bettyk

Even at home, you are always told to wash you hands regularly to prevent illness. Having come down with a nasty cold on my first trip back to Europe in 1999, I am now more careful about keeping my hands clean with Purell and hand wipes. I also wipe down the armrests and food tray on the plane. Other than that, I don't agonize over it too much. But I haven't been sick again either.

Years ago, when we lived in Vienna and went on our first driving trip, we started out with just a general idea of where we were going and had no reservations made ahead of time. While the trip was wonderful, we wasted a lot of time trying to find someplace to sleep when we were already tired. We also ended up staying in less than desirable hotels at some inflated prices because we hadn't planned ahead.

Now, I do plan out our entire trip so I can stay at the hotels I want at a price I want. Also, now that we are older it's easier on my husband if we have elevators in our hotel.

sglass

It's great that you had such a good spontaneous trip and returned home in one piece and healthy. I just hope (since you didn't mention) that you didn't have children with you on your mountain jaunt, or left behind at home being cared for by relatives, who might need to reach you should there be an emergency. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you and your travel partner are child and older-relative- free.

Otherwise, with or without the Purell, this is exactly the kind of "we're so carefree and you are so uptight" attitude that drives me crazy when something unexpected happens. I was reminded from your post of the relative who nearly emptied my OCD-stocked first aid kit in Germany to treat their expanding blister because they were too "carefree" to pack a bandaid and we were staying in a small village.

Call me cranky at the end of a school year, but generally when you successfully wing it is is because of good fortune or someone else picking up the pieces...

JJ127

I've read, with great interest, all the posts from those who don't use precautions to prevent illnesses. And I must admit, I was somewhat in the same category. I do use Purell when on a trip, but never used extra-ordinary precautions. However, as of one month ago, that has definitely changed for me. I was scheduled to leave for London on the 29th of May, but my husband got sick on the 21st. At first, we thought it was a stomach virus and that he'd be okay in 24 hours. Instead, his condition steadily worsened and we were in the E.R. on the 23rd. They took blood tests, found that his kidneys were failing, and took him by ambulance to a larger hospital 75 miles away. He spent 8 days in the hospital and for the first couple days we didn't know if he was going to make it or not. He had continual diarrhea - every 15 minutes - for all 8 days. After 3 cultures, they found he had Salmonella food poisoning. We don't know exactly how he contracted it - but we're fairly certain it was eating a fast-food lunch. The doctors kept stressing, over and over, how important it is to wash your hands. They said you can catch it by just touching a door handle, grocery basket, food tray, etc. that has the germ - and then transferring that germ to your mouth.

So now, we're GREAT believers in compulsive hand washing. And I'm dealing with the travel insurance company to get reimbursed for my cancelled trip, but that's a whole other story!

LoveItaly

And even with all of the hand washing IF the food preparer doesn't practice proper hygeine you can get quite ill. I ended up with Samonella (sp?) poisoning once after eating at an elegant restaurant in the area where I live. I was so sick a few days later and thought I had a virus until I opened up the morning paper to see a huge Warning at the top of the first page about the fact that the restaurant I had eaten at had a problem as over 60 people were quite ill and several were in the hospital (4 elderly patients died). Long story short my doctor had to get meds from the Public Health Center and I was ill for over two weeks.

And my late husband was quite ill one time and our doctor was certain it was from a deli where he had purchased a sandwich.

So we can wash and wash our hands but if food preparers do not what can we do and how do we know whether they do follow proper hygeine procedures or not?

kerouac

The trick is to be in contact with just the right number of germs without going overboard. I know that Americans easily get sick abroad because they try to live in a germ-free environment at home. Apparently, there are not enough germs in kitchens anymore due to all of the antibacterial products, and this makes people a lot more subject to food poisoning because they have no resistance. The big problem is that it is hard to advocate being less clean in the future when this attribute has become so important to all of us.

Nevertheless, it is a well known fact that small children who eat dirt in the back yard are generally healthier than children who spend all of their time being disinfected by their parents.

nona1

just realised I made poor Mr N sound like a rather disgusting person - which he isn't at all really!

I'm not a germ worrier. Wash my hands when I shower in the morning, after the loo and before preparing food, that's it. I touch door handles and taps. Wash the chopping board after cutting raw meat on it (but I only have one chopping board that serves for everything). I firmly believe a bit of dirt is good for you.

The other day I was in the park and a parent wouldn't let their kid sit on the grass because 'it's dirty'. The kid had to sit on a bench. Good lord, how disconnected some people are from life/the world/nature. I'm glad I grew up making mud-pies and my son did too.

Once a year I use a hand sanitiser and that's when I'm at a music festival and those toilets are just indescribable at times, and you often can't wash your hands.

fnarf999

JJ127: you cannot as far as I know get Salmonella from a doorknob or a grocery basket. You get it from infected food that is improperly prepared, or, more likely, that has come into contact with surfaces touched by raw food. It doesn't matter how much you wash your hands, or dip your entire body into pure isopropyl alcohol -- if it's in your food, you're going to be very sick.

I can empathize with your suffering, as I had a bout with Campylobacter, which is similarly devastating, 15 years ago. But I cannot agree with your precautions.

Handwashing after using the toilet, sure. But living in terror of ordinary surfaces and dirt? It's crazy and it's wrong. Overly-aggressive "sanitizing" with Purell or whatever can actually harm you by making you more susceptible.

If you want to avoid germs, you should just kill yourself now, because every square inch of your body, and every surface in your home, your office, your car, and every place in between, is completely covered with them. They'll do you no harm, for the most part -- if you let your body handle them the way it was designed to.

LoveItaly

The bout I had with Salmonella poisoning was due to one of the restuarant employees in the kitchen. He had been ill for a couple of days but was afraid to call in ill as he didn't want to get in trouble with his boss. The end result was that according the the Public Health Dept. who did extensive detective investigations of course due to the deaths and all the seriously ill cusomters was that he had a bad stomach problem and he finally admitted that he did not wash his hands after using the bathroom. He prepared the salads in the kitchen. None of the other people in my group that ate at the restaurant got ill except for me. I had the Crab Louie which he had prepared.

I was so irritated about a chain restaurant here in my city a year or so ago. A friends son worked in their kitchen. He had a terrible stomach virus. He called in sick and the restaurant more or less let him know that if he didn't come into work that day for his shift he would probably be out of a job. So he went to work but a couple of hours later he was so ill they did "allow" him to go home. But in the meantime he was working in the kitchen. I still wish I had called the Health Dept. but I felt if I did I would make a problem about violating the "secret" my friend shared with me. I have never gone back to that restaurant but I understand a lot of restaurants insist that employees come into work even when they are ill.

Anyway..I was one of those kids that loved to make mud pies and so I did eat some dirt. Maybe that is why I am basically very healthy and even though I am older I am not on any meds at all? Our doctor of over 30 years said the same thing that it is not good to use all the antibiotic products that are in the stores etc. I sure am careful to be clean and yes I sure wash my hands carefully when appropriate and I am very careful in my kitchen but I don't freak out over "germs" that are everywhere. Good health to everyone.

beaupeep

I love to plan out my itinerary and have no idea what Purell, Airbourne, or NoJetLag are. If I get jet lag and can't sleep, I read. When the sun is out, so am I and I don't feel tired. Maybe we don't have Purell in Europe. I know I've never seen it.

Lawchick

I have no idea what Purell, Airbourne, or NoJetLag are either.

It appears I'm not that worried about germs. I was the kid who ate the dirt (and cat food) in the back yard so I guess I'm healthy.

"Call me cranky at the end of a school year, but generally when you successfully wing it is is because of good fortune or someone else picking up the pieces..."

What a mean little quote. I have never had anyone pick up any pieces because of my spontaneity.

I believe they sell plasters even in small towns in Germany So I wouldn't be getting too upset about it.

nona1

One thing that winds me up is all the ads for products to sterilise your home. You don't need a kitchen floor cleaner that 'kills all known germs'. You don't eat off your floor. If you do, you need more help than a germicide. You walk on the darn thing. Do you want to sterilise all the pavements outside as well?

Lawchick

Here in Belgium there are practically no anti-bacterial products for the home. People just don't use them. I have started to buy Dettol again now that I'm pregnant - I'm a bit more cautious - and this you buy in the pharmacy, not in the supermarket.

I asked around aabout anti bacterial products and people looked at me as if I was crazy. They just use Mr. Proper - if anything.

bellastarr

I had to lagh at the post that claimed Americans live in a germ[free environment!

I live in New York city and use the Subway system every day-just think of the microbial possibilities inherent in my daily commute!

I also don't think Purell is 100% effective, although I have used it from time to time. In fact, if I were really worried, I would have to carry a large supply of dispoable rubber gloves that Police officers use when they have to
interact" with peole while making arrests. I would be sure to wear them each time I used an ATM machine, which is germ heaven.

rex

When I am at work (neonatal intensive care unit), it is not unusual for me to wash my hands 10-20 times an hour. I never think of that as <i>self</i>-protection, even when handling an unbathed baby, who has just been delivered. My handwashing has to do with not transferring organisms from one patient to another. It's a reflection of an era long gone in nurseries when seemingly innocuous staphylcoccus &quot;epidemics&quot; spread rampantly among seemingly well babies. I don't think I have heard of this happening in over 20 years... but then we don't herd babies into nurseries and hold them there 12-24 hours a day, like they did in the past. There are still, occasionally, what seem to be epidemics of various gastrointestinal problems in various NICUs, and it correlates somewhat (though not entirely) with having a high patient census, being &quot;busy&quot;, and presumably, handwashing measures breaking down, at least in part. Handwashing, with soap and water, is increasingly giving way to waterless hand sanitizers... I am in the minority of those who resist this change, but I probably go one way or the other, half the time.

All of which is background to being a _somewhat_ frequent handwasher in my &quot;outside&quot; life in the &quot;real world&quot; - - say, maybe 4 or 5 times a day, just around the house, for example... for no reason other than habit, as far as I know. When I travel, it might be less. I just never think of being &quot;sanitary&quot; as having anything to do with &quot;protecting&quot; _my_ health... and so, when I travel, I cannot imagine worrying about toilets, bathtubs, bedspreads, blankets, doorknobs, currency or other items touched by countless others before me... and after. This carries over to gym equipment for me as well - - I get rather annoyed by those who compulsively &quot;swab down&quot; all kinds of surfaces that are &quot;contaminated&quot; by ordinary sweat.

And like the majority of others who have responded to this thread, I plan every night's stay when traveling in Europe and here at home. As I have said before, those of us who reserve rooms ahead are grateful to you who do not - - and willingly accept those rooms with the crummier locations, the fewer amenities, at the higher prices. Those who reserve... and those who wing it... both play important parts in the daily drama of market forces - - in the hospitality industry.

Best wishes,

Rex

Sue_xx_yy

julies, I brought up the old post in the hope that it would stimulate your memory. I believe it was you who got royally flamed for your trip report on VietNam. That might have been a year or so ago, but I have to wonder why the memory of it was so ephemeral for you, and why you do not see the correlation between what was done to you on that thread, and what you are doing here.

In the responses to your report (apparently since pulled by the editors, things got so out of hand) people took a few data points that they knew about you (some unflattering remarks, scattered in amongst positive ones, that you had made about the country you visited) and proceeded to extrapolate from these few data points into making broad judgements about you. In short, they were doing to you exactly what they felt, and I stress felt, you were doing to Viet Nam. This is emotional reasoning, it is feeling at the expense of thinking.

And now here you are saying that because you feel someone to be excessive and irrational because they plan, or have concerns about health, that somehow they are irrational. That you feel it, does not make it so. By the way, you do not specify which health concerns or practices strike you as irrational, or explain why you hold it to be so, in fact you seem to hold all concerns to be interchangeable, a most curious position.

So, Not so fast. Let us try thinking about the issues you've raised instead of emoting about them - which will require suspending the urge to pre-emptively congratulate ourselves on how much cooler we all want to think we are than the next person.

First, on the subject of planning.

As Rex has pointed out, no man is an island. We do not exist as individuals, no matter how much we like to think. What we do affects other people. We are part of a society, a system, and never more than now, when 3000 planes are in the airspace above the US alone in any given hour. That translates to an awful lot of people being discharged into the major cities of the globe during any given hour. All of these people will need to be fed, housed, and require other services in their temporarily adopted abodes.

You are not operating in a vacuum, julies. You are operating in an environment in which a significant proportion of people with whom you are travelling HAVE planned ahead, and their planning helps you, even if that was neither their intention nor yours. They do not head to just any hotel, they head for the one they chose and booked in advance. This translates into faster processing times overall, such that you will more quickly find your own spontaneously chosen accomodation.

When planning does not occur to a significant degree, the result is not efficient, or cool, to say the leasat. Many people do not plan for disasters, notwithstanding the advice they are given. They do not keep a fresh supply of batteries or candles on hand, or cylinders of fresh water. When the blackout strikes, when the hurricane happens, these are the people who wonder why stores cannot somehow supply 10,000 or 100,000 or even over a million people with batteries in the space of 48 hours. They are the people who cannot get that evacuation always has to commence prior to final information about a weather system being known, because the exits out of a city can only handle so much traffic in an hour.

Of course, provided that a majority of people do plan, those that leave the buying of batteries or the evacuation of a city till the last minute, can execute these functions relatively unimpeded. They then boast about how cool they are not to have had 'irrational' concerns prior to the last minute, notwithstanding that it was the 'irrational' planning of others that made their own cavalier ways possible. They cannot see how they fit into the big picture, and apparently, neither can you.

plafield

Some people have way too much time on their hands and take things way too seriously and might want to think about going to social work school where their psychological assessments of others will actually be asked for!

walkinaround

&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;
I know that Americans easily get sick abroad because they try to live in a germ-free environment at home.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;


I also laughed at the strange stereotype that americans live in a germ free environment whilst everyone else takes a more natural approach.

the current standard for british parenting is to sterilise all bottles and anything else to do with feeding a baby. sterilisers (both steam or chemical) are part of almost all parents' standard kit. british medical professionals and child experts generally give the advice to sterilise everything as standard.

In the UK, Dettol (an anticeptic cleanser) is not a passing fad but a long established product that is standard in almost all british homes for decades. it even has a royal warrant.

in the US, the norm is not to sterilise baby feeding equipment but just to wash it thoroughly. parenting books and websites between the two countries will differ on this advice. even the same websites (with different country versions) will tell british parents to sterilise and american parents just to wash.

likewise, when you travel to many parts of southeast asia, you see many people who are very paranoid about germs(perhaps rightly considering SARS, etc).

there are clearly a lot of misinformation and strange perceptions around this issue.

real travellers and those with open minds will realise that cleanliness of ones food, feet, hands, home, etc and all of the various rituals and norms related to cleanliness (dipping chopsticks in tea, removing ones shoes in a home, flannel/washcloth or not in a hotel, wearing a surgical mask when sick, etc, etc are cultural and differ greatly throughout the world. it is ignorant and bizarre to boil the issue down to 'americans are paranoid and everyone else is not'.

kerouac

In any case, it is the #1 OCD:

&quot;The most frequent rituals concern cleaning and are often associated with the idea of contamination.
Cleanliness can be personal hygiene, such as brushing teeth for hours after each meal until the gums
bleed, or washing hands with abrasive and disinfectant products until lesions appear. These rituals
may also involve domestic activities such as the laundry, whereby patients put the clothes through
the washer even three or four times consecutively, unconvinced that they are sufficiently clean.&quot;

julies

Miss Winging It here--

We often have reservations I'll admit, but we can also do without and end up just fine. There are only 2 times in our entire lives (and we're rapidly closing in on 60) that I can recall when we had difficulties because of no reservations.

The first time was in Germany, and we had reservations. The only problem was that we heard that there was construction work on the autobahn, and we became concerned that we would have too many road delays and thus miss our flight home out of Frankfurt. So, we decided to leave and cancel our reservations and just drive to get closer to the Frankfurt airport. This was a Thursday night, so we didn't anticipate any problems. What we didn't know was there was an ultimate frisbee tournament going on in the area with 1200 paritcipants. Finally, the kind owner of a gasthaus (who didn't speak English and we only speak a little bit of travelers German) called a colleague and found a room for us.

And, I'll admit once we did end up sleeping in the car. It was either a Thursday or Sunday night so we thought we'd have no problem. We were in Canada coming to the Bruce peninsula. We took a late arriving (midnight)ferry and thought we'd just grab a room at a motel as soon as we got off the ferry. All the rooms were full at the motels and inns. So, we thought we'd go to the local provincal park campground because we did have a tent and sleeping bags with us although this certainly wasn't our first choice of a way to spend the night. The 400 site campground was full too. Turns out it was a long holiday week-end in Canada, and we weren't aware of it because we are Americans. Spread out our sleeping bags in the back of our van and were awakened by the park ranger tapping on our window at 3:00 am because we were parked in a &quot;no camping&quot; area. He wasn't sumpathetic even though there was no place to stay for 100 mikes around. We lived and it didn't ruin our vacation. In fact, it was just another adventure and what makes life interesting.

Martyharly--

Tales of your adventure in Nepal in some ways remind me of a portion of the trip we just took to Vietnam this year. We did a homestay in a remote Hmong village and another one in a less remote village. In one, we took the kids' bed, which was a straw mat on a piece of wood. The hosts stuffed in some straw from the hayloft for us so we'd be more comfortable. The only known thing that I saw at dinner was the water buffalo we'd just seen killed a few hours earlier. We slept in all our clothes because it was cold in the mountains and didn't die from using their bedding although I'll admit we did have some silk sleep sacks.

Life, and its accompanying adventures, is what you make of it.

SeaUrchin

I wash my hands when I know I will be3 using them to eat with, such as nuts and bread on the plane. I wash the tray because I know it may touch my food or silverware or plasticware.

I am more careful on a plane because I don't want to catch some virus and ruin my trip. At home I am not worried about it although I do wash my hands before eating. I think it is unwise to leave your toothbrush near a toilet.

I still play in the dirt in my own yard, planting and playing with my dogs.