europe is so much more....

reasonable? historic? efficient (with resources, not with legal red tape)?... all of the above?

last year, when i was out with my friend shalom in budapest, we were comparing and contrasting hungary and the US and what we each miss when we change regions. her first comment was
"i love how much more reasonable people are in europe... if someone trips and falls in a restaurant in the US, they sue the building management... if someone trips and falls here, they realize it was an accident and life goes on."

it was a funny example, and as of yesterday quite ironic. here's a story that would never happen in the US:

one of my REU students has had bad luck with bumping his head. there are very large windows in the hallways of our dorm that open out like doors and are about 6 feet off the ground. he has twice rammed his forehead into open windows without meaning to on the way to his room and is now sporting a fantastic bandaid right across the middle of his head. he's ok, just annoyed with hitting himself.

yesterday, as usual, we ate lunch in the restaurant in the bottom floor of the prague math building. the wait staff is patient since we come in a group of about 10 with only 2-3 czech speakers who must ask each of us what we want and then serve as go between... it takes a lot of time for us all to pay too... we've been wondering if we're tiring them out by eating there a lot.

as we left the cafeteria area yesterday we went up a large flight of stairs with lights attached to the wall at about head level all the way up. you can see what happened already: my same student accidentally hit his head on a light. he survived the encounter just fine, but the light cover (a large glass vase-ish type thing) went flying off the wall and shattered into a million pieces all over the stairwell.

one of the czechs went with my student to sort it out with the management. the conclusion?
"it's ok. just come here to eat every day for the rest of your time in prague so that we can get good tips from the big group."

reasonable. people are exceedingly reasonable and kind. i like that.

math lecture time... later!