Is Small Ugly?

An example of how small places may simply get too small

I was in a taxi. Not one for just me, but a huge big shared maxi one. The other passengers, like me, had flown in from Oslo and Bergen half an hour earlier. All of us were going to Leikanger [where my parents live], and all 13 of us were employed at some state, region or independent office or institute [Leikanger being something like a mini Brussels, where about 1500 out of 2000 inhabitants are "bueraucrats"].

It was pitch dark as the taxi approached Leikanger, and this is where it gets exciting. In any other case, the young man driving the taxi would have inquired about where the 13 individuals wanted to get off. But not in my teeny-weeny town. This is where the driver simply slows down his vehicle, swithces on the interior car light for about five seconds and scans the back of his taxi. Then - one by one - we politely get dropped off in front of our homes. Directions, [God forbid!] are seen as superflous; after all there is not a soul in town whose life is not to some extent monitored by the silent We.

Incredible as it may sound in our security scandal-haunted times, this mechanism of instant identificaton still allows all 2000 of us to dial the bank's number and ask the clerk to make payments and transfer money between our accounts, based on pure voice recognition. To be honest, I am not sure whether I like it or not, because this also means that news travels fast. The downside: Puke in a person's flower bed today, and (you can be damned sure) you feature in the jungle telegraph tomorrow. (Not that I ever did that).