My niece was recently the subject of unwanted photos taken by strangers, and lots of them. She's four, and blonde and adorable, and busloads of tourists started making her the focus of their photos while she was in transit between Tromso and Oslo. They thought that she looked like a typical Norwegian girl, and there she was in Bergen looking all local colorish, so they gathered around taking her picture, and when she retreated to her pile of luggage with her blanket to try to get a break, they thought this was even cuter and really closed in. My sister tried to protect her as best she could, but there's only so much you can do when you're faced with the tourist paparazzi. Not one person thought to ask if it was o.k. to take her picture, and they didn't speak any of the same languages that my sister speaks, so getting them to back off was next to impossible.

The joke of all of this, of course, is that my niece doesn't have a drop of Norwegian blood in her. She was born and raised in Virginia and is of Scotch-Irish ancestry, so these tourists are all going to go home with bunches of pictures of an American tourist.

At any rate, from the way my sister described it, it was invasive for the whole family and scary for my niece.

Sarah