LLWorldTour

While I was traveling around the world I really didn’t have much to worry about except Dr. Seussical things like: ‘where will I find a bed? Where can I lay my head? Where can I go to be fed?’ But one thing I worried about back home was my grandmother still being there when I returned. She’s a fiercely strong, independent woman and the older I get the more I realize I am a lot like her. We made a pact before I left that she would wait for me to come home… And she’s a woman of her word. Just this past weekend she turned a young 94-years-old. I am staying with her in her apartment in Manhattan. She’s phenomenal. She was an actress in the Yiddish theater in New York and traveling shows for about sixty years of her life. She started on stage when she was six-years-old and didn’t stop singing and dancing until she hit eighty.

And today she lives alone and is still taking care of business. Her mind is amazingly sharp, but thanks to emphysema (she used to smoke, oh, roughly fifty years ago when it was très chic and oh so healthy) she’s slowed down a bit. She gets around fine though by zipping around Manhattan in what she calls her Lexus, a snappy red electric scooter. I can’t even keep up with her when she’s cruising down the sidewalk plowing down the fine citizens of New York left and right. Watch out, or she’ll take you down.

And believe it or not, just the other day, she motivated me to get on her treadmill. That’s right, not only does she own a treadmill, she uses it three to four times a week. She walks on it for about fifteen minutes and seeing her on it made me think to myself, ‘Okay, if my grandma is on there, I better step it up and start running again.’ Nothing like your 94-year-old granny to kick your ass into gear. I can only hope to be like her when I’m old and wrinkly.

Now that I am back in my homeland of majestic purple mountains, fruited plains, and good ol’ amber waves of grain, I am amidst my American brothers and sisters–sometimes loud, sometimes big, but almost always smiley and friendly. After more than one year on the road, I feel I have taken a very unscientific measure of foreigners’ views of Americans and America. Many statements have some truth to them—although, of course, they are all generalizations.

Here are some of the most common things I heard about us from foreigners.

1. Americans are very confident.
2. Americans are all rich.
3. Americans don’t know much about the rest of the world.
4. ‘I like Americans but I do not like American politics or foreign policy.’
5. How come every American traveler I meet tells me they don’t like George Bush? How did he become president…twice??”
6. I traveled to the United States and was pleasantly surprised at how friendly and welcoming they were (I honestly heard this at least ten different times).
7. You are thin for an American (this was really said to me in Madrid by a British guy).
8. You’re American, and you actually know how to drive a stick shift (standard transmission)??
9. You’re American…so you have a gun, right?
10. I don’t meet many Americans—they don’t travel as much as others.

This last one is a much discussed topic amongst travelers. Roughly 20-25% of Americans have their passports and those that do are more likely to be liberal-minded, left leaning individuals. But even though I do travel and think it is a great experience, education and investment for me personally, I do not feel the need to ‘wear my passport’ as a badge or look down on others who choose not to. I also know there are many reasons why some Americans do not or can not travel outside the country:

• The US is very big and one can spend a lifetime just seeing the fifty states inside its borders. North America has just about every climate and landscape known to man and a wide variety of culture, cuisine and lifestyles. A lifetime isn’t enough to see everything.
• Unlike European countries, the US is very far from most other countries making it very expensive to travel abroad. A New Yorker may go all the way to Florida on holiday while the same thing for a Brit may be to fly to the Costa del Sol of Spain—probably the same distance but because of the small size of European countries, crossing borders is just more common.
• And in relation to the above, since the distance is so great, the flights are therefore very expensive and many, many people in the US can not afford to travel abroad.
• The unfortunate lack of vacation time given by the majority employers in the US.

The United States is a vast nation. With a total land mass area (exclusive of waters) of 3,536,294 sq mi (9,158,960 km²) the U.S.A. is the world’s third largest country, following Russia and China. Stretching more than three thousand miles across with nearly fifty states and nearly 300 million people in between, this is one diverse land. Like all nations in the world some people are good and some bad. Some are the nicest you would ever meet and some are complete morons. One of my biggest pet peeves is generalizations.

In the beginning of my trip, I was slightly excited to be thought of as a ‘cool’ or ‘good’ American. People said I was ‘different’ because I was traveling and seeing the world and not just holed up in my country watching one of 300+ channels on my TV or driving my big, gas-guzzling SUV on some big highway somewhere (these are obviously more stereotypes). By the way, I sold the only car I’d ever owned, a 1989 Honda Prelude, before my trip began. I only drove about once a month and hope to not buy another one since I normally use public transport anyway. I was happy to also defend and explain to people that all Americans are not created equal and we are all different just like the rest of the world. But, I have to admit, as time went on I began to get sick and tired of trying to make sense of it all and either defending or renouncing other Americans. I grew weary of debunking the negative stereotypes that I really can’t do much about.

A few times I did encounter the stereotypical “ugly Americans” (as well as other English-speaking nationalities that shall remain nameless) during my travels giving us all a bad name, but I still tried to give them the benefit of the doubt because of the fact that they still made the decision to travel and see other parts of the world in the first place. But I also met and know wonderfully kind and open Americans. Just remember also that the Americans who are traveling abroad are there to open up to new experiences and engrossing themselves in new cultures, but by making comments about these very visitors to your countries that open-mindedness can quickly turn to defensiveness. After all I’ve seen and done I am still an American and I like myself and most of my American friends. I was proud to represent my country as I toured the world. I’m not proud of all Americans or everything my country does but who said it was all or nothing? Now shut up before I shoot you…and then sue you.

Many asked if coming ‘home’ would be bittersweet for me. I don’t know if ‘bittersweet’ is the right word. I’m certainly not bitter and life is still sticky sweet. I’m certainly not saying that my journey is over…in fact far from it—it’s only just begun (hum your version of the Carpenters tune here). Here in bustling New York I am continuing to meet new people giving me that same positive rush I now crave that I felt during my worldly travels. I’ve caught up with old friends and new ones that I met online through this very website–some were inspired and asking me for advice on their own upcoming adventures, some were getting back in touch after reading about my trip in the local paper, and others were trying to sell me some kind of ‘enlargement.’ I’ve been told I already have big ‘cojones’ for doing a trip like this…so I guess I don’t need that now. But it goes to show you how traveling is a great way to meet people–even if you are meeting New Yorkers or Chicagoans while you are in Istanbul.  Even when I’m not sure what to do next or feel flashes of confusion, I find it hard to stay that way because I keep coming back to the fact that I’ve been so extremely lucky and fortunate to see what I’ve seen, not just in the last 15 months, but during my entire life.

I am now back in the land between the two shining seas, the United States, but the only plan I have now is to stay in New York for about a month, then go to Chicago for another month or two, and then cross the country to Los Angeles for a few months to stay with my friend Mark, try to publish some more of my writing and/or photos, do some freelance PR work for Pueblo Ingles that I picked up in Spain, and most importantly lay at the pool.

Many have warned me about the very tough re-entry after a trip like this and that returning back to the US could be the biggest culture shock of all. I think like a good (or bad) movie, I heard so much about this ‘reverse culture shock’ that the hype was a bit more than the real deal. But I also feel like flying from London to New York made things so much easier. It was quite a seamless transition to go in between possibly the world’s two greatest, most diverse cities. I guess I’m doing what you would call not ripping the band-aid off quickly by creepingly slowly transitioning back to life in the US. As you can presume, I have never been away this long. So I wanted to try and see things differently here in the ‘US of A.’ You can see, do, and experience just about anything and everything in London, but nevertheless, New York City was still a bit of sensory overload. There are just so many things for your brain to absorb—no wonder people are stressed. A multitude of signs are everywhere you look, telling you something: ‘Stop!’ ‘Sale,’ ‘Barack wins this primary’, ‘Hilary wins that primary,’ ‘Hot Pizza’, ‘Cold Drinks’, ‘Buy this’, ‘Eat here,’ ‘Walk,’ ‘Don’t Walk,’ ‘Don’t Shoot!’, ‘Run for your life…,’ etc. There are so many, too many choices for everything. I mean it’s nice to live in a land where things are plentiful, but sometimes it seems a bit ridiculous. I now realized how simple my life had been for the last fifteen months. I only had a few pairs of pants (that’s trousers for the Brits–I did have a week supply of underwear, fyi) to choose from each day, I had no bills to pay, and my only worries were finding a new place to stay every few weeks, booking some form of transport, and avoiding most insects. I had avoided most media while I was away. It was a really nice break from being force fed lots of information, most of which is not 100% true, and a lot of which I frankly just don’t need to know. For the most important world news, I could scan the headlines on the internet or watch the BBC News and get a really nice five minute (that’s long by US news standards) update on the latest scuttlebutt of the US Presidential Race. I really didn’t need to know about any traffic-causing car crashes on the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago or old warehouse fires in the South Loop or another sad missing child story.

And speaking of the media—there is also an overabundance of television channels (do we really need 300?), magazines and tabloid newspapers being flashed in your face all day long. And then there are the stores. I went in to a drugstore (of which there are a multitude—practically one on every corner—just like the now omnipresent Starbucks) just to buy a simple tube of toothpaste. It was intense. First I had to sort through all the brands on offer. Once I settled on one name, I had to study each package for the various differences—gel, paste, tartar control, whitening, whitening with baking soda, all natural, all chemical, 4 out of 5 dentists recommend it, with fluoride, with crystals, for sensitive gums, for gums of steel, plaque control, with scope mouthwash, minty fresh, orangey goodness, or a swirly combination of everything. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh…my brain hurt. Do we really need all this?

I was also confronted with a plethora of unguents, emollients, moisturizers, creams and lotions that claimed to firm, tighten, buff, polish, darken, shine, and improve my life, or at least the life of my skin. For more than one year I have done without nearly all of this and thanks to good marketing—now I just had to have some.  It was too easy to get sucked in–in fact I think they have a lotion for that–so I just have to avoid going in these stores at all.

The day I returned to our fair country, I flew into JFK International in New York City.  It was weird to go through immigration and not be a “visitor” for once and actually be around more American citizens than I’ve seen all together in more than a year. I have heard a few horror stories from my ‘foreign’ friends about their experiences being grilled by US immigration officers and I have to say I was a bit disappointed with my experience. I was sure hoping for a little stern interrogation or maybe just a comment about me being gone for so long. But nope. The white, stocky, grey-haired officer barely glanced at my customs card (on which I had to list where I’d been on my visit out of the country–twenty some-odd countries took up more space than allotted of course), took a cursory flip through my stamp-laden, well-worn passport, stamped me in and said, ‘welcome home.’ There was no ‘what were your dealings in the Middle East?’ ‘Why were you in Turkey so long?’ Not even a ‘Wow, gosh, gee, 15 months is a really long time!’ Oh well. Very soon it will be like I never even left.

During my trip around the world I’ve now logged 115 hours flight hours (not even including the many hours getting to and from airports plus doing the wonderful ‘arrive two hours ahead of time for international flights’ game) and feel that my time flying the friendly skies has given me enough research to compile this list of things that will inevitably happen to you on international flights:

1. There are always, at least, two screaming, crying children on board. And one of them will always be an average of 3.3 seats away from your ears.
2. The headphones they give you to watch a movie are always crap and so is the audio. Four out of five times, the used ‘toy’ headphones you remove from their specially ’sealed’ plastic wrapping will only have sound in one ear forcing you to go back to 1940 when everything was in mono.
3. On some budget flights nowadays you have to pay (way too much) for your own food and drink, but the pungent body odor coming from the passenger next to you is always free.
4. Also on some budget flights (ie Air Asia, Ryanair) there are enforced weight restrictions for your checked baggage (15Kg/30lbs or less). I often had to shove my boots, toiletries, and other heavier items into a second carry-on bag. Unless, of course, they only allow you one stinkin’ carry on (including purse!) like the good folks at Ryannair, then I was stuffing all things imaginable into my one carry on back pack…its weight seeming to outpace even my checked bag. This makes no sense whatsoever considering it all goes on the same plane anyway.
5. More body odor.
6. The fattest and only American on the plane will sit next to you. She didn’t pay for two seats, but she certainly is using them.
7. Or…there are two Brits sitting next to you that do NOT shut up the whole time and there voices are the loudest on the plane. And not only that…they ‘talk’ with their hands in a very ‘herky-jerky’ way nearly slapping you with every damn punctuated sentence.

I flew to New York’s JFK International Airport on Air India. It was the cheapest flight available at $400. When I mentioned flying on Air India, a few raised their eyebrows. It was a standard 747 like all others, the flight was great, I had scored an exit row all to myself (I always ask for it, ya know, because I’m just so darn tall), and as I’d hoped the food was a tasty Indian curry. I even requested the vegetarian meal. Yum.

Inevitably, as soon as the plane touches down on terra firma and skids to a screeching halt at the last bit of runway, all passengers (especially in Asia) jump to their feet (yes, seat belt light is still on) so they can stand hunched over in a queue in the aisle for ten minutes as we taxi to the gate and wait for the plane’s doors to fly open and release its fidgety human contents. It is as if somehow standing will get them out of the plane faster. And now they can get to the baggage carousel that much faster so they can stand there for fifteen extra minutes and wait for their bag to come off…unless it’s lost, of course. By the way, in my thirty-five or so flights not once did my bag get ‘lost, stolen, or damaged.’ Sweet.