Eh, What?

Published 2 September 2012

A skiing and walking sign in Norway

After its summer break, A Sunday Picture is back and throughout September I thought I’d look at signs. You see I have a habit of taking photographs of quirky, interesting and/or confusing signs.

Like this one, taken in Switzerland in 2008 in a small tunnel in a stretch of path between the towns of Wilderswill and Lauterbrunnen in the Bernese Oberland.

Okay, okay I’ll admit it. I was actually on a cycling holiday at the time but the sign itself clearly has a walking connection. But whilst I know that, I also know that I have absolutely no idea what on earth this sign means.

What do we know? Well the sign features six people doing something. From left to right we have a woman (there’s a pony tail going on, not that that means anything as at university I had long hair in a pony tail. But this is a sign we’re talking about so we can assume it’s a woman) with a walking pole. Then there’s someone who looks like an Eskimo in shorts.

We’re on less shaky ground with the dude with the dog and there’s someone vaguely male looking with a rather old school looking rucksack (where’s the ventilating back system, that’s what I want to know.) But it’s at the end that things get frankly odd. We have someone (probably a teenager if you ask me) just stood there, then there’s a child with deeply unfashionable haircut who is holding a javelin.

Put it all together and what does it mean? Well I’m still clueless. One of the things that a sign on a road or footpath is supposed to convey is its meaning. This one does nothing to me other than tell me to beware of children holding javelins!

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