THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERNT IN EUROPE THEN BACK HOME IN THE USA
3/7/2006 UPDATED
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37) Hotel Rooms: They do not have alarm clocks or radios. You have you use your cell phone alarm or a wake up call.
36) Hotel Rooms: Your key card for the room, also is used in a slot by the door to control the lights in the room. So if you leave with the key, all the lights turn off as you leave the room. Smart for energy reasons.
35) Laundry: If you don't completely line dry your clothes, they might smell like salt, at least in Lisbon it does.
34) Toilets: yes more on them... They are smart, they have 1/2 flushes for #1, and full flushes for #2 stuff.
33) TV's: if you turn them off, they don't go completely off. You can turn them back on with the channel up/down button.
32) Restaraunts: If a waiter puts bread, crab dip or anything on your table that makes you want to eat it, it might not be free even if it is on your table... They tempt you to eating it, without ordering it, and they charge you up the ass for it... Like 5 euros for bread, yet if you ordered it it would be 1 euro.
31) There are too many ONE WAY streets in the towns, you might not be able to get around even with a map!
30) There is no such thing as PAPER TOWELS, just toilet paper.
29) Floor numbering: if you are on the first floor your not on #1 floor. The floor above you is floor #1, and the floor below you is floor -1. Odd huh
28) THEY DON'T LABEL THEIR STREETS. About every 4th one has a ID on it. I might have mentioned this sooner, but man is it horrible. 27) People in Europe know so many more languages then us stupid Americans. I don't know any. Ben know a bit of Spanish (which is not real spanish, it is a Mexican version of it). Real Spanish here actually sound more like people with a lisp speaking Mexican Spanish. Plus people here know about 3-6 different languages fluently, but are scared to talk english to us most of the time. Some people really don't know english but not many. We met a nice lady at the italian cafe in lisbon, who her mom is from africa, her dad is from asia, she grew up in portugaul, and she knows spanish and english. WOW, she spoke really go english too. The cook there, was german, moved to portugaul, knows spanish and english. Amazing how people know speak so many languages so well. 26) Each big city also has a local train system that allowes it to go from the main train station to local subburb areas around the town and upto about 2 hours outside the town. So it would be like going from Seattle to North Bend, with stops in Mercer island, Bellevue, Issaquah, Samamish Platue, and then in North Bend. North it would be up to Everett and back with stops along the way. It is similar to the Commuter train we have for the Sounder, but it travels each hour on the hour each direction, and goes more places faster, and cheaper. We need more of these for sure! Plus big cities have more then just one train station, unlike seatte. Who in seattle wants to do down to our train station where there is no parking in pioneer square with the bubs and get on a train there. There should be one like near myrte edwards park or by ballard (since that is near the train station lines). Something someone should look into. 25) Each big city has an underground metro train line that allows you to go from one place in the city to the other places with many different lines to choose from. This is smart considering Seattle is just starting to connect only 1 line of train like this from the airport to downtown. Similar to our bus tunnel but with about 5-10 other lines connecting to it. So you could go from pike place market to capital hill, down to the waterfront, then to greenlake, and then to west seattle, all on one metro train ticket... Smart idea. Its all underground and I think I figured out why that is smart (hence the train in Lisbon is above ground, and rattles the whole house as it goes by, it is only a good thing to put those things underground where they will not allow people to complain about the noise and saftey of others around them with as fast as thes things go on the street.) USA needs more underground metro trains... 24) Children are not brought up in houses, they are raised in apartment style housing, or townhomes. Single family homes with yards and no other homes connected to them almost don't even exist even in the countryside. It is odd to think of people not getting their own homes like we have in the USA. They strive to get an apartment to call their own, with neighbors all around literally. No parking spots of your own, no garden, no privacy, no free space. 23) Speaking of phone booths, the ones that work need to take coins. Most take a certain type of phone cards that we have only found one place that sells them. Crazy things. The ones that do take coins either are broken, or eat coins up like they are sugar coated candy. 22) I don't know if Europe has ever heard of the White pages or yellow pages, but they should get one for each city, have them at phone booths, and availible online. I don't know how people find business or anything around here with out one 21) Renting a car while in europe is different. If you go to the places online that rent cars (national, avis, alamo, hertz, etc) you quickly find out there are NO SPECIAL SAVING WHILE IN EUROPE! The specials they do offer are only good in Florida, Cali. or inside the USA or Porto Rico. Lame 20) In the windows here, you have either 2 options for blinds, 1 is shutter that are in the inside of your place, or 2 is having rolling shutter on the outside of your window or door. Seems like alot of people don't even open their shutter at all during the day. Or they are vacant. I can't tell 19) They do not have DRYERS for laundry. They think they will ruin the clothes they have, so all the places we've been they only have washers and hang their clothes out to dry on lines like the old days. You can only do about a load a day. No dryer sheet smell to our clothes. I miss that. 18) Still on drinks, if you order pop like i said it is about 2-3 euros for a small glass. Even worse then that, is if you order TEA, yes our type of tea in bags, you get charged about 4-6 euros for one tiny small glass of TEA. Ben had the same thing happen to him when he ordered a glass of Whcte Chocolate coco. Yet wine or beer is cheaper then pop, but more expensive then water. How do people here get all the liquids they need to have a healthy lifestyle without going broke??? 17) Milk: well we are not quite sure how this is, but their milk is sold in a juice box container, about the size of a quart, and is not refrigderated at all, and it is good or it seems months in the box. If you know anything about this let us know. It is not a powder at all either... 16) If you go to a restaraunt, you are most likely going to be asked mineral or gas, which means do you want mineral water or gas/carbonated water. Which is not free. If you order water from the tap, you are looked at by the locals funny. We don't care as long as it tastes good and does not cost us 3 euros per meal we're good. It is amazing that the cost of pop and other beverages are around here too. If you want to order a pop, it is about 2-3 euros and is 33ml, which is small compaired to our glasses back in the USA. If you want to buy a 2 liter bottle think again, only sold by the 1 litter bottles. 15) The height of doorways seems to not be propotional to the size of people. In Lisbon the doors are sooo short Ben almost hits his head, while when your at a medieval looking wall area the doors are huge. I think they must have gone back and forth trying to find out it a big door or a small door is better. I like the ones at home, they are just right for this goldie locks. 14)Scooters are the only way of transporting Pizza's in Europe. We thought car drivers were crazy, well scooter drivers are even worse! They weave and pass and speed. They look very dangerous on the roads... 13) Pigeons in Milan were HUGE! They are were the size of Boone and Kenzie almost, they were that big. Luckly that is the only city with that big of birds. They all do seem a big bigger then the ones in Seattle in general though 12) People in Europe must have Oval or Rectangular butts. The toilets we've seen in Italy, France, Spain and some in Portugaul have had Oval or Rectuangular toilet and toilet seat lids. Which for our American Round circular in shape butts it is very unfortable to use an oval shaped one. Can't wait to come home and use our toilet seat 11) The doggie friendly places have dog pooper scooper bags all over the city and garbage cans every 75 feet. Love that you don't have to carry it around with you very far, and have to find a bag to put it in. 10) I still can't find a place to get my allergy shot at. I can't find a place like a doctors office, dentist, laywer or other serives other then clothes, restaraunt, or mini-shopping malls, or real estate shops. Where are they? They must be on the second floors of places, but not obvious here where to find them. 9) People will take picture of anything over here. Well may not, they take pics of the dogs and with them like they are famous. I think that is so funny. I know we love them and like pics with them. I just can't get over that they like them too so much! 8) If you need gas or food on the highway, there are places called Autogrill pull offs like our rest-stops that you can go get a full meal at, get gas, and rest. They are over the freeway like an overpass, so you can access them from both directions of the freeway. We saw something like it being built in Chicago last year. It is a great idea.
7) Hotels VS Vacation Rentals: well we have not decided which one we like better yet.
Hotels: n- don't have ants running though the rooms
Vacation Rentals: 6) SPAIN hates dogs. Well maybe not reallys, but not as friendly as Italy and France. They don't allow you to take them in to restaraunts, trains, buses, hotels (well most), shops, or any place we found Italy and France did. They did allow dogs on certain trains, but they charge 1/2 price of a normal ticket, since we have 2 dogs it was the price of 1 normal ticket. Which can get quite expensive. Like from Madrid to Lisbon was 140 euros. That is one way, and we would have had to pay 100 euros for us with our europass ticket one way... It was cheaper to rent a car! 5) We don't know when people eat around here still. We think people eat at 7-9am a crouisant and coffee. Then at 12pm-2:30pm people eat lunch. Then from 7:00-9:30pm is dinner. Then if your in a big town the night life starts at 11pm-6am. The place that is open at lunch time is not always the same place is open at dinner. So if you go down a street during the morning it will look different then it does at night. It always looks like the place has vacanties in the shops, but it just means they are not open yet. Milan seemed to be even more different yet, they pulled heavy metal shutters down in front of their windows when they are not open, and post no hours of when they are going to be back open on them. We spend 7 days waiting to find out when the Ice cream shop opened before the shutters were open so we could see the hours. 4) People in Europe drive & park CRAZY! They speed on normal surface city streets. We mean like freeway speeds in the city streets. They park on the sidewalk anywhere they can, and we mean anywhere they can. They normally don't stop for pedistrians at all, you have to throw yourself out into the street to cross and they they might slow down or stop for you. They don't mind double parking anywhere. Middle of a oneway in street, middle of an intersection, crosswalk, onelane bridge. Does not matter to them where they stop. Just throw on your hazard lights and its all good. 3) The mannequins in Milan for sure, had very pronouced nipples as Ben noticed. I guess it was to show off what it is like in Winter??? 2) Sex sells in Europe. If you see an ad in the newpaper, TV, or billboard it does not matter what it is selling, you'll see a pretty looking woman with her boobs sticking out selling anything from toothpastes, to denture cream, to shoes (when there are no shoes in the ad at all). Funny. 1) Cars are smaller in Europe. In Milan, the biggest car we saw was the size of our Mini Vans, and that was the shape of a Truck...
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