Friday, January 4, 2008
Clapping
Those devoted readers of my blog will remember when I wrote about how Latvians clap in unison at concerts. Well I noticed another interesting thing about clapping on my way back from Switzerland. I took Air Baltic the Latvian airline because it was the cheapest and took me directly to Switzerland. When the plane touched the ground on my return to Riga a significant number of people on the plane started clapping. I remember it happening before on flights to Latvia but not from Latvia. Maybe they were happy that we arrived in one piece..or that they were home. Its one of those weird cultural things I am going to have to ask about to find out why it is done...so stay tuned!
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2 comments:
This happened to Mike and I once, on our return trip to Chicago from Rome (Jan. 2000), but that was during a horrible snowstorm and I think people were clapping because they were convinced that they were going to die and the plane would skid off the runway....but you don't mention mortal peril in your story, so I'm not sure what the deal is!
I remembered you talking about this and eagerly looked forward to the clapping when we landed in Latvia. But sadly, no one clapped. It was very anti-climatic.
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