Travelling is by far one of my favourite things in the world. I recently returned from a trip to France and Switzerland and despite being confident in my own abilities to adapt to wherever I find myself, there are still some differences between the metropoles of Paris and Geneva and my hometown of Calgary that still have me stumped.
1. Why does it seem like pretty much everyone smokes? Seriously, there’s so many people with cigarettes that the amount of secondhand smoke is enough to choke me.
This was probably one of the most noticeable differences that I noticed between Canada and Europe. Here, smoking in public is much less, uhh, abundant. It’s hard to walk outside in a major European city without being met by a wall of secondhand smoke. You could almost become a smoker just by walking outside on a regular basis.
2. Wait, you have to PAY to use the public washroom? Honey, that bathroom is so nasty, you should be paying ME to use it.
I was taken aback when I arrived at a train station bathroom in Marseille only to find out that I needed to pay €0.70 to use it. It was one of the less well-kept bathrooms I encountered during my travels and I was not impressed that I had to fork over money to pee. I had to pay to use a bathroom in Geneva as well, however, that one was much cleaner and nicer and I felt a bit better about paying for it. I still don’t understand why bathroom payment is even a thing.
3. “I’m sorry, I don’t read/speak *insert language here*”
I lost track of how many people would approach me and expect me to speak their language. Now, in France this was no problem, as I am fluent in French, but in parts of Switzerland, I was way out of my element. German is the primary language used and there’s no way that I could have had much more than a remote idea of what someone was asking me. The worst part of this language barrier, at least for me, was not being able to read menus. It’s pretty hard to order food when you can’t read what any of it is. Granted, a lot of places had bilingual menus with English on them, so it wasn’t too hard to make do.
4. It’s so crowded that your pictures are ruined by people you can’t manage to keep out of the frame.
This is a huge deterrent to travel photography, especially at popular sites like the Eiffel Tower and at popular museums. You can be pretty hard pressed to take a picture of statue or the outside of a building or anything of that nature without at least a head or a limb infiltrating your shot. It kind of makes you wonder how many people’s pictures you’ve managed to inadvertently ruin.
5. Hold on a sec, Starbucks costs how much?
If I remember correctly, a tall hot chocolate cost something outrageous like 5.00 Swiss Francs. That’s the equivalent of $6.75. I can barely afford my Iced Maple Macchiato at home on the best of days. So much for trying a PSL in Geneva.