We’ve often commented how different this long-term travel is. Settling in for a few weeks, longer than a typical vacation but shorter than actually calling a place home, exposes us more to the differences in the ways the locals live before we lose sight of what makes it so unique to begin with if we were to live here. The more common questions we get from back home are around this theme: what do Europeans eat? Are they really as socialist as we’re led to believe? What do they watch on television? What do they talk to their friends about?
In short, how do they live differently than us Americans?
We’re amateur anthropologists at best, so our observations are limited and not professional. And of course, our observations are skewed in the direction of things we are “tuned” to observe. Many of our observations, of course, show up in our regular blogs, but in this and the next 3 blogs we thought we’d take some time to specifically comment on how our friends on the eastern shores of the Atlantic live, starting…
Around The Table
Eating for most Europeans is a much more serious affair than for Americans. Sure, we have our foodies and we love good food and wine as much as any other people, but eating out in most of Europe, you’re expected to want your dinner table for the entire evening. It’s an event, not just a meal. For the most part (depending, of course, on where you eat) proprietors take huge amounts of pride in the food they serve, even to Americans, and cuisine is often considered close to an art form. In the states, quality and service seem to be more underpinned by commercial motivation than pride.
With all the grand, multi-course meals, and often calorie-rich foods (creamy sauces in France, pasta and cheese in Italy, sausages in Germany and the British Isles), you’d think Europeans would suffer from the same obesity issues that we Americans do, but they don’t. The reasons for this are pretty simple: Europeans eat two small meals a day and one major meal, and only a few times a week does one of those major meals blossom into a calorie-fest. It flies in the face of the theory that we should eat many small meals throughout the day, and it’s similar to the principle by which Chuck lost 80 pounds in 2012: eat what you like, just a lot less of it. In Europe, the “less” seems to be spread over the course of a week.
Conversation around the table is eerily similar to what we Americans talk about. A lot of talk the past few weeks has been about ebola. Earlier in the summer, it was about the war in Israel. Sports is always a favorite topic: football (soccer) is the standard on the continent, but in the Isles (Britain, Ireland) they add rugby to the list, while in Ireland the list is lengthened yet again to include hurling (sports variety seems a big deal in Ireland). Local sports loyalties are intense, so much so that we’ve seen pubs with signs on the doors prohibiting entry when wearing team logos: they tend to cause fights. And in Europe, as we’ve seen, pub fights can result in riots, castles and cathedrals being burned down, and governments being deposed. They take their sports seriously here.
But the universal topic for all humans seems to be politics. We’ve not found a people yet that didn’t speak disparagingly of their own government, making Europeans a lot like Americans. Which brings us to politics…
At The Statehouse
We Americans gripe a lot lately about the deadlock of our two-party system, but imagine a government with representation from dozens of parties, so many in fact that there is no clear ideological majority. Such is the case with many of continental Europe’s countries. Much of the political talk here is about the pros and cons (mostly cons) of membership in the EU: in the states we are often presented with an image of the EU being a near-utopian federal government. The reality is that the EU is a very loose confederacy with a lot of discontent, particularly among the wealthier nation members, and there’s this ongoing feeling that the EU is an unproven experiment. The UK, for example, is proud of their arms-length association with the EU.
Speaking of the UK, politics here are about as close to American politics as anywhere. Like us, they have a de facto two-party system of conservatives (the Conservative Party) and liberals (the Labour Party–to retain the English spelling). Still, other parties hold seats in the parliament where we have no (zero) 3rd party representatives and only 2 senatorial independents (I suspect that’s the highest number of independents we’ve ever had in the US Senate). The big political topics in the UK these days are the ebola outbreak, terrorism, immigration, and the Middle East. Sound familiar?
Are Europeans as socialist as Americans are led to believe? We don’t think the answer is so clear cut. The United States was founded on the principle that the function of government is mostly to ensure the population’s rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Not all cultures and their governments share the same view; for many, it’s all about “good government”. For example, in Scandinavia they are generally happy with having the highest tax rates in the world, for which they get a great many services we would call “socialist entitlements”. Generally, most populations expect more of their government–those “services”–than we Americans do. However, the universal expectation, shared by Americans and Europeans alike, is decidedly libertarian: nobody likes the government intruding into their private lives.
Finally, while we’ve noticed the universal disdain for one’s government, it seems there’s also a universal respect for the American government. In Ireland, that respect is practically a love. We Americans may think our government is gridlocked, but we have a reputation in Europe as being the most stable nation on the planet, though perhaps struggling to maintain our pre-eminent economic position. While most goods–like in America–come from China these days, America’s greatest export is still our culture.
Which brings us to what’s…
On The Telly
Admittedly we didn’t watch much television while in continental Europe. In part that was because we only speak English. It’s hard (though sometimes surprisingly interesting) to watch Spanish and Italian soap operas when you don’t speak Spanish or Italian. Sports–particularly the World Cup last summer–favor heavily, and not just on sports channels.
The UK is a different story: we’ve watched a good bit of television here. Whether Americans realize it or not, many British TV shows have American counterparts, and vice-versa. British humor seems to translate well onto American channels, like The Office being based on the original British version starring Ricky Gervais’ David Brent versus Steve Carrel’s Michael Scott. Even our Dancing With the Stars is based on the British version, Strictly Come Dancing.
The American shows that the English can’t seem to get enough of are dramas, including CSI (multiple flavors), NCIS, Law and Order, Sleepy Hollow, How To Get Away With Murder, and Bates Motel. One of our favorite series of all time, Boston Legal, is enjoying post-series life here in the UK. Internet streaming has hit here, and as a result House of Cards, Alpha House, and Breaking Bad are popular. In fact, it seems Breaking Bad is a global phenomena: we saw “Heisenberg” t-shirts in Spain.
Our favorite British show, you ask? It’s a variety show by a guy named Russell Howard. Think Tosh.O with British humor.
When it comes to the news, mostly the same topics get airtime here: ebola, terrorism, politics. Surprisingly, there’s no shortage of violent crime here. While America is seen as the “Wild West” when it comes to gun ownership and America seems to have a reputation for rampant gun violence, there’s no shortage of murders here, by gun and by other deadly means. There may be very strict gun laws in the UK, but somehow people figure out ways to kill one another. When it comes to weather news, we’re surprised that we have yet to find an equivalent to our Weather Channel: I guess when the weather is consistently good (Spain) or consistently questionable (Ireland) or completely unpredictable (Britain) then it’s hard to run a 7×24 weather channel.
Coming up tomorrow in part 2 of this “Life On This Side of the Pond” series, we’ll take you around the European house and talk about how Europeans spend their leisure time.
