Back home, in the USA drinking belongs indoors. It’s fenced off by laws, patios, licenses — treated like something that needs supervision. Here, it just happens in the open. A woman sits on a park bench with a beer the same way someone might sit with a coffee. No performance. No edge. No permission-seeking.
What strikes me isn’t the alcohol itself. It’s the ease. The absence of ceremony. The way public space feels less policed by invisible rules about what bodies are allowed to do.
Because I’m not drinking, I see it more clearly. If I were participating, it would blur into the background. Instead, it stands out as a quiet difference in how people are allowed to inhabit the world.
There’s something grounding about it — not because I want the beer, but because it suggests a relationship to public life that’s less anxious. Drinking here doesn’t announce anything. It doesn’t separate you from the day. It just folds into it.
I don’t feel tempted. I feel informed.
It reminds me that culture isn’t just what people do — it’s what they don’t have to explain. And in this place, sitting with a drink in public doesn’t require a story.
I’m aware of the contrast, and I carry it lightly. It’s another way of seeing how different societies decide what belongs to everyone — and what has to be hidden away.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co
Travel in Life 