Much stronger signal area than western North America. Much stronger. BBC is
listenable on 648 MW which was informative during the two sets of terror
bombings. There is an awful lot of bad Italian, Turkish and other similar
music cluttering up FM, MW and SW. I found myself unable to classify and
log properly because of too many stations. Never used the roll up antenna
I brought.

I took a Sangean ATS 606A with me. I wouldn't bother next time. I picked
up a "Luxus Weltempfänger mit PLL Tuner" (luxury short-wave receiver with
pll tuner) made by Elta of Germany for 9.95?, which is about $12 US or
14.50 Cdn. It does not have the MW 9 versus 10 hz adjustment so not usable
for MW in North America, but for this price it is a throw away. It uses
the Sangean wall wart which has an auto-switch and changeable plugs for the
European pin plugs and higher voltage. I bought it in Globus which is
Germany's answer to Walmart from the look of the place and unusual range of
stuff.

All Europeans appear to have cell phones - "Handies". And they obsessively
open and close them everywhere. The costs are more than what I pay in
Canada.

Glad to have avoided the UK in the month the Holland, France, Italy and
Germany with brief stops in Austria and Belgium. I think the train system
(aside from the undergrounds and metros in cities) is extremely vulnerable
to terror attacks and I wish they'd do airport type screenings. The Dutch
were the most thorough both before and after 07 July re border crossing and
scanning passports. The Italians don't care, the Germans are more careful
than the French, both of which are in the middle. The European radio, TV
and newspapers all support the Afgan intervention, and all reject the one
in Iraq, even when their gov'ts have sent troops (e.g., Dutch). We did not
advertise our Canadian nationality and did not see any overt hostility to
Americans or anyone else except in Italy toward a S. Korean who got a bad
hassle from the rail police in Italy (the poor guy had been robbed on the
train and they wanted to talk about his immigration status) and a Turk from
the Dutch border police on the train (post July 07, probably wondered about
his risk - racial profiling?). Wisely, the social chit chat with Europeans
and travelling North Americans avoided politics nearly universally except
in Paris and Amsterdam. I pretended to speak only French when this
happened. My German has improved but this is one impossible language to
learn correctly by just talking to people.

A joke told to me by an American living in Italy:

In European heaven, Italians are the lovers, British the police, French the
cooks, and the Germans organize everything. In European hell, Brits are
the cooks, the French the police, Italians organize everything and the
Germans are the lovers.