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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Experiences in the United StatesI've started a new thread to answer the questions which Porthos asked me in another thread.
Well first of all, I'll start by saying that I only really visited a very limited part of the US — Indiana and Ohio (airport stops in Pennsylvania and North Carolina don't really count). I can imagine that some other parts of the US would be very different from the areas which I saw. My visit has basically re-inforced the view I've always had — that I'm essentially 'European'. I spent three weeks in Germany last year, staying with a German family there — I certainly felt much more at home in Germany than in Indiana. That's not to say that I didn't have a nice time in Indiana though, because I did. I think it's something about lifestyle. I felt that the Americans I was with in Indiana have a rather different sort of lifestyle compared to what I'm used to — they drive absolutely everywhere, they go almost exclusively to retail parks and out-of-town shopping complexes, and almost never went to the city centre. On the other hand, I'm mainly used to walking and using the bus, and going to the city centre to do most things — which is the same sort of lifestyle I experienced in Germany. It's very noticeable that people in Indiana and Ohio are generally rather more religious than in England — large churches on almost every corner, and most people I met seemed to be practicing Christians. One other thing I noticed about people is that people in Indianapolis seemed to be extremely friendly and polite. People seemed very comfortable talking to strangers, and I found everything very informal — people seem to get on first-name terms straight away, for example. In this sense, things seem more 'open' compared to what I'm used to. This was reflected in the layout of people's houses — typically fairly open-plan, with open-field gardens which run into each-other without clearly defined boundaries. British homes, on the other hand, are rarely open-plan, and usually have lots of internal doors which are often kept closed; and in suburban areas, separate gardens are clearly defined by walls, hedges and fences — both front and back. |
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| Uriel |
Don't worry, most Americans have only had the opportunity to visit small parts of the US, too.  I've never been to the Midwest, where you were, for instance.
Many city centers, as you call them, are often run-down or not where most of the action is anyway -- as cities expand outward, the inside often gets left behind or becomes old-fashioned or obsolete compared to newer places opening up on the periphery. Downtown Las Cruces is like that -- despite several attempts to revitalize it, people just don't like it much -- the neighborhoods around it are often poor, parking sucks, businesses don't do well there, etc. They turned the main street into a pedestrian-only open-air shopping plaza and rerouted traffic around it to make it more foot friendly, and people just avoid it like the plague. Stores are empty and unleased, and it's silent in there. I tend to talk casually with strangers the same way I would with you all, and it does strike me that often you feel like you just walked into a much longer conversation with someone you know well, even though it's someone whose name you don't even know. It's more like it's no big deal, and there's no reason to maintain these artificial social barriers -- we're all people, we pretty much have similar experiences, we can all relate. No biggie. Smiling is a natural icebreaker, and we tend to smile a lot. People who don't respond in kind to small talk or look you in the eye and smile when greeted usually come off as rude or shy or standoffish or in a bad mood -- even when they're really none of those things. There are lots and lots of churches here, even in very small towns. My dad used to joke that the ones in his tiny village must each have a congregation of about 5, since there wer so many. His wife was flabbergasted at how many there were, even though she's a "practicing Christian" herself. We joked with her that of course there had to be that many churches -- God forbid that the Methodists sit down with the Catholics, or that the Baptists have to rub shoulders with those heathens at the Church of Christ -- and over there, those are Presbyterians; they can't be seen hanging out with the Calvinists, you know. It's the curse of the Protestant split, you know.  Otherwise, we'd just have a single cathedral in the middle, just like many European towns!
Mesilla is like that -- there's just the church of San Albino on the plaza. 
My ex used to go there as a kid -- he was an altar boy. But on the road that runs alongside my house, there are no fewer than four different houses of worship -- the one catty-corner to my house, which I think is really just a money-laundering enterprise, since the congregation is so small (and I'm trying to get my oleander to block the view), the Baptist church one block over, the Jehovah's Witness hall a few blocks in the other direction (which has no windows -- weird), and the deserted-looking church at the end of the road -- all on a street that is only one mile long! |
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| Bashar |
Not to change the subject or anything, but Presbyterians ARE Calvinists. Anyway back to the topic... I think the east cost cities like NYC and Boston are more like European cities than the cities further west like Dallas and LA. Apparently it's common in New York City to not get a driver's license until you're middle aged, if indeed at all. Who needs one when you can go anywhere you want on the subway, bus, or taxi? Further west, all the small towns and suburbs are built around a (often run-down) central square, small grid of streets, or one main street. These are always lined with small two story buildings with restaurants and shops in them, with parking spaces along the sides of the streets. Can you think about what a stereotypical town in the Old West looked like, with the wooden sidewalks along the buildings? I think this is what those towns evolved into. It doesn't look very obvious, but I've seen some towns around Nebraska and Texas where, if you went back in time a hundred years, you would find a saloon with the stereotypical swinging doors in one of those buildings. |
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| Josh Lalonde |
By these criteria, Ottawa is more like a European city than an American one. I've only been to a few American cities, and none of them seemed much like Ottawa. Bank Street (our main commercial street) extends from the Ottawa River at the northern end of the city all the way to the Rideau River at the southern end of the "city core", and almost the whole length is full of shops and restaurants with a lot of pedestrian traffic. Plenty of churches here, sometimes even three or four on the same block, but if someone just starts talking to me on the street, I think they're weird. | ||||||
| Bashar |
That sounds a lot like New York. | ||||||
| Uriel |
I love those old boardwalks! Seen them in California, Alaska, New Mexico, and Arizona. I think they're very picturesque. Tidy, too. 
Old Sacramento (capital of California) 
Ketchikan, Alaska 
Tombstone, Arizona (sportin' the Arizona state flag in the setting sun -- how appropriate!)[/quote] |
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| KSa |
Ben,
Did you come across such clever girls like this one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww |
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| Travis |
Same thing here - I for one have never lived outside southern Wisconsin, and have only briefly visited a number of scattered places outside of Wisconsin and northern Illinois.
Things here in Milwaukee are similar, but not exactly the same. The city center is not run down here, and merges into the affluent East Side and Third Ward areas contiguous with it along the lakefront, which are very active and vibrant as a whole. However, much of the residential areas forming the general core area of Milwaukee to the east of downtown and the nicer areas long the lakefront are not the best of areas to live in, being economically depressed, not infrequently dangerous, and sometimes run-down. Aside from the area near the lake, the main areas of Milwaukee proper which are not like such are the parts directly adjacent to some of the suburbs of Milwaukee to its west (except on the far Northwest Side) and the far South Side. On the other hand, many of the suburbs directly adjacent even the worst parts of Milwaukee are quite nice overall. Also, while there are malls in various more outlying areas of the Milwaukee area, they tend to primarily be used by people living relatively close to them, particularly in the suburbs of Milwaukee, rather than having people on the East Side of Milwaukee go out of their way to head to malls (except for maybe Bayshore Town Center, in the lakeside suburb of Whitefish Bay to the north of the East Side).
People tend to be more standoffish than such in public here, simply that people here do not speak to each other in public unless they already know the person they are speaking to, have a particular reason to speak to them, they are spoken to by them, or they are already interacting with them in some other way (e.g. a business transaction). Large public areas filled with people, such as malls, can easily be very quiet here despite the number of people in them. However, people are often quite friendly when they do actually directly interact with each other, despite the usual tendency to not speak to anyone one does not know in public which one does not have some particular reason for interacting with. However, much of such interaction, and especially interaction with workers in stores and like, is distinct from how one interacts with people one knows personally, in that it is either generally more polite or more callous depending on the individual in question; there definitely is an unwritten distinction between people one knows and people one doesn't know in everyday interaction here, however friendly (or not) such may be. |
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| Uriel |
I got to spend three days on a business trip in Boise, Idaho, this week, and man, was it a blast! I had never been to the northern part of the Rockies (well the US Rockies, anyway -- they do continue on up into Canada), and I was very excited to get to see that part of the country. Let me just say that it was suitably gorgeous, with lots of snow-coverend mountains surrounding the town. I didn't get to see much of the city, but I was surprised to hear that the whole Treasure Valley area (Boise and its suburbs) has 300,000 people -- it really felt small and laidback, like a city the size of Las Cruces (80,000). The people were very friendly and nice. I was surprised by the ethnic mix -- lots and lots of Asian-Americans (which I virtually never see in NM, and sort of miss) and a fair amount of hispanics (up to 30%, I heard, due to the potato fields for which Idaho is so famous).
Flying over the west was scenically spectacular -- nothing but hundreds and hundreds of miles of mountains, canyons, the occasional river or lake, and lots and lots of snow. We flew from El Paso to the urban blight that is Phoenix, Arizona, then on to Las Vegas, then over Colorado, which was almost pure white with snow, and then into Idaho, where the snow petered out some (although there was a little on the ground in Boise, the weather wasn't terribly cold). We flew back in the evening, as as spectacular as the scenery had been in daylight, we found it even more haunting and evocative at night. There is something beautiful and still eerie about flying over such vast tracts of uninhabited wilderness, all nestled in blue snow. You see the lights of the occasional city or town twinkling below, but even eerier is when you see only one or two lights down there, all alone in a vast land, no highways passing near them, and wonder what the hell they are doing out there in such solitude, so far away from anyone else. Are they hermits? Ranchers? Game wardens? Park rangers? Artists? Despite their lights, they are so far removed from any town that they must be living off the grid, and generating their own electricity (not unknown out west, even Darryl Hannah does it at her house, and I've seen catalogs that tell you how to do it and what to buy). It's pretty entrancing and sobering, too, to know that there is so much unspoiled wilderness in this country, so many places where you could still get lost and die without anyone ever finding your bones. In the 19th century, they called it the sublime, the sense of womder and awe and insignificance in the face of nature. I feel it every time I step out of a city here, and I'm mindful of it whenever I take off up the interstate. Four-lane highway or not, you still pass in and out of cell phone service areas, and through empty stretches of desert and canyons, where it would be a long time before an ambulance got to you if you rolled your car (I have seen wrecks in the middle of nowhere), and roadside crosses dot the medians and right-of-ways all the way up to remind you of your mortality. It's not something you feel anywhere else that I've been -- not the east coast, or the south, or California. It's uniquely western, it seems, although, I can imagine it also in the emptiness of the Dakotas, or the snowbound woods of the upper midwest. |
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| Walker |
That country of yours is disturbingly humongous. | ||||||
| Uriel |
Nah, the humongousness is the part that makes it so much fun!
Here are some pictures for reference: 
It's in the southwestern part of Idaho, which probably explains why it "felt" a little like a cross between the West and the Pacific Northwest. 
This was about what it looked like when I was there, with the mountains all snowy and pretty like that. 
And it ain't Wyoming, but it does have gay cowboys, apparently (although this is a stock shot from a gay pride parade; I never saw any!) Also, although everyone kept mentioning that we were flying over Colorado, that seems geographically impossible; it must have been Utah and northern Nevada that was so white (appropriate; Nevada means "snowy"). Utah was the home of one of the recent Winter Olympics, and my boss, who hails from there, says he was one of the guys who blew up the mountainsides and set all the water pipes for the ski runs up there for those games. He has lots of good dynamite stories.... |
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| Travis |
I would associate such more with the West and especially the Southwest than the Upper Midwest. Much of the Upper Midwest is densely forested, but at least in northern Wisconsin it is not really hopelessly remote in the way that, say, most of Alaska is. If you manage to reach a highway of any size of there, you will probably run into a car sooner or later (during the day in the summer, even little county highways had significant traffic there, on the way to Minocqua in late fall, there ways noticable traffic even in the middle of the night). At the same time, northern Wisconsin in general is a major tourism area, catering heavily to people in Illinois and southern Wisconsin, and thus is often quite active despite being heavily forested as a whole. From what I hear, the Upper Peninsula (of Michigan) is significantly more remote than northern Wisconsin, and does not get the kind of tourism that northern Wisconsin gets. Edit: Forgot the word not in the last sentence. |
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| Uriel |
Hey, don't be ruining my Laura Ingalls Little House In The Big Woods vision, now! 
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| Loic |
I always say to myself that when I visit America, I'd absolutely have to start off with California. I'd rent a convertible and drive up and down the freeway (it doesn't matter which direction) with the wind blowing my hair while I listen to Joshua Kadaison's "Send me a postcard from LA", the Papas & Mamas' "California Dreaming", Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Californication", the Papas & Mamas' "San Francisco" and last but not last, "Hotel California" by the legendary Eagles.
Hmm..what other songs can I play when I visit other states? For the moment, I already have one in mind when I visit Massachussets, namely the Bee Gees' eponymous song. Have there been ballads composed in honour of say, New Mexico? |
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| Llatai |
I used to live in Santa Fe and drove all over New Mexico - to Albuquerque, Ruidoso, Roswell, Taos, Farmington, Hobbs, Clovis - but I never made it to Las Cruses. I always think about Little Feat, especially their song "Willin". Something western might fit, or mariachi music - Linda Ronstadt's "Canciones de mi Padre" is good (its an album not a song). The highways in NM are lonely. Its a big state with only about a million people. I'd drive to Carlsbad from Santa Fe down 285 for 4 or 5 hours and only see maybe 3 other cars, no gas stations, houses or farms for miles and miles. Just when you think humanity has utterly confiscated the planet, drive through NM or Paradise Valley in Montana or hike in the Olympic National Park in Washington State. You'll think otherwise. Even the memory of New Mexico is soothing. Personally Loic, I can do without LA, particularly Hollywood, though I understand the curiousity it inspires, particularly considering the fame of the place - its cosmopolitan chic. Give me the wide open spaces of the West or the 200 foot fir trees of the Pacific Northwest anyday. I've driven through the Boise area too Uriel and I agree, its beautiful. So is the Medicine Bow National Forest area west of Laramie Wyoming. I'll never forget hiking through the Pecos Wilderness or going to unexcavated Anasazi sites near Los Alamos or Carlsbad caverns, driving through the Jicarilla Apache Res, or wandering through Bandalier or finding that there was a cliff and lookout point at the edge of a baseball diamond in White Rock outside Los Alamos, and way down at the bottom of the mesa you could see the Rio Grande looking like a creek. Sigh - wax rhapsodic forever I could about NM. |
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| Uriel |
Dude! Someone else who knows the names! 
I conversely, living in the far southern part of the state, have never been way up north -- never been to Farmington, Taos, or Los Alamos, although I have been to Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and even once to Chimayo. Haven't spent much time on the Pecos, either -- took a friend to Roswell once because she wanted to see some Buffalo, and I've been to Carlsbad, of course, to see the caverns. It's a long, long trip to see something spectacular, and then turn around and drive back home. I think it's three or four hours from me, too. Never had a reason to hit Hobbs or Clovis, and I drove through Artesia with the windows up (there's oil in Artesia, and refineries reek!). Ruidoso, Cloudcroft, and the other mountain towns are just gorgeous -- just big enough that they have amenities like gas, food, and some shopping, but small enough that they don't intrude on the wilderness too much. And it's like another world up there, with all the pine forests and aspens and wildflowers -- unexpected oases of coolness, trees, and snow in what's mostly a desert state. You drive through the Mescalero Apache reservation to get to Ruidoso, and you certainly get a vision that is far, far, from any movie sterotype, as where they live is silent and green and forested, with horses grazing in every meadow you pass and good fishing in Silver Lake, and Sierra Blanca overlooking it all. 
This is near Alto, it but it could be any drive up to Cloudcroft or Ruidoso or anywhere else in Lincoln National Forest. Don't think there are too many songs about NM, but Marty Robbins' cowboy classic "El Paso" gives it a mention: Out through the back door of Rosa's I ran Out where the horses were tied I picked a good one, he looked like he could run Up on his back and away I did ride Just as fast as I could from the west Texas town of El Paso Out through the badlands of New Mexico "Get Your Kicks On Route 66" mentions Gallup. Partial to the Depeche Mode version, myself. The way they say Flagstaff busts me up every time. Chris Isaak's "King of the Highway" is good one to play on long drives at night, where its stark lyrics and spooky guitar give just the right eerie feeling to the black roads. Actually, all of Heart-Shaped World is great at night on a long drive. |
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| Elaine |
"Somewhere in New Mexico" by Jill Sobule. I have a friend who swears she saw Jesus Hovering above her lonely bed She said it changed her life forever "Whatever works," I said All afternoon I change the channels It's so hard to concentrate I laugh at her, but I'm pretty sure She's having a better day Maybe I'll lay on the highway somewhere in New Mexico And wait for a strange light to come and take me home Maybe I'll stand by the statue and wait for her to cry I wanna see real tears and be sincere once before I die The other night I talked to an old flame Who finally said why he moved on He said I didn't have faith in anything I knew he wasn't wrong I saw two lovers in the park With that dreamy look of lust in their eyes The whole world smiled as they passed by They just make me mad Maybe I'll lay on the highway somewhere in New Mexico And wait for a strange light to come and take me home Maybe I'll stand by the statue and wait for her to cry Take this jaded heart, blow it all apart, once before I... I'll get down on my knees, something I don't believe Somebody help me, please, I'm starting to repeat myself I'm starting to repeat Maybe I'll stay on the highway somewhere in New Mexico And wait for a strange light to come and take me home Maybe I'll stand by the statue and wait for her to cry I'd love to see a miracle once before I die Once before I die |
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| JGreco |
I being the child of a military man have traveled a lot through the U.S. I think the only areas I haven't visited was the west coast. I mostly have lived in Northern Florida all my life though and do consider it my home area. To me the area I've been in that was most alien to me was San Antonio Texas. They seem to be used to totally different food and lifestyle that I live. The majority of my dad family is actually from Canada specifically New Foundland and a lot have moved to Toronto. I felt quite comfortable up there maybe because my family made me field comfortable. | ||||||
| Uriel |
Wow, I've never heard that song, Elaine! 
What was so weird about San Antonio, J? I've never been there, but everyone I know who has says it's a neat place. They're always surprised that the Alamo is so dinky, of course, but rave about the Riverwalk and the food. (And my favorite Lyle Lovett album was recorded live there -- actually, the only Lyle Lovett album I like, because it's not his country stuff.) |
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| KSa |
I imagine myself listening to this song of Randy Travis while driving down the New Mexico's highways: >>A farmer and a teacher, a hooker and a preacher, Riding on a midnight bus bound for Mexico. One's headed for vacation, one for higher education, And two of them were searching for lost souls. That driver never ever saw the stop sign. And eighteen wheelers can't stop on a dime There are three wooden crosses... << and so on... |
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| JGreco |
No it was really cool and everything. The weird part was that it was very culturally different from what I'm use to. The people, the way they talked, food....definitely food, and everyday life just seems different from the way I live it. It felt like it was a whole different country. We all know that Texas was once a whole different country ...wasn't it
Though I think of anywhere that does not have sweet ice tea as being strange anyways haha.... |
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| Travis |
Well, you can get sweet tea at McDonald's and in cans at supermarkets and in some vending machines here, but I doubt that really counts, considering that it is not traditional at all to drink sweet tea here... |
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