The Tri-Tour Conundrum
I love guests. Since moving to England three years ago I have had the fortune of being host to several of my friends from back home and always welcome more people to my humble abode. This week I was lucky enough to have 3 seperate groups of people pop over the big pond for a visit and that resulted in the now patented “London: Stoss Style©” tour being held on 3 seperated occasions over 4 days.
What was interesting (beside the rather amazing way foot blisters heal and re-form over the course of 4 full days of walking, is that none of these tours resulted in the same sites. I never really noticed it before, but looking back I realize that each time I have taken friends around London I tend to follow the same general walking/Tube path, but never have I had the same tour twice.
What makes this interesting to me is that I have just spent 4 solid days, on top of the countless times before this week, walking in basically the same 7 or 8 major areas of London and I still see new things. It really is a tour for myself, guided by the people who think I am guiding them.
I lived in Toronto for 4 months and never got this feeling, I lived in Guelph for 4 years and pretty much can claim to have seen it all. What is it about Europe that makes cities like Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam etc. places that you can go to over and over and never see the same site the same way twice? Is it the exotic-ness of simply being in Europe? I doubt it, that wore off a year or so back for me. Perhaps it is the copious amounts of alcohol I drink? Nah, been doing that for years too, especially in Guelph, you bastards (you know who you are)… In my opinion it is the lifestyle they lead.
See, in general, Europeans drink more than North Americans, they smoke more, they eat more meals (albeit in smaller portions) and yet, in general, they are in better health and happier then we are. Why?
If you watch Sick-o by Mr. Michael Moore you will see a “documentary” that gives a lot of credit to the healthcare over here, especially in France. Mr. Moore basically makes Canadian Healthcare almost Utopian and then surpasses Utopia in Europe and specifically Scandanavia. We all know this isn’t really true, but he has some interesting points.
Europeans are more relaxed and depending on the survery 6-8 out of the top 10 “happiest” counties are European.
I recently went to the Doctors for a minor problem and instead of immediately feeling me up or doing unmentionable things below the belt the doctor asked me about me. How UNIQUE! Was I in a relationship? Were there any problems? Has my eating pattern or work habits changed? How was I sleeping? Any added stresses in my life? I strongly believe these questions are the reason why English medicine doesn’t work for me. It is weaker medicine and it can be because it isn’t their first line of defense. Their first attempt is figuring out why “all of sudden” something went wrong with your body. Likening this to a computer problem. The first line of defense isn’t to reformat, or to start deleting things or changing settings somewhere, it is to do a generic scan of your machine for problems using antivirus, or antispyware software. Our medicines have to be stronger, because we grew up taking them after each cough. We “change our settings” until something works better. I spent the better part of 5 years getting allergy shots and so many times as I sat there waiting to be received I saw people walk in and ask how long the wait was, and if it was more than 30 minutes they left. Clearly these are not sick people, they are people who aren’t 100% well who want a quick fix drug to get back to their busy lives.
Recently, a counterpart of mine felt faint one day at his office. His boss called him an ambulance and they gave him 2 weeks stress leave from work. No perscriptions. The Doctor (this happened to be in Switzerland) determined that this was nothing more than over work and exhaustion. He was a perfectly healthy man where something had changed, his hours at work were longer, he had some tight deadlines to meet and his blood pressure rose signifcantly because of this. They even gave him a free heart monitor and if it ever went off he was told immediately to stop what he was doing and go and get a coffee or a tea and sit for 15 minutes to let his heart rate even out! Would a North American Doctor ever perscribe that?
Regardless, I am no Doctor and I don’t know what is best for the human body and this rant isn’t about health care, BUT all I am saying is: Europeans don’t rush home from work at 5pm sharp. They finish up their job and move on to the pub for a chance to unwind. They don’t rush to the stores after dinner for some late night shopping because they are closed at 6pm. They eat on patios facing outwards towards the sidewalks, not in a fenced in area to appease alcohol restrictions.
They schedule and enact their lives around living, not around doing.
So, what does this have to do with my recent trips to London? It is simple: London is a city where anything can happen because the people want it that way. They spend so much time enjoying the sites around them, they want them to change. I walked through the same tunnel twice today about an hour apart. The first time there was a string quartet playing and the second time 2 opera singers, ever seen that in TO?
Bottom line here is relax a little. Smell a few roses…