Small Wonders

Small Wonders of the World

What is it that makes life different from place to place? Language is a big factor that unites, and (as we who only know one language have found out) divides people. But it is the small things that make life interesting and that challenge your assumptions. Here's a list of what we have found....

The Smart Car - a beautifully unique European invention. A car, jazzy and economical, that is so small it can fit into your back pocket (well, that's a stretch). Its length is the same as the width of American cars, so it can park head-in to parallel parking places. While talking to a shopkeeper in Dublin, we learned that the Swatch company is one of the originators of the car...He said that they transferred the idea of changeable watchbands and faces to the car - it has changeable parts. Check this out: http://www.smartstore.uk.com/smartinfo.html. The cars are so popular that there is now a convertible limited edition model for nearly $20,000 --this for a car that is only slightly larger than a watermelon.

Food in Tubes...mustard and horseradish in tubes easy to carry on a picnic. Even without refrigeration, the contents are not exposed to oxygen and last a little while. Great for peanut butter, cheese, and everything else.

Sweetened Condensed Milk - it's the perfect antidote to the instant coffee that you are invariably served in Asia. And I thought I'd never advocate cream and sugar for coffee. But the worse the coffee, the better the cream and sugar! It's even better if it comes in a squeeze tube.

Subways...those on the West Coast can't begin to appreciate the ease of public transportation in many of the big cities of Asia and Europe. Underground trains that link to above ground trains, trams and buses get you from point A to point B without the stress of driving for hours on freeways. They are also a great way to avoid driving the impossibly narrow, winding streets of older cities. And the subways are fast, regardless of the tangles on the surface streets.

Free, clean toilets; isn't it odd that whenever we had to pay for a toilet we knew that it would be dirty? The cleanest and best stocked were free. We paid for the privilege of using the dirtier ones. A bit of a digression on toilets (squeamish readers may skip on to the next paragraph here).... It is really nice to be back to western-style toilets in Europe. We did just fine with the Asian toilets, but there were some pretty horrible ones. On one beautiful river gorge road, the roadside outhouses were simply walls around a pipe that drained down to the edge of the cliff. In another, there was simply a pit that was writhing with maggots. Another was just a pit draining into the vegetable garden (yikes). None had toilet paper, and given the disposal mechanism, toilet paper would be a problem. At best, you bring your own and then put it into a burn bin. We learned to just accept whatever we encountered!

Traffic lights with countdown timers! The signals do not have just the usual red, yellow and green lights, but also display the number of seconds left until the light changes color! That eliminates anyone running the red light, since the cross traffic is also watching the timer and acting like they are at a drag strip. Everyone knows exactly when the light will change, and traffic flies through the intersection until the last fraction of a second. Very efficient! It is particularly handy for pedestrians, since we then know exactly how many seconds we have to get across the street.

ATMs. Yea, this isn't exactly new but it virtually eliminates the old hassle of changing money at every border crossing. We rarely if ever visit money exchange offices --we just head for the ATM when we enter a new country, and poof, we have money from our credit union in the local currency, at the current exchange rate, with no transaction fees. Globalization has some nice features!