Baseball, Apple pie, and Alesund

Let me get this part out of the way before I make my comments. Norway is beautiful, Alesund is an amazing city full of interesting stuff. Ok? Now.....why do I keep running into Americans here? I understand that when you have a country of almost 300 million people, some of the riff raff is going to leak into other cities and towns...but Alesund? We were in the grocery store the other day when our English gave us away. A guy walked up and introduced himself to us in English, asked us where we were from and told us he was originally from, I think, New York. He was perfectly nice, asked us to meet him for coffee sometime and disappeared. Ok, weird, but not that weird. Yesterday another guy walks into our favorite cafe while we are eating our meal and says to the clerk behind the counter "Hey dude...you want anything from the states? We are headed back in 5 days". I really didn't expect to hear the word "dude" the entire time I was here. Lastly...we were walking along the waterfront in Alesund and Sams 4 year old volume dimed us out as Americans. The lady walking nearby smiled and said "Oh it makes me smile when I hear a child about my grandsons age speaking English like that. He's back in New Jersey and I miss him". I can't be sure she was originally from New Jersey, but she spoke perfect "American" and I think she even said "g'head" as we went to cross the street. I am now on the lookout for more of us...maybe they will have ice cubes for me.

Picture of some tourists, doing some touristy things.