One Marathon Every Three Weeks

You all might have heard that Europeans walk so much more than Americans do. But is it really true? Well, we don’t have a car for the whole year and use the bus, the tram (called “Trämli” in Basel), and the train. In case you wonder, the “li” at the end of Trämli means “small”, so, it’s the small tram. But there is not another, big one, in case you wondered. Similarly, the zoo is called “Zolli” although it’s not that small either and full of fierce animals, like that cute baby Rhino we saw this morning.

Anyway, back to walking. Sophia walks to school Monday to Friday, five times in the morning, three times in the afternoon. Yes, she comes home for lunch just like everybody else. Many businesses, even for instance the post office, close over lunchtime, say from 12:00 noon until 2:00 p.m. So, back to walking again. But before we look at Sophia’s walks, let’s figure out how far the typical kid at Sophia’s American school walks to school: in the morning five times from the house door to the car and then from the parking lot to the school building and the same in the evening, backwards, kind of. That makes approximately two times five times fifty yards, that is, about 500 yards which is about 450 meters.

Sophia’s walk is 0.9 kilometers and she does it ten times in the mornings and six times in the afternoons. Additionally, she has to go to another school for another four times. This altogether makes sixteen times 0.9 kilometers plus four times 0.5 kilometers which is 16.4 kilometers.

Let’s see how this compares to those 500 yards. It’s actually about 36 times as much. Now, Sophia has been in school for seven weeks so far, which means, she has walked to and from school for a total of 114.8 kilometers. That’s actually more than two and a half marathons. Or, put differently, it’s a bit further than from Touchstone, Sophia’s old school, to the coast in Newport, Rhode Island.

So, at least some people around here walk quite a bit. And, by the way, these are Sophia’s walk-to-school-and-other-places shoes.

Tags: hiking, Sophia