Our Three Cents: Proof of Life
Article by Amanda Kendle
Photos by Ian Dorant, Courtesy of Liechtenstein Toursim

London’s an irritatingly famous city. Even those who’ve never suffered through a Heathrow passport control queue think they know all about it. Call home and while you try to talk about the important stuff, like your amazing discovery of the first Greek-slash-Japanese fusion café in funky Covent Garden, all you’ll hear will be “Did you see the Tower Bridge? Ride in a double-decker yet? Been to check out Buckingham Palace?”

Perhaps the ultimate stereotypical London experience would be to arrange tea and scones with the Queen and her corgis, but a worthwhile second choice is to call and explain how much more there is to London—from one of their landmark red telephone booths. Cleverly combine your sightseeing activities with keeping in touch. They’re easily spotted by the instantly recognizable color—London phone box red—and their gently curved top edges above the royal crown and quaint “TELEPHONE” lettering. A scheme to replace them all with fancy modern jobs a few years back met with howls of protest, so you can still find them in many parts of London, especially the tourist drag. Keep a handful of coins at the ready and follow the polite British instructions. You’ll be helping to keep the experience alive for your future fellow travelers, too; recent stats show that at least a third of these famous telephone booths are running at a loss, because so many people are making connections with their cell phones instead. So jump inside a box, dial Mum at home, and keep everyone happy.

It’s the drab part of the traveling life that doesn’t usually make it into the magazines or the chat rooms: the sad fact that sometime you have to do your laundry. You’ll get clean clothes and happier bunk mates, and prevent Mom from worrying for at least a couple of days, if you email ahead to let her know when you’ll be visiting the Happy Wash Laundromat in Strasbourg, northern France. Whether with the good intention of keeping people in touch, or merely the voyeuristic pleasure of watching the dirty stuff go in and the clean bits come out, the proprietors have set up a webcam which broadcasts live the goings-on in front of the washing machines. The Internet eye captures everything from mixed loads, stains from Oktoberfest, some laundry lovin’ (those French!), and backpacker messages.

Spend an afternoon in Alsace-Lorraine’s pretty capital making good use of the washing machines with the most multilingual instructions you’ll ever find. While you’re doing your whites, Mom can tune into happywash.com and you can wave, write messages in liquid soap on your tshirts, and prove you’re not only alive and probably illness-free, but that at least once during your trip, your clothes have seen soap and water.

When did you last send a postcard? Email and the proliferation of Internet cafes have largely put a stop to the ol’ postcard trade. But lots of people still like to get something colorful, ragged around the edges, and inked up in the mailbox. What better place to make them happy than from than a ridiculously small country whose biggest draw is actually stamps. Liechtenstein in fact uses both the postage stamps and the ones in your passport to attract visitors.

Nestled cozily between Switzerland and Austria and rating just a page or two of a passing mention in most guidebooks, it’s a country with an area not quite as large as Washington DC and a population of just 33,000. Pretty easy for a traveler to run out of things to do here, especially if the weather’s not conducive to hiking. But the draw to say you were in the 6th smallest country in the world, with the funkiest name, deserves a postcard home. Spend 1.80 Swiss francs (yes, Swiss francs--Liechtenstein is too tiny to warrant its own currency) on the latest sought-after-by-stamp-geeks postage stamp to send a postcard of the grinning Liechtenstein royals to the U.S. You can also pay a couple of francs to get a Liechtenstein stamp in your passport—depressingly rare in these practically borderless days of the European Union. If you’re going to send the folks at home that long-promised postcard just once during your trip--and let’s face it, usually you remember at the airport before the flight home—then at least mail it from an obscure nation like Liechtenstein and give them something conversation-worthy to put on the fridge.