Nov 04 2008
in which there aren’t any napkins
Okay, here’s something I don’t get. Why do there seem to be no napkins here? Right, they’re not called that, “nappies” are diapers, this isn’t linguistic confusion (I think the word is “serviette”). I’ve been fine with finding them at restaurants, generally, too. But any time I’ve been in someone’s house, or when I was at the Slug and Lettuce (no, really, that was the pub’s name) for the CU Cocktail Party, or the whole weekend of the CU Houseparty…no napkins. Or paper towels. It’s like it doesn’t even enter people’s minds that such a thing might be necessary, even when we’re eating burritos. (At one point during the cocktail party I got a bunch of toilet paper for myself and another American girl because there was nothing else around. At the houseparty I asked for a napkin and the girl who brought me something–I forget what it was–took like ten minutes to get it and said it was the only…whatever…she could find. Which made me feel bad. But…really?) One person said that British people are too tidy to need napkins, but I’m pretty sure she was mostly joking because that’s patently not true. It’s probably above the WTF level of no Kleenex or washcloths in the Turkish hotels.
