Europe – the like/dislike list

Spain, England, Italy, Slovenia, and Germany have all been our homes for two weeks or longer this year. After spending some time in these great countries and reflecting on our experiences, we have been able to come up with some nice generalizations of things we liked and disliked. Instead of breaking these likes and dislikes into country categories, we’ll just plop them all under Europe. Here we go:

Liked

1. Bike lanes – The best bike lanes ever! I don’t think you would ever need a car in most of these countries, except during the winter months perhaps. We are currently lucky to have bikes in Munich to experience all the wonderful lanes here, but in all other European cities this year, it was clearly bike lane lust.
2. Public transport – I imagine it’s fairly well known that public transportation in Europe is fantastic. We appreciated that knowledge even more this year by experiencing the ease of going anywhere, anytime, without the hassles of traffic and gas.
3. Parks – So many great ones scattered throughout the major cities. There wasn’t an ugly one and a few even had the most amazing kid playgrounds I have ever seen. My personal favorite kid playground was in Vienna. It had a zip-line and a super funky tire swing that must have felt like a Disneyland ride to its passengers.
4. Clean public bathrooms – Most of these restrooms were well kept, although an elderly man or woman sitting at a card table listening to the radio was usually waiting to collect your pocket change on the way out in exchange for their cleaning services (or for sitting and listening to the radio).
5. Bakeries – This was a consist delight in all the places we traveled in Europe. All were a staple for cities big and small and all had tasty treats to sample. My current favorite is the Munich bakeries that sell freshly baked Bavarian pretzels.

Disliked

1. Missing shower curtains – There were so many showers that just had a tub and a shower hose and nothing else. How do I keep the water inside while bathing? Even if I sit it goes everywhere. Not all were like this of course, but there were plenty of wet bathrooms after we were done.
2. No garbage disposals - Maybe this is a result of many conscientious composters collecting piles of food for their gardens, but it was a pain to wash dishes and then collect all that stuff stopping up the sink afterwards. I haven’t used or see one garbage disposal in any country since we left home.
3. Pay toilets – Sure they’re clean, but I bet we forked over enough money for a plane ticket to Amsterdam, just for a little relief. The going rate was about 50 cents in Euro, which is like 70 cents U.S. Rip off (the worst was Venice – 1.50 for a pee!)
4. 30 cent grocery bags - I actually like this concept; charging people for grocery bags so they bring their own and thus cut down on waste. But if you forget to bring your own bags on a big shopping day, it’s a tragic mistake.
5. No dryers – Another environmentally sound idea that we didn’t get used to. We hung our clothes all year, except for our current place in Germany that has few pay dryers in the basement (no one really uses them). I like the concept, but the get too impatient waiting for those clothes to dry. I think I need to watch an Inconvenient Truth again.