The strangest things, in this process of cleaning out our lives, haven’t come from any of the logistical things – such as packing or moving – but have come from realizations about the differences between the culture of the United States and that of Scotland / the U.K. / Europe. One of those realizations came the other day as I was looking at Google Earth … and realized that I had my sense of scale all wrong.
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I live 26 or 29 (I can never remember) km’s from town (and add another 5 km’s to the grocery store), through the “Big Slide,” up and down some very long hills (9 mile is a killer) so my SUV is a necessity! Well I could probably get away with a car but darn these winters in Canada (wink, wink). I can see your point though, if I lived somewhere that was small and most everything was within walking distance or some sort of mass transit I’d ditch my vehicle in a flash… no gas, no insurance, no maintenance… ahhh the freedom!
Exactly – for some, it’s simply not feasible to go without a vehicle of some sort. For those living in the large urban centers – or living in areas where they’ve established bicycle trails and don’t have poor weather (snow) – it is a reasonable thing to do.
We chose to buy a car in Europe after about one month living here. While there is public transport, our intentional purchase of a small-affordably-priced-not-fancy car gave us great freedom to explore our new environs, traveling around Ireland, taking the ferry to the UK. Have to say that it helped us in our transition.
Driving in Glasgow is scary and with the transit and underground, probably mostly unnecessary. There are always taxi’s. And you will be saving so much money from not paying for gas and insurance, etc. that you could rent a car to see the sights that are not covered by public transport.
We chose not to buy a car in Europe. We have no intention of buying one…we simply walk, cycle, take the bus, train, ferry & plane…we don’t have the car repairs, the maintence, loan payments, petrol bills, car insurance payments, high car park rates…
I think there’s a lot that goes into a decision like this, and that many people arrive at their decision simply because it’s what feels right for them. And that’s perfectly valid.
So – although I can justify the decision by citing all sorts of reasons – I think that what it comes down to is that our collective gut tells us that we don’t want one. Now, our collective guts have also told us to eat way more candy than we’ve needed, so it’s not like we listen to them all the time, but in this? In this, we’re going with the gut feeling, which is that it’d be more of a hindrance than an advantage, and would prevent us from assimilating as well.
So – no cars.
Our stuff has shipped. It’s terrifying.
According to PetrolPrices.com, petrol (a.k.a. Gasoline) runs £.95 in Glasgow. Thus (if we round that to an even £1):
£1 = 1 liter
$2.04 = 0.264172051 gallons
3.7854118 * ($2.04) = 1 gallon
$7.75 per gallon
That’s roughly double what it runs in California.
Just had to do the math, to know, you know? So many conversions, so little time.