"Not a dunck..."

"More like a....a...how is called...sv, svvvwoa, svaaaaaaan! Ja? A svan."

When we were in Finland, we decided to take the ferry to the zoo - on an island, like Jurassic Park. It was about a 15 minute ride at most and was entirely enjoyable.

Upon disembarking from the ferry and walking up the path to the main entrance, our first stop was at this sign, placed prominently in the walkway:

Unfortunately, there were no translations in Swedish OR in English, and no other information on the displayed subject. A couple more steps into the zoo, and the displayed subject scuttled across the path before us. There were what appeared to be some kind of goose waddling all over the open areas in the zoo. They were unlike any goose we'd seen, but we didn't know what they were. Since the goose didn't speak English either, we decided to go have lunch. We wound up at a little cafe by the bear exhibit, with a wall of windows so you could watch them run around while you ate. We each ordered the frankfurters with fries, which we sort of figured would be a hot dog and fries. What we actually received was a bowl heaped with skinny fries, and about four or five skinny hot dogs on top. Sadly, we didn't take a photo, and I can't find anything like it online. When we ordered the food, the fellow at the register was especially pleasant and chatty and asked where we were from, what we thought of Finland, blah blah blah. So when we were finished with lunch, we asked the guy if he knew what kind of goose was all over the place.

He said, "Oh! No, no...not a goose. I don't know the English name. It's....not a dunck...."

And then followed the beginning sentence of this post. We thanked him anyway, and went to go wander the zoo a little more. We were pretty sure they were geese anyway. I think he thought that I'd said it was a duck. But either way, when we got back to the hotel we looked it up. Turns out they were geese - Barnacle geese.

~E :)