Sometimes I feel like I’m on a time travel. Some observations we made during our first week:
- New Zealand grown fruits and vegetables taste like I remember how things tasted when I was a little kid, 20 years ago. The veggies here don’t look as perfect as the Spanish tomatoes and perfectly shaped Dutch cucumbers, but they have an amazing taste. Young people in Europe today don’t even know how a ripe mandarin orange tastes or how juicy a ripe pear can be, as they are used to that CRAP sold in European supermarkets.
- The little retail business still exists in small towns, and seems to do well. Each town has a vivid center with loads of very small commercials of all kinds. Those type of shops have been massively wiped away in Austria during the last 20 years. It’s nice to see such structures still alive.
- The road traffic is as low as it was I guess 40-50 years ago in Austria. Never seen a traffic jam here so far and I doubt there are many across the whole country. The roads are wide and carparks are available for everybody without a charge.
- The beaches are clean like they were in Europe I guess 100 years ago. Yes, sounds like an easy goal to achieve, but became quite rare especially at the Mediterranean Sea. Greeks, sorry, shame on you, take care of your nature! So far I couldn’t find any plastic bottles on beaches in New Zealand, even close to river entries. If there is some waste found, it’s usually obviously from heavy rain floodings and not intentionally dumped at the sea. Apart from that: Just shells and pieces of wood.
- The typical clothes here look like time-transferred from the 80’s. Seriously, we couldn’t find any even near to stylish clothes in shops so far. Seems like people don’t run after international trends and brand names that much and focus on just ‘effective’ clothes that keep them warm. I’m still hesitant if that’s to be considered a good or bad thing. ;) Eva bought a green hippy-style dress today!
- The same applies to cars. People here don’t buy a car because they wanna have a new, nice looking car. They buy one that works and use it for many years (or decades) until it finally breaks apart. In opposite to Austria and Germany, cars here are not a kind of status symbol at all. Most of them are old and just utilities to get from A to B. A typical scenery in town reminds a bit on the 90’s.
- Even the music on the radio usually puts you back in time. There are many radio stations, it seems each district has several ones, and most of them play music from the late 60’s onwards. Well, at least I like those classic rock&roll tracks. ;)
