Observations

Since arriving there has been a lot of stuff that I have noticed that is different. First and foremost is the cars here. They are all really tiny! Of course when gas is 1.?? something per liter that gets expensive. For us that would mean multiplying their price by four in order to get a gallon. I am pretty sure it is close to 8 Euros per gallon, add that along with the fact that the Euro is stronger than the dollar and that makes it really expensive. Also the roads are really narrow and so it is also beneficial to have a small car to weave in between parked cars and oncoming traffic.

There as so many road signs that I haven't been able to decipher them all yet. I have figured out which ones are speed limit signs and Heather asked about another sign which we learned was a no parking sign. I am still unsure though when it means no parking or no unloading. Also the roads are nothing in America compared to here. It looks like more fun to drive here because the roads just go wherever. I am sure when I get back to Boise the grid pattern we have will seem extremely boring. Add the roads plus Ben's driving and it is pretty fun to go anywhere. It is like a roller coaster! Oh and there is no right on red here.

Some smaller differences I have noticed are things like when you go to a store, the cashiers sit in chairs. At first I though oh maybe they just have something wrong with them and they get to sit down. Now that I have been to many stores I have noticed everyone sits down. I don't think I would mind being a cashier in the US if I could sit down! Yesterday we went to Germany's version of Walmart. It was crazy because they had an escalator for you and your shopping kart. Besides that I also discovered (thanks to Iris pointing it out) that there is only one isle in that store that had processed food. Everything else was fresh and/or unprocessed. Needless to say their meat section was huge! Take Walmart's meat section and double or triple it and that is this stores meat selection. Also they had two isles that were just chocolate! I was in heaven for several minutes with all of the choices of Milka chocolate candy bars I had to choose from. The bottle sizes are different as well. Which is to be expected since they use liters instead of ounces. Also the stores are like Costco in that there are places to get samples or buy things. They are just random vendors like when we went to Globus, the German version of Walmart, there was a lady selling food in the parking lot. She was just sitting in a little vending box thing selling food.

If you want to use a shopping kart here you either have to pay 1 Euro or put a little tag thing in a slot which unlocks it. Then you can get it back when you lock it back in. It is a good way to make sure you don't lose any of your karts and you never have extras floating around the parking lots hitting cars. Oh and parking garages....yeah....they are super tiny. Even in the small cars the walls seem really close. There is no way you would be able to park an F-150 in any of the parking garages here.

I have yet to figure out how to keep hot water on in my shower. I am not sure if I always happen to take a shower at the same time as someone else or if it is just the way it was meant to be but I get about ten seconds of hot water and then about thirty seconds of cold water. So needless to say my showers have been cut down drastically. This isn't a huge problem for me though because I was expecting to take short showers.

Another thing that might be a problem for me is the coins. So far I have only used my money twice, I think, and I have a ton of change that I need to remember that I have so that I can get rid of it. They don't have dollar bills. They are: one euro, two euro, fifty-cent, twenty-cent, ten-cent, and one-cent coins. They might have more but those are the ones I have at the moment. So if you pay for something with a 5 Euro bill expect to get a lot of change back. Oh and another thing with the stores is that if you want a bag to take your stuff home with you and you didn't bring your own bag, you will have to pay for one.

It is funny to see how people here interpret America. We walked by a store when we were at the mall and it was manikins in bikinis that were designed with the american flag and in the window it said "The american way". Also in the stores, if something is made in the States, there will be "Product of USA" in big bold letters or "Made in USA". I thought it was weird since we don't even broadcast it in our own country that is it made there.

I have noticed that some people will stare at us whenever we are speaking English. For the most part we fit in. The only time people really will notice that we are American or not from around here is when we have our cameras or are speaking English. I thought we would stick out more. We went to a party and people didn't know we were American until someone said "No these two are Americans" and then this girl, who studies English, started talking to us in English.