I've been taking some yoga and Zumba classes here in Florida, gone to the pool on the warm, sunny days (I'm glad I was able to escape the New England cold for a while and get a head start on my summer tan :D ), started trying to teach myself both German and French (we'll see how well that actually goes :/ ), and been experimenting with baking and cooking, which I missed a lot during my trip. Even in all of that though, there have still been times when I miss being on the road seeing new things all the time, and I'm getting a bit bored of having to wait to hear back about job applications. It will be nice to have a routine again soon and have a productive purpose in life, but for now I suppose I should just sit back and enjoy this relaxing period of time. My mind is already running wild with all of the possible places I could travel to next and trying to make plans before I have any kind of resources (aka money) to put into making those plans. But hopefully it won't be too long before I am able to save up some more money and set off in search of new adventures again. Will I buy a car and road-trip around the continental U.S. and Canada? Will I go volunteer in South America? Will I buy a round-the-world plane ticket and visit friends living in various countries around the globe? I do not have the answer to that question yet, but all of those are things that I would love to do, so we will see what happens.
Anyway, throughout my travels, there were things I noticed in each place that were different from how I was used to. A great thing about visiting other cultures is that it makes you realize that what you think of as "normal" and wouldn't give a second thought isn't always the same everywhere. It can make you wonder why things are done in certain ways, when you never would have questioned it before, and make you more open-minded and able to accept differences and change. I kept a list for the last several months I was traveling so I would hopefully not forget what I was noticing, and then I sorted it into categories for this post. So without further ado, here is a rundown of my most striking observations from my time in Europe:
Language
Of course one of the most obvious differences when visiting most other countries is the difference in language. Even if it is a language you speak, like when I visited Spain, it can still take adjustment to hearing a language other than your native one being spoken all around you. And if you don't speak the language it is even more overwhelming. Luckily, most places in Europe you will be able to find people who speak English whenever you need something, especially in touristy areas, airports, restaurants, and stores. In general, my observation was that countries in northern Europe have very high numbers of people who speak English, especially in Scandinavia, where I could very easily assume that anyone around me would understand me, and would respond in near perfect English with barely an accent. As I made my way south in Europe, the number of people who spoke English seemed to decline, until I was in Romania and had many people try to speak to me in Romanian, and when I said in English that I didn't speak Romanian, they just smiled and found someone else to talk to instead of switching to English like many people in other countries had done. In Turkey I interacted with many people who spoke very good English, but Istanbul is much more touristy than Romania, and I was pretty much always in touristy areas of Istanbul, so I wasn't surprised. I really enjoy hearing other languages so for me to go from country to country and hear various languages within such a relatively small geographic area is very exciting, since it doesn't happen in the U.S.
In spite of my love of languages, I was still pretty relieved when I arrived in England and was among English speakers again. However, even in countries that speak English as a primary language there are differences, which were fun to discover. I was already familiar with many differences in British terminology, as all Americans are (such as trousers instead of pants, football instead of soccer, jumper instead of sweater, and various other words) but there were also some I noticed this time around that I wasn't aware of before. I knew that it was common in Britain to say "half past" the hour to tell time, whereas Americans more often say the hour and then "thirty," but I learned that it is also acceptable to just say "half" and then the hour. The first time I heard someone say "half two," I was confused about what she was saying but then realized she meant "half PAST two," or as I would say, "two thirty" (2:30).
Some other interesting ones I noticed: dish soap/detergent is called "washing up liquid" in the UK and Ireland, a kitchen cabinet is called a "press" in Ireland, and when stores are having a sale, the advertisements don't say "sale" or "on sale," they say "sale now on" (I noticed this a lot because I got to England right before Christmas, when lots of stores were having sales). I'm sure there were more differences in terminology but unfortunately I didn't write them all down so I forgot a lot of them.
And of course my favorite things about the UK and Ireland was listening to the accents. I love British and Irish accents, they are so fun to listen to! There were a couple of times in Scotland and Ireland that I had trouble understanding someone, but it actually didn't happen as often as I thought it might. In general, Scottish accents are harder for me to understand than Irish, and English is by far the easiest (although I didn't go any of the places that are known for having thick accents), but I really enjoyed talking to people in all of those places, not just because I was finally speaking the same language as everyone else, but because the accents are just so much fun!
And just a quick fun fact, I also noticed that different countries sometimes translate things slightly differently into English, and my favorite English translation I saw was in Romania, instead of saying "24 hours" or "24/7" on a store's hours when they were open all the time, the sign would say "non-stop." :P
Money
The second most basic thing that is usually different while traveling is currency. Most of my trip I was within the Euro Zone, which is all the countries in Europe that use the Euro. This made the trip very easy most of the time because I could go from country to country without having to worry about switching currencies. However, there were a few countries I went to which did not use the Euro: Norway, Denmark, the UK, Romania, and Turkey. In these places the money because more confusing. The Euro is simple not only because it is used in so many countries, but for an American it has a value that is very similar to the dollar, so calculating the conversion in my head was fairly easy (while I was in Europe a Euro was about $1.25). This was not the case with most of the other currencies. Norway and Denmark were somewhere around 6 kroner to a dollar, Romania was about 4 lei to a dollar, and Turkey was something like 3 or 4 lira to a dollar. So when you are seeing a number that is several times bigger than the currency amounts you are used to seeing for certain things, and then you have to divide that number by anywhere from 3 to 6 to estimate how much it will cost you in dollars, it can get quite complicated. This sometimes lead me to just give up on calculating it, which can be bad because you don't really know how much you are spending. And then pounds was also a bit of a hardship. It was easy to calculate because, like the Euro, it's a similar value to the dollar, but things ended up being quite expensive for a spender of the American dollar. A pound is about $1.50, which means that you have to add half of the amount to itself to get the amount in dollars. This might not seem bad at first, but that means if you see something that is 10 pounds, a meal for example, you might think oh, that's a good deal, but then do the math and realize you are actually spending $15. So the similarity in the numbers you see for the prices in pounds can be a blessing and a curse.
Then there are differences in the physical money as well. Of course each currency looks different with different designs, pictures and words on it, but there is also the size which is different. The first time I went to Europe in 2010, I was surprised to learn that the Euro bills of different values are all different sizes. The 5 euro is the smallest, and it's much smaller than a dollar bill, and the sizes go up from there. This is also true for every type of currency I used in Europe, so up to this point, American dollars are the only currency I have used that all of the bills are the same size regardless of their value. That's something I never would have questioned had I never left this country. Also, euros and pounds have coins for the 1.00 and 2.00, whereas dollars only normally use coins for anything smaller than 1.00. I also realized that American currency has several denominations that are legal but we hardly ever use them, like $2.00 bills, $1.00 coins and half dollars. Maybe other currencies do too, but if so, I've never heard of it.
The most interesting money I came across was the money in Romania. The first time I took some out of the ATM and held it in my hand I realized, hmm, something is different. Upon further inspection, I realized that the money was made out of plastic! I had never heard of bills being made out of plastic before, so it was very strange. There are also clear plastic shapes in each bill so you can see right through it. So interesting! Here is a picture of one of the bills:
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| This is the reverse side of the 5 lei note, which was my favorite design on the Romanian money. The music note on the right is made up of clear plastic, so you can see right through that part and the reverse of the music note is visible from the front of the bill. |
The biggest differences I noticed with houses had to do with doors and windows (other than bathrooms, which deserves a whole separate section I will get to next). One of the first, simple things I noticed was that the houses I was in did not have screens on the windows or doors. That seems quite unusual to an American who grew up in houses where all the windows and doors have screens on them so you can open them to get a breeze without letting bugs in. When opening the window to get a breeze in a European house, I always felt like all manner of bugs and wildlife was going to waltz in and make a nuisance of itself, but surprisingly that hardly ever happened. Maybe there are just more bugs in the U.S. and that's why everyone has screens in their windows. The windows also open differently and tend to have different handles. My sister wrote about this and several other related observations when she first moved to Germany; to read her post click here.
And my ultimate pet peeve about how things are done in Europe: locks. I do not understand the European fascination with making door locks that are so user-UNfriendly. I saw several versions of locks on doors that made no sense to me, so I will give a description of the highlights. First of all, most locks I encountered in Europe required you to turn the key multiple times to completely lock of unlock the door. Which almost makes sense to me. If you want to be really secure, you turn the key completely around twice in the lock. But if you have the choice of "locked" and "really locked," wouldn't you always just want it "really locked"? So why not just have everything lock on the first turn? American locks only have one setting, "locked," and you only have to turn the key a half turn to get the bolt to slide into the lock. I'll admit, the typical American lock is only one bolt, whereas many I saw in Europe had bolts all along the door frame, so that is more secure, but I still don't understand why it has to take so much key-turning.
Now onto some examples of specific locks that made me scratch my head and wonder (note that the city or country names associated with each example are not meant to be indicative of the entire country, just to describe where I had each experience).
Example 1: Greece. Where I stayed when I WWOOFed in Greece had a door that could only be opened and closed with the key, from the inside as well as the outside. American doors typically have a door knob or handle with a latch which holds the door shut, but releases the latch with a simple turn of the knob, and then have a separate system to lock it so the knob turn will not open the door. This door had a handle to pull the door closed but it did not have a latch, so I accidentally left the door open the first time I used it because I didn't realize I had to lock it to get it to shut all the way. Not all that inconvenient, but still a little weird to me.
Example 2: Paris. The door at the place where my sister and I couchsurfed in Paris was similar to the above example, but made even less sense. The door did not have a handle so it had to be unlocked with the key, but once it was open, you couldn't physically close the door all the way without the key. Instead of going into the door, the bolt to lock it automatically sprung back out when you removed the key and prevented the door from closing. Our host had to go to work in the morning and lent us to his key so we could come and go as we pleased, but this meant that we had to get up and let him out in the mornings because he couldn't close the door behind him. Such a poor design.
Example 3: England. At my friend Vickey's house in England, the door had a handle and a latch so you could come and go as you pleased without necessarily locking or unlocking the door, which was great. But when you wanted to lock the door, you couldn't just put the key in and turn it. For some reason you had to lift up on the door handle and then the key would turn in the lock. It wasn't an inconvenience, but I have no idea why it was designed that way or what purpose it served.
Example 4: Dublin. And the most ridiculous to me was the door where I couchsurfed in Dublin. You couldn't open the door without the key because there was a latch similar to American doors but it did not have a handle to turn from the outside. This wasn't so bad since I always had my key, and it was easy to let yourself out without the key simply by turning the handle from the inside. But if you locked the door from the outside when you left the house, they anyone still inside would also have to use a key to get out. This became a problem while I was there because the other couchsurfer locked the door when she left, thinking she was the last one, but the cleaning lady was still inside and didn't have a key. So she was literally locked inside the house with no way to open the door! Any American house I've ever been in has a way to lock and unlock the door from the inside without needing a key, so if someone locks the door behind them you simply unlock it, let yourself out, and then re-lock it from the outside using the key. Why in the world someone would design a lock that makes it possible to trap someone inside the house, I do NOT understand.
Bathrooms
Ok, now that I'm done with my rant about locks, onto bathrooms! This was one of the areas where I noticed the most number of small differences. Most notable was that many countries most commonly refer to them as "toilets" instead of bathrooms or restrooms like we typically use in the U.S. Also, the abbreviation WC, for Water Closet, is common, probably as a way of standardizing signage across many countries that speak different languages. Those two became my favorite letters in the Latin alphabet while I was traveling, given my frequent need to pee which has caused problems for me my whole life haha. The use of the term "toilet" for the room with the toilet makes a whole lot of sense when you are in a house that actually has separate rooms for where you use the toilet and where you bathe. I saw this most commonly in Norway. The house where I stayed when I was WWOOFing there had a room for the toilet and another room with a tub/shower and a sink, and also when I stayed with my friend Vickey in England there were separate rooms, but each had its own sink. I even saw a house in Norway with 3 different rooms, one for the toilet, one for the shower, and one for the sink.
As someone who has to pee a lot, I end up searching for bathrooms fairly frequently when I'm traveling, and my least favorite thing about this already unpleasant process was the fact that many bathrooms in Europe charge you to use them. Not just the leave-a-tip sort of things you sometimes see in the U.S. (although there were some of those too), but a person guarding the door collecting money or an actual turnstile that wouldn't turn until you put in the appropriate amount of money, which was anywhere from about 20 cents to the most expensive one I saw for 1.50 euro in Venice! This is an awful situation when you don't have any change, which happened to me in Oslo, and I had to stand there knowing that the salvation from my screaming bladder was so close but I couldn't get to it because I didn't have a stupid coin to put in the machine. It's completely unfair to charge people money to use a toilet. Relieving oneself should be a right, NOT just a privilege to those who can afford it. I would hate to be homeless in a city with no free public toilets. Wouldn't that just encourage people to pee in the street? There were many times I really missed living in a tent in the desert and peeing anywhere I wanted. There is such freedom in not having to conform with the societal expectation of only peeing when there's a toilet handy.
But anyway, I digress. Another pet peeve of mine was the lack of shower curtains in several of the places I stayed. I have never seen a house in the U.S. that did not have a shower curtain, but it happened quite a large percentage of the time when I was couchsurfing on my trip. I don't get it, do those people they like getting water all over the floor? Without a shower curtain, it was almost impossible not to cause puddles on the bathroom floor because the water would drip off my elbows and fall outside the tub. Even when I tried really hard to keep my arms in really awkward positions that would keep my elbows close to my body, I never managed to keep the floor completely dry. The first time it happened, I thought the person just hadn't had time to buy one yet, but it happened multiple times to the point where I started to wonder, is it common practice in Europe to just not use a shower curtain?
And last of the bathroom quirks: toilet paper in the trash can. Before when I had stayed at hostels, I had occasionally seen signs that said to put toilet paper in the toilet, not in the trash. My reaction always was, who puts toilet paper in the trash? The concept seemed so weird to me, and I assumed that it only happened in places far, far away where I would probably never go. But to my surprise, that is common practice in two of the places I visited, Greece and Turkey. Apparently the plumbing in those places just isn't designed to handle as much, and the pipes are too small to allow toilet paper to be flushed without clogging. The first few times I had to put my toilet paper in the garbage was super weird, and I never completely got used to it. But overall it wasn't as hard to do as I thought it would be, although I did forget a few times and accidentally drop it in the toilet, luckily without an issue.
Well, I meant to do this wrap-up of my blog all in one post, but it turns out I have too much to say and will have to split it into two for the sake of you not getting bored of my rambling.. ;) So here is part 1, and in my next entry, which I will post in a day or two, I will discuss cars and transportation, my experience with the Eurail pass, and how my journey made me think about what I want to do in the future. Thanks for reading!
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