Bill Bryson on the small marvels of Europe

“One of the small marvels of my first trip of Europe was the discovery that the world could be so full of variety, that there were so many different ways of doing essentially identical things, like eating and drinking and buying movie tickets. It fascinated me that Europeans could at once be so alike — that they could be so universally bookish and cerebral, and drive small cars, and live in little houses in ancient towns, and love soccer, and be relatively unmaterialistic and law-abiding — and yet be so endlessly, unpredictably different from each other as well. I loved the idea that you could never be sure of anything in Europe.”
Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There (1993)