Obviously Alien

As far as I know it is not written all over my forehead that I am not from The Small Town, but it seems to be very obvious that I am not from here. Even when I go out in The Next Somewhat Bigger Town and meet someone I often get to hear as an opening phrase "you are not from here, are you?". Ok, I don't speak the dialect, but often I don't even have to say that much that people can tell, so I don't really know what it is.

What happened yesterday might not be so strange though, but it was still an interesting experience. Yesterday I managed to leave the office early enough to get down town before the shops close (i.e.18:00) and went to the watchmaker to have the battery changed in my clock. I also brought some wintercoats to bring to the dry cleaners. As I did not know where to find a laundry I asked at the watchmaker's. There were quite a few people there and they all looked at me and then one of the man said "Isn't he ill!?" and everyone looked at me as if I had asked when the next space-shuttle back to outer space leaves. Then they realised that it might not be common knowledge wether the laundry-person is ill or not and laughingly said "well this is a small town". Then they started to go on where it used to be "down by the traffic lights" and I started to wonder "what lights?" and "are there not more then one traffic light?". Then someone said "but isn't there one in XX-street?!" "No, he is dead" said another.

The conclusion was that there is no laundry in The Small Town. As one of the ladies said before I left; "well, as you see; we don't dry clean our clothes very often".

Then I felt it was about time to get out of the shop, I feelt like an alien again.