Day to Day Life in Europe
Living in Geneva Switzerland has taught me many different aspects of life. Many people in Geneva, where I lived, only had one car. The most common cars were little Volkswagens. The streets, road rage and curtice were completely different. Roundabouts and parking garages were very common in Geneva. Here in America everyone is very cautious about going around in a roundabout, but in Geneva everyone actually used the roundabout to their advantages. Instead of stopping like everyone in America does when they come up to a roundabout, Europeans would fly through unless someone was actually in the way. Parking garages were very advanced for the time when I lived in Geneva. They had green and reds lights above the parking spots to let you know if the spot was open or taken. This came in handy as it can be very difficult to find a parking spot sometimes. They also had mirrors hanging on the walls making it possible to see the cars on the opposite side.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
What some roundabouts in Switzerland look like.
​
Houses in Europe is something I have mentioned in another blog post but haven’t gone into depth about. Houses in Europe were either made out of concrete or bricks. Where I lived, my house was connected with other houses. The best way to explain it would be the garage or house would be right next to someone else's house and your own house with no gaps between. Some big bushes would separate each others backyards. My house had three floors which included a attic. There was a spiral stairway built up to the attic from the main floor. The attic had a rooftop church ceiling that was completely made out of wood and it had a bathroom. The attic was my favorite place other than the sun room. The sun room was one of my favorite places as you could look out at our backyard and Mont Saleve in the background. If you don’t know what a sun room is it basically is a room made out of complete glass. The only bad thing about a sun room is it got very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. I have mentioned a bomb shelter in a previous blog, but to recap what I said was basically every house has a bomb shelter as it was a requirement to have one.
​
​
​
​
​
What my house looked like in Switzerland.
Being a kid living in Geneva, I loved to go to toy stores. In my opinion I thought these stores were better than Toys R Us. My favorite toy store was King Jouet. My favorite part of this store was all the interactive things they had in the store. For example they had huge Playmobil statue toys inside the store when you walked around. They loved to give free toys to little kids when you checked out too. I got four My Little Ponies that I was actually able to sell on eBay and made a huge profit off of them. Shopping in general was a little different. The grocery store my mom always went to called Co Op. To get a shopping cart you would have to put in a 5 franc coin like they have at Aldi. Grocery stores were step up practically the same but of course Europe has different foods than America and of cousre everything was in French. European grocery stores didn’t have root beer, kelloggs cereals, fruit roll ups, and so much more. The positives that an European store had was the chocolate. The chocolate was so much better than American chocolate. When we came back to America I refused to eat American chocolate cause I thought it tasted like garage compared to European chocolate.
This is the King Jouet toy store in Swizterland.
​
​
​
​
​
Overall day to day life in Europe was very different and I did love every second of it, even if I couldn’t read any of the signs or posters as they were all in french. Living in Europe was definitely something diverse and new which I am thankful for expecting for over 5 years of my life.
​
