The Ulsteinvik story
When my brother and I were growing up our dad worked as a sales guy. He sold films, chemicals and such to printing companies so he did a lot of traveling across the country.
On one of these trips he had apparantly been given a bunch of postcards from a place called Ulsteinvik. These postcards were stored in our living room writing cupboard and my brother and I had lots of fun sending these out to friends and relatives. Instead of marking the postcard with an x saying "I've been here", we would mark it and write something like "we've never been here" and "noone has ever been here"
Over time this turned into a joke that noone had ever been to Ulsteinvik and that distributing the postcards was just a publicity scham to fool people into thinking that Ulsteinvik was a real city. We had lots of fun with this and thought that Ulsteinvik was really a little place that almost noone knew about.
Turned out we were mistaken. Over the years Ulsteinvik grew and actually got city status. It also has a big ship yard and lots of ships are build here. Så eventhough we thought it was a place noone had ever heard of it turned out that quite a few know where this is and have in fact been there.
My surprise was big when I this christmas received a card from Ulsteinvik. The card was not signed and I had no idea who sent it. On the back it said "Ulsteinvik is as beautiful as ever almost like a fantasy"
I tried accusing both my brother and sister in law, but they were both as amazed by the card as me, so we had no idea who sent it.
The strangest thing was that I'm pretty sure it was exactly the same card we had tons of at home growing up. So it had to be in the family.
I finally got the answer to the mystery this week when our friend Bjørnar came over for dinner. We haven't seen him for a while and while we were sitting there catching up he tells me that he's been to Ulsteinvik. It took a little time before it dawned on me that I had actually told him the story of the postcards. He was amazed that he'd actually managed to pick out the same card. What are the odds of that?
On one of these trips he had apparantly been given a bunch of postcards from a place called Ulsteinvik. These postcards were stored in our living room writing cupboard and my brother and I had lots of fun sending these out to friends and relatives. Instead of marking the postcard with an x saying "I've been here", we would mark it and write something like "we've never been here" and "noone has ever been here"
Over time this turned into a joke that noone had ever been to Ulsteinvik and that distributing the postcards was just a publicity scham to fool people into thinking that Ulsteinvik was a real city. We had lots of fun with this and thought that Ulsteinvik was really a little place that almost noone knew about.
Turned out we were mistaken. Over the years Ulsteinvik grew and actually got city status. It also has a big ship yard and lots of ships are build here. Så eventhough we thought it was a place noone had ever heard of it turned out that quite a few know where this is and have in fact been there.
My surprise was big when I this christmas received a card from Ulsteinvik. The card was not signed and I had no idea who sent it. On the back it said "Ulsteinvik is as beautiful as ever almost like a fantasy"
I tried accusing both my brother and sister in law, but they were both as amazed by the card as me, so we had no idea who sent it.
The strangest thing was that I'm pretty sure it was exactly the same card we had tons of at home growing up. So it had to be in the family.
I finally got the answer to the mystery this week when our friend Bjørnar came over for dinner. We haven't seen him for a while and while we were sitting there catching up he tells me that he's been to Ulsteinvik. It took a little time before it dawned on me that I had actually told him the story of the postcards. He was amazed that he'd actually managed to pick out the same card. What are the odds of that?