My first blog entry from INSEAD, brought to you from the sunny surrounds of Fontainebleau, France.
I am sitting in the sun, enjoying the mild autumn temperatures of France in early September, basking in sunshine, listening to the gentle buzz of Friday afternoon conversations, as people celebrate the end of the first week of classes with a quiet (and subsidized) beer or wine in the INSEAD courtyard area. The chatter is quiet, partly because people are tired from a long week, partly because there is no reason to expend much energy now, with the INSEAD social scene set to come to life at another chateau party tomorrow night. Until then its all about fitting in to the French way of life, where, as I've discovered, nothing is rushed, and everything is a little subdued.
The volume may be in keeping with French custom, but the language of these conversations is certainly not. If I strain my ears I can hear a German conversation and a Spanish one, drowned out in the main by many, many different accents of English, all trying to make themselves understood. This is the first place I've ever been in my life where having fluent command of two languages is unusual for the fact that its not three or four. INSEAD make a big deal out of their internationalism, but that does not make the end result any less impressive. There are 73 different nationalities represented in my class, including seven Australians and about 25 Germans. India contributes the largest group, with 56 (of 500) students), while many smaller nations deliver only one. On arrival I was put in a small study group - the group in which I will do most of my assignments for the first two periods (ie until Christmas). Our group covers 5 of the world's 6 continents - A Frenchman, a Nigerian, a woman from Japan, a Uruguayan and an Australian.
It's promising to be a very busy year. Classes may only involve about 16 contact hours per week, but each class requires homework, pre readings and group assignments. I've been at school until about 9pm on most days that I've been here so far - quite a shock for the first week.
When the weekend rolls around though its party time here. Quite a few of the students here live in large old chateaus in groups of up to 15 or 16 students. With summer fast coming to an end, every house seems to keen to host at least one party before time runs out. On my first Saturday here I went to one my first party. The following Wednesday was a 'traffic light' party in town - just to get everyone's cards out on the table early, I guess. One feature of parties here is that they generally don't start before 10, and end equivalently late in the night / early in the morning.
Last Saturday was the Bain party. The consulting firms put a lot of time and effort into recruiting here - I've gotten letters from McKinsey and Booz, a USB stick from Bain, and my locker is secured with a BCG lock - not bad for a weeks work. But Bain have hatched a plan to get into everyone's mind early, by putting up the cash for a huge party in the first week of term. Fortunately no one from Bain actually attends, but the thousands of Euros they put up pay for 500 people to party the night away in the grounds of a French chateau, with a dance floor, marquis, professional lights and copious amounts of (real) champagne.
The parties do provide one dilemma though - most of these houses are on their own grounds, quite a long way from anywhere. There was, apparently, a time when the French didn't worry too much about drink driving, and getting home from these parties was simply a matter of dodging a few wild boar as you steered your rental car home. These days (fortunately) that has changed, and drink driving is a definite no, in France and especially at INSEAD, where just about every communication about a social event is signed off with the phrase "At INSEAD, we don't drink and drive".
The French police may do a lot more breath testing now, but there is definitely one thing they could do which would be far more effective in reducing drink driving, I think. Taxis. The French seem to take not working on a Sunday very seriously, but the fact that this extends to taxis just seems absurd. As it happened, after the Bain party, when the last bus back to town decided he could not take a single standing passenger, a good thirty of us were left standing outside said chateau, with very little idea how to get home. Calling a taxi at that time only leads to waking someone up, as most of the taxi's are private operations with their own numbers, as being told something in French. Whatever that something is, it is not "I'll be there in 15 minutes".
In the end I slept at the chateau, and could only get a lift to within about 5km of my house. In case you were wondering, ending a party by waiting for 2 hours for a bus that doesn't come, then waking up to see the aftermath of a 500 person party, and then walking 5 km to get home, is not ideal.
There is a lot more to tell about French life, but for now, the wine calls.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
From Sea to Shining Sea
Four months ago we were swimming with the turtles and dolphins of the Bay Islands, in the improbably warm, luminescent turquoise waters of the Caribbean, trying with little success to escape the scorching heat and stifling humidity of Honduras. A month later it was cold and rain that we wanted to escape, with even less success, as we watched the thunderous surf of the Pacific Ocean crashing into the Western coast of Vancouver Island. In Cape Cod we'd found a pleasant balance in the elements, dipping our feet in the chilly waters of the Atlantic and soaking up the moderate warmth of a New England Summer. It made a fine place for the climax of our Great Escape, putting us perfectly in tune with the national anthem of this nation, which we've now explored from sea to shining sea.
The road trip itself started 88 days ago, in a rainy, dreary, but ever so cool Seattle. Since that day in May we've travelled a little over 10,000 miles, or 181 km per day, crossing mountain ranges and deep canyons, deserts and swamps, forests and praries. At the moment I'm left reflecting on the great contradiction of time - that it flies when you are having fun, so the more you do, the shorter the time seems to get. On the one hand, waking up in the snow in Jasper seems like a distant memory, so entirely removed from the groan of a humid New York City as to feel like another life. On the other hand I can barely believe that a trip that was even longer in the planning than the execution is already over. But over it is - continuing the theme of writing in travel time, I'm writing this one from a rather cramped and turbulent plane over the Atlantic ocean, en route to a reunion with my parents and wider family, and to a life in Paris that allows me to draw on more than the contents of a single backpack. For the final map of our journey click here
It is a much recited, though I suspect not entirely accurate, statistic that only five percent of Americans own a passport; something invariably voiced as a criticism. I would be the first person to extol the delights and virtues of international travel, but I find it easy to understand why Americans don't travel the world in the same numbers that Australians, Brits or Germans do - there is just so much to see in this country. In the aforementioned 10,000 miles we've covered only 27 of 50 states (plus two Canadian provinces). Even with the luxury of a three month trip we have had to bypass huge swathes of land and some very famous attractions - there is surely no other country where, after a three month journey, a visitor can still look forward to places like the Californian coast, Florida, Alaska and Colorado for future visits. There is so much to visit in this country, if you are American, why fly to Europe or Australia when for the cost of a flight you can hire a camper van that is a palace on wheels and explore your own backyard.
Despite the vast territory that we haven't reached, I think we've come to understand Americans a little better than when we started - to the extent that it is even possible to 'understand' a country and its people. I mentioned in a recent post how walking around New York feels familiar even to a first timer because of its dominant position in pop culture. The same, in fact, can be said of the entire country. There are so many prejudices and stereotypes associated with America that we inevitably, and almost involuntarily, spent a significant amount of our time looking to either confirm of dispel our own preconceived images of the 'Land of the Free.'
There are too many of these images to mention them all, but I've been meaning to record at least of few of those that have surprised me the most, either by the confirmation or the evidence of their errors. I'll start with an easy one - American's have crap beer. It tastes like water, it's weak, it's all mass produced by Budweiser, Miller and Coors. Interestingly, this one seems to be true for just a few parts of the country - and not those parts I would have expected. If you limit a trip to the USA to New York, Chicago and other big North Eastern cities, then you will indeed find that American beer is pretty poor - you get the choice between the big brands, and the world's standard import beers - Heineken, Corona, Stella etc. But get outside these cities, and the picture changes dramatically, as each region, and even individual towns, proudly serve their own local brews. From Seattle to Mississippi, I rarely ordered a particular type of beer. In every restaurant I would simply ask for a local beer, and the response would almost always be the same. After asking for i.d. (which they never fail to do here) the waiter would ask whether you prefer light or dark beers, and then promise to bring you his or her favorite. And it was almost always very good. In Utah, home of the teetotaling Mormons, every town and every national park had a different drop to offer.
So the beer is not as bad as we thought, but what about the food? Well, if you had a mind to, you certainly could travel through the whole country and subsist on fast food, not only from McDonalds and Burger King, but from quite a few local competitors, such as Arby's, Sonic, A&W Burger and IHOP. They all have their own variations on the theme, but fries, burgers and buns made more of sugar than flour are de riguer at all - even IHOP, which stands for International House of Pancakes - which I love for the irony of the fact that no other country in the world actually thinks of pancakes as a meal. But that would be pointless, and probably deadly. Behind the junk food each region offers its own food, and some of it is really very good. From Texas all the way to Ohio BBQ is the name of the game, with each state offering its own variations on cooking style, sauce and even the kind of meats to be used, from ribs and beef briquet in Texas to pulled pork loin in Memphis. The South does indeed enjoy a good serving of fried chicken, but we ate escargot and drank fine wine in a restaurant owned by Morgan Freeman in rural Mississippi. In Chicago the hotdog may be heart attack inducing, but it has been refined to an art form. Not to be forgotten is that classic American dish - warm apple pie, which, when made by sleepy road side diners in rural Utah or Texas, is one of the best things you'll ever eat. And this is all before you get to New York, where you could eat well for a month and never eat the same cuisine, let alone at the same restaurant. The serving sizes are indeed very generous, and the evidence of the obesity problem is very much there to see. I'll be happy not to see a french fry for a while, but overall we ate pretty well - and we capped it off in Cape Cod with some amazing New England lobster.
Given that the beer and the food are ok, why are they a bunch of gun toting, angry, religious nuts? This is the one where the public image of Americans diverges furthest from my experience of them. Unfortunately, I think the rest of the world sees a great deal of Fox News, and judges America accordingly. But outside of the idiots that pass for conservatives on that channel, and the well funded interest groups that pay for billboards deriding Darwinism on the highways, very few Americans seem to actually stay up at night worrying that their guns might be taken away from them, or that homosexuals might be allowed to marry in a state on the other side of the country. Not one person we met could have been put in that bracket, and we spent quite a lot of time talking to strangers. Most of them are far more concerned to hear your thoughts on America, and share their own stories of friends and family that have visited Australia (just about everyone seems to have a niece or daughter studying in Australia).
Having said that, American's are vastly patriotic, or at least great fans of the outward signs of patriotism. The American flag is everywhere. It is not unusual for a small town to have adorned every lamp post on main street with a flag, while any house with a front lawn generally flies the flag with pride. Car dealers in particular seem to compete to hoist the largest possible flag in their yards, and retailers are not far behind - it seems the flag is thought to help get people to open their wallets in tough times. One reason I suspect the World Cup is not as popular here as in Europe is that in Europe the success of the national side kicks off a patriotic fervor - in America that fervor is a state of being.
When we first arrived in the USA, the only thing that actually did seemed to concern Americans was the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For the first half or so of our trip oil was gushing into the Gulf, and it seemed that no news bulletin could start with anything else. I was actually impressed to see a country's national attention span focused on one thing for so long, given that very little was actually happening. Once the oil was stopped though, America was free to turn to lighter entertainment - the greatest sporting story of the past five years. There may have been a bunch of socialists kicking a ball around in South Africa, but the real story in America was LeBron's decision day. For those who don't know, LeBron James is generally considered the best basketballer on the planet; he is one of those sports stars that is so famous over here he only needs a first name, like Tiger or Venus and Serena (though apparently he does need two capital letters). Last season his contract with Cleveland expired, leaving him free to choose a new team. Like most American sports, basketball parades itself as a team sport when in fact one outstanding individual can deliver entire championships - so fans everywhere thought LeBron would be the answer to their prayers. A national bidding war ensued as every city in the country chased LeBron. Cleveland begged him to stay, talk show hosts implored him to pick their town and just about everywhere we stayed, the local news would run an analysis of that city's chances of landing LeBron. The farce culminated in an hour long, live ESPN event, billed Decision Day, where LeBron announced he was going to Miami, for the princely sum of $130 million over 5 years. I'm not sure to what the other 59 minutes of the broadcast were devoted.
The other ever present in the USA right now is the recession. To the traveler the signs are everywhere. In small towns boarded up shop fronts are a regular sight. There are stories in the news of towns switching off their street lights because they cannot pay the electricity bills, or cutting the school week to 4 days because they can't pay the teachers. In many cases its obvious that road maintenance and simple tasks like clearing stormwater drains have been abandoned, as short rain showers leave knee deep puddles beside even deeper pot holes. Where federal money is available the opposite is the case, with many of the interstates and major highways being currently or recently resurfaced, adorned with signs advertising the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" which is the name for Obama's controversial stimulus package. There are signs in mid sized cities offering off the plan three bedroom apartments for 80 or 90 thousand dollars, while last minute hotel websites allowed us to stay in business oriented 4 star hotels for as little as a third of their frontline price. Unquestionably, the recession is causing a national sense of gloom - mainly because, despite the hoarse screaming of both sides of politics, its pretty clear that nobody really knows what to do next. Everyone knows the deficit is out of control and needs to be cut, but they don't dare cut spending or raise taxes until the economy recovers, which it flatly refuses to do, in part because everyone is so worried about the deficit that consumer spending won't rebound. There are elections coming up in November, and, while the Democrats look like they are in for a bad day, the general feeling seems to be that any incumbent, regardless of party, is in danger of losing his/her seat in Congress - it's a reflection of the level of anger that currently pervades the American mood.
Much as I might try, I can't record everything we saw and did (in fact, only a small proportion of it), and while I'm agonizing over the appropriate way to finish this blog, it seems it might just be time to let it go and move on. I have to save a few stories to tell at the pub too, after all. So to the next steps. We are in Germany now (I couldn't finish on the plane) and in a few days Kate and I will go our separate ways (for now). I'll be off to INSEAD, just outside Paris, while Kate heads to Oxford to do her MBA as well - after a pleasant week of sailing around Croatia, of course. I suspect the adventures of an MBA student might be of slightly less interest to a lot of people than our holiday was, but I will try to keep this blog going once I get to INSEAD. INSEAD have also asked me to keep an official blog (chosen out of a huge pool of applicants, no doubt!), so if you really want to keep up with what I'm doing, or you prefer to read the sanitized, official version of my year, you can always check out www.insead.edu.
In the meantime, I am interested to know who has been reading the blog. I know some people have because I spam their email with it, but beyond that I don't really know - and if only for the sake of avoiding repeating too many of my stories when I get home, I'm interested. So if you have been reading and enjoying this blog, please, leave a comment below or drop me an email. Also - check out the latest and final photos of our trip on facebook.
The road trip itself started 88 days ago, in a rainy, dreary, but ever so cool Seattle. Since that day in May we've travelled a little over 10,000 miles, or 181 km per day, crossing mountain ranges and deep canyons, deserts and swamps, forests and praries. At the moment I'm left reflecting on the great contradiction of time - that it flies when you are having fun, so the more you do, the shorter the time seems to get. On the one hand, waking up in the snow in Jasper seems like a distant memory, so entirely removed from the groan of a humid New York City as to feel like another life. On the other hand I can barely believe that a trip that was even longer in the planning than the execution is already over. But over it is - continuing the theme of writing in travel time, I'm writing this one from a rather cramped and turbulent plane over the Atlantic ocean, en route to a reunion with my parents and wider family, and to a life in Paris that allows me to draw on more than the contents of a single backpack. For the final map of our journey click here
It is a much recited, though I suspect not entirely accurate, statistic that only five percent of Americans own a passport; something invariably voiced as a criticism. I would be the first person to extol the delights and virtues of international travel, but I find it easy to understand why Americans don't travel the world in the same numbers that Australians, Brits or Germans do - there is just so much to see in this country. In the aforementioned 10,000 miles we've covered only 27 of 50 states (plus two Canadian provinces). Even with the luxury of a three month trip we have had to bypass huge swathes of land and some very famous attractions - there is surely no other country where, after a three month journey, a visitor can still look forward to places like the Californian coast, Florida, Alaska and Colorado for future visits. There is so much to visit in this country, if you are American, why fly to Europe or Australia when for the cost of a flight you can hire a camper van that is a palace on wheels and explore your own backyard.
Despite the vast territory that we haven't reached, I think we've come to understand Americans a little better than when we started - to the extent that it is even possible to 'understand' a country and its people. I mentioned in a recent post how walking around New York feels familiar even to a first timer because of its dominant position in pop culture. The same, in fact, can be said of the entire country. There are so many prejudices and stereotypes associated with America that we inevitably, and almost involuntarily, spent a significant amount of our time looking to either confirm of dispel our own preconceived images of the 'Land of the Free.'
There are too many of these images to mention them all, but I've been meaning to record at least of few of those that have surprised me the most, either by the confirmation or the evidence of their errors. I'll start with an easy one - American's have crap beer. It tastes like water, it's weak, it's all mass produced by Budweiser, Miller and Coors. Interestingly, this one seems to be true for just a few parts of the country - and not those parts I would have expected. If you limit a trip to the USA to New York, Chicago and other big North Eastern cities, then you will indeed find that American beer is pretty poor - you get the choice between the big brands, and the world's standard import beers - Heineken, Corona, Stella etc. But get outside these cities, and the picture changes dramatically, as each region, and even individual towns, proudly serve their own local brews. From Seattle to Mississippi, I rarely ordered a particular type of beer. In every restaurant I would simply ask for a local beer, and the response would almost always be the same. After asking for i.d. (which they never fail to do here) the waiter would ask whether you prefer light or dark beers, and then promise to bring you his or her favorite. And it was almost always very good. In Utah, home of the teetotaling Mormons, every town and every national park had a different drop to offer.
So the beer is not as bad as we thought, but what about the food? Well, if you had a mind to, you certainly could travel through the whole country and subsist on fast food, not only from McDonalds and Burger King, but from quite a few local competitors, such as Arby's, Sonic, A&W Burger and IHOP. They all have their own variations on the theme, but fries, burgers and buns made more of sugar than flour are de riguer at all - even IHOP, which stands for International House of Pancakes - which I love for the irony of the fact that no other country in the world actually thinks of pancakes as a meal. But that would be pointless, and probably deadly. Behind the junk food each region offers its own food, and some of it is really very good. From Texas all the way to Ohio BBQ is the name of the game, with each state offering its own variations on cooking style, sauce and even the kind of meats to be used, from ribs and beef briquet in Texas to pulled pork loin in Memphis. The South does indeed enjoy a good serving of fried chicken, but we ate escargot and drank fine wine in a restaurant owned by Morgan Freeman in rural Mississippi. In Chicago the hotdog may be heart attack inducing, but it has been refined to an art form. Not to be forgotten is that classic American dish - warm apple pie, which, when made by sleepy road side diners in rural Utah or Texas, is one of the best things you'll ever eat. And this is all before you get to New York, where you could eat well for a month and never eat the same cuisine, let alone at the same restaurant. The serving sizes are indeed very generous, and the evidence of the obesity problem is very much there to see. I'll be happy not to see a french fry for a while, but overall we ate pretty well - and we capped it off in Cape Cod with some amazing New England lobster.
Given that the beer and the food are ok, why are they a bunch of gun toting, angry, religious nuts? This is the one where the public image of Americans diverges furthest from my experience of them. Unfortunately, I think the rest of the world sees a great deal of Fox News, and judges America accordingly. But outside of the idiots that pass for conservatives on that channel, and the well funded interest groups that pay for billboards deriding Darwinism on the highways, very few Americans seem to actually stay up at night worrying that their guns might be taken away from them, or that homosexuals might be allowed to marry in a state on the other side of the country. Not one person we met could have been put in that bracket, and we spent quite a lot of time talking to strangers. Most of them are far more concerned to hear your thoughts on America, and share their own stories of friends and family that have visited Australia (just about everyone seems to have a niece or daughter studying in Australia).
Having said that, American's are vastly patriotic, or at least great fans of the outward signs of patriotism. The American flag is everywhere. It is not unusual for a small town to have adorned every lamp post on main street with a flag, while any house with a front lawn generally flies the flag with pride. Car dealers in particular seem to compete to hoist the largest possible flag in their yards, and retailers are not far behind - it seems the flag is thought to help get people to open their wallets in tough times. One reason I suspect the World Cup is not as popular here as in Europe is that in Europe the success of the national side kicks off a patriotic fervor - in America that fervor is a state of being.
When we first arrived in the USA, the only thing that actually did seemed to concern Americans was the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For the first half or so of our trip oil was gushing into the Gulf, and it seemed that no news bulletin could start with anything else. I was actually impressed to see a country's national attention span focused on one thing for so long, given that very little was actually happening. Once the oil was stopped though, America was free to turn to lighter entertainment - the greatest sporting story of the past five years. There may have been a bunch of socialists kicking a ball around in South Africa, but the real story in America was LeBron's decision day. For those who don't know, LeBron James is generally considered the best basketballer on the planet; he is one of those sports stars that is so famous over here he only needs a first name, like Tiger or Venus and Serena (though apparently he does need two capital letters). Last season his contract with Cleveland expired, leaving him free to choose a new team. Like most American sports, basketball parades itself as a team sport when in fact one outstanding individual can deliver entire championships - so fans everywhere thought LeBron would be the answer to their prayers. A national bidding war ensued as every city in the country chased LeBron. Cleveland begged him to stay, talk show hosts implored him to pick their town and just about everywhere we stayed, the local news would run an analysis of that city's chances of landing LeBron. The farce culminated in an hour long, live ESPN event, billed Decision Day, where LeBron announced he was going to Miami, for the princely sum of $130 million over 5 years. I'm not sure to what the other 59 minutes of the broadcast were devoted.
The other ever present in the USA right now is the recession. To the traveler the signs are everywhere. In small towns boarded up shop fronts are a regular sight. There are stories in the news of towns switching off their street lights because they cannot pay the electricity bills, or cutting the school week to 4 days because they can't pay the teachers. In many cases its obvious that road maintenance and simple tasks like clearing stormwater drains have been abandoned, as short rain showers leave knee deep puddles beside even deeper pot holes. Where federal money is available the opposite is the case, with many of the interstates and major highways being currently or recently resurfaced, adorned with signs advertising the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" which is the name for Obama's controversial stimulus package. There are signs in mid sized cities offering off the plan three bedroom apartments for 80 or 90 thousand dollars, while last minute hotel websites allowed us to stay in business oriented 4 star hotels for as little as a third of their frontline price. Unquestionably, the recession is causing a national sense of gloom - mainly because, despite the hoarse screaming of both sides of politics, its pretty clear that nobody really knows what to do next. Everyone knows the deficit is out of control and needs to be cut, but they don't dare cut spending or raise taxes until the economy recovers, which it flatly refuses to do, in part because everyone is so worried about the deficit that consumer spending won't rebound. There are elections coming up in November, and, while the Democrats look like they are in for a bad day, the general feeling seems to be that any incumbent, regardless of party, is in danger of losing his/her seat in Congress - it's a reflection of the level of anger that currently pervades the American mood.
Much as I might try, I can't record everything we saw and did (in fact, only a small proportion of it), and while I'm agonizing over the appropriate way to finish this blog, it seems it might just be time to let it go and move on. I have to save a few stories to tell at the pub too, after all. So to the next steps. We are in Germany now (I couldn't finish on the plane) and in a few days Kate and I will go our separate ways (for now). I'll be off to INSEAD, just outside Paris, while Kate heads to Oxford to do her MBA as well - after a pleasant week of sailing around Croatia, of course. I suspect the adventures of an MBA student might be of slightly less interest to a lot of people than our holiday was, but I will try to keep this blog going once I get to INSEAD. INSEAD have also asked me to keep an official blog (chosen out of a huge pool of applicants, no doubt!), so if you really want to keep up with what I'm doing, or you prefer to read the sanitized, official version of my year, you can always check out www.insead.edu.
In the meantime, I am interested to know who has been reading the blog. I know some people have because I spam their email with it, but beyond that I don't really know - and if only for the sake of avoiding repeating too many of my stories when I get home, I'm interested. So if you have been reading and enjoying this blog, please, leave a comment below or drop me an email. Also - check out the latest and final photos of our trip on facebook.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Boston
Wifi on a bus is a wonderful invention. It allows me to be completing what will be one of my last blog entries of the Great Escape, Part II, Road Trip, from the bus that it taking us from Boston back to New York. A bus? I hear you say. Not only is that unamerican, but don't you have a car?
It has in fact reached that point in our journey where the car had to be sold. Our original plan was always to buy the car in Seattle and sell it on the East Coast, and hopefully in the process beat the prohibitively expensive system of one way fees that are charged on rental cars. For the plan to work out, we needed to get a decent price for the car on resale, and so we found ourselves driving around the outer suburbs of Boston, trekking from car dealer to car dealer to compare offers.
It would have been a long day anyway, but it was made longer by the fact that, after not losing anything for the entire trip, which those of you who know me will realise is an impressive effort, I had a difficult couple of days as far as keeping track of my personal possessions goes. In the space of two days I managed to leave my iphone in New York, then leave my wallet at the first car dealer, and then leave my bag containing my laptop in the car we had just sold. The wallet and the laptop have been recovered, but the phone seems to be a lost cause (on that note, if you receive any bizarre or offensive emails from me in the next few weeks, please assume they came from the person who now has unfettered access to my hotmail and facebook accounts, courtesy of my phone)
Back to the car. The first dealer we went to offered us $2000 for the car, which was less than we had hoped. The second dealer offered us $2500, then took the car for a quick drive. He returned to tell us the transmission was gone, and that he could only offer us $1500. At that point we hurried the car back to the first dealer and took the $2000. With the disappointing resale price, I'm not sure whether we beat the expense of renting a car, especially once you take into account the $900 spent fixing the radiator. But we joined the great American dream of owning a big, inefficient sedan, and had the convenience of having our own car, that could go wherever we wanted it to. Despite his poor resale value, I was pretty sad to see Yes Man go - without him, after all, the great adventure would never have been possible. For nostalgia's sake, we kept the number plates (as it was being registered in a new state, it needed new plates anyway).
Having sold the car, we had the opportunity to turn our attention to Boston itself. It is the first time in America that I have been surprised by how small something is. Given its status as the home of the world's best universities, and one of America's original and most famous cities, I was expecting a big place. Not so. The population of Boston is around 600,000, and you can easily walk the city's most famous sites, and its central business district, in under an hour.
After Philadelphia and Washington, Boston is the final stop for someone who wants to take a history of the American Revolution tour of North East America. It is a city dripping in history, as the place where the 'patriots' as they are universally called, first refused to pay British taxes, and where the first battles of the war of independence broke out. The names of the founding fathers, Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, are everywhere, including on the city's most famous beer.
My final point on the American revolution: Taking the 'Freedom Trail' around Boston, which goes from one significant site of the revolution to another over a two mile loop, you get a good sense of what sparked the whole conflict, amongst other things by participating in a town meeting that re enacts events of 1775. Really, it seems it all started because a few wealthy merchants, such as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin, didn't want to pay taxes levied on them by the British. In the aftermath there was a great deal of talk about liberty and equality of all, the pursuit of happiness and all that, but that, while it might have been a good rallying call to get people more involved, doesn't seem to have been what really kickstarted the revolution. And to judge by the state of the US deficit today, the anti-taxation principles of the revolution seem to have been amongst its most enduring.
Aside from the revolutionary stuff, Boston's other great historic claim is that it is a city of firsts. First public park in America, first subway station (though not first subway system, because by the time the second station was built New York's system was up and running), first university (Harvard), first primary school etc. This is all very impressive, but after a while it becomes obvious that, really, its all the same trick. It was one of the first cities, so much of what it built happened to be the first such thing in America. I would probably offend a few people in Boston if I pointed out that all these things were old news in Europe.
We managed to catch up with some more friends from back home, both working in the Boston office of LEK. We even crashed on the couch of one of them for the full 5 nights, thereby defraying at least some of the cost of our vehicles failed resale. If you are reading this Neil, thanks again.
A chat with Neil and Jono certainly did nothing to make me regret leaving work. Fortunately they both managed to get out of the office on Saturday night, and we went to a concert starring none other than the Bare Naked Ladies. Now, I have to admit, it has been more than one week since I looked at, or heard of, the Bare Naked Ladies, but I have to give them credit. For a quartet of clearly fast ageing rockers, they still put on a pretty good show. Someone near the front even through some underwear at them.
My final observation about Boston has to be the accent. Accents in America have changed with the regions, but never so clearly as in Boston, where they have a striking way of saying any word with an 'ar' sound in it, dropping the r and dragging out the a with a twang that somewhere between 'eh' and 'aw'. It's a little like a New Zealand accent in that it can sound normal for a couple of sentences, but then a give away word like car comes up and the secret is out. They are very proud of their accents in Boston, and their favourite saying is that a Bostonian will 'Pahk the cah in Hahved yahd'. Although a tour guide informed me that no one actually does this anymore, because you get a ticket.
We also visited Cape Cod before coming back to New York - that will get covered off in what will probably be the final post of this this trip. Once again, check back soon.
It has in fact reached that point in our journey where the car had to be sold. Our original plan was always to buy the car in Seattle and sell it on the East Coast, and hopefully in the process beat the prohibitively expensive system of one way fees that are charged on rental cars. For the plan to work out, we needed to get a decent price for the car on resale, and so we found ourselves driving around the outer suburbs of Boston, trekking from car dealer to car dealer to compare offers.
It would have been a long day anyway, but it was made longer by the fact that, after not losing anything for the entire trip, which those of you who know me will realise is an impressive effort, I had a difficult couple of days as far as keeping track of my personal possessions goes. In the space of two days I managed to leave my iphone in New York, then leave my wallet at the first car dealer, and then leave my bag containing my laptop in the car we had just sold. The wallet and the laptop have been recovered, but the phone seems to be a lost cause (on that note, if you receive any bizarre or offensive emails from me in the next few weeks, please assume they came from the person who now has unfettered access to my hotmail and facebook accounts, courtesy of my phone)
Back to the car. The first dealer we went to offered us $2000 for the car, which was less than we had hoped. The second dealer offered us $2500, then took the car for a quick drive. He returned to tell us the transmission was gone, and that he could only offer us $1500. At that point we hurried the car back to the first dealer and took the $2000. With the disappointing resale price, I'm not sure whether we beat the expense of renting a car, especially once you take into account the $900 spent fixing the radiator. But we joined the great American dream of owning a big, inefficient sedan, and had the convenience of having our own car, that could go wherever we wanted it to. Despite his poor resale value, I was pretty sad to see Yes Man go - without him, after all, the great adventure would never have been possible. For nostalgia's sake, we kept the number plates (as it was being registered in a new state, it needed new plates anyway).
Having sold the car, we had the opportunity to turn our attention to Boston itself. It is the first time in America that I have been surprised by how small something is. Given its status as the home of the world's best universities, and one of America's original and most famous cities, I was expecting a big place. Not so. The population of Boston is around 600,000, and you can easily walk the city's most famous sites, and its central business district, in under an hour.
After Philadelphia and Washington, Boston is the final stop for someone who wants to take a history of the American Revolution tour of North East America. It is a city dripping in history, as the place where the 'patriots' as they are universally called, first refused to pay British taxes, and where the first battles of the war of independence broke out. The names of the founding fathers, Sam Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, are everywhere, including on the city's most famous beer.
My final point on the American revolution: Taking the 'Freedom Trail' around Boston, which goes from one significant site of the revolution to another over a two mile loop, you get a good sense of what sparked the whole conflict, amongst other things by participating in a town meeting that re enacts events of 1775. Really, it seems it all started because a few wealthy merchants, such as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin, didn't want to pay taxes levied on them by the British. In the aftermath there was a great deal of talk about liberty and equality of all, the pursuit of happiness and all that, but that, while it might have been a good rallying call to get people more involved, doesn't seem to have been what really kickstarted the revolution. And to judge by the state of the US deficit today, the anti-taxation principles of the revolution seem to have been amongst its most enduring.
Aside from the revolutionary stuff, Boston's other great historic claim is that it is a city of firsts. First public park in America, first subway station (though not first subway system, because by the time the second station was built New York's system was up and running), first university (Harvard), first primary school etc. This is all very impressive, but after a while it becomes obvious that, really, its all the same trick. It was one of the first cities, so much of what it built happened to be the first such thing in America. I would probably offend a few people in Boston if I pointed out that all these things were old news in Europe.
We managed to catch up with some more friends from back home, both working in the Boston office of LEK. We even crashed on the couch of one of them for the full 5 nights, thereby defraying at least some of the cost of our vehicles failed resale. If you are reading this Neil, thanks again.
A chat with Neil and Jono certainly did nothing to make me regret leaving work. Fortunately they both managed to get out of the office on Saturday night, and we went to a concert starring none other than the Bare Naked Ladies. Now, I have to admit, it has been more than one week since I looked at, or heard of, the Bare Naked Ladies, but I have to give them credit. For a quartet of clearly fast ageing rockers, they still put on a pretty good show. Someone near the front even through some underwear at them.
My final observation about Boston has to be the accent. Accents in America have changed with the regions, but never so clearly as in Boston, where they have a striking way of saying any word with an 'ar' sound in it, dropping the r and dragging out the a with a twang that somewhere between 'eh' and 'aw'. It's a little like a New Zealand accent in that it can sound normal for a couple of sentences, but then a give away word like car comes up and the secret is out. They are very proud of their accents in Boston, and their favourite saying is that a Bostonian will 'Pahk the cah in Hahved yahd'. Although a tour guide informed me that no one actually does this anymore, because you get a ticket.
We also visited Cape Cod before coming back to New York - that will get covered off in what will probably be the final post of this this trip. Once again, check back soon.
Monday, August 9, 2010
I heart NY
"New York New York it's a helluva town". So goes the song, and its hard to argue with something so catchy. We spent five days in the Big Apple and didn't even get close to seeing the whole town. In fact, this was my second visit, and even adding the sights of the seven days I spent there last time, I still don't feel I can say I've ticked that box.
One of the most entertaining things about walking around New York is that, even though you've never been in this particular neighbourhood before, its all so familiar. We are all so used to seeing New York on television and in movies that walking around it feels like walking around a town you've lived in for years. There are the obvious sights, like Times Square, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and then the less obvious, but in some ways equally famous sights. A few blocks from our hotel was a diner called Tom's restaurant - familiar to anyone who has seen an episode of Seinfeld. Continuing the Seinfeld theme I also managed to get a bowl of soup from the stand that inspired the famous Soup Nazi episode. It was excellent soup, and there is indeed a sign above the counter demanding that patrons have their money and order ready before they get to the counter, and immediately move the the extreme (which is underlined and in capitals) left after placing their order. There are even footprints painted on the pavement to show you where to go.
Then there is also just the familiar feel of the buildings and streets. Rows and rows of terrace houses with steps up to the front door, the green stairs and railing leading down to the subway stations, and of course, the iconic yellow taxis. Arriving in New York is the opposite of culture shock - instead of being overwhelmed by how different the place is, it all feels shockingly familiar - like traveller's deja vu.
There is one facet of New York life that I wasn't quite familiar with - lining up. The inevitable result of a city that is both a major tourist attraction and immensely densely populated is that just about any activity will be preceded by a long wait. Want to see the Statue of Liberty - join the 60 minute queue to get through security. Want to get tickets to a show, any show at all - there is a nice line on Times Square that stretches a few blocks that might act as an excellent curtain raiser. Want to have dinner on the lower east side - that table will be ready for you at at 11pm, sir, so perhaps you'd like to have a 2 hour drink first.
One thing I will say about New York is that, due to the scale and diversity of the place, it really helps to have someone local to show you around. Luckily we were able to tap into a network of friends from home that have succumbed to the lure of the city in recent years. Rico, who's been in New York studying law at Columbia for the past year, showed us some great bars and restaurants, and even took us over to Brooklyn for some drinks. Tessa, who's working in the New York office of our former employer, took us to a restaurant on the Lower East Side that served only variations on meatballs. It took a two hour wait to get a table, but was well worth it.
Getting shown around by the locals was great, but we did have to play the part of tourists too. There are actually families that come to New York and dress the whole clan in those "I love NY" t-shirts, and that just seemed like an excellent idea. So we started our trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island by purchasing some high quality $5 t-shirts. Kate wasn't willing to wear them all day, so in the end we just put them on for the photos, but even that got us some disdainful looks from the locals (and other tourists for that matter).
While Manhattan was great, one of the more memorable experiences of the trip came from a trip to the Bronx. Back in Sydney Rico and I both like to play a bit of golf, and we couldn't pass up the chance to renew a long standing rivalry on a new continent - and as it turns out you can get to an affordable golf course in the Bronx with a $30 taxi ride from the Upper West Side.
I noticed that my sister-in-law was recently on Facebook wondering why all the taxi drivers in Sydney are crazy. I have no answer to this question, but I can report that New York cab drivers are no different. When we jumped in the taxi he seemed to indicate that he knew where we were going. As it turned out however his knowledge went only as far as knowing how to get to the Bronx. From there the plan was apparently to drive around in circles until the golf course magically appeared. When it became apparent that this plan was not working, he decided to simply pull over the taxi and ask people. That would be ok, except for the fact that, whatever language he did speak, it was not English, and his real plan was to pull over, yell at someone, and then indicate to me that a I should ask the person for directions.
Now, I have to admit that I don't like asking for directions at the best of times, but leaning out of the window of a taxi, in my best Tommy Hilfiger polo shirt, and asking a black guy with no teeth, who is dragging a garbage bag full of empty bottles behind him, where I might find the local country club does was a new level of uncomfortable. Unsurprisingly, this tactic did not yield instant success. Apparently not many of the people sitting idly by the street in the Bronx at 11 am on a Tuesday are avid users of the Split Rock Golf Club.
A regular New Yorker might have spotted a flaw in this story by now. You see, NY taxis are in fact equipped with a GPS system in the back seat (I was in the front - Rico and Pete, another friend from Australia, were in the back). Despite having been in New York for a year, this fact apparently escaped Rico until we'd stooped to stopping other taxis to ask them for directions. For that reason alone I think his subsequent victory on the golf course is tainted.
On the return we had a very different, but similarly memorable taxi driver - but I think one story about cab drivers per blog entry is enough.
I did eventually make it back to Manhattan, and from there, a few days later, on to Boston. Our trip is winding down fast now, so I'll try and get Boston posted ASAP - check back soon.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
History Lessons and chicken
There has been a lot happening in the last week or so here - and, inevitably, the blog has suffered as a result. It is like an (un)virtuous circle - the more you do, the less time you have to blog, but the more you have to write about, and so the further you fall behind.
Washington and Philadelphia are but distant memories now, but I need to cover them off; if only for my own piece of mind. The thought of missing cities out entirely keeps me up at night. As a reader though, you might benefit from my slacking, because the number of irrelevant details that I can remember shrinks with each passing day, hopefully making for a more concise, but still entertaining blog.
We couldn't do the USA without visiting the nation's Capital, Washington, D.C., a city that seems to be almost entirely composed of monuments, museums and municipal buildings. We had two days in Washington, and divided them up in what I would guess to be the same way as almost every other tourist that visits this city. One day for the Smithsonians, one day for the monuments and famous buildings.
Before we had even started the tourist itinerary we realized that we were being joined in Washington by some sort of national boy scout gathering. Everywhere we looked were groups of 10 year old boys wearing khaki uniforms with badges and designations like 'Wisconsin 5th division', all being followed around by exhausted looking parents.
The Smithsonian is not one museum but rather a whole suburb of them. You can choose between modern and classical art, air and space, natural history, American history, sculpture and more. Kate's tastes in museums - planes, spaceships and dinosaurs - coincides just about with that of every 10 year old boy, so we shared our visit to these museums with what seemed to be half the prepubescent population of the United States. The other half apparently weren't allowed to choose their museum, and were waiting for us in the American History Museum.
There are some great exhibitions - the Wright Brothers plane is a favourite, while the space exhibit kept me entertained with mind boggling questions about the age of the universe, and the inevitable question of what there was before that. American History has an entire floor devoted to America's wars, which can't help but give the impression that they really don't mind a scrap over here, but don't spend an excessive amount of time contemplating the rights and wrongs of their decisions in retrospect - a great deal more floor space was devoted to the repressive English of the 1770s than the unfortunate South East Asians of the 1970s. The exhibitions on slavery and civil rights were much better, with a great mix of information and remembrance.
To see the monuments the next day we took a bike tour - a wise decision, because, as quickly become clear, there is an astonishing amount of space in Washington devoted to monuments and memorials. The centrepiece is the Washington Monument, the giant obelisk we've all seen on TV a thousand times. The National Mall stretches for out for a mile either side of the Washington, with the Capitol at one end and the Lincoln Memorial at the other. Forming a cross with these points are the White House and the Jefferson Memorial, which was placed so that it is precisely in view from the White House, so that the President may look out of his window and draw inspiration from the third President, and the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Franklin Roosevelt has also qualified for a monument, sitting just off the National Mall, in view of Lincoln.
Then there are the War Memorials - one for each foreign war the USA has been involved in. The Korean War memorial contains 19 larger than life steel soldiers, prowling through scrubs and bushes. When reflected in the adjoining wall there are 38 figures, representing the 38th parallel, where the border was eventually drawn. Vietnam takes a subtler approach, with the names of all 58 000 soldiers killed in the war inscribed in reflective granite blocks; reflective so that you can see yourself amongst the casualties. An interesting sight here is the people who come with a pencil and a piece of paper and take a rubbing image of a name they find on the memorial.
The other interesting fact we learned about the Vietnam memorial was that it was designed by a 21 year old architecture student, who won a national contest. The conditions of the contest said that the design could not make any political statement about the war. It is a simple wall, with the dead listed in chronological order, starting in the middle, going out to the right, then continuing on the far left of the wall back to the middle, so the last casualty is just before the first one. It was only after it was built that someone noticed that it looked suspiciously like there were 58 000 names on the board leading you right back to where you started.
In case we hadn't had enough history (can you ever have enough history? Kate certainly thinks so), we headed to Philadelphia next, where quite a lot of important stuff happened in the 1770s. Philadelphia was briefly the capital of the United States, and it was here that the Declaration of Independence was written and proclaimed, and the constitution was framed. The old part of the city, where the founding fathers met and worked, makes up the Independence National Park, which was worth a visit too.
Philadelphia was, in a sense, where it all went wrong for the British back then, and, 220 years later, it wasn't all good for a couple of antipodeans either. The sightseeing was great, but a few hours after eating in what seemed like a cute old tavern, the buffalo wings we had shared returned with their very own quest for freedom from the oppressive yoke of our stomachs, and apparently unwilling to follow the usual peaceful path to such liberty.
Things were complicated the next day by the fact that we had a hotel reservation in New York to get to, so we tried to brave it out in the car. This was not an excellent time to hit the first serious traffic of our journey. From Philadelphia through New Jersey to Manhattan is basically one urban megapolis, and the highways look just as you would expect - crawling at a snail's pace. There were pros and cons about this. A pro was that, when you pull over to throw up, you barely lose your spot in the queue. A con was that, as the traffic is not moving, instead of hundreds of motorists catching a fleeting glance of someone hunched over by the road, a select group of five or six cars gets the opportunity to carry out an in-depth analysis of your last couple of meals.
Reprising this memory is making me feel queasy all over again, so I will leave it there for now. We've only a week or so left, and I have plenty that I still wanted to get into this blog, so I'll try and post a couple of pieces in the next few days.
Washington and Philadelphia are but distant memories now, but I need to cover them off; if only for my own piece of mind. The thought of missing cities out entirely keeps me up at night. As a reader though, you might benefit from my slacking, because the number of irrelevant details that I can remember shrinks with each passing day, hopefully making for a more concise, but still entertaining blog.
We couldn't do the USA without visiting the nation's Capital, Washington, D.C., a city that seems to be almost entirely composed of monuments, museums and municipal buildings. We had two days in Washington, and divided them up in what I would guess to be the same way as almost every other tourist that visits this city. One day for the Smithsonians, one day for the monuments and famous buildings.
Before we had even started the tourist itinerary we realized that we were being joined in Washington by some sort of national boy scout gathering. Everywhere we looked were groups of 10 year old boys wearing khaki uniforms with badges and designations like 'Wisconsin 5th division', all being followed around by exhausted looking parents.
The Smithsonian is not one museum but rather a whole suburb of them. You can choose between modern and classical art, air and space, natural history, American history, sculpture and more. Kate's tastes in museums - planes, spaceships and dinosaurs - coincides just about with that of every 10 year old boy, so we shared our visit to these museums with what seemed to be half the prepubescent population of the United States. The other half apparently weren't allowed to choose their museum, and were waiting for us in the American History Museum.
There are some great exhibitions - the Wright Brothers plane is a favourite, while the space exhibit kept me entertained with mind boggling questions about the age of the universe, and the inevitable question of what there was before that. American History has an entire floor devoted to America's wars, which can't help but give the impression that they really don't mind a scrap over here, but don't spend an excessive amount of time contemplating the rights and wrongs of their decisions in retrospect - a great deal more floor space was devoted to the repressive English of the 1770s than the unfortunate South East Asians of the 1970s. The exhibitions on slavery and civil rights were much better, with a great mix of information and remembrance.
To see the monuments the next day we took a bike tour - a wise decision, because, as quickly become clear, there is an astonishing amount of space in Washington devoted to monuments and memorials. The centrepiece is the Washington Monument, the giant obelisk we've all seen on TV a thousand times. The National Mall stretches for out for a mile either side of the Washington, with the Capitol at one end and the Lincoln Memorial at the other. Forming a cross with these points are the White House and the Jefferson Memorial, which was placed so that it is precisely in view from the White House, so that the President may look out of his window and draw inspiration from the third President, and the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Franklin Roosevelt has also qualified for a monument, sitting just off the National Mall, in view of Lincoln.
Then there are the War Memorials - one for each foreign war the USA has been involved in. The Korean War memorial contains 19 larger than life steel soldiers, prowling through scrubs and bushes. When reflected in the adjoining wall there are 38 figures, representing the 38th parallel, where the border was eventually drawn. Vietnam takes a subtler approach, with the names of all 58 000 soldiers killed in the war inscribed in reflective granite blocks; reflective so that you can see yourself amongst the casualties. An interesting sight here is the people who come with a pencil and a piece of paper and take a rubbing image of a name they find on the memorial.
The other interesting fact we learned about the Vietnam memorial was that it was designed by a 21 year old architecture student, who won a national contest. The conditions of the contest said that the design could not make any political statement about the war. It is a simple wall, with the dead listed in chronological order, starting in the middle, going out to the right, then continuing on the far left of the wall back to the middle, so the last casualty is just before the first one. It was only after it was built that someone noticed that it looked suspiciously like there were 58 000 names on the board leading you right back to where you started.
In case we hadn't had enough history (can you ever have enough history? Kate certainly thinks so), we headed to Philadelphia next, where quite a lot of important stuff happened in the 1770s. Philadelphia was briefly the capital of the United States, and it was here that the Declaration of Independence was written and proclaimed, and the constitution was framed. The old part of the city, where the founding fathers met and worked, makes up the Independence National Park, which was worth a visit too.
Philadelphia was, in a sense, where it all went wrong for the British back then, and, 220 years later, it wasn't all good for a couple of antipodeans either. The sightseeing was great, but a few hours after eating in what seemed like a cute old tavern, the buffalo wings we had shared returned with their very own quest for freedom from the oppressive yoke of our stomachs, and apparently unwilling to follow the usual peaceful path to such liberty.
Things were complicated the next day by the fact that we had a hotel reservation in New York to get to, so we tried to brave it out in the car. This was not an excellent time to hit the first serious traffic of our journey. From Philadelphia through New Jersey to Manhattan is basically one urban megapolis, and the highways look just as you would expect - crawling at a snail's pace. There were pros and cons about this. A pro was that, when you pull over to throw up, you barely lose your spot in the queue. A con was that, as the traffic is not moving, instead of hundreds of motorists catching a fleeting glance of someone hunched over by the road, a select group of five or six cars gets the opportunity to carry out an in-depth analysis of your last couple of meals.
Reprising this memory is making me feel queasy all over again, so I will leave it there for now. We've only a week or so left, and I have plenty that I still wanted to get into this blog, so I'll try and post a couple of pieces in the next few days.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Skyscrapers, roller coasters and a horse and cart
It's been another week, and, because my last blog post was one of general observations instead of following the trip, I'm once again behind my travels. This blogging is a bit like keeping my room tidy - if I did a little each day it would be no problem at all, but I always let it heap up until there is lots to do in one big session. On the other hand, this highlights exactly why people who keep their room excessively tidy are boring - if I published a couple of sentences each day, I'm pretty sure no one would read this blog.
We left off on in Chicago, I think, after a long day of driving up from the South. Chicago is one of those cities - world famous, a big city even in a country of big cities, setting for many movies and tv shows - yet I didn't really have any preconceived image of Chicago. That is in part, I think, because Chicago lacks an iconic image - it doesn't have that one post card picture that everybody knows is Chicago, the way New York has the Statue of Liberty, LA has the Hollywood sign, Paris the Eiffel tower, et cetera.
It does have the bean, which may in time become that image. Officially known as Cloudgate, you've probably seen it movies. The Bean is a large, rounded metal structure shaped like a bean, that reflects the surrounding skyline, as well as the hundreds of tourists standing around its base gawking at their distorted reflections and trying to take tricky photographs of themselves and the buildings behind them. Well, when in Rome, as they say, and Kate and I couldn't resist visiting the bean more than once to join the gawkers and tourists marveling at this brilliant piece of public art.
Crucial to the success of the Bean is the city's architecture, which is so roundly reflected in the silver. Architecture, as it turns out, is something Chicago fancies itself as rather good at, and the amazing array of skyscrapers that make up America's most impressive skyline is in fact Chicago's true highlight.
It is a vast skyline. To walk from the 110 floor Sears tower to the 96 floor John Hancock Centre would take close to an hour, and those two giants are well inside the boundaries of downtown. On either side, and for all the ground in between, the skyscrapers continue, most rising a more reasonable 50 or 60 floors, but with several bigger ones than that jumping around the place.
Chicago, in fact, claims to have invented the skyscraper, and was the first city where high rise, steel skeleton buildings took off. The reason for this was, truth be told, largely one of timing - one of those periods where everything came together at the right time to transform a city.
With Lake Michigan to the East and rivers to the North and South, Chicago has always been pressed for space. In 1871 the city was beginning to feel the constraints of its geography. At the time the city was built almost entirely of wood, and the engineering techniques of the day meant that buildings were supported by their walls, and the higher they went, the thicker the walls had to be. Then, on the outskirts of the city, a cow kicked over a lantern and its barn caught fire, and the fire spread to neighbouring houses. Two days later and just about the entire city had burnt down. (As it turns out the cow story is still told, but apparently not true - the actual cause of the fire is unknown).
Chicago was faced with rebuilding the entire city, and at that exact time in history, a number of other things were happening. Steel was becoming a viable form of construction material, allowing Chicago to rebuild without the wood that, understandably, was considered too dangerous now. By using an internal skeleton, builders had found a way to increase the height of a building without wasting half the footprint on ever thicker walls. That allowed for a tall structure, but several things still had to come before buildings could practically be more than four of five stories. At various places in the world people developed the elevator, modern plumbing and electric lighting, all of which are essential to a skyscraper. So just as the technology to build skyscrapers emerged, Chicago was rebuilding, in an area where up was the only sensible place to go for more space. And so the huge urban canopy that now puts Chicago into permanent shade and wind began to take shape.
THe rivers have long since been passed as geographic boundaries. All that steel also allowed for the building of bridges, and Chicago boasts of having more opening steel bridges (32, I think) than any other city in the world. A cruise along the river system is today the best way to see much of the amazing architecture of Chicago. The other way is to see it from the top, from the observation platforms atop some of the tallest buildings. Sears Tower, at 110 stories, is the tallest building in the USA (it lost the World title to Petronas Towers in Malaysia, which has since been surpassed by buildings in Taipei and Dubai), but we choose to view the city from level 96 of the John Hancock centre. The reason for this was simple. You can pay $14 to go to the top of Sears, or you can go to level 96 at John Hancock for free, on the proviso you buy at least one $14 cocktail. Its not a very good cocktail, but still a cocktail. I should thank Jules for this tip.
Next stop from Chicago was Sandusky, Ohio, home of the Cedar Point theme park. Cedar Point bills itself as America's roller coaster capital, and it fully lives up to that hype. As I think most people know, and my blog may have made clear, Americans don't really do understatement. If they are going to build a roller coaster park here, you can bet your life that its going to be big - really big. Remember the days of visiting Wonderland in Sydney, or even Luna Park - after you'd ridden the roller coaster it always seemed there weren't that many exciting things left to do? Well, Cedar Point has solved this problem - with more roller coasters than any normal person could ride in a day. Throw in log rides, the classic tower drop ride, giant swings and more, and you have almost infinite ways of simulating the feeling of being dropped from a great height and then being hurled around at high speed. Flagship attractions include the Millennium Force Coaster, which, at 310 feet tall, was the tallest coaster in the world when it was built (2001), and the Magnum Coaster, which was also the tallest coaster in the world when it was built in 1989. Taller than both of them now is the Dragster Thrill Racer, which is unlike any roller coaster in the world, in that it reaches its top speed at the start, before climbing a 400 foot, vertical arch and plunging back down the other side. Powered by magnets in the same way as high speed rail lines, it reaches 120 mph in just 4 seconds at take off. Its a 22 second ride - after a 1 hour wait - but its worth it. I've tried to attach a video to the bottom of this blog, but it is giving me some technical difficulties, so apologies if it isn't working.
On more sedate lines Cedar Point also offered mini golf, which was a good chance to give churning stomachs a rest, and play the latest installment of the Great Escape Mini Golf Challenge, in which O'Brien held a 2-1 lead going into the game. It wasn't O'Brien's day however, as the accurate short range putting that had served her so well in Washington back in May deserted her, and Albrecht managed to play a 1 under par 42 to win by 7 shots. It's two all now, and the decider looks likely to be played on my old home course, the Seehausen mini golf course.
You probably couldn't find a bigger change in pace than from the Dragster Thrill Racer of Cedar Point to the horse and buggy of Amish country, but that was where we headed next. The Amish are spread around a few rural areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania. They are known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, but they came from Switzerland - because they spoke German they become known as Deutsch, which at some point morphed into Dutch. The Amish are committed to maintaining their traditional farming lifestyle - they reject technology such as cars and mobile phones and dress like something out of Little House on the Prairie. Ironically their determination to isolate themselves from the modern world has made them a major tourist attraction, and it seems that the Amish are more engaged in running restaurants and bed and breakfasts than farms these days. I noticed the ban on technology didn't extend to electronic cash registers. That was emblematic of Amish country as a whole. It is pretty scenery, and the people riding around in their horse and buggy and sporting chest length beards provide a curious spectacle, but that's about it.
We have arrived in Washington, DC now, but that again warrants a post to itself, so I reluctantly leave the blog still not quite up to date. Look out for the Philadelphia and Washington entry in a couple of days.
We left off on in Chicago, I think, after a long day of driving up from the South. Chicago is one of those cities - world famous, a big city even in a country of big cities, setting for many movies and tv shows - yet I didn't really have any preconceived image of Chicago. That is in part, I think, because Chicago lacks an iconic image - it doesn't have that one post card picture that everybody knows is Chicago, the way New York has the Statue of Liberty, LA has the Hollywood sign, Paris the Eiffel tower, et cetera.
It does have the bean, which may in time become that image. Officially known as Cloudgate, you've probably seen it movies. The Bean is a large, rounded metal structure shaped like a bean, that reflects the surrounding skyline, as well as the hundreds of tourists standing around its base gawking at their distorted reflections and trying to take tricky photographs of themselves and the buildings behind them. Well, when in Rome, as they say, and Kate and I couldn't resist visiting the bean more than once to join the gawkers and tourists marveling at this brilliant piece of public art.
Crucial to the success of the Bean is the city's architecture, which is so roundly reflected in the silver. Architecture, as it turns out, is something Chicago fancies itself as rather good at, and the amazing array of skyscrapers that make up America's most impressive skyline is in fact Chicago's true highlight.
It is a vast skyline. To walk from the 110 floor Sears tower to the 96 floor John Hancock Centre would take close to an hour, and those two giants are well inside the boundaries of downtown. On either side, and for all the ground in between, the skyscrapers continue, most rising a more reasonable 50 or 60 floors, but with several bigger ones than that jumping around the place.
Chicago, in fact, claims to have invented the skyscraper, and was the first city where high rise, steel skeleton buildings took off. The reason for this was, truth be told, largely one of timing - one of those periods where everything came together at the right time to transform a city.
With Lake Michigan to the East and rivers to the North and South, Chicago has always been pressed for space. In 1871 the city was beginning to feel the constraints of its geography. At the time the city was built almost entirely of wood, and the engineering techniques of the day meant that buildings were supported by their walls, and the higher they went, the thicker the walls had to be. Then, on the outskirts of the city, a cow kicked over a lantern and its barn caught fire, and the fire spread to neighbouring houses. Two days later and just about the entire city had burnt down. (As it turns out the cow story is still told, but apparently not true - the actual cause of the fire is unknown).
Chicago was faced with rebuilding the entire city, and at that exact time in history, a number of other things were happening. Steel was becoming a viable form of construction material, allowing Chicago to rebuild without the wood that, understandably, was considered too dangerous now. By using an internal skeleton, builders had found a way to increase the height of a building without wasting half the footprint on ever thicker walls. That allowed for a tall structure, but several things still had to come before buildings could practically be more than four of five stories. At various places in the world people developed the elevator, modern plumbing and electric lighting, all of which are essential to a skyscraper. So just as the technology to build skyscrapers emerged, Chicago was rebuilding, in an area where up was the only sensible place to go for more space. And so the huge urban canopy that now puts Chicago into permanent shade and wind began to take shape.
THe rivers have long since been passed as geographic boundaries. All that steel also allowed for the building of bridges, and Chicago boasts of having more opening steel bridges (32, I think) than any other city in the world. A cruise along the river system is today the best way to see much of the amazing architecture of Chicago. The other way is to see it from the top, from the observation platforms atop some of the tallest buildings. Sears Tower, at 110 stories, is the tallest building in the USA (it lost the World title to Petronas Towers in Malaysia, which has since been surpassed by buildings in Taipei and Dubai), but we choose to view the city from level 96 of the John Hancock centre. The reason for this was simple. You can pay $14 to go to the top of Sears, or you can go to level 96 at John Hancock for free, on the proviso you buy at least one $14 cocktail. Its not a very good cocktail, but still a cocktail. I should thank Jules for this tip.
Next stop from Chicago was Sandusky, Ohio, home of the Cedar Point theme park. Cedar Point bills itself as America's roller coaster capital, and it fully lives up to that hype. As I think most people know, and my blog may have made clear, Americans don't really do understatement. If they are going to build a roller coaster park here, you can bet your life that its going to be big - really big. Remember the days of visiting Wonderland in Sydney, or even Luna Park - after you'd ridden the roller coaster it always seemed there weren't that many exciting things left to do? Well, Cedar Point has solved this problem - with more roller coasters than any normal person could ride in a day. Throw in log rides, the classic tower drop ride, giant swings and more, and you have almost infinite ways of simulating the feeling of being dropped from a great height and then being hurled around at high speed. Flagship attractions include the Millennium Force Coaster, which, at 310 feet tall, was the tallest coaster in the world when it was built (2001), and the Magnum Coaster, which was also the tallest coaster in the world when it was built in 1989. Taller than both of them now is the Dragster Thrill Racer, which is unlike any roller coaster in the world, in that it reaches its top speed at the start, before climbing a 400 foot, vertical arch and plunging back down the other side. Powered by magnets in the same way as high speed rail lines, it reaches 120 mph in just 4 seconds at take off. Its a 22 second ride - after a 1 hour wait - but its worth it. I've tried to attach a video to the bottom of this blog, but it is giving me some technical difficulties, so apologies if it isn't working.
On more sedate lines Cedar Point also offered mini golf, which was a good chance to give churning stomachs a rest, and play the latest installment of the Great Escape Mini Golf Challenge, in which O'Brien held a 2-1 lead going into the game. It wasn't O'Brien's day however, as the accurate short range putting that had served her so well in Washington back in May deserted her, and Albrecht managed to play a 1 under par 42 to win by 7 shots. It's two all now, and the decider looks likely to be played on my old home course, the Seehausen mini golf course.
You probably couldn't find a bigger change in pace than from the Dragster Thrill Racer of Cedar Point to the horse and buggy of Amish country, but that was where we headed next. The Amish are spread around a few rural areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania. They are known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, but they came from Switzerland - because they spoke German they become known as Deutsch, which at some point morphed into Dutch. The Amish are committed to maintaining their traditional farming lifestyle - they reject technology such as cars and mobile phones and dress like something out of Little House on the Prairie. Ironically their determination to isolate themselves from the modern world has made them a major tourist attraction, and it seems that the Amish are more engaged in running restaurants and bed and breakfasts than farms these days. I noticed the ban on technology didn't extend to electronic cash registers. That was emblematic of Amish country as a whole. It is pretty scenery, and the people riding around in their horse and buggy and sporting chest length beards provide a curious spectacle, but that's about it.
We have arrived in Washington, DC now, but that again warrants a post to itself, so I reluctantly leave the blog still not quite up to date. Look out for the Philadelphia and Washington entry in a couple of days.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
"Do I tip a tow truck driver?" and other conundrums of the American way of life
Spending an extended amount of time in a foreign country always gives you a chance to see how people in another country go about some of the everyday parts of life differently, and inevitably throws up a few things that seem like they could be brought back home, as well as a few that make you grateful you live wherever you do. In the USA there are so many things done just a little bit differently to Australia or Germany, and I wanted to take a chance to record a few of those things, and perhaps promote some of them back home.
First and foremost, the cultural norm that follows the traveler is the tipping culture. Everyone knows that waiters and bar staff work for little or no hourly wage and live from tips, and its an easy custom to adjust to - add 10% as a minimum, a little more if you are satisfied, and more again if you are particularly happy. I know people have strong opinions about tipping in Australia, but I have to say I come down in favour of the American system here. The service is almost universally very good - not just because of the extra incentive that the tip provides, but because people who find it difficult to be friendly or otherwise don't make good waiters quickly find they can't make any money in this industry and move on. My only objection to the tipping culture in restaurants is that it allows a restaurateur to basically shift all the patronage risk in his labour costs onto the employees. That might be a wonderful economic policy in terms of flexible workplace relations, but it does seem harsh that if an employer over staffs a restaurant, the waiters are the ones who take the loss. Similarly, the waiter bears the brunt of dissatisfaction, regardless of the cause. If my meal is bad, or takes too long, I am unlikely to tip as generously, and the waiter, rather than the kitchen, will suffer the consequences. On the other hand, the waiter gets a part of the upside. If the restaurant does particularly well, the waiters probably earn far more than they could in Australia.
More difficult, as far as tipping goes, is knowing where to stop. Waiters and bar tenders are obvious, which did lead me to theorise that you should tip when the service is separate from the good you are paying for - so I pay for the drink, and tip for the pouring and bringing of the drink. But that does not cover taxi drivers, where the service is all I'm paying for, yet they clearly expect tips. Most troubling was the tow truck driver, where I didn't pay for the service at all, other than the $90 we paid for AAA membership at the start of the trip. If you receive a service from a club that you are a member of, provided by a contractor not actually employed by that club, do you tip? Even when you decide that a tip is appropriate, how do you know how much to tip, when you can't use a percentage of the price as a guide?
Unfortunately, you never actually answer any of these questions, because no-one ever gives you feedback on a tip. I gave the tow truck driver 10 dollars, but I have no way of knowing whether he drove off thinking a) that was fair, b) awesome, I never usually get tipped, c) I can't believe he only gave me $10, or d) who does this guy think he is, some sort of big shot who thinks I need a tip - I probably make more than him, judging by his crappy car.
Essential to the tipping culture is another oft commented upon facet of American life - all the money looks the same. At first this drove me to distraction, and I am still prone to thinking I have a well stocked wallet, only to find out at a very inconvenient time that I have 15 one dollar bills and nothing else. But when you think about the tips, it suddenly makes sense. You are forever handing over notes to people for minor services, from serving you a drink to getting your car or your bags to providing the live music (Bands here generally play for tips only - which is probably a part of what makes the live music culture possible). In those situations it is convenient that all the money looks the same, because it allows you to decide how much to tip far more discreetly - no one knows I've given them a single dollar until I am far enough away to avoid an awkward moment.
Still on the subject of money, less convenient is the American habit of displaying prices that do not include fees and taxes. Each state levies its own sales tax - even individual cities have their own taxes. On top of sales tax there can be a 'bed charge' ($3.50 per night in New York), an amusement tax (9% in Chicago) or any manner of extra charges. Unless you have both an encyclopedic knowledge of federal, state and local taxes and a genius level IQ, it is impossible to know what the final price of any particular item is going to be. Published prices adhere to the principle of making every thing end in 99 cents, so after taxes you forever end up paying amounts like $8.43. This in turn means you collect mountains of 1c coins. The USA mints 40 million 1 cent coins per year, at a cost of $80 million. This is one area where Australia has clearly found a better solution. In NZ they even got rid of 5c coins.
Moving away from money to one of the travelers other great concerns - coffee. Every time I leave Australia, I realise how good the coffee culture in Sydney is. Australia is the exception, rather than the rule, in serving espresso coffee in every last cafe. Outside of the very big cities, cafe lattes in the USA are largely limited to Starbucks and a few imitation chains. Even here in Chicago a standard breakfast cafe is unlikely to serve you a cappuccino. Fortunately, Starbucks is everywhere, and you rarely have to go a day without getting your fix. Unfortunately, the coffee at Starbucks is not excellent, and there is no such thing as full cream milk - 2% milk is the best you can hope for.
One thing about Starbucks here is that when I say its everywhere, I really mean that. Obviously its in all the big cities, on almost every block, but far more delightfully, there is a Starbucks at most truck stops on the long interstate drives, and in every little rural town. That is where I think Starbucks went wrong in Australia - if they'd put their shops at Pheasants Nest and Sutton Forrest, serving coffee to all the passing city folk who don't want to even enter the Coolibah Cafe, instead of competing with a thousands coffee stands on Pitt Street and Collins Street, they probably wouldn't have had to shut them all down.
Another quirk of American life is the four way stop sign. When you come to an intersection between two smaller streets there is often a stop sign in every direction. If you were to apply the Australian interpretation of a stop sign, then when two cars approach from right angles at the same time, they would both have to stop and wait until the other one went, meaning they would be stuck at the stop sign forever. In America, you stop at the stop sign and let one car go, then the next car has to stop and let you go. It's simple enough, but it took us a while to work out, and led to some strange looks from other motorists as we firmly refused to budge while there was a stopped car on the other street. Once you figure it out, it works, but its pretty obvious that a better solution would be that invention that is completely absent from American roads, the roundabout.
By far America's worst habit has to be the imperial measurement system. Here is some history for you. A pound was traditionally measured in grains - one pound was the weight of 7000 grains of standard cereal. After starting with 7000, its natural that you would divide this into 16 ounces, meaning there are 437.5 grains in an ounce. Clearly this is a measure of weight, not volume, which is why a fluid ounce, which is how they measure drinks here, has no relation to the ounce weight. A fluid ounce is 1/128 of a gallon, which, logically enough, is 231 cubic inches. The origin of the inch is uncertain, though the earliest known definition seems to be that an inch is equivalent to three barleycorns. 36 inches make up a yard, and 1760 yards give you a mile. In case you can't do this in your heard, that means there are 63,360 inches in a mile, or 190,080 barleycorns.
America is fully committed to this system though. As with roundabouts, soccer, and gun control, it seems that the very fact that the rest of the world has figured it out makes supporting this system a point of national pride in the USA. Deep down I suspect there is probably a hint of defensiveness because they know that they have missed something here and they don't want to admit it. The irony of it all is that since 1959 all the imperial measurements have been measured in metric terms. The official measure of a yard in no longer 108 barleycorns - its actually 0.9144 meters.
I don't want to end on a negative note, so I've saved America's best habit for last - the people's amazing friendliness to strangers, and their willingness to make proper conversation with anyone they meet. I first noticed this in Central America, when we were stuck on a plane in El Salvador for a few hours. While we sat there and read our books, it was clear the many Americans on the flight were making friends with their neighbours. I suspect this much might happen in Australia, but after a few exchanges and the odd shared sarcastic remark, people would get back to their own friends, or their Ipods. The Americans on the other hand, by the time we were back in the air, were exchanging phone numbers and email addresses and making plans to have dinner back home in a few months time.
We've tried to be open to this approach, which doesn't necessarily come naturally to me, and we've seen American friendliness first hand, on too many occasions to count. In Seattle a family (Canadian, but to be honest, it really is pretty much the same thing) we met on the plane offered to show is round Vancouver; in Las Vegas we chatted for 30 minutes with two guys next to us at a bar, just because they were sitting there and introduced themselves. In Austin the friends we made watching the World Cup had offered us a place to stay within half an hour of meeting us, and invited us straight to their 4th of July celebrations.
It seems to me that this is the true irony of America. From the outside it seems determined to be different, proudly rejecting the world's favorite past times and better innovations, but from the inside, it seems more open to other people and ideas, be they from out of town or overseas, than any country I've ever been to.
First and foremost, the cultural norm that follows the traveler is the tipping culture. Everyone knows that waiters and bar staff work for little or no hourly wage and live from tips, and its an easy custom to adjust to - add 10% as a minimum, a little more if you are satisfied, and more again if you are particularly happy. I know people have strong opinions about tipping in Australia, but I have to say I come down in favour of the American system here. The service is almost universally very good - not just because of the extra incentive that the tip provides, but because people who find it difficult to be friendly or otherwise don't make good waiters quickly find they can't make any money in this industry and move on. My only objection to the tipping culture in restaurants is that it allows a restaurateur to basically shift all the patronage risk in his labour costs onto the employees. That might be a wonderful economic policy in terms of flexible workplace relations, but it does seem harsh that if an employer over staffs a restaurant, the waiters are the ones who take the loss. Similarly, the waiter bears the brunt of dissatisfaction, regardless of the cause. If my meal is bad, or takes too long, I am unlikely to tip as generously, and the waiter, rather than the kitchen, will suffer the consequences. On the other hand, the waiter gets a part of the upside. If the restaurant does particularly well, the waiters probably earn far more than they could in Australia.
More difficult, as far as tipping goes, is knowing where to stop. Waiters and bar tenders are obvious, which did lead me to theorise that you should tip when the service is separate from the good you are paying for - so I pay for the drink, and tip for the pouring and bringing of the drink. But that does not cover taxi drivers, where the service is all I'm paying for, yet they clearly expect tips. Most troubling was the tow truck driver, where I didn't pay for the service at all, other than the $90 we paid for AAA membership at the start of the trip. If you receive a service from a club that you are a member of, provided by a contractor not actually employed by that club, do you tip? Even when you decide that a tip is appropriate, how do you know how much to tip, when you can't use a percentage of the price as a guide?
Unfortunately, you never actually answer any of these questions, because no-one ever gives you feedback on a tip. I gave the tow truck driver 10 dollars, but I have no way of knowing whether he drove off thinking a) that was fair, b) awesome, I never usually get tipped, c) I can't believe he only gave me $10, or d) who does this guy think he is, some sort of big shot who thinks I need a tip - I probably make more than him, judging by his crappy car.
Essential to the tipping culture is another oft commented upon facet of American life - all the money looks the same. At first this drove me to distraction, and I am still prone to thinking I have a well stocked wallet, only to find out at a very inconvenient time that I have 15 one dollar bills and nothing else. But when you think about the tips, it suddenly makes sense. You are forever handing over notes to people for minor services, from serving you a drink to getting your car or your bags to providing the live music (Bands here generally play for tips only - which is probably a part of what makes the live music culture possible). In those situations it is convenient that all the money looks the same, because it allows you to decide how much to tip far more discreetly - no one knows I've given them a single dollar until I am far enough away to avoid an awkward moment.
Still on the subject of money, less convenient is the American habit of displaying prices that do not include fees and taxes. Each state levies its own sales tax - even individual cities have their own taxes. On top of sales tax there can be a 'bed charge' ($3.50 per night in New York), an amusement tax (9% in Chicago) or any manner of extra charges. Unless you have both an encyclopedic knowledge of federal, state and local taxes and a genius level IQ, it is impossible to know what the final price of any particular item is going to be. Published prices adhere to the principle of making every thing end in 99 cents, so after taxes you forever end up paying amounts like $8.43. This in turn means you collect mountains of 1c coins. The USA mints 40 million 1 cent coins per year, at a cost of $80 million. This is one area where Australia has clearly found a better solution. In NZ they even got rid of 5c coins.
Moving away from money to one of the travelers other great concerns - coffee. Every time I leave Australia, I realise how good the coffee culture in Sydney is. Australia is the exception, rather than the rule, in serving espresso coffee in every last cafe. Outside of the very big cities, cafe lattes in the USA are largely limited to Starbucks and a few imitation chains. Even here in Chicago a standard breakfast cafe is unlikely to serve you a cappuccino. Fortunately, Starbucks is everywhere, and you rarely have to go a day without getting your fix. Unfortunately, the coffee at Starbucks is not excellent, and there is no such thing as full cream milk - 2% milk is the best you can hope for.
One thing about Starbucks here is that when I say its everywhere, I really mean that. Obviously its in all the big cities, on almost every block, but far more delightfully, there is a Starbucks at most truck stops on the long interstate drives, and in every little rural town. That is where I think Starbucks went wrong in Australia - if they'd put their shops at Pheasants Nest and Sutton Forrest, serving coffee to all the passing city folk who don't want to even enter the Coolibah Cafe, instead of competing with a thousands coffee stands on Pitt Street and Collins Street, they probably wouldn't have had to shut them all down.
Another quirk of American life is the four way stop sign. When you come to an intersection between two smaller streets there is often a stop sign in every direction. If you were to apply the Australian interpretation of a stop sign, then when two cars approach from right angles at the same time, they would both have to stop and wait until the other one went, meaning they would be stuck at the stop sign forever. In America, you stop at the stop sign and let one car go, then the next car has to stop and let you go. It's simple enough, but it took us a while to work out, and led to some strange looks from other motorists as we firmly refused to budge while there was a stopped car on the other street. Once you figure it out, it works, but its pretty obvious that a better solution would be that invention that is completely absent from American roads, the roundabout.
By far America's worst habit has to be the imperial measurement system. Here is some history for you. A pound was traditionally measured in grains - one pound was the weight of 7000 grains of standard cereal. After starting with 7000, its natural that you would divide this into 16 ounces, meaning there are 437.5 grains in an ounce. Clearly this is a measure of weight, not volume, which is why a fluid ounce, which is how they measure drinks here, has no relation to the ounce weight. A fluid ounce is 1/128 of a gallon, which, logically enough, is 231 cubic inches. The origin of the inch is uncertain, though the earliest known definition seems to be that an inch is equivalent to three barleycorns. 36 inches make up a yard, and 1760 yards give you a mile. In case you can't do this in your heard, that means there are 63,360 inches in a mile, or 190,080 barleycorns.
America is fully committed to this system though. As with roundabouts, soccer, and gun control, it seems that the very fact that the rest of the world has figured it out makes supporting this system a point of national pride in the USA. Deep down I suspect there is probably a hint of defensiveness because they know that they have missed something here and they don't want to admit it. The irony of it all is that since 1959 all the imperial measurements have been measured in metric terms. The official measure of a yard in no longer 108 barleycorns - its actually 0.9144 meters.
I don't want to end on a negative note, so I've saved America's best habit for last - the people's amazing friendliness to strangers, and their willingness to make proper conversation with anyone they meet. I first noticed this in Central America, when we were stuck on a plane in El Salvador for a few hours. While we sat there and read our books, it was clear the many Americans on the flight were making friends with their neighbours. I suspect this much might happen in Australia, but after a few exchanges and the odd shared sarcastic remark, people would get back to their own friends, or their Ipods. The Americans on the other hand, by the time we were back in the air, were exchanging phone numbers and email addresses and making plans to have dinner back home in a few months time.
We've tried to be open to this approach, which doesn't necessarily come naturally to me, and we've seen American friendliness first hand, on too many occasions to count. In Seattle a family (Canadian, but to be honest, it really is pretty much the same thing) we met on the plane offered to show is round Vancouver; in Las Vegas we chatted for 30 minutes with two guys next to us at a bar, just because they were sitting there and introduced themselves. In Austin the friends we made watching the World Cup had offered us a place to stay within half an hour of meeting us, and invited us straight to their 4th of July celebrations.
It seems to me that this is the true irony of America. From the outside it seems determined to be different, proudly rejecting the world's favorite past times and better innovations, but from the inside, it seems more open to other people and ideas, be they from out of town or overseas, than any country I've ever been to.
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