Strange names for towns return

Jan 10, 2008 08:37 GMT  ·  By

You often hear the phrase "I need to get from Here to There in x minutes or hours" and it means that the person is in a hurry like no other. Well, except for the time mentioning part which is obvious, the idea of a hurry is subliminally induced to you by the lack of names of places in the expression. That means that he/she can't afford the time to mention them and that you'd best step out of his/her way.

Not many know that the phrase actually has a real equivalent and that it's in France. There are a couple of towns there, one named Here and the other There; the distance between them is of about 683 kilometers, and it takes 7 hours and 51 minutes to reach one from the other, according to Google Maps.

Sometimes you sit and are amazed at how much time some people have on their hands and at the crazy ideas that pop out when there's too much time and too little occupation. I would have never even dreamed to think about searching the Mountain View based company's mapping service for these two particular names. If Santa Claus and Christmas were somewhat logical to query after around the Holidays, Here and There are about the craziest logical things to search for that I've ever seen, so well done on that one to Dustin Harris and Travis Harris, those credited with the find by Tony Ruscoe on blogoscoped.com.

Oh, you might argue that the names aren't exactly written down in Google as they are in reality. But you know what? Not many people care about this and, most importantly, this is just one of those boredom searches, at least the way I see it, so any find would be exciting.