Tuesday, March 24, 2009
The United States is a country famous for convenience. We Americans live our lives with ease, a fact made apparent by our experiences in Spain and Germany. These first-world countries may be among the richest on earth, but in terms of convenience, the U.S. remains king.
Helen:
My first task upon arriving in Santiago de Compostela was to find an apartment to rent for the upcoming semester. This assignment — to negotiate housing in a foreign country and language — was my first clue into the nature of student life in Spain.
When apartment-searching in Lawrence, considerations are usually limited to location and price. Apartment-searching in Santiago includes many more factors. Unlike in Lawrence, Internet access is not available in the majority of locations. Like many students, I live in an apartment without Wifi. This means a grand reduction in the time I spend on the Internet. I used to check my e-mail and Facebook more than five times a day and watch my favorite television shows online in the comfort of my dorm room. I took for granted being able to check the news and weather when I woke up in the mornings. Now, I’m lucky to send important e-mails once per day at a nearby café.
One must also consider heating and hot water — or, rather, the lack of heating and hot water. My room is the only one in my apartment with a non-functioning heater. This means I’m cold while wearing long underwear, pajamas and six blankets. A friend of mine who has no heating either can sometimes see his breath in his bedroom.
While my roommates and I are lucky enough to have automatic heating for water, others must deal with bombonas, gas canisters that heat barbeque grills in the United States and apartments and water in Spain. Changing bombonas is an ordeal in and of itself, and if someone forgets to order the next one, all residents of the apartment must live without heat until the next one arrives. Showering in freezing water is certainly not the most pleasant of experiences, but it does encourage the limited use of natural resources.
Michael:
Once I arrived in Bonn, Germany, it didn’t take long for me to discover that convenience and variety may only go hand-in-hand in America.
For example, Mrs. E’s offers countless dinner combinations. Want a bowl of Coco Puffs and a chicken wrap for dinner? Go right ahead!
The local QuikTrip provides dozens of soft drinks. And if a Diet Coke with Lime isn’t quite right, why not add a vanilla “flavor shot” to top it off?
An over-abundant selection is even a point of pride for some. Consider the “ultimate drink stop” — Sonic. It’s more then 168,000 drink combinations means “you could have a new drink every day for the next 462 years,” according to its advertisement. Never mind that no one in his or her right mind would ever order a blue coconut and chocolate root beer.
In Germany, variety is exchanged for simplicity. Menus rarely exceed ten pages, Pepsi is non-existent and the student cafeteria has two options — vegetarian or meat.
As for Sonic — McDonald’s, Subway and the occasional Burger King are the only American fast-food restaurants I’ve found here. I guess my craving for a vanilla Dr. Pepper will have to wait another five months.
America — home of one-hour photos, self-checkout lines and drive-thru restaurants, banks and even marriages — remains unmatched by two of the world’s most prominent countries in terms of convenience.
— Mubarak is a Shawnee sophomore in journalism and Spanish. Holtz is a Topeka sophomore in journalism and German.
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