Sabbatical - Errata
Since January I've been summarizing each day of my 2015 sabbatical. To the best of my knowledge, everything is as accurate as I can make it. I brought a notebook with me on the trip and every night I summarized the day's events. I used those notes to post all my photos in the month after I returned, when everything was still reasonably fresh in my mind. Then when I wrote these I had my notebook, my photo captions and the occasional dive into wikipedia to find supporting details. I'm sure it's not perfect, but good enough.
In this post, I'm going to summarize a few things from my notes that didn't make it into other posts.
- I saw a lot of dogs on my trip. It turns out that French Bulldogs are in fact extremely popular in France. I saw them in basically every French city I went to, along with a very wide assortment of other dog breeds.
- One notable thing about the all of the European cities I was in was the preponderance of scooters, mopeds and bikes. Cars must be significantly more expensive in Europe, or non-car options are supported, because I saw far, far more of them compared to my visits to major cities in America like New York or Chicago or Portland. Granted, it was the height of summer vacation for most of my trip there, but I've been in all three of those cities in August and there was simply no comparison.
- Most of the beds I slept in at the various hotels had no upper sheet, just a comforter inside a cover. That's very unlike American hotels.
- The hotels in the major cities (Geneva, Lyon, Montpellier, Bracelona, Granda, Lisbon) were otherwise very similar to American hotels. The hotels in the small towns along the Tour du Mt Blanc had one glaring difference: the showers almost uniformly lacked a shower door or curtain, even though they were mostly set up as showers. Taking a shower without spraying water everywhere involved some contortions. This was true even in comparatively major tourist towns like Courmayeur.
- For all that bidets feature heavily in stories of clueless Americans, I only saw one on the entire trip. I only saw one squat toilet as well.
- Subway, McDonalds and Starbucks were basically everywhere in the larger cities. I didn't go in them. Aside from those three, I saw relatively few American chain restaurant establishments. I did accidentally eat at a number of places that turned out to be European chains.
- A common American complaint about European travel is poor service in the restaurants, especially an inability to get the check when you wanted to leave. This stereotype seemed to be true at most sit down restaurants. At the end of the dinner I had with babymonkey and mishamish we weren't even sure the waiter was still in the restaurant! Clearly, turning over tables and getting new patrons isn't given the same priority. This was true even in very busy areas.
- On the whole, the amount of random interesting architecture in European cities was far beyond the amount in even the oldest American cities. It made random wandering much more interesting.
- As you'd expect in major tourist cities in August, tourists were everywhere. Portugal was full of Englishmen. Geneva had lots of people from China when I was there. Chamonix and Barcelona had people from everywhere. In Lyon and Montpellier most of the tourists seemed to be French or English speaking.
- Americans really are fatter than people from other countries, although Brits gave us a run for the money. Since I lost seven pounds walking around despite all the great food, I can believe it.
- While hiking, someone asked our guides if it was true that French people hated American tourists. Christine (who was in her sixties and has been working with tourists basically her entire adult life) said "well, back in the old days that might have been true, but now we've all seen Chinese tourist groups and they behave so much worse that now everybody would much rather have American tourists instead." In her view Americans, for all the negative stereotypes, were much more likely to make an effort to have learned France and to behave respectfully at tourist sites than Chinese tourists. So I guess that's something.
- I was walking in Barcelona when I overheard the funniest comment of the trip. Two college-aged female English-speaking tourists were in front of me on the sidewalk while we waited for the light to change. One said "and then he came up to me and said 'we are the two most attractive people in this club so we should kiss.'" "What did you do?" "Well, his logic seemed solid and he was really hot so we did make out!"
- At the fado club, I sat with a group of people from a hostel. One of the woman in the group told me that "staying in a hostel is like having a buffet of hot guys to choose from." So take that for what little it's worth.
- Whomever invented the selfie stick should be taken out and beaten to death with his invention. They were EVERYWHERE. Apparently, it is no longer possible to simply take pictures of the sites. Now you have to be in all of them. This was particularly bad in La Sagrada Familia which very quickly became a forest of them, but it was true basically everywhere I went in Europe to an extent far beyond what I've seen in America. I hope it's just a fad, because it was an enormous pain in the ass maneuvering around a bunch of idiot tourists who were constantly taking their own picture. I'm not hopeful though. One of my coworkers went to Barcelona early in 2016. When he showed me his pictures, he was in virtually all of them.
One more post next week and then this series is (finally) done.
In this post, I'm going to summarize a few things from my notes that didn't make it into other posts.
- I saw a lot of dogs on my trip. It turns out that French Bulldogs are in fact extremely popular in France. I saw them in basically every French city I went to, along with a very wide assortment of other dog breeds.
- One notable thing about the all of the European cities I was in was the preponderance of scooters, mopeds and bikes. Cars must be significantly more expensive in Europe, or non-car options are supported, because I saw far, far more of them compared to my visits to major cities in America like New York or Chicago or Portland. Granted, it was the height of summer vacation for most of my trip there, but I've been in all three of those cities in August and there was simply no comparison.
- Most of the beds I slept in at the various hotels had no upper sheet, just a comforter inside a cover. That's very unlike American hotels.
- The hotels in the major cities (Geneva, Lyon, Montpellier, Bracelona, Granda, Lisbon) were otherwise very similar to American hotels. The hotels in the small towns along the Tour du Mt Blanc had one glaring difference: the showers almost uniformly lacked a shower door or curtain, even though they were mostly set up as showers. Taking a shower without spraying water everywhere involved some contortions. This was true even in comparatively major tourist towns like Courmayeur.
- For all that bidets feature heavily in stories of clueless Americans, I only saw one on the entire trip. I only saw one squat toilet as well.
- Subway, McDonalds and Starbucks were basically everywhere in the larger cities. I didn't go in them. Aside from those three, I saw relatively few American chain restaurant establishments. I did accidentally eat at a number of places that turned out to be European chains.
- A common American complaint about European travel is poor service in the restaurants, especially an inability to get the check when you wanted to leave. This stereotype seemed to be true at most sit down restaurants. At the end of the dinner I had with babymonkey and mishamish we weren't even sure the waiter was still in the restaurant! Clearly, turning over tables and getting new patrons isn't given the same priority. This was true even in very busy areas.
- On the whole, the amount of random interesting architecture in European cities was far beyond the amount in even the oldest American cities. It made random wandering much more interesting.
- As you'd expect in major tourist cities in August, tourists were everywhere. Portugal was full of Englishmen. Geneva had lots of people from China when I was there. Chamonix and Barcelona had people from everywhere. In Lyon and Montpellier most of the tourists seemed to be French or English speaking.
- Americans really are fatter than people from other countries, although Brits gave us a run for the money. Since I lost seven pounds walking around despite all the great food, I can believe it.
- While hiking, someone asked our guides if it was true that French people hated American tourists. Christine (who was in her sixties and has been working with tourists basically her entire adult life) said "well, back in the old days that might have been true, but now we've all seen Chinese tourist groups and they behave so much worse that now everybody would much rather have American tourists instead." In her view Americans, for all the negative stereotypes, were much more likely to make an effort to have learned France and to behave respectfully at tourist sites than Chinese tourists. So I guess that's something.
- I was walking in Barcelona when I overheard the funniest comment of the trip. Two college-aged female English-speaking tourists were in front of me on the sidewalk while we waited for the light to change. One said "and then he came up to me and said 'we are the two most attractive people in this club so we should kiss.'" "What did you do?" "Well, his logic seemed solid and he was really hot so we did make out!"
- At the fado club, I sat with a group of people from a hostel. One of the woman in the group told me that "staying in a hostel is like having a buffet of hot guys to choose from." So take that for what little it's worth.
- Whomever invented the selfie stick should be taken out and beaten to death with his invention. They were EVERYWHERE. Apparently, it is no longer possible to simply take pictures of the sites. Now you have to be in all of them. This was particularly bad in La Sagrada Familia which very quickly became a forest of them, but it was true basically everywhere I went in Europe to an extent far beyond what I've seen in America. I hope it's just a fad, because it was an enormous pain in the ass maneuvering around a bunch of idiot tourists who were constantly taking their own picture. I'm not hopeful though. One of my coworkers went to Barcelona early in 2016. When he showed me his pictures, he was in virtually all of them.
One more post next week and then this series is (finally) done.