Ugly American Englishman

We have all heard about the ugly American traveler and I think most of us who travel or live in Europe in this day and age are aware, at least to some extent, of this reputation and make strides when we travel to be good ambassadors for our country. But apparently Americans aren't the only ones who can be "ugly Americans" as Jon and I witnessed in a recent BBC documentary we were watching.

The seven-part series called, "Riding Route 66, America's Mother Road", is about an Englishman who buys a Harley motorcycle in Chicago in order to live out his childhood fantasy of riding the length of Route 66. This is the second series we have seen on this subject and the last rider was a Scotsman. He had a thoroughly enjoyable trip and laughed his way through most of the show, enjoying the good and laughing at the bad of his particular trip. The Englishman didn't have those kinds of traveling skills.

The ride through the Midwest was a disappointment to him and he began to complain about things. He was tired of fast food and thought that was the limitation of the food options. He was tired of the bland little towns along the way and the fat people that were everywhere. He stayed in chain motels to save money and found them to be "soulless". He got fatigued from the long hours of riding. He alternately loved and hated what he was experiencing. He has become the "ugly American" and I doubt that he realized it.

It made me think that perhaps Americans have had this reputation because Europe is a common vacation destination and they face some of the same things that this Englishman did which can make anyone a cranky traveler. Jet lag, fatigue from trying to do or see too much, the need to budget and finding accommodations which are adequate, but not charming and never just like our own bedroom at home. Having a romantic notion of a place which it can never live up to. Inadequate research and planning. If this man had an American guide, he might have seen all sorts of things along the way that are novel and charming. He might have planned his route differently deviating occasionally onto side trips to see special things. (The Scotsman did.) If he had asked local people where to eat, he could have found lots of Mom and Pop places with good home cooking at very reasonable prices. He might have found out that traveling parts of Route 66 aren't worth doing, no matter the romantic fantasy based on American television or movies.

I thought it was funny, that this man, who works in television was surprised and disappointed to find that the America portrayed in movies such as Easy Rider, doesn't really exist. I would think he would know that television is always a fiction, to one degree or another. Even news or documentaries are going to be slanted because the best they can be is the eyewitness account of something from a single person's viewpoint or in a single moment of time. Some are longer on facts than others, but there is almost always something of the unreal in it.

So Jon and I watch and laugh to ourselves as this visitor from Britain, both extols his enjoyment and displays his displeasure in minor rants throughout his documentary. We laugh because we recognize ourselves in our European infancy and we smile instead of being insulted or offended by his behavior, recognizing in it, a rather universal traveling experience.

One can laugh at one's traveling ups and downs or get angry and disappointed. The Scotsman did the former and our friend from Britain did the latter. I have done both. No question who will go home with the fondest memories and who will want to come again. And I must admit a small inner satisfaction (wicked though it is) in finding out that not only Americans can be "ugly." Perhaps it is time to change this appellation to the "Ugly Traveler" or more kindly to the "Tired, Stressed and Inexperienced Traveler."

Next post I will give some tips we have learned along the way to make travel easier, minimize some common difficulties, and encourage happy memories.

Moving from Holland

This recent move was the thirteenth major move that I have made in my life. That number doesn't include the smaller ones that involved moving from one place to another within a city. I made my first move from Virginia where I was born to Athens, Greece at the tender age of eighteen months. For some reason I don't remember that move. I am guessing that I wasn't greatly involved and can be fairly certain I was of no help whatsoever. Nonetheless, I got my feet wet in the moving game early on. Dad was a military chaplain and it was common for us to move every three years or so. In fact when Jon and I were first married, I began to get itchy to move if we stayed in a place more than a two or three years. So moving isn't particularly stressful to me and I actually enjoy many aspects of it. And no I am not insane, my mother had me tested. :-)

Having prefaced myself with all that information I can now say that this move was by far the most stressful move I have ever had to make and has taken the longest to complete. In most moves I have completely unpacked within a week, this one took five months. There was, though, in the midst of all this difficulty many ways the Lord showed Himself and helped us.

Probably the hardest part of the move was the need to do so much in a foreign language. The conversational Dutch I knew was no help with some of the more technical aspects of the move and my inability to understand it was daunting. TWR Europe hired movers to return our goods to the States, which was a great kindness, but I actually prefer to pack my own boxes. And, though our movers were excellent, we actually had less damage when we moved ourselves overseas. I haven't spent nearly five decades unpacking boxes without learning a thing or two about packing them as well and had the benefit of the knowledge and wisdom of a variety of movers, all of which have their own particular tricks. It is less work, but more stressful for me to have professional packers. At least usually it is less work, but then our moving company told me they needed an inventory for insurance purposes. Imagine going through your house in the midst of everything else that needs to be done and counting your shirts and shoes and underthings. Imagine counting every glass and spoon and item in your hobby room. Now go on the internet and try to find this item so you can put a replacement value on it all the while trying to be somewhat accurate in case your entire crate is lost at sea and also trying to keep the estimate as low as possible since the cost is based on a percentage of the amount claimed. No easy task. This was stressor number one.

With the movers booked, we now turned our attention to the next phase and by far the most difficult one. We looked around and with a sinking heart saw a lot of stuff we would have no use for in the US. It was incredible the amount of useful household items which had now become flotsam and jetsam, everything from towel bars and window screening to anything and everything that had an electrical plug on it.

We are not techno folks and don't even have a cell phone (I know, we are dinosaurs), but I was amazed at the amount of things we had that plugged in. Most of it was small things like extension cords, an alarm clock, a battery charger and lights and more lights. Christmas lights and ceiling lights and all the wiring for our table lamps. There was an outdoor light and the light for the aquarium. There were appliance large and small. We needed to sell these items to recoup at least some of the money so we could turn around and replace most of those items in the States. I didn't have a clue how to go about this.

Thankfully our staff in the Netherlands showed us where we could list our stuff and one friend showed me how to go about it. What we ended up using was an internet site similar to Craig's list in the US. For those unfamiliar with this site, it is basically an internet bulletin board where you can list items for sale and best of all it is free. Amazingly, so was the Dutch site! Problem was it was all in Dutch. So I got out my dictionary and began wading into the deep end of the pool trying to figure out what category things went into, how to describe them and what price to put on them. Not only did I need to put this basic information on the website, but I needed to clean each item to a pristine state ( I was trying to sell them to Dutch folks who invented the word "clean"), then take good photos of it as well. This was very time consuming. It took me four months of working more or less full-time on it. It was a very slow process. I did finally discover Google translate which helped me tremendously with both the information and communicating with folks in writing.

I put contact info on the website and clearly stated that responders could email in Dutch or English, but needed to call in English only. The Dutch people were no problem but the non-native Dutch speakers who wanted to call in English or in Dutch were a difficulty. I often could not understand their heavily-accented spoken-way-too-quickly English. I got so my heart would jump when the phone rang. I dreaded it so. Even as we needed it to ring to sell things. Did I mention it was stressful?

I got the items listed but we weren't getting any responses and time was ticking by and the pressure to get stuff sold and gone was rising within me. I had been praying the whole time for the Lord to bring people to us and to help us sell our things. Finally someone wanted to buy something. I was thrilled, but it did mean a complicated back and forth in Dutch to work it out. Then they came right over and bought it!

Aaaah, one item down, about 60 or 70 to go.

I was so grateful and then looked at all the stuff sitting on our table waiting to be sold and said, "Lord, it would really be nice if that aquarium sold, it is big and takes up space." A little bit later that afternoon someone called, came right over and picked up the aquarium! Then I asked about the microwave and it sold that day also. Three items in one day, I was thrilled and so grateful. I can be slow, but even I was seeing a pattern here. It seemed I needed to be specific in my requests. So I began to ask each day for one thing to sell and it would sell that day or the next. As one item sold, I would ask for another to sell and so it went until all of our items sold. And we even sold some items we didn't think we would be able to sell and so hadn't bother to list them!

I was never so relieved in all my life as I was the moment the movers closed the doors to the van and drove off. I had completed my part of the move on the Europe side and now would begin the move into the States. It turned out the Lord wasn't finished helping us yet, though we didn't know how much we were going to need it at the time.

Next time: What has happened to us on this side of the Atlantic.