Choices

My ex-husband, Anders, always talked about how many choices you had in American restaurants. Do you want a salad? What type of dressing? You get a choice of side... And, he is right, in Europe, you order your meal and it comes as it comes. Sometimes exactly as described, sometimes with a small salad or other side dish, but you certainly are not asked if you want it. He used to complain that there are really too many choices in America.

I have begun to believe that Europeans make up for those choices in their appliance options. I think our microwave has more than eight modes to it, for example, and that doesn't count just manually lowering the power output on it. Our washer dial makes roulette look simple. I think that there are about 16 choices there, different temperatures, etc. and again, that doesn't count an extra rinse or a pre-wash cycle or the ability to change the rate of the spin cycle. For reference, our top end washer that is in storage back home had about eight settings -- as I recall.

The funniest bit of all this, is that every European I have met swears by how wonderful their appliances are (our washer does get clothes really clean during its two hour cycles), but most of them talk about only using one setting. So, for most of my European friends, these are faux options anyway.

Ah well...just a strange observation!