So last week, when we were in a hotel where the huge magnifying mirror in the bathroom was mounted on the wall a good 6-8 inches above my head, I didn’t think too much about it.

After all, we were in a hotel in Tübingen, Germany, and I’d just spent the last 3.5 years living in a land where I often felt dwarfed by the people around me. While the stereotype that the trains always run on time in Germany may not be true, one stereotype that seems true from my vertically challenged perspective is that most people in Germany are tall.

OK, so then we came to Italy last week. It’s a country where we lived for over 3 years, and during all that time I never felt as out-of-place because of my height, which is 5 ft (152 centimeters). At least when I round up.

Anyway, I can’t always easily reach the top shelves at the supermarket in any country, but at least the lower shelves typically aren’t out of reach anywhere, and definitely never in Italy.

Which makes our current vacation apartment a bit confusing. It’s a lovely studio apartment with a separate kitchen and bath in an old, but remodeled, building in the centro storico (old city center) of Verona. The remodeling, however, was apparently done by  and/or for someone rather taller than average. In the photos below, note the height of the cabinet in the bathroom, as well as the location of the drying rack for dishes over the sink. Oddly enough, the bottom of both of those things are well above the top of my head – clearly, this apartment was built for a giant – or at least a really, really tall person.

But we’re in Italy – people aren’t typically that tall here, right? So it’s confusing. We may not be living in the land of the giants, but we’ve definitely moved into one of their apartments.

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BTW, the slide show style of the photos today is being used because I’ve run into a bug with the blogging software I’m using.  The slide show can be paused using the controller at the bottom of the photos, but you won’t be able to make the photos larger. However, for these photos, I think the slide show size will give you enough of an idea; if you really want to see larger versions of any of the photos, though, let me know.