The Old World
The reason I started traveling was to learn about different ways of living. I went to Europe to go to the grocer, drink at cafes, navigate across the cities and use the light-switches. Going to museums and monuments was just as much a way for us to turn the doorknobs as anything else. A buddy of ours went to Europe a few years ago, and when he came back he said,
“They’ve got us beat.”
“Whaddaya mean? How?”
“They live better. They’ve got us beat.”
In many ways, I’m now inclined to agree with him.
The old medieval city centers were built for people and are just a joy to walk around. Not only are they beautiful, but everything is person-scale, not car scale. Even in the larger cities, bike lanes and walkways are given just as much precedence as roadways. There are public recycling and rubbish bins on most city corners, so everyone uses them. You never have to duck into a *$ to use the toilet, but you might need a coin for the public one. The cities seem built for you, not just retail corporations and delivery trucks.
You can go anywhere in the continent by train. The auto and oil companies have not bought up the railways and torn up the track. Gasoline is not subsidized, in fact its taxed pretty heavily because it fucks up the air. People usually don’t drive cars that are bigger than they need. SmartCars are just two seats and a trunk, and they can cruise on the highway. Lots of people bicycle or drive rain-shielded scooters along the ubiquitous bike lanes.
European plumbing cracks me up. Like the electricity, a lot of it was installed hundreds of years after the original building was built. Every sink and toilet seems like a custom job. You walk in, you do your business, and then you play a puzzle game with anything that looks like it could flush or turn on the water. Sometimes you push, sometimes you pull, twist or yank. Sometimes its a foot activated button on the floor. Toilets have a “stop flush” button, so you don’t waste water on little jobs.
The food is fresh and real. Its never seen a preservative. When it goes bad it gets thrown out (‘cept the cheese! Whew!). I cannot emphasize how much of a difference real food, made in a local traditional style makes. If you order pizza, its made with dough that was baked this morning, not trucked in on a freezer from some factory loaded with “tasteless” carcinogenic preservatives. If you want yogurt, you go get it from a fromagier and its been made recently with fresh milk. Its divine. “Whole Food” or “Organic Food” is not a radical new trend for health conscious yuppies. Real food was never wiped out by factory made, carcinogenic, trans-fatty crap. Portion size in the store or the restaurant are not Glutton-Sized. As such, coming from the US they all look miniature.
So I’m pretty fascinated with Europe. Some of it fits me a lot better than the The States, some of it doesn’t. The US has many advantages, but it strikes me as Sparta to Europe’s Athens. Not in a warlike sense (ha!), but an economic and cultural one. Everything in the US is bare utilitarian, and dollar/marketing rather than quality of life motivated. Europeans appreciate style and taste in a way that I’ve always wished the USA with all its resources would. The public infrastructure and conservationism makes the USA look pathetic. When you tell Europeans about a 40 hour work week and less than 5 weeks of vacation they laugh until their sides hurt (“Its the 21st century! What about your life?”). But I’ve never payed European taxes, dealt with their restrictive speech laws or over-empowered police. The cultural traditions that gave me so much good food and pretty buildings might be really stifling if you grew up there. Guess I’ll have to go back and do more research (read “eat and drink”).