According to Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw, this is a joke every European knows

Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw’s  book, Europe 101: History & Art for the Traveler, contains this joke that everyone in our family thought was very amusing based on our experiences in some of these countries.

In Heaven:

• The chefs are French,
• The lovers are Italian,
• The mechanics are German,
• The policy are British, and
• Everything is run by the Swiss.

In Hell:

• The chefs are British,
• The lovers are Swiss,
• The mechanics are French,
• The police are Germans, and
• Everything is run by the Italians.

For your enjoyment.

A note about the blog technology I’ve used – WordPress.com and Windows Live Writer

If you’re not interested in the software used to create a blog, skip this post.  Its aimed at those who might be wondering how an amateur like me could put together a blog.

I hadn’t setup a blog before (but I’ve been reading them for a couple of years) and was inspired by my brother Jeff and his family’s blog of their trip to Europe in summer 2008.  Theirs was hosted on wordpress.com so when it came time for me to select a blog service provider, it was the only one I considered seriously.  I found plenty of documentation on the Web and it was quite simple to set up a (free) blog and use some of their web-based tools to create a few initial posts.

However, I knew that I would not have sufficient internet access to create and maintain the volume of blog posts I was expecting.  So I went looking for software that enabled blog posts to be created without internet access that would operate on the Windows XP-based, Lenovo T61 laptop computer we had along for the trip.

There were a surprising number of tools that supported these general requirements and many also supported programming interfaces of a number of the major blog service providers.  Since I’d already selected wordpress.com as my service provider, I limited my survey to those that offered this support.

To make a long story short, I downloaded and started to use Microsoft Windows Live Writer and have used it to create and maintain all of the posts on this blog.  I would recommend its ease of use and function for the types of posts you see on our blog and for use with WordPress.  Any problems I’ve had creating posts off-line and publishing to wordpress.com are probably explained by the quality and capacity of the internet connection I’ve used on our trip.

I’m looking forward to trying more Windows Live Writer features when I get home to update and add more content and will post more impressions.

Nov 20, 2008 – Our TomTom 920 GPS Navigator – R.I.P.

The importance of a GPS navigator on a trip like this cannot be overstated.  I don’t think it would be possible to travel Europe as we have done, through city streets, autobahns, auto routes, auto stradas, super stradas and other types of roads, highways, old city one way streets, and goat paths.

A week or so ago our TomTom started to hiccup – it needed to be reset to get it to load from its storage device and once, after emerging from a long tunnel it spontaneously restarted itself.  Finally, today no amount of resetting would get it to start. 

It would go to load its operating system and the application and then stop with a red circle with a white cross inside it.  This is very bad according to the TomTom support people.  A TomTom GPS, when plugged into a PC, appears as another USB storage device.  This is part of the device recovery process – delete the contents of the TomTom device and then copy from the PC to the TomTom.  Even this function was not operational on my TomTom. 

When I conveyed this to TomTom support they started sounding sympathetic and started talking about how to get the machine to a dealer to be sent to them for warranty repair.  I also have a 3 year warranty on the device with Future Shop back in Victoria but I wondered if there was anything TomTom could do for me while traveling.

After a 45 minute Skype phone call from Marcialla, Italy, we established there was nothing they could do for us while we were traveling in Europe.  They don’t have a process through which they could do an exchange.

Here is a picture of TomTom in the good old days – navigating us around Europe – as I’d like to remember it.

Fortunately for us, Jean-Pierre Peugeot was equipped with a GPS that we had used on a couple of occasions.  It works but we didn’t like it as much as the TomTom 920.  Now it’s our primary unit.  Here is our new travel companion.

Our "New Places – Familiar Places’ Syndrome

We have observed what we consider a syndrome of those who change places every 2-4 days as we have on this trip.  We think of it as a syndrome because it has an observed and repeated pattern.  We call it the New Places – Familiar Places Syndrome and even though it sounds as though its 2 syndromes they are really two aspects of the same observed phenomenon.

The first Syndrome aspect is the New Places Syndrome.  It starts the night before we are due to leave our current place and, as Allister has observed, is characterized by a poor night sleep.  We don’t know why this happens but an obvious cause could be some anxiety surrounding our departure and finding our next place.

This anxiety is sometimes well-placed.  About 1 in 5 times we find the place we are staying on our first try.  This occurs for a variety of reasons, usually because addresses in Europe are not as orderly as they are in Canadian cities which were built more recently, or all at once, and are laid out on grids or at least parts of grids.

Addresses provided sometimes assume some local knowledge, are not complete, and, often, are not maintained by our GPS.  As we have gotten further into the off-season we have also found that even if we get the address right, there isn’t anybody there to meet us because there are not enough guests to keep a reception desk open.  This is not the case in larger cities but in some of the smaller places we’ve visited, as we’ve gotten later in the season, has become almost a rule.

The flip side of this condition, that arises after you’ve been in a place for a few days but are preparing to leave, is the Familiar Places Syndrome.  It includes symptoms of both feeling comfortable and anxious.  Comfort in the sense that you have been in the place for a few days and know where the banking machine and supermarket are located, you’ve visited a few sites in the surrounding area and have found restaurants and interacted with locals and are feeling almost self-sufficient.  You’re not anxious about where you’ll sleep that night.

Our trip has seen this syndrome play out over and over again and each of us have felt their symptoms at one time or another.  We’re sure we aren’t unique, that everyone has experienced this when traveling but we found talking about this made it easy for us to deal with the symptoms.

Our chariot for the trip – ‘Jean-Pierre’ Peugeot – France

I should have posted an entry before now to give credit to our transportation for our trip, a Peugeot 407 Station Wagon that we’ve nicknamed ‘Jean-Pierre’.  We’ve leased Jean-Pierre on a buy-repurchase program through an organization called Auto Europe that represents the Peugeot company and makes this program available to non-EU citizens. 

This car, as you would hope in a new car, has been extremely reliable, having carried us more than 9,000 kilometers.  Before our trip is over, I expect we will have almost driver it almost 15,000 kilometers.

It is a 6-speed diesel which provides good gas mileage and is very easy to drive and provides just enough storage space for our luggage (providing a valuable service by preventing us from collecting more stuff).

Paying for things in Europe – ATM and credit cards

A couple of observations about ATM and credit cards in Europe, based on my experience.

First, ATM cards.  The daily limit on my CIBC ATM card seems to be 250 Euros.  We have been staying at a combination of hotels, pensions, and B&Bs.  B&Bs in Italy and France want to be paid in cash and it can take a little advance planning to accumulate the cash needed to settle a bill.  Hotels and pensions take credit cards so its not a problem with that accommodation type.

I’m going to inquire with CIBC and see if there is a way to get the daily ATM withdrawal limit higher than 250 Euros.  This limit may be imposed somewhere else in the ATM network as part of an agreement amongst participants but it can’t hurt to ask.  It would also reduce the bank service charges incurred by ATM withdrawals.

With respect to credit cards, Canada is behind Europe in adding a chip to our cards that can store another authentication factor.  Last Sunday, needing gas to get us to the Rome area, we drove past at least 5 service stations that offered only automated payment options (i.e. there was no attendant).  Germany, France, and parts of Italy have updated their point-of-service equipment to use these new types of credit cards.

I called CIBC before we left on our trip to alert them to expect charges from Europe.  On the same call, they informed me about their plan to update Canadian VISA customers to the new cards in 2009.  This will make it easier, particularly for those traveling by car who need to buy gas at European service stations.