The moment I felt most American

AOG, Madrid

On election day 1988 my mother, my sister and I were on a Jumbo Jet heading for Europe. 

We arrived in Madrid and within less than an hour we were on a train heading for the region of Extremadura, on the border with Portugal. 

My thoughts on that long journey (it was about an 8 hour train journey then to add to the transatlantic flight) centered around what our new lives would be like in this continent. I remember being told at the time that Spain only had 2 television channels. 

This might seem ridiculous to you, but I had grown up with cable, and two channels seemed insufficient to me. And third-world like. And I wasn't happy about it.

I remember stepping off the train and looking over the tracks to my right. A beautiful hill and forest scene with sheep peacefully standing there, hardly moving. To my left, the future. 

We had gone to Extremadura because one of my mother’s great aunts lived there with her Italian husband, who came to pick us up at the train station. My parents were separated now and would divorce a few years later, and this was the only close family we had at the time. 

The car which picked us up at the station was a white Ford Escort. I remember thinking then “ok, I know this model, everything is going to be ok”. 

View of the city of Caceres

 A couple of days later, my sister and I went into town on our own. I clearly recall my thoughts when I saw this very modern looking parking meter with a digital screen right next to a XVII century Baroque palace with medieval elements attached to it.

I immediately thought back to the meters in Houston where you had to stick a quarter and roll a handle to watch a little flag pop up telling you how much time you had left. 

 At that moment, America didn’t seem modern at all, especially when compared to this country which could allow things like Baroque palaces and modern digital machines to co-exist side by side. It was, I think, my first eye-opener.

A year after landing in Spain, we landed in London. Life was moving on.

I have to say that from the moment I set foot in Europe in 1988 I have felt American on a daily-basis. It is hard to explain, but it must be related to not really knowing what the deal is most of the time. To making a faux pas here and there, that you are not even aware that you are making. 

To looking at things and thinking, “my God what are they on about with this?”. 

To reacting to some situations in a manner different from expected by my friends and colleagues.

To not settling for tripe when tripe is being served (although I think this is more about me than about me being American; many Americans settle for tripe too easily).

I know I am different from most of the people who surround me and my life. I think differently.  I act differently. I react differently. I want different results. Better things in general.

And I'm glad I do. Just as I am glad that they think differently from me.

I have experienced hundreds of examples of this  cultural disparity since election day 1988.

But back to the original question.

In 1995 I went back to the US and stayed with a friend in Alabama. it was my first trip back since 1988.

Although everything was familiar I could see small cultural cracks here and there. I was no longer the same person who’d left the country 7 years before.

And the questions began to flood in. Some positive, some negative.

Why do people drive everywhere? Why don't they make more sidewalks? Why do they all eat so much processed food? Why are things national and not local? Why are there so many people who allow religion to rule their lives? Why all this racism and hate? Why are women's fashion and hair stuck in the 1980s?

I was feeling very much the European throughout. But then something happened.

 Shortly before I left, I went out one night in Birmingham and I met this guy who was very friendly.

I remember talking with him about things, his life and his future, and mine. He was about my age and had achieved quite a lot. He told me about his up and coming projects, dreams, and achievable goals. There it was once again. American positive thinking. Everything was possible.

I remember thinking during that conversation that I needed to get my butt in gear and be like my right-there-in-front-of-me peer.

I needed to complete my education, just like him, and start aiming for a good job, just like him, and aim for a better life, just like him.

He was talking to me in a language I completely understood. The cultural references were identical. The outlook was familiar and well trodden. The goals achievable. The future was bright, and it had an American glow about it.

I felt very American just then. That instant catapulted me back to the person I used to be just before that Pan Am flight touched down at Madrid Barajas Airport in 1988. The feeling stayed with me for a long time afterwards.

I returned to London.

Yes, the minute I got back to my flat in central London the questions started flowing, but in reverse.

Why is everything so expensive? Why is everyone so poor? Is this a police state? Why doesn’t anyone smile? What am I doing here?

It was a few years before I realized what I was doing there and before I could answer my  own questions.

I confess that these days, I am one of those people who feel very American in Europe, and very European whenever I go to the US. I can't help that. In fact, I rather like it. 

Outside

AOG, Madrid

Outside is different. What does this normally mean? Well, for starters, it means that everywhere you go, it is going to be different. Different? You may say, But of course!

Well Little Miss Smart Ass, you don’t know different until you see a French toilet up close and personal. Or until you enter a rest area on a British highway and marvel at the dried up and insipid food. You never knew sausages could taste like rope did you?

Yes, forget America’s obsession with hygiene and smells and get ready to enter the smelly world waiting for you just outside your local international airport terminal.

The planet is different from us. Not better or worse just different, and I suggest you strap yourself tightly, darling, because the great “unknown” just beyond our borders is going to smack you in the face like a wet fish and no, it won’t say sorry afterwards.

Start with Europe, one of our acknowledged cultural homelands (for what else is our country but an amalgamation of XVIII European Enlightenment thoughts and ideas sprinkled here and there with some good old fashioned social and religious persecution and a shameless excuse for slavery and world domination?).

Europeans feel superior to us. No, I can’t explain it. They just do. It does not matter that we tend to earn more, have bigger and longer hair, that our waistlines are expanding like mount Krakatoa on acid, or that we live in larger homes. 

It does not matter that the price we pay for gas is half of what they pay, or that anything the Japanese invent, we get first.

It goes beyond that.

Europeans have a certain knack for keeping old things around which we either lost along the way, or, quite frankly, never acquired. And yes, we must admit, that is why we go to Europe.

No one in their right mind travels seven hours from JFK to stare at London’s Canary Wharf, or eight hours to be marvelled by La Defense, in Paris.

No.

We jump into those flying tubes to get what we don’t get in America: old stuff. Sometimes, very old stuff. In the case of Greece and Italy, even ancient stuff.

And here’s where their dislike of us begins. Once, in Southern Spain, I overheard a group of American teenagers as they were being addressed by their tour guide.

“We will visit the Roman ruins of Italica”, she said.

And what did Miss Blonde Bimbo say to her friend within earshot of yours truly?

“Oh, we have those back home, how boring”.

In case you are wondering, la Bimbona was from Texas.

The tour guide overheard her and started to laugh when she glanced over towards the airhead section of the group and saw me trying to gnaw my veins off in disgust.

Europeans, I must confess, don’t hate Americans, they just hate stupid people.

Unfortunately for us, we do have an inordinate amount of those within our borders. Sometimes they even make it into the White House, so imagine how superior Europeans feel!

In Europe you will find old everything: homes, cars, clothes, people, museums, streets, jewels, neighborhoods, cities, bridges, and, interestingly, customs.

Europeans like their tradition even more than we do, the difference being that they have so much of it!

Like their tradition of keeping poor people poor. 

An age old tradition that one.

Why help the poor better their lot in life when they will only multiply and produce more smelly poor people? 

Like I always say, you can’t rape the willing!

Harsh, but very much how many European governments treat their population, and they then, in turn, say things like “please Sir, can I have some more?”

Unless they are Scandinavian. These are probably the only countries on Earth which have worked tirelessly to ensure everyone is middle class, and poor at the same time.

Poor? You may ask. But I heard they have a great social system!

Indeed they do. Everything is paid for…out of their salary. What is the point of earning 60K when half (or more) of it is going to the State? So ok, they are not exactly Brokeback Mountain poor, but they are sort of lower middle class on state aid poor… ish.

But they drive Saabs and Volvos! You say. Yes, but they tend to be cheaper there. And subsidised.

Unlike their alcohol, which is taxed to death and controlled unlike in any other place on this planet.

Which explains why Scandinavians like to visit Southern Europe so much: booze is cheaper there, and like the Vikings they really are at heart, they love nothing more than getting wasted on a Mediterranean beach after (or even whilst) “fertilizing” a local lovely.

Ah…Europe…so civilized…and yet…so not!

Like I said at the beginning, “outside” is different. Be prepared, yes, but bear in mind that our way is not the only way, nor the best way.

You really haven’t lived until you’ve Frenched a drunken Adonis on a Mediterranean beach under a star lit sky with Europop blaring nearby. 

Or until you discover what a foreskin is. You thought you had, but I assure you, you haven’t. Not until you've seen one upclose and personal.

Pack your bags my lovely, it is going to be a bumpy, yet thrilling, ride!

Sunday afternoon

AOG, Madrid

(Igor Mitoraj sculpture)

The nice thing about living in a major world capital is that it has a lot of cultural events going on most of the time. I don't think of Madrid as a major world capital, though I do think of it as a major cultural city- perhaps more so than Barcelona, but not quite London or New York yet.

Nevertheless, Madrid these days is really into its art and it takes itself very seriously. Wherever you read in the Spanish media, the fact that Madrid has three major museums within walking distance of each other is a source of pride. Art is big business in general. That goes double for Spain, for many a bargain when compared to other capitals such as Paris or New York.

The Prado (Spain's Louvre), the Thyssen, and the Queen Sofia Museum of Contemporary Art- alias the "Reina Sofía"- are all on the same street- the Prado boulevard.

Now, within the same street, Caixa Forum Madrid, a cultural, not for profit, organisation funded by La Caixa, one of Spain's largest savings banks, has opened its doors.

Sporting Madrid's, probably Spain's, first vertical garden, its modern headquarters building in Madrid is less imposing that the other three. As in Barcelona, it has taken a pre-existing building, and remodeled it into something new. I have not been inside of it yet but from the outside it is not a very impressive building, except for its vertical garden which you can see on the photograph at left behind the winged sculpture.

However, what it lacks on the outside, it makes up for in its first public exhibition: the work of Igor Mitoraj.

The Prado boulevard has been peppered beautifully with Igor Mitoraj's sculptures. Neoclassical, postmodern, certainly sensual and at the same time, cold, given their metallic nature.

I discovered it today when I went to visit the "Cuesta de Moyano" (link is in Spanish), an uphill (cuesta) street linking the boulevard with Madrid's Retiro Park and located at the back of the Agriculture Ministry, Madrid's most beautiful ministry building (below).











On the slope you find about 15 covered stands which have been selling second-hand books, as well as new books, since 1925. All sort of literary treasures are found there. My find yesterday was the January 1977 issue of National Geographic. I bought it for the articles on Stockholm and Haiti.

Whilst there, I met up with an improv-class classmate and one of the tutors. We spoke about life in general and how best to get into improv. The sucking of a particular body part was part of the way into improv. Ha ha ha, how we all laughed.

On my way home, I marveled at the sculptures which I had seen in Barcelona a few months ago, at Barcelona's Caixa Forum. And then some.

One of the small pleasures of living in a European capital.