Monday, 31 July 2006

Europe Post No. 1
Before I start re-reading the travel journal, I thought I'd post some initial thoughts I had on the trip. Fear not, the next Europe entries will be the travel log. Since I know this blog has SO many fans, I don't like keeping readers on the edge of their seats.
A few impressions/random thoughts:
-English and Scottish folks drive VERY small cars. We saw one called the SMART that I called a clown car (it barely fits the driver). The biggest thing I saw in the UK was a Ford Mondeo, which is just a little bigger than a Focus. Speaking of cars in Europe, they drive tons of brands I've never heard of. Some that come to mind are Vauxhall, Opel, Cirtroën, Peugot, Renault, and probably some others. Once you get on the continent, they get bigger again. Germans and Austrians are EXTREMELY loyal to domestric brands, so it's no big deal to see a Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, or BMW flying down the streets. They're not really status symbols at all, or at least not as much of a status symbol. Oh, and German/Austrian taxis are almost all Mercedes-Benz models. Talk about riding first-class...

-Smoking is RAMPANT. It's not quite as bad in England, but in Austria and Scotland especially, it seems everyone's a walking chimney. I could almost feel the lung cancer growing inside me. Yuck.

-Supposedly Europeans are shorter on average than Americans. Not true. Everywhere we went, I felt short. The Germans aren't quite as tall as myths portray them, but they're still tall. Which makes me wonder how I ended up so vertically challenged with my heritage...

-As my brother Jordan pointed out, the European diets are healthier and heartier than ours, but only half the solution to how they seem to be in better physical condition than we are as a society. They walk a LOT more than we do. Europe has well-established public transportation, so you're not driving everywhere you go. Instead, you have to walk at least to the U-Bahnhof or the bus stop or find the queue of taxis waiting someplace if you're not walking to your destination. You gotta burn the Calories from the schnitzel and wursten somehow, and they do.

-Europeans are FAR more well-mannered than Americans as a rule. We may call them "defeated," submissive, or unambitious, but they are much more well-behaved. You rarely hear children making a racket in public, people don't yell into cell phones all the time, and everyone seems to mind their own business. We even encountered drivers who would stop so we could cross the street in Salzburg. And even though you can get beer much more readily in Germany & Austria, I rarely saw people drunk in public. It seems less people drink to get hammered over there. A lesson, perhaps?

-The Europeans are WAY into body piercings and tattoos. And the kids seem to love to be "countercultural" with their piercings and tattoos, whacky hair, and sense of fashion.

-Ben once wrote a post in his LiveJournal about how Lucky Charms are his dream food, based on his experiments. I've discovered European cuisine is my own dream food. Every single night, I had some absurd dream that I'd remember until I woke up. Everyone in my family groaned as I talked about them the next morning. I wish I had kept a log of those, too.

-Air conditioning is not a commodity in most buildings unless they hold some sort of relic. We went to Europe just in time for a record-setting heat wave, and we melted everywhere we stayed. Our solutions were drinking tons of water, ordering pints of beer at dinner because it's colder than anything else, or praying the Coke was cold. And by the way, they don't like putting ice in your drinks in Germany or Austria. It nearly drove my father to madness.

So there you go, some impressions to get things started. Next I'll start posting the travel journal. We'll be starting in York, England, and going to Edinburgh and St. Andrews, Scotland; Berlin and Wittenberg, Germany; Wien (Vienna) and Salzburg, Austria; and then Köln (Cologne) and Aachen, Germany.