Things I learned On Our Trip#2

So, the other day on Wild Rose Forum(yes I know I'm a huge CBC radio nerd) the topic was spring cleaning and a new Calgary resident called in. She had just moved here from the UK and did not know how to care for her stainless steel appliances. After answering her query, the host asked her if her new appliances were much larger than her old ones. The caller responded by laughing and then said "everything is bigger in Calgary". It struck a chord with me. We have always tried to live a 'smaller' life. Of course, I realize that 'smaller' is a relative term and for many who live 'larger' than we do, they too might think that they are living small. While in Spain, I got a glimpse of just how 'large' it is we North Americans really do live.

In every city we visited, we passed by real estate offices. They are much the same everywhere and had new listings posted on their windows. All the listings were apartments. 95% were under 1000 square feet--heck, many were under 800 square feet. We saw only one listing that came near to our own house. An apartment almost 1600 square feet in size--no yard, no parking(it did say the possibility for parking), no basement(ours adds an additional 600 square feet of living space). It was in Sevilla and it was listed at close to 700,000 euros. At 1.5 dollars to the euro, that is a significant difference for sure.

So, this 'smaller' living also brought about other differences that we noticed. You should have seen the kitchen stores--so cool and sleek with their tiny little kitchens all efficiently laid out to pack as much as possible in a little tiny space. And, the lack of parking--well, that means that the streets are packed, at all times of the day, with people actually walking to their destinations. Kids are actually playing in the parks and in the streets. It was not uncommon to see little boys kicking soccer balls in tight little alleyways using the buildings as teammates. And, the cars people drive were way, way smaller. Smart cars(there were several different models) were very common--so easy to park(where does one add a parkade in a city of buildings that are hundreds of years old with streets designed for horse and carriage). I often saw families of 5 get out of VW golfs...which has us thinking that we should rid ourselves of our own minivan and be a two golf family. We saw very few SUV's and the ones we did see were diesel driven. The government there keeps the price of diesel lower than the astronomical price of gas in order to encourage conservation. Wow...

And the variety in the shopping was so different. People don't drive to big box stores or shopping malls(where would they put them in a city that is hundreds of years old?)--they walk down the street and go to the little independent shirt store where all they sell is men's shirts. If you need a tie--no fret, right next door is a tie store and next to that is a shoe store. I don't know where they get their pants. But, you see what I mean don't you? We all live in these huges houses and fill them with stuff we don't need--and I'm not so sure that we're any happier. I can only imagine how much smaller their ecological footprint is from ours. Sad really...