International travel is essential to the human experience. Hell, sometimes just getting out of the city for a week will do the same thing. It’s necessary, from time to time, for a person to unplug from their society and immerse themselves in a culture other than their own. Why? Well, it fosters a bit of empathy for people who don’t speak the predominant language.
Enough about that. I want to talk to you about tobacco.
I have just returned from the land of Drugs, Physics, yodelling and Bilderberg Smurfs. Yup. Switzerland.
Did you know that people around the world have more personal liberties than we do here in Canada? For example, I have drank a 22 of Coors whilst strolling the strip in Vegas. I have smoked indoors in Pennsylvania, and now, recently, on a train platform in Schaffhausen, CH.
In Switzerland, not only can you smoke nearly everywhere, save for daycare facilities, you may also bring your dog. To the restaurant. To the butcher. To the watchmaker’s shop. But not the campground. This is a little odd, as it’s completely backasswards from Canada. I wish I could take my dog to work. I wish I could take him to Starbucks. But I can only really take him to the off-leash park, the mountains, and the campground.
In Switzerland, the cigarettes are dual filteredYou can even break it open and look at the little bits of odour-absorbent carbon inside the first filter. In Switzerland, nobody cares if you smoke, as long as you don’t try to give them CPR with a mouthful.
But here in Canada, especially in Calgary, it’s a different story. When you light a cigarette, people will cross the street and will purposely and obviously position themselves downwind of your smoke, only to begin wheezing, hacking and coughing. Sometimes they even manage to feign surprise by asking :” Who’s smoking? Are those cigarettes I smell?”
There are no shortage of these dinktards walking around, with their fake and bake tans, yakking on a cel phone while chowing down on a Big Mac.
Smoker’s discrimination is emerging. At the very least, it’s fascinating how people police one another’s behaviour, based on their beliefs about what will harm them.
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eh 06.24.08 at 9:09 am
People take there dogs everywhere in Toronto. I’ve seen them there in movie stores, office buildings, on the subway/street car, restaurant patios, etc.
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