們說：“喔，你肯定會(huì)說很多語言吧?！?11.Why, no, I would reply with a certain pride, only English, and they would look at me as if I were crazy. But that39。s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don39。t want to know what people are talking about. I can39。t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can39。t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can39。t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence bees a series of interesting guesses.11 “為什么，我不會(huì)，”我會(huì)帶著一點(diǎn)傲氣回答，“我只會(huì)英語?！比缓笏麄兙涂粗?，好像我瘋了。(此文來自袁勇兵博客)但是就我而言，那正是國外旅游的美妙之處。我并不想知道人們?cè)谡f些什 么。置身于一個(gè)對(duì)你而言完全陌生的國家，能激發(fā)一種孩子般的好奇心。除此之外，我想不出還有什么更好的辦法。突然之間你又回到了五歲。你無法讀懂任何東西，你對(duì)事物運(yùn)行方式只有最基本的感知，你甚至無法安全地穿過馬路。你的整個(gè)存在變成了一系列有趣的猜想。 get great pleasure from watching foreign TV and trying to imagine what on earth is gonging my first evening in Oslo,I watched a science program in which two men in a studio stood at a lab table discussing a variety of sleek, rodentlike animals that were crawling over the surface and occasionally up the host39。s jacket. And you have sex with all these creatures, do you?the host was saying.12 看國外電視節(jié)目，試著想象到底發(fā)生了什么事，這讓我樂此不疲。比如說，在奧斯陸 的第一個(gè)晚上，我收看一個(gè)科學(xué)節(jié)目，演播室里的兩個(gè)男子站在一張實(shí)驗(yàn)桌旁，討論著一種有著光滑皮毛的貌似嚙齒目的動(dòng)物，它們?cè)谧烂嫔吓佬校紶柵郎现鞒秩说耐馓?。主持人正在說：“那么你與所有這些動(dòng)物做愛，是嗎？13.Certainly, replied the guest. You have to be careful with the porcupines, of course and the lemmings can get very neurotic and hurl themselves off cliffs if they feel you don39。t love them as you once did,but basically these animals make very affectionate panions, and the sex is simply out of this world.13 “當(dāng)然，”嘉賓回答道，“你必須對(duì)豪豬十分小心，當(dāng)然，旅鼠若是感覺你不再像以前 那樣愛它們，會(huì)變得焦躁不安并跳下懸崖，但總的來說，這些動(dòng)物是非常親切的伴侶， 并且性也是十分美妙的。14.Well, I think that39。s wonderful. Next week we39。ll be looking at how you can make hallucinogenic drugs with simple household chemicals from your own medicine cabinet, but now it39。s time for the screen to go blank for a minute and then for the blights to e up suddenly on the host of the day looking as if he was just about to pick his nose. See you next week.14 “哎呀，我覺得那很棒。下周讓大家見識(shí)一下你是怎么用藥柜中的簡(jiǎn)單家庭用藥制造出致幻藥的。(此文來自袁勇兵博客)該讓熒幕空白幾分光突然亮起，然后讓燈光突然亮起，照在主持人身；讓他看起來似乎就像正要摳鼻子。下周見。” Hammerfest, Oslo was simly wonderful. It was still cold and dusted with greyish snow, but it seemed positively tropical Hammerfest, and I abandoned all thought of buying a furry hat. I went to the museums and for a daylong way out around the Bygdoy39。 peninsula, where the city39。s finest houses stand on the wooded hillsides, with fetching views across the icy water of the harbour to the downtown. But mostly I hung around the city center, wandering back and forth between the railway station and the royal palace, peering in the store windows along Karl Johans Gate2, the long and handsome main pedestrian street, cheered by the bright lights, mingling with the happy, healthy, relentlessly youthful Norwegians, very pleased to be alive and out of Hanunerfest and in a world of daylight. When I grew cold,