Randomness on the Road Part 2

 

Some more little incidents that have happened to me over the last three months that didn’t make it into the other posts.  Enjoy!

I thought for sure this was a guy creeping on me in Amsterdam.  It took me a while to realize that it is a mannequin for a mask shop.  Still felt like the guy was staring at me.

Is this a joke?  Or a misspelling?  I don’t know but I saw this in a window in Greece and had to take a picture of it.

I’ve had a single song stuck in my head for the entirety of my travels.  Night and day, the thing plagues me.  It’s a good song, but so annoying.  Maybe I should treat it like the video in the movie The Ring.  If I just share the annoyance … Dominic Fike - 3 Nights (Official Video) - YouTube

If you’ll remember, I discovered my favorite wine in Portugal, Casal Garcia Vinho Verde.  I’ve searched for the wine in every country I’ve visited and so far have only found it in one – America.  I idly went into Total Wine expecting to be disappointed and yet there it was.  I’m sure I’m not the only woman who’s ever been in a liquor store hugging a wine bottle while on the verge of tears – but I’m sure I was the only woman who put the bottle back on the shelf and left the store empty handed.  It was my last day in the states.  There wasn’t enough time for me to chill the bottle and drink the entire thing in one night.  It was tempting though.

I may bash America a lot (deservedly so), but there are three things I’ve come to appreciate about it. One is the powerful passport.  I can travel quite freely to most other countries without a visa or any restrictions which is incredibly convenient.   Two would be the USPS.  This institution is beloved for a reason.  Lots of locations, easy to find and access – all things I’ve found to be quite difficult in other countries.  Either the post office is hard to reach or the hours change on a whim.  I truly enjoy the ease of using the American system.  The third and final thing I like about the U.S. is a policy it enacted years ago that makes it truly stand out from Europe.  When the U.S. started to crack down on public smoking back in the 80’s, the rates of death started to drop.  The number of new smokers went down (until, of course, Big Tobacco invented vaping).  I have a distinct memory of taking the bus to high school for the first time in 1987 and being stunned at the number of teachers and students who were outside smoking.  The very next year, smoking was banned on school property and since then, I’ve seen fewer and fewer people who smoke.

In Europe, unfortunately, smoking is still big.  I mentioned that it’s still legal to smoke in restaurants in Bulgaria.  In Istanbul, most of the cafes are open air so there are plenty of smokers there (as there are everywhere.  I swear, when a kid is born in Türkiye, the boys are given a cigarette while the girls are given head scarves). Smoking rates are high across Europe despite the sometimes graphic images on the packaging. 

I don’t know when I started to notice this, but once I did, I made a habit of snapping a picture of any new image I could find.

The pictures are enough to gross me out and I don’t even smoke, so the fact that smokers deliberately buy products with this imagery on them proves how much smoking is an addiction.

This is possibly the biggest freaking dog I’ve ever seen.  It was just wandering the streets of Istanbul.

I have no idea what this was about.  I was in Raffles City in Singapore and this line of uniformed people just marched into the mall and headed up the escalators.

Then, people in a different uniform would follow.  Some were cops, some were military, but no one gave an explanation for why they were there.  All I know is that the top floor of the mall was a convention center, so I suppose there was a huge meeting going on there.  Still don’t know why they chose to march in like this.

And in tech news: air conditioners are run by remote in several of the countries I’ve visited.  There may also be a separate unit for the bedroom and the living area.  It’s also common practice to turn them off when out of the apartment.  Makes sense and is a contributing factor as to how Europeans use less energy than the U.S.

I’m always happy to see English on any appliance I encounter.  Otherwise you get this. 

Or this one in Thai.  I just kept pushing buttons until the machine started to make noise.  Seemed to work out okay.  Nothing exploded anyway.

I usually try to book apartments with a washer when I can.  Dryers are rare in Europe.  The only time I’ve encountered them was in the public laundromats in Greece and the washer-dryer combos in Lisbon and Dublin.  Instead, most places in Europe have these dealies to dry the clothes.

Set the thing up on a balcony or back porch and you’re good to go.  I had enough room in the Sofia apartment to set it up inside as there was nowhere outside to put it.  In Sunny Beach, I had this unique contraption on the tiny balcony.  It was like a chandelier for underwears.  Interesting.

There are markets in Phuket where you can buy living fish then take them over to a nearby restaurant and have them cook them.  It’s the lobster tank in fancier U.S. restaurants, but for any kind of fish you want.  Can’t get any fresher than that.

There’s a store chain in Singapore called Gentle Monster.  I spotted a couple of these stores in malls and each one of them had a different sculpture in the entrance.

These were some of the weirdest moving mechanical … things I had ever seen.  It made me wonder what the store sold.  I never would have guessed that they carry eyeglasses.  What that has to do with the name or the sculptures – I couldn’t tell you.

One last song to leave with you.  I’ve always considered this my theme song.  It hit me one morning on my journey that I’m finally living it.  Imani Coppola - Legend of a Cowgirl (Video) - YouTube