Barbershop poles are interesting things. They have them in the US, of course. Germany doesn’t seem to have them – at least, I’ve never seen one in Germany. They are quite common in Switzerland.
And you can find them in France, but not everywhere.
I took this snap in Arles:
Of course it is probably more at home here in Europe, originally deriving from a sign used for shops that had doctors and leaches and were willing to bleed you with them.
But that begs the question: what else do we see in our daily lives and take for granted, but that we would have also seen hundreds of years ago? Probably if we could travel back in time there are more than a few things that we would instantly recognize.
