I’ve spent the past two weeks travelling in Europe with a tour group. Because our tour wanted us to represent ourselves well, they have some mantras they want us to follow. One of those was that while travelling you’re going to see some things that seem weird to you, but that these things aren’t actually weird. They are just different. Along the trip, I came across a lot of things that were different. Some I wasn’t a fan of, some things I wish I could transport back home, but all of it was part of travelling. Here’s a few:
Public Bathrooms
These are not called bathrooms. They’re called toilets or WC’s and you have to pay to use them most of the time. Especially at rest stops, the system was very established. You would put 50 or 70 cents into the machine and it would spit a ticket back out at you and you could go through the turnstile to the bathroom. Sometimes, you could use your ticket to put toward a purchase at the store attached to the rest stop. It was strange at first, but all of the bathrooms we were in were really clean and technologically advanced. They all had dryers and sinks that actually responded when you waved your hand at the sensor. A few of them even had robot toilets that self-sanitized the seat when you left.
Conditioner
I bought a small travel size conditioner before leaving, under the assumption that I would be getting some from the hotels we stayed at, the way I could at a hotel here. But that was not the case. A lot of the hotels had a body wash/shampoo that was attached to the shower wall and a lotion (which I did wind up using in my hair out of desperation) but nothing else. It’s not in the supermarkets there either.
Speaking of showers, I know that’s one of the things a lot of people notice as different when travelling. And they were. Don’t ask me how, but I somehow always wound up flooding the bathroom.
Traffic Rules
Instead of the red stop hand and the white walking person, Europe has green man and red man that tell you when to go and stop. (In a few places, green man was actually green couple, with two light figures holding hands and a heart. It was adorable). Most pedestrians I saw followed what green man and red man told them to do. The general lack of jaywalking amazed me.
I think part of it is because, outside of the crosswalk, pedestrians are not the priority. One of the scariest moments is trying to walk through a bike lane. The bikes will ring their bell to let you know they’re coming, but if you don’t get out of the way, they’re going to keep coming toward you anyway.
Signs
I was hiking with a group of four and we got pretty lost. This was because a) we didn’t know anything about the trails system or where we were going and b) there were very few signs for us to follow. A few of the times we wound up tossing a coin on which direction we would go and once or twice we had to double back to try the other path. (For the record, it took us five hours, with a stop for lunch and ice cream to get to the top of the mountain.)
In general, I found there were a lot less signs pointing out directions, warnings etc. than there are here in America. I mentioned it to a tour director and he joked that it was because in Europe they assume you’re smart enough to know what to do and not to do and in America they assume you're not. The other cool thing about signs was that they were all in a different language. It was a real "you're not at home" feeling whenever I looked at one.
There were many more of these points of deviation from what I consider normal. And while I guess it could have been annoying to have to adjust to those little differences, it was part of what made the travel experience complete. The "different not weird" mantra is something I'm going to keep with me from the tour. In a world where accepting differences is something less common than it should be, a three word reminder is something to keep close in mind.
Shout out to the American Music Abroad Red Tour for letting me have these fantastic experiences and to Odyssey for letting me share my memories.
