In this post we'll go over some differences we observed in our travels.

Things Europeans do well

Public transportation

It's almost cliche now to saw that Europeans have better public transportation than Americans do.  Every city we visited except Rome had public transport that could get us anywhere -- downtowns, train stations, airports, suburbs.  Not once during the entire trip did we need to rent a car, have a friend pick us up, or take a cab.  Outside of the northeast, can you imagine flying in to an average American city and relying on public transport to get to your downtown hotel?

In addition to the extensive network, European systems are better organized and labeled.  They're better organized because they rely on very simple rules.  First rule, one train per track.  You don't have to worry about getting on an express or local, a #3 instead of a #1 or #2.  When the next train arrives, you simply get on.

Second, they're better organized by using a radial pattern for the routes, like in Madrid where Plaza del Sol is the center.  This lets people get in and out of downtown directly and provides for a common transfer hub.

Third, they're better labeled because all tracks have the system map in plain display at each stop (this is not true in New York).  Also, directions are labeled by terminal station and list all upcoming stops.  You don't need to speak the language or know anything about the city to navigate the metros -- all you need is the stop name, and you can go from there.  In contrast in New York the subway direction is indicated by downtown or uptown, and none of the stops are labeled.  You have to know the city to get around in the metro, which is a little less tourist-friendly than the European equivalents.  Oh yeah, the European equivalents are clean.  We never saw a puddle of urine until we got on the NY Subway.

Train system

To complement the great intra-city transportation system, western Europe has very good inter-city trains.  These are high-speed, electric trains that you simply get on at the right time.  There is no security, usually no assigned seating, and in Germany nice outlets to plug your laptops in.  They're perfect for taking day trips to nearby communities or for leisure.  There is no hassle, and outside of Spain, they're always on time.

One comment on the seat assignment: we've noticed that trains and planes without seat assignments load and unload quicker.  This is because people have an incentive to get on fast in order to secure a seat.  While it's nice to know we would sit together with pre-assigned seats, we would just as easily prefer first-come, first-serve since it reduces the hassle.

Putting liquid measurements on menus and glasses

All restaurants in Europe are required (we think, since we saw this 100% of the time) to display in the menu the amount of liquid served in a beverage.  They then must pour the liquid in a glass with the measurement shown.  For example, if we order a coke, we would typically get a 40 centiliter glass (just one shot smaller than a water bottle).  On the menu it would say 40 cl (or 400 ml or 4 dl depending on country) and on the glass there would be a small -- but clearly visible -- line showing how high 40 centiliters are.  This seems like a minor thing, but in Europe where beverages are expense (and free water is unheard of), it really makes purchasing drinks straight-forward.  We can pick out the cheapest by-volume liquid without looking at prices.  Think of this, at a restaurant you order a glass of wine.  How much wine are you getting?  Is it 1/4 or 1/10 of the bottle?  We visited some places, notably in Geneva and Spain, where 10 centiliters of wine cost the same amount as entire liters of wine in France and Spain.

We think the measurements should be listed on American menus as well.

Metric system

It's just smarter and makes sense.  How many ounces in a gallon?  I don't remember, and nor should I have to.  What more to say?

It's not that expensive to change over, either.  We just have people afraid of change.  It's an education thing.  Once we take the leap we can better work with the rest of the world.

Speaking English

This is a sensitive subject because language is strongly tied to national identity and culture.  However, the simple truth is nearly every educated person in all of the countries we visited spoke English.  It was not necessary to know Italian in Italy, for example.  A good number of restaurants had English writing on menus separate English-only menus.

Why is this?

Just like the Euro is the common currency, English is the common language.  It's the lowest common denominator for everyone in the EU to do business with each other.  Take two countries, Spain and Germany, for example.  Since they're not geographically close, there's no historical reason for Germans to learn Spanish or Spaniards to learn German.  So the two communities generally cannot speak to each other.  However, both countries did teach their children English.  So that's what's used.  Joe predicts it will become the official working language of the EU (all meetings and business will be done in it without the need for translation) in two generations.

We actually think this is a wonderful development.  If you didn't already know, China and India are the two largest English-speaking countries.  Combined with English-speakers in America and Europe, we're approaching a de facto common, global language.  Language barriers aren't the problem they used to be.

Tax is included in the price

We got spoiled.  You walk in to a bakery and purchase a 1.50 croissant and a 2.30 eclair.  How much is the bill?  In the states I have no idea.  In Europe it's 1.50+2.30=3.80.  The only exception was in Barcelona, but it's clear they just do things differently as part of their identity crisis.

Tax should be required to be included in the price.  Sure it would "raise" menu prices, but we're already paying the tax, and it would make it easier for Americans to do business.  No more need for pennies, either.  In our entire trip in Europe we got at most 3 EU pennies.  How many do you get during the average day?

Things Americans do well

Credit card receipts

European receipts print your credit card number.  Not the "entire" number, but the important parts.  In the states the receipts show the last four digits for consumers to identify which card they used in the purchase.  In Europe they omit the first 4 and the last digit of the 16-digit number.  If you're curious why this is so stupid, it's because the numbers they keep in print are the important ones.  The first 4-6 digits on the card identify which bank issued the card, which is public knowledge and easily picked out by looking at the card itself.  You also could just guess.  The remaining digits are unique to the account, except the last digit which is a check-digit.  A check-digit is a number that's calculated based on the proceeding digits so that computers can check for errors while reading the magnetic strips.  This check-digit algorithm is also public knowledge and easy to do by hand.  So, while the European receipts don't print the number verbatim, they do print the "unique" information so that it's easy to reconstruct the entire card number from a found receipt.  Stupidity that's borderline criminal.

Restaurants

While we enjoyed eating out in the various countries, there often was too much risk in Europe.  In the states we have the benefit of chains that provide a guaranteed service offering, which forces independent restaurants to provide the same or better service.  There simply isn't much risk in eating out in the states.  In Europe there really aren't chains to force a lowest common denominator.  Plus, the tipping scheme we use causes waiters to be interested in their tables and constantly "table touch."  In Europe we almost always had to call the waiter for the check or any other issues.  We also never were asked "how's the meal" or if the waiter needed to bring more out.

Free Restrooms

In Europe it's customary to pay to use public facilities.  This is just stupid.  The facilities in Europe were no cleaner, and it often causes people just to urinate outside.  Using the restrooms is a human right; charging a fee is criminal.

Tips for traveling like we did

1. Leave the wallets at home, use a travel belt.  We put our passports, credit cards, and large amounts of money in ours.  We actually saw pickpockets in Madrid, and let's just say we never felt in danger of losing our valuable information.  There's no other safer way to travel.
2. Bring a laptop, you'll need one.  First, it's perfect to offload and organize pictures.  You don't have enough memory cards for a trip like this -- we took 17.5 GB of pictures.  Next, it's nice to have a keylogger-free computer for emailing and browsing.  We also installed MapPoint European Edition so we had offline maps of all the cities we visited.  Plus, it's nice to watch a movie or two.
   1. Bring two laptop batteries.  Plane rides and train rides are almost always long enough to kill a battery.  It's nice to have a spare so you're not left with a non-functioning computer.
   2. Charge whenever you can.  Even if you don't think you need to, charge.  You won't know when the next time will be.
   3. Bring a three-way splitter for electronics.  Most places you'll be lucky to find one outlet... make the most of it.  Along the same lines, you only need the cheap adapters in Europe.  The 50-cent ones that are glorified wires.
3. Pee whenever you can.  Even if you don't think you need to, pee.  You won't know when the next time will be.  This may be common sense, but in Europe you pay most places to use facilities. 
4. Have copies of all receipts for your journey.  We kept them all on the laptop and also stored them in Skydrive in case we lost the computer.  We then wrote all of the confirmation numbers in our hard-copy itinerary.  Luckily we didn't need any of them on the trip, but it was nice assurance when traveling.
   1. Make a hard-copy itinerary with all of the main plans in one place.  We had all of our hostel reservations, train times, flights, and even major attractions picked out before going.  We put them into one document, in chronological order, that we and our families could follow.  We had two hard-copies of the document with us, an electronic one on the computer, and another electronic one on Skydrive.  Make sure to include directions to hostels and train stations in the itinerary.
   2. Copy all of the directions onto a separate piece of paper.  We had all of the directions on our travel itinerary, and just before we arrived we copied them to scratch paper.  The purpose for this was twofold.  First, it caused us to read closely the directions and understand them.  Second, we put the itinerary away in its safe place and worked off of the scratch paper.  That way, as we were traveling the metros and walking through the streets, if the scratch paper got dirty or lost, we only were out a disposable copy of directions.  If we used the original itinerary, we would have been out a copy of our entire travel plans.
5. Blog instead of writing emails.  It's much more efficient than repeating yourself to multiple family members and friends.  We were pleasantly surprised with how well our family and friends accepted and kept up with the blog.  Thank you.  Plus, after the trip you have a good record for your memories.
   1. Blog using software offline like Live Writer since the internet is sporadic.  Live Writer, with Live Photo Gallery, really worked out well.  Also, working offline led us to produce higher-quality content since we could take our time or sleep on posts.
   2. It's easy to refer to the blog as well, and we even used it a few times to remember details while en route.
6. Bring an external hard drive like a Western Digital Passport to back up pictures and documents as you go.  Laptops can get stolen or hard drives fail, taking with it all of your offloaded pictures.  We kept copies of all the pictures we took in two places throughout the trip.  You want to pick one that doesn't require its own power source.  Also, we stored all of our media on the hard drive.
7. Bring media to watch on down time.  We had 100 movies and 10 television seasons to watch.  There is down time.  Sometimes you want to sleep.  Sometimes you can't and want to be entertained.

We hope that was useful.  The next, and final post, will be on our travel statistics.

Sincerely,

J+S