Smaller is better (except with french fries)

So here's the way it works: everything is smaller, and everything is connected. No one wears bike helmets here, yet everyone bikes. Because everyone bikes, everyone knows (?) how to be safe on their bikes, and car drivers respect the bikers. Because everyone bikes there are very few cars on the road... Everyone is able to bike because the city is densely populated -- no flight to the suburbs.

This filters into food storage and consumption as well. The fridges here are tiny, like dorm fridges. No one buys vast amounts of groceries from the SuperMarket and stores them in their energy-consuming monster refrigerators. Instead, people buy small amounts of groceries from the local stores (the deli with cheeses and meats; the chicken shop; the butcher; the bread shop; the wine shop) or from the small grocery stores. They ride on their bikes to get to and from these stores and so only buy what they can carry on bike. Hence their fridges are small. Hence their food is fresh. Hence there's no need for monster corporations that have monopoly relationships with all of the food suppliers and therefore drive the small, local stores out of business. Hence the food is not flooded with preservatives so that it can be driven by the trucks and sit on the shelves and in the huge fridges for weeks at a time.

Of course it helps that this is not an ice-age-style tundra with feet and feet of snow, but they do bike through the snow and rain and have all of the appropriate gear.

It also helps that the public transportation system, both local and national, are excellent and reasonably-priced. I will go to the furthest southern point of the country later this month, Maastricht, and pay 22 Euro to get myself there and back on a clean and comfortable high speed train.

Enough, enough already!

In my next few posts I will cover: Going to the Movies and The Plumbing.