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THE FAMILY CHEAP GOES ON VACATION

A story, by emi.

Check out emi's great stuff! A calendar from 1995 and the Parker Quintuplets.

When I was younger I used to travel a lot with my family. We could afford to, since we only stayed in youth hostels or camping grounds. Most of the time you could eat really cheap at the hostels, but sometimes my parents preferred to cook breakfast themselves on a small portable stove. Like one time in Denmark, when we were staying at a relatively fancy youth hostel in Copenhagen and my parents decided that 2 bucks was too much to pay for a breakfast buffet. "We'll make our own food in our own room!" my dad declared with enough determination to stop me from presenting the advantages of having breakfast at the buffet with 20 handsome Italian boys I'd met playing table tennis the previous night. So mom went out to get eggs and milk and dad started to light the little portable stove. He tried and tried, but it wouldn't start, he got angrier and angrier and then BOOOM! an enourmous flame arose from the little stove. Now putting it out was close to impossible since dad had, in a yet another fit of cheapness, bought kerosene instead of the regular stuff you put in those stoves. Dad tried everything, but nothing would work, until my mom came running into the room, took the trashcan, ran into the common bath room where 15 naked ladies watched in surprise as my mom filled the trashcan with water and took a towel from a hook on the wall which she put in the water, ran back to our room and suffocated the flame with the now thoroghly wet, stolen towel. At that point, enough smoke and heat had seeped from our room to make everyone in the hostel know what the cheap Swedes were doing in room 322 and we were asked to leave by the hostel management. All I wanted to say, by telling you this very true story is:

  • 1) Don't use kerosene in your portable stove.
  • 2) 2 bucks is not that much for a breakfast buffet
  • 3) 20 handsome Italians is the best argument I've ever heard not to have breakfast with your parents. I still regret I was too young to understand it back then.









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