During the first week of this trip there were several key differences that I noticed between the US and the European countries that have been visited. Our study started in Switzerland which initially felt very clean and extremely safe to walk around regardless of the time of day that we were outside. The first days we got to know our tour guide and the people in our class, which gave us a good opportunity to explore relationships with new people that I had not previously talked to. Austria was very similar to Switzerland, possibly because of the proximity to each other, and made all of us feel very welcomed. The locals there are more than happy to assist when needed and majority of them speak English in addition to their native German language, meaning that as foreigners we never truly felt left out since there was always someone to talk to. This is one of the large differences I realized from being in Europe compared to being in the States. Many of the people who live in Europe speak more than one language with a large group of them speaking English in addition to their official language. While this is very common here, I do not know a large amount of people back home who also speak another language unless they have foreign family roots. The cities here also have a lot of people who commute to work solely by walking or using transportation rather than driving themselves. Since the countries and cities are not nearly as far apart compared to states and cities at home, the citizens are a lot less likely to worry about having a vehicle to transport themselves. This aides in the cities feeling much cleaner since there is less congestion as well as pollution from the cars with many pedestrian only areas that allow people to easily navigate central areas of the cities.
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