"Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living." –- Miriam Beard
I have long thought that Europeans know how to live better with less. Since arriving in Amsterdam in late winter and seeing so many dedicated bike-commuters brave wind and rain, I have reflected a lot on this idea. As I have settled into living in Jerusalem I find myself adopting a few small habits that may expressions of this type of wisdom. First, I walk just about everywhere. The most interesting historical sites and museums are not far away and the people I know in town tend to live nearby. I live very close to campus so everyone walks there. Church meetings and grocery shopping are similarly close. The furthest grocery shopping I go to is at the outdoor market on the Jewish side of town. There, I was reminded of an advancement over the reusable burlap sacks I use in the U.S. (which are a great alternative to the paper v. plastic dilemma)--grocery carts. I shopped around and bought a $15 version and the shop keeper told me that a set of replacement wheels costs roughly $3. I was about to stock up so that I could bring them together with the bag back to the states but the shop keeper assured me that he'd always have them and I could get them when I needed them (which for me meant closer to when I leave). To not be disagreeable to held off of the extra investment. I filled my cart with fruits & vegetables, goat yogurt, brown rice & lentils, oil and vinegar.
The student dorms have permanent clothes lines out a bathroom window. It hasn't been used much and even my German roomate seems to use the machine to dry his clothes but I washed it and bought some clothes pins and dried my laundry there. I thought of my sister in Arizona for whom doing such is gospel and thought that I had heard my other sister in Australia does the same. Anyways, it also saves time since the machine isn't in the apartment so machine drying would require me to sit there or go back and forth a couple of times. I had fallen out of the habit of using a clothes rack in the states before discovering the clothes lines here.
Finally, I walk up the three flights of stairs to my apartment rather than taking the elevator. Most people use the elevator. In the elevator shaft there is a light switch that you hit and then it goes off in around 30 seconds. A bit of energy saving engineering. The solar water heaters and gas water heater that supplement it are other examples of engineering things for energy efficiency. The gas water heater doesn't continually keep an amount of water hot as most units in the U.S. do. Rather, you push the button and wait a little while and you use the hot water and then you turn off the switch.
Part of why I have been thinking about these type of things while here is the economic news out of the U.S.--principally the trade deficit http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/11/business/11trade.php
--and the weakness of the dollar. From here, resource use in the U.S. seems careless. Purchase of many resources, notably oil, from other countries seem to be taking its toll.
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