We made it out of the Alps, spending last night in Chamonix, France, and traveling to Courmayeur, Italy today. The transportation system here is remarkable. Not only are the trains and buses clean and spacious, but they are on time. There is public transportation to and from everywhere. Not only that, but there is a remarkable trail system here, with signed trails between every community. No distances are given, only the amount of time it takes.
The transportation system in the US, by comparison, is not very good. Buses are reserved for the needy, and trains were replaced by autos after World War II. What passenger service we have is only in or between heavily populated areas. Public transit between smaller towns and cities is difficult at best. The country was designed for ownership of cars.
It is what it is, but so much of the US is that way because business interests wanted it that way. Oil companies wanted automobile travel, which led to suburban sprawl and gridlock. Neighborhoods are designed with few services, necessitating a drive for the simplest of errands, like getting a quart of milk. Market advocates like to brag about efficiency, but we are not efficient. We are wasteful in our habits and our towns and cities are poorly designed. If markets caused that, then perhaps markets could use some fixing. Or maybe we can simply scrap that ideology and try things that actually work, and work well, in other places.
There’s some amazing engineering feats over here – a ten mile tunnel under Mt. Blanc, and a cable from system from Courmayeur to Chamonix that goes up to 15,000 feet. The cable system was the result of a bet between engineers back in the early 20th century. It is one of the longest spans in the world. That is the picture above.
Other things that I like over here:
Coffee is very good. US coffee has gotten better over the years, but drip coffee is a rarity here. Everything is pressed through machines. I have come to like caffe’ Americano with milk. That is an expensive habit back home, so I’ll go back to my usual. (Also coffee is drunk at a table or standing bar. There is no carry out and no cooffe on trains and buses, and no wasted paper cups like those that pollute the American landscape.)
Bakeries and pastry are quite varied. This is becoming more so in the US, but where I grew up we had three kinds of bread available, all white. Italian pastry is beautiful, intricately designed and dressed up with fruit. It is such a shame to defile it.
There is not a lot of meat or eggs on menus, so I’ve come to like various strains of pizza and some pastas. I am not hurting for energy nor am I hungry, and I’m not gaining back any lost weight. We’ve eaten a lot of cheese, which can be quite moldy tasting to the American palate. We don’t recognize any of it so try to stick with hard and off-white stuff and hope for the best.
Beer is everywhere, hardly a big deal, served alongside Coke and bottled water most everywhere. It is mild beer, pilsner and lagers, with alcohol content around 4%. It is far tastier than American lagers like Bud and Coors. It is sold by the can or bottle, and not in multipacks.
And wine is everywhere, many varieties and brands, none recognizable. I learned from various writers that even the experts cannot tell cheap wine from expensive, and so do not think much about what we buy. And even if we find something we like, the odds are we won’t find it again. Very good wine is quite affordable in Italy and France, and ridiculously expensive in Switzerland. A bottle that costs €4 in Italy might run 16 Swiss francs, though the two currencies are roughly equal.
We have not encountered any “supermarkets” in our limited travels. There are small markets that carry everything in small quantities. They are often just a hole in a wall that opens up into many rooms once inside. They can be quite fun, and are low-priced, usually locally owned.
Ice is a rarity. I do miss ice, but public fountains running a steady stream of ice cold alpine water are a true delight. But at 3AM after dehydration caused by hiking, lukewarm room water does not satisfy like ice water.
We have encountered no storefront health care – it must be hidden away somewhere. We hear ambulances now and then. Each country here has first-class public health care, according to WHO. Frankly, I have not encountered anyone not in good health except for a guy who sat on the next door balcony in Argentiere hacking away as he smoked 15 cigarettes. Poor devil.
Tomorrow we are off to Murren, Switzerland. I am guessing that the Eiger peak is in that area, and that in Clint Eastwood’s movie The Eiger Sanction, the town below where George Kennedy sat looking up the mountain was Murren. I could be wrong about that, but I do maintain strongly to this day that that was Clint’s worst movie ever. I love the guy and his work, but that movie blew bleu cheese chunks.*
_________
Piece of Mindful 
Europe has had 3 thousand years to develop their transportation network with each new transportation technology having to be integrated into an already existing pattern of life and land-use. Many modern day major roadways in southern Europe follow paths established by the Romans.
So while Europe’s transportation network slowly evolved in a layered fashion with new modes never truly displacing older modes while in contrast America’s network was simply grafted onto an untouched landscape in a wholesale manner. First with railways, then with the highway system it was the new and shiny transportation technology of the time that dictated our living arrangements rather than the living arrangements dictating our transportation networks.
As for the caffe Americano… you can get pretty close at home without an espresso maker by buying espresso grade coffee and running it through a french press.
LikeLike
You’re right about that and we are aware of the long history. I was thinking as we hiked the Italian Alps how Pope Leo III crossed them in 799 to visit Charlemagne. (I knew it was a pope and I knew it was Charlemagne but I just looked up the rest.) So yes they have had centuries to work on this stuff and also remember that I am a tourist and don’t see body shops and dumps and slaughterhouses.
But we did have a shot at going a different way in the US. It did not have to be sprawl and autos. That was a decision that was made for us in the post-war era without our input.
LikeLike
We were partially complicit in how this country was built post-WWII. We fully adopted the idea of single family home ownership and a two car garage. Yes these ideas were sold to Americans, and for the most part they were taken hook-line-sinker, but not to many people complained about it until you get into the last couple of decades. As the system was being built the costs of the systems were masked by the immediate benefit that highways and sprawl allowed… construction/engineering jobs building roads, real estate development, vast increase for new professions and services that came into existence because of the new living arrangements. The costs have just started to really become apparent in the last several decades mainly through reduced services, increased cost of living, budget short-falls, and poorly maintained infrastructure.
And why should have people complained about it, almost every political constituency that mattered at the time saw a benefit from this system? For most of that time the beneficiaries of both government policies and market forces was the white middle-class and the white upper-class. The only group that really had enough of a voice to have shifted any policy were too busy enjoying the new suburban escapism that was developed. And the losers? Poor minorities that didn’t have the resources to join in or access to education, jobs, credit didn’t have a voice in the political realm and their fight and energy was spent simply gaining access to the political system.
There is certainly a growing segment of the population that is waking up to the reality of what America has built for itself… basically we have engineered our own demise. But still the number of people that want the old system to continue far outweigh those making noise about our built environment. And our politics is still mired in the old thinking and thus we get policies that are meant to amplify the old (bank bailouts, more highways less transit) rather than make a shift to any new way of conducting business.
Mean while the costs of maintaining this system have now come to far outweigh the benefits to the point that we can’t even maintain the system at the current level (roads and bridges falling apart, foreclosed homes).
LikeLike
Again I mostly agree. But you often add the air that all that happens is by public demand. I agree that if you offer cheap burgers people will eventually live on cheap burgers, but question the assumption that such decisions are majority rule or majority follow, and also your apparent assumption that decisions are made en masse in democratic fashion.
For instance Standard Oil of California bought the LA mass transit system after WWII and disassembled it. Where was that decision made? Ballot box? Consumer choice? No. Corporate board room. And all over the country when decision time came, passenger rails were taken down, new lines not built, buses were not funded. Just recently an oil-backed Governor in Wisconsin turned back high-speed rail.
We agree on what happened but not why.
LikeLike
I don’t think I implied it was a majority decision to go down the road we did. A little money in the pockets of those less fortunate than the ones making the actual decisions goes along ways towards buying their consent.
LikeLike