Differences
This is a miscellany of things that caught my eye while on holiday in Canada, which I should have written weeks ago, but somehow never got around to.
The first difference that struck me, was the matter of heating. German apartments are heated by water- or oil-filled radiators, that sit below the windows and (you guessed it) radiate heat silently into the room. Canadian houses are heated by forced-air: an enormous fan in the basement pushes large volumes of body-temperature-warm air around. This is very disturbing if you're not accustomed to it: the air movement is unpleasantly like being breathed on by a very large invisible dog. I never did get used to that.
The second difference was related to the first: the windows in Canadian buildings are sealed up tight for the winter. I like fresh air, I open the windows here three or four times a day, to let some (relatively) fresh air flow through. After a week there, I felt that I was close to suffocating.
The third difference is in the way that space outdoors is handled. North America is very wasteful of space, there are highway junctions I crossed over that are the size of whole villages in Germany. The low-density sprawl of North America is shocking to European eyes (as mine now are), Stuttgart (population 560,000) is smaller in geographical extent than Prince Albert (population 13,000).
I didn't actually noticed the fourth difference when I was in Canada; I'd picked up on a certain comfort and easiness in going out and being around people without identifying what exactly was different. Well, I had figured it out while I was still in the airport at Frankfurt.
Canadians don't smoke, I think I met one smoker in three weeks of travelling around. Germans all smoke, I am often the only non-smoker in a group. There is not one restaurant or bar in Germany that has a non-smoking section, people smoke everywhere and all the time. If you are lucky, your table neighbours might wait until you finish eating before lighting up, but that is the extent of their indulgence of your unusual habit.
This is what reminded me to write this article: I was leaning out the office window meditating, when somebody opened a window in the bar on the ground floor of my building. You may remember a physics teacher telling you that hot air rises? I can confirm that it's true, because I got a facefull of stale cigarette smoke. Mmmm, lovely.
posted by Udge @ 20:00
3 Comments:
At least both Canada and Stuttgart read and write their languages from left-to-right. And I'll bet they insulate their homes in both those places, instead of pretending it doesn't get cold in winter, like the tiny Middle-Eastern country where I live.
When I was newly-pregnant with my first child, my h & I were honeymooning in Amsterdam/Rotterdam. I couldn't go anywhere without cigarette smoke being blown in my face and I was utterly nauseated by it.
I don't know if this is another Canada/German difference, but in Rotterdam I found it very difficult to find food. I just did not eat a thing they had in restaurants or in stores. I forget now what it was on those menus, but yuck. Crispbread sustained me.
What do y'all eat in Stuttgart?
Your memory is correct, there is very little that vegetarians can eat in most German restaurants. When my sister and BIL were here on holiday, they ate Italian or Indian most evenings.
The Germans eat lots of meat, and decorate the plate with green stuff and some starch (potatoes in the North, noodles or dumplings in the South). If I had to pick a single item to characterise the German diet, it would be pork. It's really hard to avoid eating pig, so I guess Muslims and Jews would have just as hard a time as vegetarians. They eat relatively little beef (since BSE, many restaurants don't offer it at all) and little chicken or turkey.
The Germans love "wild" food: specific kinds of mushrooms, venison, wild boar, rabbit, duck, goose. Fish is more common in the North ( easy access to the Atlantic and North Sea), it tends to be expensive here because it was hand-caught in lakes or rivers.
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