Flam

As you may know, restaurants are so different in Europe.

Your Daily Lex.

First of all, they often don’t speak English.

But no, the biggest change in European restaurants, in my experience, and this was true in Norway and in Denmark for us, and in Germany, is that they don’t want to bring you your bill.

They will never, and they don’t come in to check.

They don’t like, Hey, is everything okay?

Like, are you enjoying your food?

That also means they don’t do free refills on sodas, which I learned the hard way.

But not that I ordered one and had to pay for it, but that they just never come by to refill it, so you get the message.

But, you know, they won’t come by with the check because they figure you’re there to enjoy your meal for as long as you want, which means you have to signal them that you’d like to pay.

That’s fine, especially once we figured it out, that they wanted to be signaled that you were ready for the check.

That’s okay.

But what was funny to me was every time we did give them the signal, it also seemed like they hated us a little bit.

It’s also very funny to be an American in Europe in a couple different ways.

One is with tipping.

I always am Googling, like, What’s the tipping culture in this place?

And it’s typically the places we were, they’re like 3 to 5 percent, or just round up to the nearest, you know, reasonable number, or don’t do anything.

But when you’re American, they kind of expect you to do more, and it’s like, I don’t know.

So that’s fun.

But then, like, I was typically rounding up and then going a little bit more than that.

So I was tipping somewhere between like 8 and 10 percent, which felt horribly cheap.

But Google reassured me, No, it’s not horribly cheap.

They’re paid a living wage to work at these restaurants.

It’s not like in the U.S.

I was like, Oh, that’s good.

And they were always very thankful when I left those tips, but whatever.

It just feels so weird.

It’s annoying to be an American for a lot of reasons, including that one.

And yeah, man, when you ask for the check, they’re like, Fine, we’ll get you the check, whatever.

I will also note that they were always very accommodating whenever I ordered something a special way, like, Hey, I don’t want the string beans, and then they were verbally accommodating, and they would always bring those things.

Like, the dish would always come exactly as planned, which was funny.

Anyway, as I mentioned, we got a lot of steps while we were in these countries and on this trip.

One thing that was funny was my, well, the blisters were instantaneous.

I wore the sneakers that my podiatrist recommended, some New Balances, and got blisters the very first day after the 28,000 steps.

So I had another pair of OOFOS, I think, O-O-F-O-S, I believe is the brand, and those felt way better, so I wore those more.

Later when I saw my podiatrist yesterday—did I call him a dermatologist?

Anyway, when I saw the podiatrist yesterday, he was like, I can’t believe you wore those OOFOS.

I call them awfuls, and he thought that joke was way funnier than I did.

But yeah, I don’t know.

It is funny when your feet hurt and you’re going to walk anyway.

And, you know, we travel with the blister goo and the mole skin, and now this podiatrist also mentioned that we should get second skin that’s better than mole skin.

It’s like, mole skin is good if you’re walking a normal amount, but if you’re walking a crazy amount like you are, you got to use second skin.

I don’t even know what it is, but I’m going to look it up, and I’m going to take it on my next trip.

What is my next trip?

It’s Portugal.

Anyway, it was just, it is so funny to me that we were, like, as long as you kept walking, it was fine.

When you stopped walking and then your feet suddenly started screaming about all the pain they were in.

At one point, Ursulon, my trainer, wrote to me and he’s like, Wow, you’re getting so many steps.

I’m sure you’re not gaining anything.

I gained 10 pounds.

And he’s like, You can’t outrun a bad diet, but you can outwalk one.

Like, with those steps, wow.

Just look at how many calories you’re burning according to your Oura Ring.

So I looked it up and I was like, Wow.

And he’s like, because he was like, Make sure you’re not in a deficit, a caloric deficit.

I’m like, There’s no chance.

Like, if you want me to be eating every calorie that it says I’m burning, I can eat even more.

And he’s like, I wasn’t challenging you.

And I’m like, Well, I read it as a challenge.

I don’t think I’m telling any of these stories well.

I’m just a little tired.

My day went hard today.

I had so many back-to-back calls.

I’ll tell you one other fun story about Flom.

I really enjoyed this.

I don’t know if anybody else will find it as funny as I did, but I found it quite funny.

My Rivian.

What if I told this story already?

Oh my God, I’m losing my mind.

Maybe I told this story.

I told this story to friends, so possibly I told it to you, because I consider you, dear dear daily Lex listener, my friend.

But we were in the Rivian, which has the Google Gemini AI assistant, which you address by saying, Hey Rivian, and I said, Hey Rivian, before we left for a trip, How do you pronounce Flam in Norway?

And it said, in its response, The word Flam is pronounced flam, and this was so funny to me because it answered by first pronouncing it a different way, and then pronouncing it in a way that you wouldn’t expect any AI voice or a human voice could really say.

The word Flam is pronounced flam.

So it still makes me laugh when I think about it now.

I’m laughing.

Trust me.

Anyway, I think that’s all the stories I have to tell today.

Tomorrow, I’m going to tell stories about famous podcasters and a hole in my house, and it’s not a door.

I’ll be having a wonderful Wednesday.

Goodbye, Lex.