Cultural differences..

NL wrote:
Man, I'm really struggling with that right now when I read the driving
thread..


I live in what could be called almost-inner suburbia about 12 km from the
centre of a large Australian city. We're lucky to be well served by a train,
bus and bus network in our spot plus parks, swimming pools, doctors,
libraries, bike paths, village-style shopping along the high street and more
within easy walking distance. It's a quick car trip to an ever-growing
indoor shopping centre of the kind I think North Americans call "malls". So
I do a lot of biking and walking but not so much when it would involve bulk
grocery shopping or getting kids to appointments during school hours with a
minimum of disruption.

My family walk or use public transport to go to school and work I would be
the one who spends the most time in a car unless my husband is currently
working somewhere where it's easier to drive to and from work. It is my
schedule that is more erratic in that some weeks I hardly use the car at all
but in others I've several trips in each day, some of them to places I
could easily walk if only I didn't need to do three other things in that 2
hour period.

All our streets have footpaths on either side and there are cycling lanes in
the major roads. The cycling walking track that intersects our street us has
been so congested lately it was recently widened to separate out the walkers
from the riders!

Because it is a city sometimes what I need to get to is a few suburbs over
or right across town so I do find car travel very convenient. Parking is
only expensive in the city and it's free in most other places. But petrol is
about $1.75/l at the moment and still rising rapidly!

I haven't travelled in North America but I've spent a bit of time wandering
around Europe in the cities and countryside over the years and it feels very
compact and accessible in most places that are fairly well-populated.
Obviously this varies from country to country but I have seen a big
difference in urban areas along the lines you describe and it's not just
because the population is so much denser than in places in my country. It
does have a lot to do with available space, though, because as a young
country ours is still filling it up and where that's a sprawling process
people are very isolated without cars.

Nikki schrieb:
NL wrote:
So, what I'm trying to say is, not driving a car for a day isn't an
issue for me. It's nothing that makes my life complicated or boring or
whatever, in fact, most days I don't ride in a car.
Is it really totally different in the states? Do you take your car for
every trip you have to make, even if it only takes 20 minutes to walk
there?

cu
nicole

I can walk to the grocery store but I never do. How do you get the
groceries home or do you just go every day?

Now I usually go once a week with my brother in the car but when he's
not here I take the stroller now (lots of space to stuff groceries) and
a backpack. Before I had Sara I would ride my bike and take a backpack
and strap stuff onto the back of the bike (toiletpaper and things that
come in large packages. We don't get free bagging anything here, we
bring our own bags/crates.)

What do you do in the winter? Do you have much snow there? We can't
ride bike in the winter. To much snow and ice.

We do get snow usually. Last winter was super mild and we had hardly any
snow, but I didn't have the trailer for my bike then yet so I wasn't
riding my bike. But usually our streets are cleared by a snow plow so
it's not like I'm riding in the snow, just in slush (which isn't much
better). But in winter I usually walk to the (more expensive, but closer
to me) store if I need something urgently. Otherwise I take advantage of
my brother ;-)
When I was still living in Konstanz I went grocery shopping on the bus.
The stop was about 5 or 10 minutes from my home and the bus went into
the city and had stops along the way, one right in front of the shopping
center.

We don't have sidewalks a lot of the time so it makes it really hard to
take a gang of kids anywhere safely.

I don't think there's even a single street in my town that doesn't have
at least a really wide curb with grass where you can walk somewhat
safely (I wouldn't let my son walk there alone, but I'd walk there
myself if I really had to go along that street, but it's in the area
where there's mostly industry so we usually don't need to go there anyway).

cu
nicole

Kat schrieb:

I also own a bike and I also own a Chariot as well (and absolutely love
it... Who'd have thought a bike trailer/stroller/etc., worth half the amount
of the van would indeed be the best investment ever made?? Oh, and they're
made in the next city over from me LOL) There is a bus system here, and I

Yeah, the cost nearly killed me but man do I use it a lot! We went to
Norderney (a North sea Island just off the north coast of germany) in
spring and took the biked and the trailer and we would have been screwed
without it, so much space to store stuff *lol*)

suppose it's not horrible. I would NOT take a bus with 3 little ones.
Nope, not on my watch. I do bike a lot. Quite a lot, actually, and we all
do.
For groceries, I normally drive. It's about a 10 min drive normally, or
about 20 minutes now with all the massive amounts of construction around
here. Main reasons I drive for groceries is that a normal grocery trip
leaves a dent of about $200-$250 in my bank account. It's a fair bit of
groceries that I would NOT walk with and wouldn't even fit in the Chariot

Yeah, I guess if I had a larger family I wouldn't take the bike for
grocery shopping either, but with Sara not very firmly on solids yet and
Sam eating like a bird there's not that much I really need to buy. And I
try to stock up on heavy stuff when I'm with my brother (carting 10
liters of water and 10 liters of juice plus groceries in the chariot is
not much fun no matter how you look at it ;-) I did that one "by
accident" (I just was not thinking! It was the first time shopping with
the trailer and man was that thing stuffed full...)

(with or without the girls in it!) There are also not very many good roads
to get there on a bike... It basically down one major, heavy traffic road
(4-5 lanes each direction, speed limit is set at 70km/h - which people abuse
and go faster anyways - but now down to massive construction, which brings
the limit to 50km/h - so people only abuse it by 10-20kms, it seems) I
don't care to ride with or without kids on big traffic infested roads with
cars zipping past at very fast speeds!

Yeah, I hate riding my bike on busy roads, but we're lucky, we have bike
trails in this area that run alongside the major roads but are totally
separate, so we're not just on a separate strip on the road but there's
a grass strip in between the road and the trail. Yay.

cu
nicole

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:29:25 +0200, NL wrote:

So, what I'm trying to say is, not driving a car for a day isn't an
issue for me. It's nothing that makes my life complicated or boring or
whatever, in fact, most days I don't ride in a car.
Is it really totally different in the states? Do you take your car for
every trip you have to make, even if it only takes 20 minutes to walk there?

Depends on where in the states you live.

I rarely drove in Chicago because they had an excellent public
transportation system and I could walk to most stores, etc. I did,
however, drive to the grocery store since carrying the groceries would
have been difficult. Sometimes, I biked and put parcels in my basket,
but that would mean a lot of little trips rather than a single big
trip so it was not efficient. I love to walk and thought nothing of
walking 20 miles in Evanston and Chicago.

Here in Houston, though, there *is* no public transportation. You
might be able to bike, but not in the 6 months of heat and humidity
that runs from May to September (90 to 95 degrees and very humid).
There are stores I can walk to, but I would have to cross busy
highways and there are few sidewalks. I can't walk to the library
since it is a 30 minute drive and again there are no sidewalks and
I would be walking on busy roads. Many of the back roads don't even
have shoulders.




--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Ericka Kammerer schrieb:

What would you say is an average distance for you to get
to a grocery store, a doctor's appointment, work, etc.?

The large grocery stores are about 30-45 min walk from here, the smaller
one is about 15-20 min walk from here (in the other direction). Where I
lived before moving here the store closest to me (maybe 10-15 min
walking distance) closed down and I had to go to the more expensive shop
which was probably the same distance but in the other direction. Which
was inconvenient as all the other shops (baker, butcher,...) were in the
other direction, so I needed to go out twice).
In Konstanz the large cheap stores were lard to reach without a bike
because there was only one bus going there and it went at impossible
times and you had to change buses twice or something. But the large
shopping center (grocery store in the basement, baker and
clothes/tourist shops and a cafe upstairs).

I think generally you can find a grocery store within 30-45 min walking
distance wherever you live (except if it's really out in the country,
but then there's a baker and a butcher and a fruit and vegetable market
once a week usually, so you don't really need a big chain supermarket).

Work depends. I'm living in the "Rhein Main Gebiet" (Rhein Main Area)
which means lots of people commute to Frankfurt, we have a lot of
supporting industry for the airport and of course lots of freight
operators, companies that need access to transport "routes" (air, road,
rail and via ship) and suchlike. I know my dad used to drive 1-1.5 hours
one way when he was working in Stuttgart. We had tried to find a house
closer to the university where he worked but couldn't find one so my
parents started searching further and further out.
I think a standard commute in germany is between 30 min and 2 hours (one
way, and I think people commuting 2 hours are probably looking to move
closer to work). MY best friend rides his bike to work and takes 45
minutes each way. But he also doesn't own a car. If it's really cold or
raining heavily he'll take the bus which takes him 45 minutes as well.
When I was working (I'm a SAHM right now and probably won't be able to
find work for a while) I was commuting about 20 minutes by bus plus a
short walk on both ends of the trip.

cu
nicole

Two of my children can walk to school, but in the winter, it is hard for
them as the sidewalks are very icy and snowy. My high schooler takes the bus
to school. I really can't walk many places at all because it is too far or
hard to maneuver. I would never be able to carry my 10 plus bags of
groceries home, especially if we have made a Costco trip. The US is very
different than Europe. The stores are not in close proximity from the homes,
even though some are, many people shop for a week or so at a time, not like
other cultures when they go everyday. Doctors are too far to walk. The
library is pretty close, but the traffic is so heavy that it's hard to go by
bike even though my girls have done that. No one really takes the bus here
in Michigan unless you are very poor and don't have a car. Many of those
that take the public transit live in the city and come to the suburbs to
work. I can walk to the park and we take walks around the neighborhood, but
that's about it.
--
Sue (mom to three girls)

"NL" wrote in message
...
Man, I'm really struggling with that right now when I read the driving
thread..

I'm in germany. I do not own a car. I do not even own a drivers license.
(Yeah, I know... I'm a rare thing, even here.) I do own a bike with a
trailor (chariot, totally the coolest thing I've bought in a long time).
I walk or ride my bike everywhere. If I need to go further than I want to
walk or ride my bike I take public transport and if public transport can't
get me there I ask my brother if he'll be able to take me there (IKEA, as
an example. I usually ask him at some point and he'll take me withing the
next month whenever it's most convenient for him).

I have lived completely without car or access to a car (with a driver) for
years while I was at university. I never felt like I was stranded and
unable to do my grocery shopping, or whatever. Sure, sometimes I would
think "Man, it would sure be cool to have a car and just up and go
somewhere right now." but it was never something I couldn't live without.
That said, I never lived really out in the country, well, I did, but I was
working at a butcher and the next grocery store was about a 30 min bike
ride away (up hill there, down hill back, thank heaven.) so I wasn't going
to starve or anything, but getting to the next city was challenging, there
was a bus that went down every two hours except during peak times when it
was going "every hour" (basically, one extra bus). But when I lived there
I did have access to a car (my boyfriend and his brother), so it wasn't a
huge issue.

Anyway: is it so different in the states? Is there really so much
"outback" where you get stranded without a car because you can simply not
get groceries without a car because you can absolutely not get to work
without a car? I mean, I look at the maps and I think "Well, looks just
like here really." but you know, that's a map and I'm not actually there
to do the walking around.

So, what I'm trying to say is, not driving a car for a day isn't an issue
for me. It's nothing that makes my life complicated or boring or whatever,
in fact, most days I don't ride in a car.
Is it really totally different in the states? Do you take your car for
every trip you have to make, even if it only takes 20 minutes to walk
there?

cu
nicole

"NL" wrote in message
When I was working (I'm a SAHM right now and probably won't be able to
find work for a while) I was commuting about 20 minutes by bus plus a
short walk on both ends of the trip.

I hope you don't mind me asking, but what do you do for money?
--
Sue (mom to three girls)

Sue schrieb:
"NL" wrote in message
When I was working (I'm a SAHM right now and probably won't be able to
find work for a while) I was commuting about 20 minutes by bus plus a
short walk on both ends of the trip.

I hope you don't mind me asking, but what do you do for money?

I'm unemployed right now. Oh, it's called "seeking employment". Germany
doesn't have unemployed people anymore *cough*. We have a welfare system
that pretty much makes sure nobody falls through cracks. Which is
expensive and part of the taxes goes into it.
We also get money/child (154 Euro/child/month for the first three kids
and then the amount gets more for the fourth child,...) and for the
first 12/14 months we now get 300 euro/month or 60% of the wage we had
pre birth. Until the year before last it was the other way, you got 300
euro/month and if the family income was above a certain amount you got
less/nothing. And you got that money for the first two years of your
childs life. Basically the state is making sure there's very little
(child) poverty.
Yes, we're privileged in that respect. Mothers also have the right to
stay home until the child is 3 years old. Unpayed of course. But we also
don't have a lot of child care available for children below the age of
3. At least not many that are affordable. And even if we have a spot in
a childcare facility the hours provided are usually very limited, at
least where I am now. The Kindergarten Sam went to ran from 8-12:30. You
could apply for an "all day" spot (waiting list, half a year wait
minimum) which meant 8a.m.-4p.m.. Of course the cost would be over
double of the morning only spot... Childcare for kids between 3 and 6 is
subsidized and costs around 80 euro/month (no food or drinks provided,
depending on the facility the kids bring their own snacks and drinks or
you pay a fee there. You're usually paying at least 5 eoro/month for
materials, and if they take day trips you pay extra for those,...) in a
center run by the community, if you go to a private care center you can
expect to pay over 200 euro per month for a morning only slot.
It's quite hard for single mothers to find and hold on to a job while
the children are little. Employers are reluctant to hire mothers because
they expect them to have lots of times off the job tending to sick
children. I personally expect it to be very hard to find work once I get
a child care spot for Sara. Getting childcare for a under 3 y.o. without
being employed is practically impossible, finding work without having
child care for your children is also nearly impossible...

Yeah, I'll have fun in my near future ;-)

cu
nicole

"NL" wrote in message
...
So, what I'm trying to say is, not driving a car for a day isn't an issue
for me. It's nothing that makes my life complicated or boring or whatever,
in fact, most days I don't ride in a car.
Is it really totally different in the states? Do you take your car for
every trip you have to make, even if it only takes 20 minutes to walk
there?

I have lived places where it takes 20+ minutes by car to get to any store at
all. So yes, for some of us, we do take the car for every trip. The buses in
the city stay in the city only, so if you do public transportation, you can
only go places within the city limits. If you live outside the limits, there
is no public transportation at all.
In my area, more people live in rural areas and it's nothing to people to
have to drive half an hour to the nearest grocer. (or it used to be nothing
before gas went up so much)
The typical bicycle rider in my town(besides kids) are men who lost their
liscences and unsavory-type characters. They are usually carrying cases of
beer or other alcoholic beverages on their bike racks or in bags.
Marie

"NL" wrote in message
I'm unemployed right now. Oh, it's called "seeking employment". Germany
doesn't have unemployed people anymore *cough*. We have a welfare system
that pretty much makes sure nobody falls through cracks. Which is
expensive and part of the taxes goes into it.
We also get money/child (154 Euro/child/month for the first three kids and
then the amount gets more for the fourth child,...) and for the first
12/14 months we now get 300 euro/month or 60% of the wage we had pre
birth. Until the year before last it was the other way, you got 300
euro/month and if the family income was above a certain amount you got
less/nothing. And you got that money for the first two years of your
childs life. Basically the state is making sure there's very little
(child) poverty.
Yes, we're privileged in that respect. Mothers also have the right to stay
home until the child is 3 years old. Unpayed of course. But we also don't
have a lot of child care available for children below the age of 3. At
least not many that are affordable. And even if we have a spot in a
childcare facility the hours provided are usually very limited, at least
where I am now. The Kindergarten Sam went to ran from 8-12:30. You could
apply for an "all day" spot (waiting list, half a year wait minimum) which
meant 8a.m.-4p.m.. Of course the cost would be over double of the morning
only spot... Childcare for kids between 3 and 6 is subsidized and costs
around 80 euro/month (no food or drinks provided, depending on the
facility the kids bring their own snacks and drinks or you pay a fee
there. You're usually paying at least 5 eoro/month for materials, and if
they take day trips you pay extra for those,...) in a center run by the
community, if you go to a private care center you can expect to pay over
200 euro per month for a morning only slot.
It's quite hard for single mothers to find and hold on to a job while the
children are little. Employers are reluctant to hire mothers because they
expect them to have lots of times off the job tending to sick children. I
personally expect it to be very hard to find work once I get a child care
spot for Sara. Getting childcare for a under 3 y.o. without being employed
is practically impossible, finding work without having child care for your
children is also nearly impossible...

Yeah, I'll have fun in my near future ;-)

cu
nicole

Thank you for answering. It definitely seems mothers are treated better as
far as having time off for the kids. But also welfare here in the US is a
bad thing unless you absolutely need it and only for a short time. Tax
payers resent having to pay into it and have others abuse the privilege
because there are many that do abuse the system. So it's a culture
difference in that respect. Childcare here can start at six weeks because
many of our moms go back to work at that age because most employers expect
you back at that time. I checked how much 300 euros was here in the US and
that it was only $476.31. Not many people could live on that and pay housing
and gas for the cars. So is the housing subsidized or paid for?
--
Sue (mom to three girls)