#FridayQuestion: What Do You Miss About Home?

Aug 16, 2024

We’ve been here in Berlin a month. Here are 8 things that I miss about home (Durham, NC):

Getting in my Subaru and just allowing Google maps to get me where I want to go.
Air conditioning. Sometimes on a bus, light rail train, tram. More often not. Yes to A/C at larger, multi-floor shopping areas and the Apple store. No to A/C at most groceries. No to A/C at our house. When it’s 90, It.Is.Rough because there’s no reset except a cold shower.
Smoke free spaces. So many people smoke (and vape) here. It’s so foreign to my 12 yr old that when people lit up in baggage claim at the Frankfurt airport, she said “it smells like Greece!” It took us a minute to realize she was talking about cigarette smoke. Literally her only memory of that scent is from 2018.
CVS/Rite-Aid/Walgreens. Basically stores where I can just go buy ibruprophen and don’t have to explain at the local apothecary why I want it and that no, I don’t have liver issues.
Ice. Iced drinks are easier to find than when I was last in Germany but ice in a glass with your water is non-existent. Also ice cube trays are doll-size here.
1 of my 2 mini ice cube trays.
Air conditioning.
My library. Also another place there’s a bathroom, lol. But really I miss hanging in stacks, putting any old books on hold and stopping in to see what’s new or different.
Public bathrooms. At Dunkin’, Harris Teeter, Food Lion, Whole Foods, Starbucks, literally everywhere I go there is a bathroom. There do not appear to be bathrooms in grocery stores here. There are some at larger SBahn stations and they usually cost (1E) but even so. Public bathrooms are RARE.