By jkichton
This week’s blog post will be dedicated to the oddities of the countries that I have spent the most time in thus far. Since there are many obvious differences between the US and Europe, I would like to now discuss the no-so-obvious differences.
SWITZERLAND
Where I live in Switzerland, near the business and economic capital of the country, everyone dresses extremely professionally all the time. To go to the store, to go to get the mail, to go for a walk, to go anywhere! I would not dare leave my apartment in sweatpants for fear of being ridiculed and scorned. Part of this professionalism is conservativism, too. Therefore, Geneva, Switzerland inhabitants often sport classy and covered outfits. To counterbalance the seriousness of their attire, people in Switzerland prefer scooters as their main form of transportation. That’s right, that dumb little contraption that you probably skinned your knees on when you were a pre-teen while trying to do a trick. Everyone uses them! Kids, teens, adults, even grown businessmen and businesswomen in their suits. I would even say they are preferred over bikes. Staying in the theme of transportation, pedestrians always have the right of way. So much so, that you can start walking in the middle of the street, even if a car is less than a block’s distance from you, and the car will stop. This is valid at any street: one-laned, two-laned, roundabout, busy street, empty street, anything! But, even for living here for almost two months, I still do not trust the drivers. If I crossed half of the streets I crossed here, in DC, I would be missing some limbs. Now, onto food. I already discusses the drinkable water in the water fountains in a previous post. Next, is the wonderful two hour lunch break. This is very common in Switzerland (and other European countries) for schools and businesses. Actually, many businesses will be closed for two hours during the middle of the day to allow for a lunch break. Schools will also give one to two hour lunch breaks and allow high school aged children to leave campus to go get food. Lastly, the food they will probably choose to eat is paprika chips. Paprika chips? Who knew the most basic of seasonings would transform the basic potato chip so much! They taste like a lighter version of a barbeque chip, and are all the rage here. Now that I think about it… I don’t even think they sell good ol’ fashioned barbeque chips here!
BRUSSELS
The Canada of Europe, everyone in Brussels was exceedingly nice. One time, I was walking around a busy plaza holding a map in the air looking confused and a random guy walked up to me and asked me if I needed directions! He pointed me in the right way, the left. Another time, my friend and I were waiting in line to get the famed Belgian fries and could not decide what type of sauce to eat with them. All of a sudden, the guy in front of us let us ty his fries and sauce and on top of that he explained all he different sauce flavors to us! Another odd event was that I happened to go to Brussels during ‘No Car Day. This meant that all public transportation was free and that everyone was riding on their bikes! I remembered wondering why the roads were so empty and why people were walking through them with no second thoughts. I wondered how a whole city would agree to participate in an event like this, and laughed at the idea of a city as big as New York or DC committing to this idea. Lastly was the Atomium, a huge atom-like structure that seemed to be the size of a couch or monster truck but instead was so large that you could buy tickets to go to the top and saw all of Brussels. It was just a piece of architecture that I did not expect from a city like Brussels, but apparently it was left over from a World’s Fair. Definitely a must-see if you’re ever in town.
FRANCE
France was a dirty city. I have been told that it is legal to pee in the streets there? Either way, I did see a little girl peeing in the street with the help of the mother and a grown man peeing in the street. Both during broad daylight! Another interesting thing was that restaurants would position their outside sidewalk seating so that all of the chairs faced away from the restaurant and towards the road. So people eating together would be sitting kind of next to each other, not across from each other, and their bodies may be facing the road while their heads would be turned to face each other. Lastly, and I should have guessed this, but I was surprised at how many people were selling little tourist trinkets at the Eiffel Tower. It felt as if every 3 minutes I had to politely tell someone “Non, merci” to their constant asking. And these people, mostly men, didn’t even truck around little carts of souvenirs, not, most of them wore all of their goods on their bodies or carried around a small bucket of supplies. You never see this side of Paris in the pictures of the Eiffel Tower online.