Life in England & Italy

[lborne]

Following the previous thread, I thought I’d put in my observations while living with friends in Italy and England. I lived with 2 British families and 1 Italian family for about 2 months each and have visited several times afterwards. Actually, our British friends are staying with us now - we live close to Disneyworld.

In England, the fridge size depends upon the size of the kitchen. However, over the past 10-20 years, sizes have increased. In the standard English home, the fridge is about 5-6 foot high but smaller in width than the standard US fridge. They also tend to have larger freezers due to the fact that most meats are purchased frozen and not fresh. The freezer part is on the bottom and so if you saw a photo of it closed, you’d assume it was the fridge part as most US models are that way.

Milk in most of europe is ultra pasterized and can be kept longer. In fact, many people in Italy do not even keep it in the fridge, and everyone I came into contact with, actually heats their milk up - even for cornflakes. Italians heat it because they beleive it kills more bacteria. Italians are a bit paranoid - (many have emergency buttons in their bathrooms which you can push to ring a bell if you are in trouble - sort of like the nurse call button in hospitals. They also beleive that taking a shower after eating can kill you. Probably a misinterpretation of the “do not swim after eating” thing.)

Orange juice is also ultra pasturized and tastes terrible.

Italy is behind Britian in size of fridges. Over the past several years, dishwashers have gained in popularity in England, but not so much in Italy. It used to be that if you had a dishwasher, you were considered well off.

One neat thing I’ve seen in many English and Italian kitchens is that they have cabinets above the sink with a wire rack bottom. You wash the dishes then put them in these cabinets and the water drips right into the sink while drying.

Also, many europeans that have cloth washing machines, (hardly anyone has a dryer - very expensive to operate), have them located in their kitchen. They are almost always the front load type.

Our friends in Italy have an on-demand hot water heater. This unit heats water running through the pipes using gas. It heats water for their space furnaces and for the hot water used in the home. It is cheap, but very difficult to maintain a constant temperature. Taking showers are not enjoyable.

Everyone in England, (not sure about Italy), pays a tax for having a television. I forget the price, but it is steep - around $250 per year. Each family pays this weather they have 1 or 20 TV sets, and even if they get satellite TV. It is basically a tax to keep the BBC, CH4, and other public stations in oeration.

Europe had small dish satellite TV long before the US did. The small dishes make it easy for someone living in a flat to receive brodcasts.

Anyone else have unique observations?

[Crusoe]

Just one thing - the TV license in the UK pays only for the network TV channels BBC1 and BBC2 and the national and local radio stations run by the BBC. Channel 4 is funded, I believe, by advertising and a grant from ITV, not public money.

Oh, and I think this was meant to be in this thread, right?

[CalMeacham]

When Pepper Mill and I visited Ireland a couple af years ago we encountered a bizarre variety of on-demand water heaters in the showers. Some of these were truly weird, with three unlabeled knobs whose functions were obscure. Taking a shower was like doing a science experiment.

Except for shops that were part of American chains, you didn’t get ice in your drink. Convenience stores, whichj in the US carry bags of ice, had none. We only got it at B&Bs if we specially requested it. (A couple of months ago I went back on business. In order to get ice at my hotel I had to go down to the BAR to request it.)

Just as US convenience stores often carry bundles of firewood, Irish convenience stores carry compressed peat! Very interesting. As a similar note, when I visited Scotland a couple of years ago in the winter I noticed a distinct medicinal smell in the air. It took me a while to realize that I was smelling burning coal fires.

[glee]

*Originally posted by lborne *
Everyone in England, (not sure about Italy), pays a tax for having a television. I forget the price, but it is steep - around $250 per year. Each family pays this whether they have 1 or 20 TV sets, and even if they get satellite TV. It is basically a tax to keep the BBC, CH4, and other public stations in oeration.

The tax (called a TV licence) is £109 a year. I make that $155.
This money goes to the BBC, which has 2 channels.

There are no other public stations.
(If you have satellite or cable, you can get a special version of the terrestrial broadcasts).
ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 are independent broadcasters, who rely on advertising revenue.

And I think the licence is great value because there are no adverts on BBC1 or BBC2.

Is it true there are over 10 minutes of advertising per hour on US TV?

[MrDeath]

Originally postid by glee
Is it true there are over 10 minutes of advertising per hour on US TV?

Vicious, vicious rumours.

It’s more like 8 minutes per half-hour. This is not an exaggeration. And it’s not the high-quality ITV adverts either. We’re talking about adverts that insult the intelligence of my 3-year-old developmentally-delayed son.

[Gyrate]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by lborne *
They also tend to have larger freezers due to the fact that most meats are purchased frozen and not fresh.

[quote]

I’m not sure that’s strictly true, although there is a chain of stores which specializes in frozen food (“Iceland”, amusingly enough). I tend to buy my meat fresh(poultry and fish, usually, although the price of chicken has gone through the roof recently).

Milk in most of europe is ultra pasterized and can be kept longer.

UHT milk – bleagh. No thank you. In British stores you can get UHT (on shelves) or regular (refrigerated) milk. Eggs, however, are not refrigerated at the grocery store, which I still find odd.

Italians are a bit paranoid - (many have emergency buttons in their bathrooms which you can push to ring a bell if you are in trouble - sort of like the nurse call button in hospitals.

I’d not encountered that in my travels in Italy. Speaking of paranoid and bathrooms, the British do not have electrical outlets in their bathrooms (“for safety reasons”), except for a special plug for electric razors. The light switches for bathrooms are either outside the room or on the ceiling (on a pullcord). Ironically, some houses have “power showers”; where there is insufficient water pressure, you have a unit in the shower itself which pumps (and sometimes heats) the water – thus the only electrical thing in the bathroom is in the shower. Go figure. Oh, and in some homes the toilet is in a separate room from the bathtub and sink.

One neat thing I’ve seen in many English and Italian kitchens is that they have cabinets above the sink with a wire rack bottom. You wash the dishes then put them in these cabinets and the water drips right into the sink while drying.

I’ve not seen drying racks above the sink; usually there’s a place next to the sink to put them. One annoying thing: British people don’t rinse their dishes. This drives me mental. I assume this is water-saving measure.

Also, many europeans that have cloth washing machines, (hardly anyone has a dryer - very expensive to operate), have them located in their kitchen. They are almost always the front load type.

British homes (and especially flats) are small, so where else are you going to put it that has a water supply? The kitchen or (sometimes) bathroom is it.

Our friends in Italy have an on-demand hot water heater. This unit heats water running through the pipes using gas. It heats water for their space furnaces and for the hot water used in the home. It is cheap, but very difficult to maintain a constant temperature. Taking showers are not enjoyable.

I have one of those. Very efficient, but you have to have a certain amount of water running through (so you can either have a lot of hot water or none at all), and you’d better set the temparature before you take your shower! (We initially had some fluctuation in temperature, but the gas company guy cleaned the innards of the apparatus and it’s worked fine since).

Everyone in England, (not sure about Italy), pays a tax for having a television. I forget the price, but it is steep - around $250 per year. Each family pays this weather they have 1 or 20 TV sets, and even if they get satellite TV. It is basically a tax to keep the BBC, CH4, and other public stations in oeration.

The “TV licence fees” are currently about £110 a year (roughly $150); less if you have a black-and-white set. The visually-impaired get a discounted rate too.

The upside of this is that you get no commercials at all on BBC1 and BBC2 (nor on any of the BBC radio stations, which also benefit from the fees), and only about half the number of ads on the other three channels (ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 (although no one watches Channel 5 anyway – it’s all Lifetime movies and Fox “When Nouns Verb!” type shows)) than in the US – which mean that when you see US shows you frequently get an ad fadeaway and then come right back to the program. This is very cool.

There are various cable and satellite channels you can get, which seem to consist entirely of reruns from the other five channels.

[Gyrate]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by lborne *
They also tend to have larger freezers due to the fact that most meats are purchased frozen and not fresh.

[quote]

I’m not sure that’s strictly true, although there is a chain of stores which specializes in frozen food (“Iceland”, amusingly enough). I tend to buy my meat fresh(poultry and fish, usually, although the price of chicken has gone through the roof recently).

Milk in most of europe is ultra pasterized and can be kept longer.

UHT milk – bleagh. No thank you. In British stores you can get UHT (on shelves) or regular (refrigerated) milk. Eggs, however, are not refrigerated at the grocery store, which I still find odd.

Italians are a bit paranoid - (many have emergency buttons in their bathrooms which you can push to ring a bell if you are in trouble - sort of like the nurse call button in hospitals.

I’d not encountered that in my travels in Italy. Speaking of paranoid and bathrooms, the British do not have electrical outlets in their bathrooms (“for safety reasons”), except for a special plug for electric razors. The light switches for bathrooms are either outside the room or on the ceiling (on a pullcord). Ironically, some houses have “power showers”; where there is insufficient water pressure, you have a unit in the shower itself which pumps (and sometimes heats) the water – thus the only electrical thing in the bathroom is in the shower. Go figure. Oh, and in some homes the toilet is in a separate room from the bathtub and sink.

One neat thing I’ve seen in many English and Italian kitchens is that they have cabinets above the sink with a wire rack bottom. You wash the dishes then put them in these cabinets and the water drips right into the sink while drying.

I’ve not seen drying racks above the sink; usually there’s a place next to the sink to put them. One annoying thing: British people don’t rinse their dishes. This drives me mental. I assume this is water-saving measure.

Also, many europeans that have cloth washing machines, (hardly anyone has a dryer - very expensive to operate), have them located in their kitchen. They are almost always the front load type.

British homes (and especially flats) are small, so where else are you going to put it that has a water supply? The kitchen or (sometimes) bathroom is it.

Our friends in Italy have an on-demand hot water heater. This unit heats water running through the pipes using gas. It heats water for their space furnaces and for the hot water used in the home. It is cheap, but very difficult to maintain a constant temperature. Taking showers are not enjoyable.

I have one of those. Very efficient, but you have to have a certain amount of water running through (so you can either have a lot of hot water or none at all), and you’d better set the temparature before you take your shower! (We initially had some fluctuation in temperature, but the gas company guy cleaned the innards of the apparatus and it’s worked fine since).

Everyone in England, (not sure about Italy), pays a tax for having a television. I forget the price, but it is steep - around $250 per year. Each family pays this weather they have 1 or 20 TV sets, and even if they get satellite TV. It is basically a tax to keep the BBC, CH4, and other public stations in oeration.

The “TV licence fees” are currently about £110 a year (roughly $150); less if you have a black-and-white set. The visually-impaired get a discounted rate too.

The upside of this is that you get no commercials at all on BBC1 and BBC2 (nor on any of the BBC radio stations, which also benefit from the fees), and only about half the number of ads on the other three channels (ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 (although no one watches Channel 5 anyway – it’s all Lifetime movies and Fox “When Nouns Verb!” type shows)) than in the US – which mean that when you see US shows you frequently get an ad fadeaway and then come right back to the program. This is very cool.

There are various cable and satellite channels you can get, which seem to consist entirely of reruns from the other five channels.

[Chronos]

What’s the question here? If this is in reply to some other thread, then it should be posted as a reply to that thread.