Smurf or Schlumpe

I just spent 10 mins looking for a specific photo on my blog, that isn't there...

And it should be!

I meant to blog it years ago and, frankly, am amazed that I didn’t, or hadn’t, done so (yes, it's been a slow morning).

It concerns Smurfs and my love for them (legal disclaimer: relatively speaking). I've got some great Smurf stories (who doesn’t… boo-yah!)(Ed note: we have no idea where this is going either).

One of them from a friend ages ago, told me about this girl who had gone missing at a party. A period of time later and they found her, all OK, sitting alone in a cupboard.

Only thing was though as they opened the door and she looked up, she got all upset, started wailing loudly and then bursts, inconsolably, into tears.

Ages later and they're still trying to comfort her and get to the bottom of what is upsetting her, when they discover that ‘in her mind’ she had been happily sitting in the cupboard, surrounded by Smurfs. They were running and playing all about her and she was having the time of her life, all alone in this secret wee world with her new little blue friends.

Awww, fluffy bunny rabbits and happy thoughts…

Suddenly, her delight was disrupted as the door to the cupboard flew open and the humans started crowding in. As they did so, they stood on and, of course, squashed, lots of her new Smurf friends - to her absolute horror and dismay!

Hence the frantic reaction.

True story!

...did I mention that she was on mushrooms at the time?

~ ~ ~

As a life-long traveller, I had often thought of what would be good mementos from my travels.

One idea had been to see a cultural sporting event, relevant to wherever I was on the planet. All things considered, there has been limited overall progress on this one - $500 USD tickets to see the Canucks in Vancouver, for example, has put paid to that.

At an even younger stage I thought collecting the red McDonald's french fry packets would be pretty cool (...did you know they have different country-specific icons on them? Or did, anyway, somewhere back in a time closer to the last mini-Ice Age).

That, however, died out too as consideration on the hygiene matters associated with the storage of year-old greasy chip packets, grew on me (figuratively speaking). And, relatively, I just grew out of McDonalds food anyway.

~ ~ ~

Then, as a somewhat older monkey, I thought learning a unique word in a multiple foreign languages would be fun or useful. So, after the initial obligatory journey through swear words, I realised that, for me, 'Smurf' was the way to go.

With this life-matter affirmed, the next place I happened to settle in was Germany (specifically, the Bavarian countryside. Which, to some, if not many, is kind of a separate country in Germany anyway), but it took me absolutely freaking ages to find out what the word for 'Smurf' was there.

...after many conversations with many people (remember, I didn't speak much German at that stage. So, describing Smurfs and the world they live in, was not very easy nor successful. These conversations were not being helped by the fact that, not very far into the discussion, the other person had more thoughts on “actually, this cat might be nuts!”…or, specifically, “eigentlich, dieser Katze ist vielleicht verruckt”, than on working out what the juice I was talking about).

About 4 months later, I was in a service station with my girlfriend, standing idly in the books section, when I noticed there was a kids puzzle-book with a Smurf on the cover. Grabbing it in delight, I hurried over to her and while pointing enthusiastically at it, started manically repeating “Smurf, Smurf, Smurf”, over and over again.

To which she laughed and said “Ahhh, Schlumpf”.

Of course, it had been the word we had pondered many times previously, but had never had the definitive evidence to confirm it (look up Smurf in YOUR dictionary and see how you get on). Remember this was the pre-Internet, caveman, era and live in a foreign-speaking country for a while and you'll find many cultural divides.

Years later and I'm back in Hamburg, Germany, on a flying visit again and you can imagine my absolute joy at coming across a U-bahn stop (tube / train / subway) that was called ‘Schlump’, which is only one letter short of a Smurf.

It obviously deserved a photo.

This is that photo.

So, 10 minutes of searching and 40 minutes of writing later, I’m pleased to have found the picture. I’m also equally disturbed that, at my age, I’ve spent so much time sorting ‘this’ out {Ed not: I, somehow, blame Rob Brydon}.

Having had to look up the exact spelling of Schlumpf online, I have sadly just discovered that: move back a letter in the alphabet and:

Schlumpf (Smurf) becomes Schlumpe (slut)!

Egad, really?!? I never knew that.

But, then, sadly, found myself wondering - “Ist Smurfette a schlumpf-schlumpe?”.

Wow, I hope some German creative team has thought of this before and worked it through (please send all royalties to…).

Forget your 'Vorsprung durch Technik', there's a whole new Smurf paradigm going on here - and I don't need to Google that to know that 'that' whole philosophical quagmire has been debated to death (sic: Smurfette).

Addendum:

(1) I did once know ‘Smurf’ in about 12 languages. Years later and I have to use the Internet now just to find it in German - and that adventure in itself, just about turned into a visit to some websites that I really don’t want to see.

(2) Sadly, I never did find the Universe where knowing how to say the word ‘Smurf’ in multiple languages, was useful.

(2a) …probably in the cupboard with Mushroom Girl.

(3) from a greater blog’astic point of view, the fact that I’ve only blogged 3'ish times in two years is probably of greater significance than a ‘missing Smurf photo’ - Universe dependent, of course!

(4) I've got a sinking feeling that I've blogged about some (a lot) of this before (oh dementia... so soon?). Something ironic about repeating yourself on an inane subject, on a blog that you don't write to enough anymore.

(5) Oddly, No, I'm not still with that girlfriend...