Road signs are supposed to be informative things that
give you vital pieces of information, right…?
Lost
in translation
place:
Wales
This is one of the all-time classics courtesy of the
Swansea town council. As a non-Welsh speaker one would assume that bottom part
says the same as the top part, right. Not exactly. What it actually says is “I
am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated"
and was obviously part of the would-be translator’s automated out-of-office
email reply.
No officer, it’s where I live…
place: Weed, California
The
question isn’t so much “how did the this town get to be called Weed” (that’s
easy – the town’s founder was pioneer Abner Weed) but more “why the hell have the
town’s elders not changed the name”?”. One can only but imagine the jokes it’s
2 967 townsfolk have had to endure and the sheer number of road signs stolen by
those habitual stealers of road signs… college kids.
You are not
here
place: Palm
Springs
If
you were on your way to Tahquitz Canyon, near Palm Springs in the US and home
to a spectacular 20 metre waterfall, rock art, ancient irrigation systems and
artifacts… well… you would be going in the wrong direction. This land owner is
clearly so over answering the inevitable question posed by his confused
countrymen, he has been moved to make a sign.
Boom. There
it is.
place:
Falkland Islands
Courtesy of the English/Argentinian spat over who
owned this little archipelago in the South Atlantic ocean, the islands’ 200
humans and 500 000 sheep have the threat of unexploded mines to worry about.
They also have to worry about what this sign actually means. Should one slow down, as this will somehow minimize the chances being blown up? Or should you speed up, because the mines explode quite slowly and you could actually out run a mine should you trigger it.
Yes I know, but where are you from?
place: Twatt,
Shetland Islands
What
is it with chilly little archipelagos and funny road signs? This one is on the
Shetland Islands, those small and very chilly pieces of rock north east of
mainland Britain. Twatt is a small settlement on the largest of the Islands and
gets its name, not from the type of people of who live there, but the old
Norse word meaning “small parcel of land”. Makes for a great photo opp though. Not.
