Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Walking down Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, I noticed suddenly that everyone seemed to be walking a dachshund. There were dachshunds on leashes, dachshunds in people's arms, dachshunds at people's feet, and way too many dachshunds actually sitting in their owner's laps, eating off of plates on café tables. Ick.

Had I missed a trend? Is the new American thing to own a dachshund? Were people going to look down on me because I was dachshundless? I was baffled.

Then I saw that there was a dog show of some sort going on in the park between the road and the beach. Well, a dachshund show, to be specific. What a relief.

Miami was far more enjoyable than I expected, even though I kept on trying to speak Swedish with the waiters, on account of I was there with 50 Swedes and my brain kept getting stuck in a Swedish rut, convinced by language that I was in Sweden despite all the evidence to the contrary.

The sun.

The beach.

The Biltmore Hotel.

The dachshunds.

It almost makes me jealous of Floridians. Almost.

The Swedish word of the day is tax. It means dachshund, natch.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tax, not tachs.

Francis S. said...

Fixed! Thanks.

Rowdy and Bette said...

There can NEVER be too many dachshunds.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

This word must be fun for the english-speaking because it also exist in english but with a wholly different meaning. LOL

I have to admit that I'm not too good on words associated to the field of flora and fauna. I did recognized the word dachshund but had forgot about it.

Anonymous said...

Well, there's your new project once you've reached 1000 Swedish words.

"How to re-learn English in 1000 difficult words!" ;)

Torill said...

Francis, there's a typo in your presentation of yourself, upper left side. Is the deteriorating English to blame?

Anonymous said...

Funny! I am a proud owner of a miniature dachshund. His name is Emerson Frost (named after Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert Frost)! We live in GA,though!

Sweden said...

Don't you just love sweden?

Nice blog :)

Anonymous said...

I find that Dachshunds are surprisingly popular down where I am, in Lund (I'm on exchange here for two semesters). Lund is, from all appearances, very much a dog town.

Shame I'm a cat person.

Also, I just wanted to say hi, and tell you that I've been reading your blog for about a year (before I even arrived in Sweden). It's a bit of a challenge, to find blogs about Sweden in English... I'm afraid that my Swedish is embarrassingly poor.

An American in Stockholm said...

I like the hairy dachshunds best.

Anonymous said...

I live in Miami, have not just one dachshund, but two dachshunds! I adopted one after seeing all the dachshunds on Miami Beach in 2008!

Anyway, like your blog so far. I am coming to Sweden in 1.5 weeks and i've been trying to learn some words/phrases. My great-grandmother was from Sweden, but apparently I don't remember her well enough to pick up on the phrasing correctly!

I am wondering how crazy I am for leaving sunny and 80F temps for a place where it is still freezing cold! I haven't been that cold in over 2 years.

 


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