Google

So. While meandering through the interwebs just now I searched "European knife laws" because I was thinking that having a little swiss army knife would be super helpful with the whole eating cheap picnic-style aspect of my upcoming European Tour. It was unhelpful-ish (except for the UK website about their laws, which is great. More on that later) because I found almost NO info about carrying knives. But, I DID end up on a white pride website. Ah, the internet. Someone on this site had posted a question about carrying knives in Europe, not because he wanted to cut open baguettes and slice cheese, but because it's illegal to carry handguns in Europe. My immediate thought was "where do you need to carry a handgun for protection in the US?" Ok, grizzlies aren't something that you want to meet unarmed (at least with bear-mace, which is a HUGE spray-bottle of mace) but people aren't really THAT crazy. An outlier is exactly that, the exception to the rule. For a million incidents, only one may need guns to keep it under control. I think that it's a little silly to always expect to be the exception. A zealouts extreme take of the Boy Scouts' maxim "always be prepared." Which means that you will always be traveling with too much baggage, both emotional (oh, the paranoia and self-doubt!) and physical (knife, handgun, compass, fish hook, water filter, spare boots, tire patch kit, magnifying glass, spare saw for cutting fire wood, 6 or 7 copies of your passport, money belt, extra travelers checks, rape whistle, pepper spray, penicillin, spare under-pants, nail clippers, sewing kit, spare gas, flare gun, book of common phrases in every single language ever [I'm talking to YOU ancient Greek, you never know when you'll fall in a wormhole and end up somewhere unexpected!]). So, I am trying to not over-plan my trip too much. Maybe I will try and under-plan it. The less crap the better.

Damn, i've rambled on forever on something not terribly interesting. Sorry. I will post later about an English person's relationship to their government, which I think is kind of interesting.