What kind of things? Well, cemeteries. I don't know why they have ironwork fences around the graves, and the amount of plastic decoration is strange to me. I understand why there's no grass, but it's not something I thought about until we drove past a cemetery and I realized how odd it seems.
What else? There's art everywhere in Albuquerque, including on bridges, highway dividers, in medians, and randomly throughout the city.
Things that are merely functional in New York are decorative here. We really like that about Albuquerque.
A few other differences: There's no helmet law. There's no bottle bill. They sell wine and liquor in the supermarket. Speaking of the supermarket, there's an entire aisle of tortillas and green and red chili sauces, plus you can buy green and red chili sauce by the vat in the frozen food aisle. There's no car inspection except in the city of ABQ, and that's only a tailpipe sniffer -- no safety inspection at all. There is early voting and you can vote at any polling place.
This is a roadside stand:
There are also block, adobe, or stuccoed walls and/or iron fences everywhere. The neighborhoods are walled off from the main streets, then the individual houses have their own fences or walls around all or part of their yards. Many houses are open to the street in the front, but have walled-in backyards. I am getting used to it, because now it seems wrong when I see the occasional house stuck out in the middle of the desert with no walls. I wonder whether it has to do with the wind?
I think that I will have to write a Part II to this post in a few months. I'm sure I've left out things that I have noticed, and that I will experience more differences as I continue to acclimate to this new place.
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