The real monks and nuns.

As a northern European, nuns and monks are something that, in my mind along with knights and princesses, mostly appears in fairytales. It is therefore still a source of amusement for me to watch nuns and monks do everyday stuff, like taking the bus, sit at cafés. I work close to the God gym (the Vatican), so I often meet gangs of priests, which also seems peculiar to me. It is quite a change from Denmark where I only occasionally saw priests in their uniforms at weddings or confirmations and always only one at the time. Down here the costume is a uniform, which they always wear. Since this is the code of catholic priests, and I almost share office building with the big chief Papa Ratzinger, I guess I will get use to it soon.

But now that they are here, I have a bit of trouble to fitting them into the system, because you know that if an old lady is standing in the bus, you getup and let the poor lady save the humiliation of being thrown around by the bus drivers. And also pregnant women should be handled with extra care. But then you have these people of go(o)d, should you be as rude to them as everybody else ( I better mention that being rude is a sport down here, like anywhere else, these days), or should you give them your seat in the bus. Cause they are the picture of goodness, they are the ones that (like the policeman live by the traffic law) live after whats good according to that Christian ethic which I have been raised by.

I have thought up two strategies, one when I was rested and in a good mood, the another after a long hard day at work (see if you can guess which is which).

1. since they are so good natured people, and have devoted their life to "love thy brother, as thy self". You should encourage them, and be nice too them, to provide them with the surplus to do more loving, and be better role models for all us sinners

2. They think that there is a god, who is testing them, and works in mysterious ways. So if they want to suffer, then let them stand, while I take the seat. If they are so good, then they would want me to sit.

Anyway close to my work is also a flower market, where I sneaked at picture of these nuns, who apparently had got a good price.



They know, that people from the north like to take pictures of them, and most doesn't like to be tourist attractions. So instead of walking up to them and ask, I tried the paparazzi way, from our office window. Stupid as I was, I forgot to remove the flash, So either they spotted me, or they must have thought it would start thundering soon.

And just to be sure nobody thinks bad of me after reading this blog, I usually get up and let the nuns sit (along with old people), but the priests get to stand.

On a historical note I read that the first monks and nuns came to Denmark around 1050, and most of them disappeared again in 1536 during the reformation, some of their cloisters became hospitals, while others (the ones for nuns) where turned into virgin cloisters. Most of monks and nuns came from Italy, but here they stayed.