To take up where I left off: I was sleeping. If you haven't been to Europe, there are several quirky things about life over here. First, for the most part, if you want non-smelly water, you have to buy it by the bottle. For some reason there are people who buy carbonated water and drink that which means you have to ask for the non-gassy kind and the restaurants don't bring you water for free. And ice cubes are somewhat of a technological break through over here and even McDonald's doesn't autmatically put it in their drinks. Yeah, the people are just strange/behind the times, but that's the charm of visiting a foreign land.
The hotel rooms are small, though ours is a good size. If on a scale of 1-10, wood is a 10, the beds are about 8.5. I've never slept on harder beds than in Europe and that includes camping when sleeping on the ground. The first few hours I slept, there were so many pressure points on my bed that I seemed to have lost circulation in virtually every part of my body at some point. My trapezius muscle HATES the bed here. Every morning I wake up in agonizing pain.
For being a touristy town, not as many people speak English as I expected. Fortunately I know a tiny bit of German and can get us by. Unfortunately, if you start to speak German, you'll get a tidal wave of German sentences thrown at you by the very helpful folks who were willing to help you in the first place. Then I basically have to say that I didn't understand any of that and that we should try again, possibly in English. Ha! It's a fun game we play.
There's more graffiti in Berlin than in the worst ghetto of New York. It's just a fact. Why? I have no idea. The buildings aren't terribly old here, because of the wars I would suspect, so maybe that has something to do with it. I'm not sure.
The public transportation system is pretty sweet. Instead of cutting train and bus service in Chicago to save money, they should INCREASE service and try to raise revenue through better service. If you knew a train or bus was coming every two minutes, you'd be a hell of a lot more likely to take it wouldn't you? I know I would. That's the situation here. And you can get everywhere. It's great.
More observations tomorrow!
3 comments:
lol! oh Joe, where to start?
First off your observations on on food & water preferences are well noted differences between the US and Europe. Actually you will find in the wider world, the US is the abnormality of enjoying frigidly cold ice water with more ice than liquid in the cup. But I do sympathize because after living here so long I have come to really dislike ice water and have to remember to ask for water without ice when I am in the US.
Hotel room sizes - alas, also well trodden territory here. You may have noticed, Europe in general, bit smaller than the US? European cities, bit smaller than the US? So, hence everything is a bit smaller in the space department.
But kudos to you for trying to speak German! That's more than most people do.
The graffiti, keep an eye out for the really interesting ones. Germany and Berlin in particular is really a hothouse in the "street art" movement. I would suspect the Wall probably has some role in its origins.
Alexis! Don't tell me you don't wish for the occasional ice cube. I know you do and if you do, you're S.O.L. in Europe. I'm not asking for a glass of ice, but an occasional cube would be nice.
And how about some drinkable tap water on my table for no charge? Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is here.
There was some really good art work on the Berlin Wall, which I would not call graffiti. The graffiti I'm seeing is really just that: graffiti. No redeeming value whatsoever. It's some kid "tagging" the area for his gang or just for fun. It's unfortunate.
More observations to come!!
Alexis said what I was thinking. (Only she said it much better than I could have.) As I read your observations, I couldn't help but wonder if the things you find unusual are the things Europeans take for granted.
Personally, I often wish Americans would adapt more of the European traits, such as closing businesses on Sundays, setting aside time for naps in the middle of the day and taking a nice long break in the summer.
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