My Europe Trip

random observations

I am recently returned from a two week speaking trip in Europe, starting in Paris (nine hours of jet lag) and ending with a night spent in Heathrow airport; I had missed my morning flight to London from Madrid due to forgetting that the UK, unlike the Schengen countries I had been traveling in, counted as a foreign country and required getting to the airport two hours in advance, which meant I could not get to Oxford in time to give a talk and spend the night in a hotel there.

Spending the night in an airport reminded me of travels as a graduate student a very long time ago, except that then it was a rail station, the Bahnhof im Salzburg, shared with some English students whose reaction to my reciting a bit of Dylan Thomas was “My God, an educated Yank.”

Coke Zero

At home, we buy Coke Zero and Diet Coke in two liter bottles — less expensive and more convenient than 12 oz cans or bottles — and consume several a day. When traveling I try to pick up a couple of two liter bottles for the refrigerator in my hotel room. I discovered on this trip that most of the countries I was in — France, Switzerland, Greece, Poland and Austria — sell bulk soda in 1.5 or 1.25 liter bottles. Only in Spain did I find it available in two liter bottles. I have no idea why.

P.S. On a later trip in a different direction I discovered that the honor of having the largest bottles of Diet Coke and Coke Zero goes not to the US but to Chile.

In both the US and Europe a 12 oz can in the airport, an occasional extravagance when waiting for my plane, costs about three times what it costs in a grocery store. In the Athens airport, however, gelato, not something I seen in US airports,¹ is the same price as in the city. That raises an interesting question for further research, next time I am bored waiting for a plane: What categories of food sell in airports for a multiple of their usual price, what don’t, and why?

Hotel Breakfasts

Somewhere in America there may be a hotel whose breakfast buffet matches what I encounter in the average European hotel but I have never encountered it. The best this time was probably the Radisson Red in Krakow, whose buffet is shown below (minus the drinks and, I think, deserts).

The breakfast buffet of a smaller and less luxurious hotel in Athens was less extensive and less elite

but included Halvah. Also a toaster that let you toast the bread on one side or both.

Observing the quantity and quality of European hotel breakfasts and the scarcity of obesity in the European population made me wonder whether European travelers took advantage of the situation by making breakfast their chief meal of the day.

I have, however, one improvement to suggest to European hotels, one inspired by our favorite Nevada restaurant. Hotel breakfast rooms are set up on the assumption that guests will eat by themselves or with the people they are traveling with. For me, part of the fun of traveling to foreign places is conversation with the people who live there. Hotels should mark a table or tables as for people who want to eat with a random selection of fellow guests.

I made the suggestion at one hotel, will be pleasantly surprised if they take it.

Bike Lanes

Walking in Krakow, I discovered that there were two sidewalks, one for walking, one for bicycles, labeled as such:

Also in Vienna:

The market in Athens — I like markets — turned out to be closed, it being Sunday. There was an hour or two wait to get into the Parthenon and I had a talk to give. But I did get to explore a collection of low-end antique shops; some of what they were selling was in one Euro bins.

The detritus of a million lives.

There was also an ornamental telephone, perhaps from a time when only the rich had them. Contrast the phone in my room in Krakow, also ornamental but in a very different style.

My favorite item in the Kunsthistorische museum in Vienna was a watch on a ring. They could not fit the mechanism inside the watch so instead made use of an external time keeping mechanism conveniently located a mere ninety-two million miles away.

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1. To check that, I googled [SFO gelato] and “SJC gelato,” those being the airports I usually fly out of, and got no hits. Further research located Gelato machines in the United lounge of San Diego Airport but, judging by the pictures, nothing like the opulent selection in Athens.

(The picture below is from the city but the airport display was similar.)