My Speaking Trip
I am currently on a two and a half week speaking trip in Europe, starting in Prague and ending in London, with talks in ten cities, including two in London. Here is my schedule, including speech titles and time and location for the talks for which I have it. Hopefully I will get more information over the next few days and add it
4/29 Copenhagen: “Interesting Times” CEPOS, Landgreven 3, 1201 Copenhagen K., Start 17.30, end 19.30, Open to the public.
4/30 Santiago de Compostella: No information yet
5/1 Porto
5/2 Lisbon: No information yet
5/3 Madrid: No information yet
5/5 Rome: “Ptolemaic Trade Policy or Why Everything Everyone Knows About Tariffs is Wrong”
5/6 Cambridge: “Market Failure, an Argument Both For and Against Government”
5/7 London: “Ptolemaic Trade Policy or Why Everything Everyone Knows About Tariffs is Wrong,” Institute for Economic Affairs, 6:00, Ascot Hyde Park Hotel
5/8 London: “Market Failure, an Argument Both For and Against Government,” Adam Smith Institute, 6:00.
5/9 Oxford
If you are interested in hearing me talk and can’t make any of those there are recordings, video or audio, of many of my talks on a page of my site.
To make a more substantial post, I am adding an account of differences noted between Europe and the US. I have no grand theories, just casual observation from this and previous trips; I usually make about one a year.
A Traveler’s Notes
If you are offered free beverages on an airplane in America, the default is with ice. On my Swiss International flight to Europe, San Francisco to Zurich, ice was available if you asked for it but only then. In a US hotel you will have ice machines, typically one on every floor, and your room will have an insulated container for holding ice cubes. My room in Prague had no such container and ice was available only from the bar. That fits my impression that iced drinks are viewed in Europe as an odd American obsession.
A midrange American hotel, a Hampton Inn or the equivalent, provides a respectable breakfast, a waffle machine, cereal and milk, scrambled eggs, probably bagels although not very good ones, sliced bread and a toaster. The equivalent European hotel breakfast is so much better it is almost unfair to compare them — half a dozen different pastries, multiple breads, scrambled eggs that are competently done, yogurt, four different jams, multiple cheeses and deli meats, four different juices, … and that is just the Prague hotel I am staying at. In Vienna or Lisbon it would probably be much more, including smoked salmon, pickled herring, Muesli, … . You can make breakfast your main meal of the day.
England is not, for the previous paragraph, part of Europe, wasn’t even before Brexit.
An American hotel room, even a low end motel, will have both a small refrigerator and a microwave. A European hotel room will have a refrigerator. The only one I can remember with a microwave was a room in Poland that was clearly intended for long-term stays and including a mini-kitchen.
Another difference is bedding. In an American hotel, or an American bedroom, it is sheets and blankets. In a European hotel — I have no data on European bedrooms — it is likely to be a duvet, a quilt in a giant pillow case substituting for top sheet and blankets. For anyone who is used to ending the night tangled up in his bedding, it is a considerable improvement.
(Bed with duvet folded in half)
A feature of European hotels that I am less happy with is the control over electricity, a socket next to the door that you are supposed to put your key card in when you enter the room, take it out of when you go out — at which point not only do the lights go out but so does the power in the electric outlets. I first discovered that when I returned to the room in which I had left my laptop, I thought charging. The idea is presumably to save electricity by making sure you don’t leave any lights on when you are out.
There is a solution if you want to keep recharging things when you are out of the room — fool the socket with another card the same size. In my experience it works, but there may be hotels with sufficiently advanced technology that it doesn’t.
My web page, with the full text of multiple books and articles and much else
Past posts, sorted by topic
A search bar for past posts and much of my other writing
“There is a solution if you want to keep recharging things when you are out of the room”
Tell the front desk that you’ve misplaced your key card. Or just ask for two from the beginning of your stay.
As a european, let me confirm that any credit card will do, and everybody knows you do it.
The cleaning ladies will probably remove it, though.