When someone travels to an unfamiliar country, they are often immersed into that country’s culture, one that may be very different from their own. This summer, my family and I traveled to Barcelona, Spain and Amalfi Coast, Italy. These trips changed my perception of Europeans and their culture, as well as my own.
The first night in Barcelona, we flew in late and decided to explore the area that we were staying in. We walked around the alleyways, shopped in the local boutiques, and ate freshly made gelato. After all of that, we started to hear music playing in the distance. It was not pop music or anything you would hear on the radio, but it was traditional Spanish songs.
We followed the sounds to a nearby neighborhood, where there was a small, dead end square with a big crowd of people dancing in a circle to the small quartet of instruments. Some people stood on the sides and watched while socializing with complete strangers, and everyone was laughing and having fun. It felt like those scenes you would see in a movie, something that I never thought I would see in real life.
In America, I do not think I have ever seen people dance to traditional music in the middle of the street. It was a completely different kind of experience, something I wish we had in the USA.
Something else that I noticed during my time in Europe was that locals were not constantly concerned about their appearance or their health. In America, people are always obsessing over what they are wearing or the way their body looks. For Europeans, being skinny and wearing nice, trendy clothes is not something to worry about. The popular items that teenagers wear to school in America like leggings, sweatpants, hoodies, and even PJs are things that Europeans find completely weird. Walking around Europe in leggings got me odd looks from the locals, while nobody in the States would take note of it. Additionally, not being skinny is not something that is looked down upon.
As for the European diet, they mostly eat freshly baked foods. I did not see nearly as much processed foods as I do in America, and the food tasted much better there.
Alexa Gawron, sophomore, traveled to Poland for two weeks and Greece for one week this summer and drew similar conclusions about the food she ate.
“[Foods that were new to me and I liked] were definitely seafoods like crab, squid, and mussels. They had different kinds of meats in Greece which were also really good,” Gawron said. “The foods are way better there because they’re more fresh, but here, there is just kind of more fast food and there was barely any fast food there.”
Gawron also took note of the different clothing style and what is considered appropriate to wear in Europe.
“It’s normalized to be very dressed up everywhere you go. You even have to be very dressed up to go to grocery stores. Here, people don’t really care what they look like,” Gawron said.
Additionally, Gawron noticed the little use of cars because Europeans tended to “use less [public transportation in Europe].” This difference was impossible to miss; with such tight alleyways and such high rates of pedestrians, many do not drive to avoid damage to their vehicle or hitting a pedestrian. This made walking around the cities look and feel very different.
As for their health, Europeans are really big smokers. Everywhere you go there is always someone smoking; it is way more normalized and acceptable in Europe. If I think about popular cities like Chicago, a young girl was smoking on the street would likely receive some dirty stares or even say a rude remark.
Overall, learning about these differences between European and American culture is one of the benefits of traveling. The traveling really changed my perception of the European way of life and allowed me to become a more curious and insightful person.
