The 10 things Europe is rubbish at

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This was published 1 year ago

The 10 things Europe is rubbish at

By David Whitley
Europe does have some lovely beaches – they just tend to be absolutely rammed with people.

Europe does have some lovely beaches – they just tend to be absolutely rammed with people. Credit: iStock

Europe offers a wide range of world class tourism experiences, with its culture-rich cities, historic castles and palaces, beautiful Mediterranean islands and sensational food scenes. But it doesn't get everything right, and there are some aspects it is downright rubbish at…

Hotel rooms

Credit: Alamy

There are plenty of stylish and charming hotel rooms in Europe. What the continent specifically lacks is big hotel rooms. Space tends to be at a premium and the average room size is often uncomfortably poky. Because the rooms are so small, the beds tend to be as well – meaning couples used to a king bed at home can end up fighting for space in a relatively tiny double.

Showers

The biggest horrors in European hotel rooms, however, are often saved for the bathroom. A combination of indifference and plumbing systems installed when dinosaurs roamed the earth means every shower is a lottery. Some are perfectly good. Others splutter out at barely more than a trickle, lack holders to stick the shower head in, and come with a grim, wafting curtain that always contrives to stick to your body.

Epic beaches

Credit: Alamy

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Europe does have some lovely beaches – they just tend to be absolutely rammed with people. What it really lacks is the epic beaches, stretching for several dune-backed kilometres, that are ten a penny in Australia.

That's not to say Europe doesn't have some long beaches. It's just that many of the biggest tend to be on windswept coastlines in northern Europe, where the vibe is, ahem, moody rather than mellow.

Audioguides

Credit: Alamy

European cultural attractions seem obsessed with the idea they are there to educate rather than entertain. It is the tourist's duty to trudge around learning Important Information. In practice, this means bone dry audioguide commentary that concentrates on facts, numbers, technicalities and tedious niche historical figures that no-one really cares about. Storytelling, it seems, is a swear word.

Rain

Credit: Alamy

It is rare to see a proper downpour in Europe. The sort of rain that arrives in a deluge in the late afternoon and gets it all out of the system in one go is unusual. Instead you get drizzle. And, particularly in northern Europe, that feeble drizzle with accompanying overcast skies can seem like a permanent fixture.

Wide open space

There may be a token bit of desert in southern Spain, but Europe really lacks those big, expansive sweeps of wilderness and emptiness that can make Australia and the US so beguiling. Every national park heaves with visitors and there's usually a town within half an hour's drive of wherever you try to pretend is in the middle of nowhere.

Giving up smoking

In Australia, smoking bans and public health initiatives have made smoking a somewhat niche pursuit. Similar campaigns have had some effect in Europe – most notably in Scandinavia – but smoking rates are far higher. On much of the continent, this is something you notice without being too perturbed by, but there are others (hello Greece and the Balkans!) where indoor smoking bans are basically a routinely-ignored laughing stock. Prepare for your clothes to stink of stale tobacco.

Food variety

Most medium-sized cities in Europe will have a swathe of restaurants that do the local cuisine well. Where they struggle is variety, and generally there will only be one or two other places doing cuisine from elsewhere well. These deviations from the norm usually depend on where the largest immigrant population is from, but Europe is notorious for poor Mexican food and it's largely disappointing when it comes to Thai and Malaysian too.

Opening hours

When shops open varies massively from country to country, and sometimes within a country. Heavily touristy areas of Spain, for example, often succumb to visitors' tastes and keep shops open all day. But elsewhere, everything still shuts for siesta, and it's maddeningly inconvenient.

Sunday trading laws are another culprit that can trip up overseas visitors. Good luck, for example, trying to buy anything outside of a railway station on Sundays in Germany.

Water

In some parts of Europe – France and Italy are especially notorious – asking for tap water in a café or restaurant is akin to asking for a bucket to defecate in. The other issue for the parched traveller is the prevalence of sparkling water. You can not assume that still water is the default. And in shops, the still and sparkling water are stored next to each other with rampantly inconsistent colour schemes on the taps and labels. Expect to recoil from unexpected fizzy water at least once.

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