Counting Down

Our household goods are on the way to the Netherlands and in about a week, I'll be following. With any luck, all of us will arrive safely and in good time. As my last week in the US counts down, I am reflecting on the things I might miss.

Good ice cream - In America ice cream is it's own food group and is eaten daily for nutritional value. Our ice cream is made from real milk. There are enough flavors to fill an entire aisle in the freezer section. In Europe, the freezer in your house very much resembles the one you had in the dorm in college. You know, the four inch tall cold shelf inside the refrigerator. Yeah, there's no room for ice cream in the freezer. But you say, perhaps we can buy a small container and just eat it all at once? Too bad European ice cream is made with powdered milk and vegetable fat so it tastes like crap. No wonder they're skinny.

Chicago Style Hot Dogs - where else can you get your dog with relish, tomato, mustard, AND a pickle, but no ketchup? Enough said.

Italian Beef Sandwiches - obviously, there is nothing Italian about these gigantic soggy sandwiches. But they are fabulous and I'll miss them.

Huge parking lots, huge bathrooms, huge kitchens - OK maybe we are super-sized in the US, but you have to admit that some of it's nice.

In the category of things I will not miss is those darn little affinity cards. I just got my Marriott card in the mail and I realized just how many of these things I have. Dominick's, Jewel, Petsmart, CVS, Performance Bikes, all the airlines (United, American, Northwest, Delta), Blockbuster, etc. It's ridiculous all these silly cards. You have to have the card or you don't get their so-called discounts. Of course, the regular price is always four times what any normal person would spend on said item. The discount merely brings the price back to reasonable.

I hope they don't have those voice-activated automated phone systems in the Netherlands. They are bad enough in English, with that sappy voice that says, "I can help you with that!" If you could strangle a computerized voice over the phone line, this one would be dead. The conversation always goes in circles until can figure out the magic word that gets you a human. Hopefully Europe is more civilized than this.