Our two weeks of cruising on the Rhine and Mosel are ended, and we are home in Wyoming. This blog contains some concluding thoughts about the trip just ended.
We observed that window curtains are rare in Protestant Netherlands. We were told it is because people want to show they have nothing to hide. I wonder what debauchery they think we're hiding when they come to the States and nearly everybody has curtains?
People who live in the northern, Flemish portion of Belgium, often speak of their country and the Netherlands together as "the Low Lands." I wonder if this is a closet separatism or if the Walloons of southern Belgium use that terminology too?
"Real" Europeans refer to the economic model of the U.S. and the U.K. together as "the Anglo-Saxon model," and it is one to which they do not subscribe. Their model is much more government-based, government-managed and has as its goal the support of the less fortunate. I wonder if that helps us understand why their unemployment rate in good times is about what our rate is in bad times?
In Antwerp we saw many buildings built with what they call "the bacon style" exterior. It is called that because the buildings consist of a layer of white stone followed by several courses of red bricks, followed by another layer of white stone, followed by more bricks, etc. It does look like bacon, but it is also attractive.
Europeans like living in the city or in town, and hope to be able to afford to do so. Therefore, particularly in France, the poor get pushed out into the suburbs. In the U.S. we mostly operate in exactly the opposite way; the poor live in the inner city and the more affluent live further out. I'm guessing our greater reliance on the automobile is partly responsible.
I may have more trip-concluding thoughts in a day or so.
