8/04/2008 09:15:00 AM
Adiós, España All good things must come to an end. |  Along Spain's most famous street, Las Ramblas |
 | The streets aren't just figuratively clean in Europe, they're also literally clean. Typical of everywhere you go in Europe, store managers could be seen sweeping up the areas in front of their businesses. In other spots garbage collectors cleaned up the streets, picked up stray trash, and so forth.  Little to no litter, anywhere. |
| Gas is still higher, but not by as much. Smart cars, mopeds, bikes abound. Of course, like so many other European people, the Spanish walk everywhere. If it's within a couple kilometers, forget about driving. Which meant we saw very few fat asses in Spain. In fact, with the exception of one very boisterous German couple, the unhealthy looking tourists we could hear spoke a very American sounding dialect of English. |  |
 | But it's not just the walking that keeps our European cousins in better shape than us. The absence of fried food from virtually every menu we looked at (the lone exception being the McDonald's we stepped into one afternoon for McFlurries); the predominance of olive oil, vegetables, and seafood. And a drink or two per day is also good for the heart, right? Naturally, we did our best to follow that guidance... But the most striking difference between American and European towns is the collective level of stress evident in people's attitudes. The first time a stranger talks to you on some random street corner, the American reaction is a defensive one: who is this weirdo, and why is he talking to me? A drunk stranger, laughing hysterically, greets you on the street at 1:30 in the morning... your reaction betrays your citizenship. In Europe, it's a given that anywhere you go, the natural state of things is an amosphere of friendliness. You probably won't get the same sort of feeling on the streets of Baltimore, Albuquerque, or Cleveland. |
But as much as we'd like to live there, we couldn't afford it. Not now. The dollar is ridiculously weak right now, which makes the inflating Euro especially tough to deal with. Yee ha. |  Sunbaked travelers. |
