We were in London because a film I was involved with was accepted into the Raindance Film Festival. We had 48 hours to kill before the festival so we decided to go to Paris.

That might sound like an indulgent day-trip if you’ve never been to Europe, but it’s literally not a big deal. Yes, I’m using the word ‘literally’ literally,  Europe is astonishingly small.  One day I drove from New York City, NY to Gainesville, Florida and it took about 16 hours, 8am to midnight, (1000 miles/1600 kilometers).

I-95 the entire way.You get to see South of the Border and uh…. South of the Border.

The equivalent trip in Europe is drastically different.

Imagine, one day, you’re at the Eiffel Tower and you decide that you want to get high, but you want to do that in Amsterdam. So you drive through Belgium to Amsterdam and have the most amazing weed. Then you get in your car and you discover a problem.

You’re high.

Too high.

In an attempt to drive back to Paris you find yourself in Berlin, which you love, but mostly because of the Italians.  Still high (it’s weed from Amsterdam, what do you expect?) you get in your car and try to drive home but you find yourself in Prague, at which point you give up, start a new family and a new life, and it’s probably a happy one because if you google “prague+people” it’s almost entirely happy people except for the people who got banged up in that gas explosion.  But that’s not the point.

The point is that after driving from Paris to Amsterdam (through Belgium, where you stopped for a snack, let’s say fries), to Berlin and then to Prague, you’ll have driven through FIVE countries, and across the great majority of Western Europe.

The New York to Gainesville trip would still be going. 

You’d be in Jacksonville. You’d still have an hour and a half left in your road trip, including the crappy stretch through Waldo. That’s how small Europe is.

This makes Europe great for exploring cultures and learning about history, but it also makes it a great place to stage a World War and create new history because every culture you hate is right around the corner. You don’t have to get in a boat or a plane or anything, you can just saunter over and start shit, it’s geographically convenient.

Growing up in America, European culture is hard to get your hands on, so without the benefit of firsthand knowledge we’re forced to learn from the media and hearsay.   There’s a very  predictable menu of French ‘facts’ that every American child gets served, so our ignorance is at least a shared ignorance.

In proper internet fashion,

The 9 things every American is taught about France.

(in order)

1. The French smell and are sexually aggressive.
[5 years old]

It starts here. You’re four or five years old, and your parents introduce you to Looney Toons cartoons.  Bugs Bunny, The Tazmanian Devil, et al. Then one day for the first time in your life you hear a (bad) French accent…. and it comes from the voice of a skunk.

Meet Pepe Le Peu. In the first scene his funk kills a few flowers and insects and before you know a seed has been planted: French people stink.   The noxious fumes emanating from this french skunk kill a few more things, and you’re five years old so your sense of humor is seconds old, so you’re basically dying with laughter. It’s hilarious to you.

Pepe turns the corner and sees what he assumes is a skunk, but is actually a cat.  He falls in love instantly, jumps over and introduces himself to her with this winning line that almost every five year old American hears, and none of us remember.

“Everyone should have a hobby. Mine is making love.”

It’s a good thing you’re five years old because your working memory isn’t good enough to wander over to your parents and tell them all about your new hobby. “Mommy, Daddy, everyone should have a hobby….”

Anyway.

Pepe le Peu (get it? he stinks!) confesses his love. The cat is perplexed, and also, mute.  She never says a word.  But even if she could respond it doesn’t matter because Pepe GRABS her before she has a chance.  She struggles against his grip, but he’s too strong so she kicks him in the face and then she fucking FLEES for her life. He jokes at her failed attempt at self-defense (“I get a kick out of her”), and then Pepe Le Peu then chases her around for the duration of your childhood.  It is extremely fucked up.

2.  The French Apparently Eat Frogs
[5-6 years old]

Earlier in that clip, Pepe’s funk kills a frog, which is a wry joke about the French eating frogs. I’m not completely sure when I was told this, but I’d say 5 or 6 is a safe bet.  At this point I was probably ready to write off the entire country.  “Ew,” I probably said.

3.  The French Also Make Great Food That’s Not Really Theirs
[6-10 years old]

Then you learn about French Toast and French Fries, and you’re back on board with the French. The fact that the French didn’t make French Toast or French Fries doesn’t bother you because you’re six or seven and your need for factual accuracy is pretty much at an all time low. That said I’d like to meet the six year old that says “Excuse me, French Fries are from Belgium.” If only to prep that kid for a long and brutal childhood.

Neal Rowland.

Factual accuracy also wasn’t a big deal for Neal Rowland of Beaufort, North Carolina owner of Cubbies Restaurant (2.5 stars, yelp) who trademarked the term “Freedom Fries.” Neal got pissed that the French Minister of Foreign affairs said that France would not partake in the Iraq war, so he decided to rename the completely Belgian snack to Freedom Fries, to make them even less French than they already were.

Cubbies has long since shut down, and according to his Facebook page now Mr. Rowland sells boats, one of which has a name that I feel causes all of his friends to awkwardly cringe and ask “Well, who’s going to tell him what it means?”

It seems he hates the French so much he has gone out of his way not to go anywhere near them.

4. The French are Pioneers at Physical Intimacy

[13 years old]

There’s a theory that guys go through a “girls have cooties” stage until they’re 13.  Never happened for me. I remember crushing on girls at like 6.  However the rest of my so-called-peers caught up, and in our early teens we learned about French Kissing and we’re ready to forgive everything. You do WHAT with WHAT?

The problem with French kissing is that a lot of adults still French kiss the way I imagine that 13 year olds imagined French kissing would work.

(There’s something disturbing about that sentence. The content is clean but I think there are just words and ages that are too close together. )

Anyway, as a public service announcement, I’d like to point out that the human tongue is a garnish and not a meal.   You should use your tongue furtively… the slo-mo version of the way a … frog uses its tongue, holy shit wait is THAT why we called them Froggies? I thought it was a frog eating thing and not a kissing thing.  Now I have to go rebuild my entire knowledge of the French starting at age 5, and on a Tuesday.

5. The French Have History
[14-15]

This timespan is sort of a blur of French Trivia that you “learn.”  I throw it in “quotes” because can you really say you learned something you can only barely recall? It’d be better to say you’re “told about.”

Napoleon was short – there’s a revolution – a bastille – a wall – maybe they sang a song about it called one more day but maybe that’s something else and, oh yeah, there are a couple of kings named Louis, oh also they had a lot of wars (so convenient!) and their taller guys all got killed in it so they’re kinda short, kinda like Napoleon.  Also oddly enough they really like Ben Franklin.  Seriously though I’ve seen Les Miserables the movie, the musical and read the book and I don’t remember anything about it.

6. The French Gave Us A Gift Once And Will Never Make That Mistake Again

The Statue of Liberty.  They gave it to us.   If you go on the tour they will tell you it was a gift, but they’ll only tell you who the gift was from if you BEG and make a very big deal out of wanting to know.  Americans never, ever, talk about this aspect of the Statue of Liberty, because we are ashamed of it.  Imagine the person you hate at work gives you something awesome that everyone then says is the BEST thing about you and signifies everything you stand for. This gift is your global IDENTITY, and that bitch/jerk is STILL talking about you in the staff room.

7. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
[???]

To be fair, I don’t know when we Americans learn this, I just know that we know about it, maybe from a cartoon or a musical or something. The problem is that if you ever ask an American where Notre Dame is there’s a really good chance we’ll say Ireland and it’s not our fault.

No one has ever explained to me why the University of Notre Dame is in America, and why it has an Irish mascot and why that Irish Mascot is Fighting.

Is it okay to suggest that all Irish men are violent? No. It’s wrong. But on top of wrong, it’s dumb to suggest that those same violent Irish men all hang out in Notre Dame. It’s not often that a person can be so wrong and so dumb in such an avoidable way but every weekend hundreds of thousands of Americans cheer for (or against) the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

(I won’t disgrace myself by telling you how old I was when I learned that the University of Notre Dame is actually in America.)

8. The French Are Sexual Pioneers part II
[16-20]Somewhere in your teens you learn about a menagé a trois.  Some cunning French scientists in a lab were so burned out on sex with two people (yawn) that they asked themselves “Ce qui se passe si trois personnes ont des rapports sexuels?”  The answer?  Confusion, chaos and a Bucket List item that most men die leaving unchecked. (But not nearly as many Women).  So many people have bought this wine and been sorely disappointed, but 2Chainz makes it clear that you just have to get involved.    Our love-hate with the French is so intense, I’m pretty confident that you can’t buy a wine that just says “threesome” in Paris.

9.  The French Hate Americans
[Adulthood]

Before my trip, I mentioned to a few friends that I might go to Paris, thinking they might give me a few pointers. Instead, each person winced like I’d told them I might go on a heroin binge.

“Look, Phil. I know you want to do this but…shit shit shit, okay. Look. Go to the Louvre, check out the Eiffel Tower, eat the food, but be ready. They hate Americans. Get In. Get Out. Do NOT Make Eye Contact, use a safe word. I’ll be here if you need me. Tell the embassy. Shit. I love you man. Really, it’s been great. We had some times, didn’t we?”

The thing is, any trip that could result in being being gifted a large statue, menaging on deux other people before being beat up by a mis-placed leprechaun seems like a trip worth taking so we booked our tickets to CDG.

Obama is normally fairly effusive about stuff, so when the only statements he made about Stonehenge were that it was “cool” and that he’d “knocked it off his bucket list” I should’ve known then to lower my expectations. 

“Cool, knocked that off my bucket list” is just one step away from “Well. Okay. That’s done” and a step past “So…every six to eight thousand miles? Got it.” The article also indicated that he’d spent twenty minutes at the henge, which I attributed to him being Presidentially Busy.  I didn’t consider the possibility that Stonehenge is worth about 20 minutes, and that’s only if you’re being Presidentially Polite.

I didn’t know any of this though and was simply excited, because I was in England and I was going to Stonehenge. In just a few hours I’d be surrounded by the magical rocks, filled with the beauty and majesty of the druids.

Would I have a spiritual enlightenment? Would I feel compelled to pray? Would I cry? Who knew? A few hours ago I called a woman a cunt because she asked me to, so it was clear to me that England is a land of unknowable wonder and surprise.

Our very English host prepared a very English breakfast, which consisted of a number of very English things, including tea. We nibbled on breakfast to be polite, but as soon as she wasn’t looking we shoved everything that wasn’t *completely* liquid into our pockets, bags, and purses for an event only known as “later.”

Apple? Squeeze it in a bag, for later. Crackers? Front pocket, for later. Packet of Ketchup? Hold on to it, it might be useful.  Later. Every traveller I know becomes a post-depression family of ten the second they get off the plane. My fridge at home never has as much food as I do on my person when traveling.

Americans have a stereotype for being rampant overeaters which, to be fair, is hard to deny.

It’s harder to deny when bumping into an American Traveler can dislodge the contents of an entire cornucopia all over the very English ground. “It’s for later” we’ll shriek, crawling over the dirt and Gollum-gathering our food-hoard.

Before we left though, I checked our Narnia-sized wardrobe for a Narnia.

There was no Narnia.

Mostly, I was unsurprised by this, because that’s how life is. There just aren’t any Narnia wardrobes. None that I’ve found anyway. 

However.

If upon reaching my hand into the wardrobe, the back of it gave way and I found myself in a foreign land with a giant talking Lion who may or may not be a Christ figure(‘this doesn’t end well for you lion’), a part of me would’ve shrieked with glee “I KNEW it! I’ve ALWAYS known it!” Is it weird that my life would make *more* sense if something strange and Narnical happened. Narnia makes more sense than (say) adulthood. Seems easier.

(When I wrote “Seems easier” in my mind it sounded exactly like the end of that scene in the social network where Justin “Sean Parker” Timberlake tells him to drop the THE in THEFACEBOOK.COM. “It’s cleaner.” “Seems easier.” That’s the tonality with which to read those two words. FYI.)

The lack of a magical foreign land inside my room shouldn’t have been disappointing, but it was.  In my disappointment I’d now raised the bar for my happiness to such an untenable level that the upcoming visit to Stonehenge was at a distinct disadvantage. “What? No Snow Queen? Fuck ALL of this.” That said, the brochure for Stonehenge was promising.

Look closely.

This is what I was sold.

Stonehenge looks motherfucking AMAZING. Like, this is just as appropriate.

I don’t know if these people are running to Stonehenge or from Stonehenge, but whatever it is they certainly don’t look unhappy.  Obama’s leisurely stroll made Stonehenge seem peaceful and relaxing, but these four are in the process of being thrilled. I made sure to wear shoes that were good for running or chasing or fleeing or whatever the hell this family of four was up to.

There’s a bus that runs to and from Stonehenge, and Old Sarum.  The best four seats in any of these buses are the front seats on the top level because then you get to just watch the countryside unfold before you.  These four seats will always be taken by Americans, I learned (and then did), because we love having the best stuff.

These were the first Americans we’d bumped into (so much food!) since landing in England a short 18 hours before.  Miles away from our home we heard the distinct accent (!) of people who shared, at the very least, the same passport, the same desire to travel, and the same interest in Stonehenge. Kindred Spirits. Ka-tet. The feeling I had upon hearing my countrymen was probably what you expect.

Fear. 

If there’s any sure-fire way to ruin a vacation, a conversation with other Americans will do it.  This isn’t a universal belief.  Studies have shown (okay, so I made that part up) that half of Americans hate talking to other Americans abroad.  The other half love it, and will actively seek it out.

If these studies had gone further they would’ve discovered that the first half only feel that way because they only end up talking to the second half, and if they had just spoken inside their own half they’d find a group of people that they kinda like hanging out with. 

Look, that’s confusing, but the upshot is this: I didn’t spend …eight pounds? eighty pounds? two hundred pence? Whatever, I didn’t spend a ton of money to fly across the country and talk to people that would’ve ignored me at home for free.

That’s the problem with money, it doesn’t have any say in the sort of person that can accumulate enough of it to travel.  In fact, money seems (in my experience) to accumulate disproportionately around the worst kind of people.

That doesn’t mean I would, like, kick puppies in order to get rich, but I bet a lot of rich people would, which basically proves my point.

The 4 guys at the front of the bus didn’t know each other, but they were cut from very similar cloth as they were actively engaged in a conversation that’s almost an American pastime:  The battle over who got the better deal.   Saving money is the secondary goal of deal hunters. The primary goal is shoving that amount down the throat of any person who paid more and makes the ultimate mistake of opening their mouth to say so.  The statement “I only paid $[x] because I did [y]” translates (loosely) to “I hope you and all of your descendants die in poverty.”

So I quietly judged these guys from the background, and made myself the second worst person on the bus (“Dude can’t we just small talk without you sniping us in a blog months later? Also your English accent is garbage, especially when whispered.”)

Finally, the bus parked next to the other fifty buses outside of the Stonehenge gift shop and welcome center.  I could almost taste the majesty.

We handed our tickets and they offered us a little portable speaker thing we could use for the tour.  My cheap-survivor mode kicked in and I smiled and said “Oh no thank you.” She read the thriftiness in my face and added “…it’s free.” Which is generous, but it also seems like such a rookie move, England.

Gift shops are amateur hour.  American daycares have gift shops.  This is Stonehenge! You could sell the speakers, you could sell the shuttle, you could even sell a special “Druid Tour” where you get to wear a robe and walk right up to the rocks and spin around or chant.   You’re just throwing money away, really.

“You don’t get to be a 1st world country with an 18 trillion dollar deficit by giving things away, England, ” Obama thought, but did not say.

There are two routes to Stonehenge from the gift shop. You can either take the shuttle which parks right next to the henge OR or the walking path which goes through a quiet forest and emerges onto the henge.  The shuttle definitely seemed like the golden chalice of choices so we took the path.

 They asked us not to touch the sheep, which was the first time anyone has ever said that to me.  That was probably a sad day when they had to add that to the training regimen.

As we walked along the path I made room in my heart and soul for an experience.  Tears. Religious fervor. Spontaneous combustion, whatever, I was down. The trees parted, and we emerged into a clearing and for the first time I saw Stonehenge, and it really, truly sunk in.

Stonehenge is a place where some people propped up some rocks a long time ago. No one knows why, it’s in a pretty enough field and there are some mounds near it, where some people got buried a long time ago. You can walk on the graves (because they’re “burial mounds”) but you can’t touch the rocks. Also, it’s Disney crowded there.

Sadly, the thing that will likely stick out most about Stonehenge was this moment.

Stonehenge represents the first time I saw a Selfie-Stick, a small stick you buy and attach your camera/phone to so that you can take a picture of yourself, or your entire group of friends, all of whom are collectively pledging allegiance to a flag which asserts your group’s belief that every single person you’re likely to bump into will be absolutely useless, even with a language barrier. Sorta bummed me out.

I listened to the portable speaker just long enough to discover that I didn’t want to know anything about Stonehenge (gotta pick your battles)  so I turned it off.  We took a few pictures in front of the henge, high-fived, and then boarded the shuttle back to the gift shop.

We shared the shuttle with a dozen or so people. Four college aged American girls were having a polite, but stilted, conversation with a man in a wheel chair (left leg amputated slightly below the knee) and his wife.   We asked how the Americans felt about London , and they said they loved it. When asked what we should do, everything they recommend was a shopping trip.

The man in the wheelchair was more engaging and told us that when he was a kid you used to be able to walk right up to the henges, but they eventually stopped that because they were worried a Stone was going to fall on someone, and henge them right into the ground.   We laughed at the idea of them being able to create another mound right there and basically get a new burial mound for free, forcing yet another revision to the training regiment. “Over here you can see two, excuse me three burial mounds that date back to thousands of years and two very awkward weeks ago.”

When I say WE laughed I do of course mean me, my girlfriend, the man, and his wife.  The four girls didn’t enjoy this joke at all.  Maybe if I’d given them a receipt with it…

No one asked us what we thought of Stonehenge which is a shame because I was ready with my punchline.

“It’s cool. I checked it off my bucket list.”

[Thanks to Lauren W. for reading drafts of this.]



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I’m a filmmaker living in Los Angeles. A film I made was accepted at the Raindance International Film Festival in London, England.  Having never really been abroad,  I decided to check out a bit of Europe.  My first stop: Salisbury.   Thousands of miles from home,  I decided to have a very English experience and went to a club and went to a very English club and they very much played Beyonce.

This is not an anomaly.  During the course of this trip I will visit 4 countries that speak 4 different languages.  In each country, within minutes of entering any bar or club I will inevitably hear Beyonce.   You can divide the number of minutes you spent  in the club by the number of minutes you waited before hearing Beyonce.  A larger number means there were more songs, a smaller number means there was more Beyonce.  If, upon entering a club, Beyonce is already playing, that would mean the number of minutes is 0, and you can’t divide by zero, without getting infinity. The Infinity Beyonce. Regardless, every club has a Beyonce Quotient, and this number is lower than I would’ve ever feared thought.  It’s not just music though, movies suffer from the same problem.

I went to a Sainsbury’s (CVS) in London and the movie section looked just like the movie sections in the states.  Really.  There wasn’t even a token copy of “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” or anything.  Just Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as far as the eye could see. Later, the joy I had upon seeing my first double decker bus was immediately crushed when it drove by, revealing a giant poster for The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Then it clicked.

America is the court jester of the world.

We don’t see ourselves that way.  Our self-esteem is uh… healthy.  It’s not like we’re swimming in Flags and Eagles, but we’re not NOT swimming in them either.  If you asked most Americans where’s the best place in the world to live, they wouldn’t hesitate to say “America.”  (And in some of the scarier places they might say “‘Murica”).  Due to the recent influx of Mexicans, Americans have this weird belief that the rest of the world is *also* eager to scale our walls, but don’t because there’s an ocean between us. 

It’s not true. The rest of the world is like Canada.  Perfectly content where they are.

Huge chunks of the world have no interest in any of our Eagles, or Flags and really only check in with us long enough to say “HEY AMERICA, DANCE FOR US! SING US A SONG! SHOW US YOUR FX!”, and, hungry for attention we do, while mumbling “Hey our democracy is up HERE.”

They roll their eyes, point at our education system and our healthcare situation and our not-so-metric system, plug their fingers in their ears and sing Drunk in Love. Touché. <– Also very European.

So I’m here in Salisbury (population 45,000). Spitting distance from Stonehenge and The Magna Carta, if you are a pretty great spitter, otherwise it’s driving distance. Everything is driving distance if you’re patient enough. You can drive across England in the time it takes to drive from Miami, FL to Panama City,FL.

(God, even the concept of spitting distance seems distastefully American.   “Is it close?” One cowboy says to the other “I dunno, can y’spit on it?”)

You know….the British are known to be remarkably polite.  I wonder if that’s just a function of…proximity.  If you make an ass of yourself in Swindon, you can’t move too far away from the scene without changing your nationality.  It’d be inconvenient to have a massive falling out with someone and realize that yes, you can move and start a new life, but yes, that life is going to be Scottish.

If I live in North Dakota,  I can act like an asshole and piss off everyone in North Dakota. Then I can just move to South Dakota and start a new life without learning a new accent or changing my passport. I’ll probably already know my way around town.

Bismarck to Rapid City

Meanwhile, at the club.

The not so Magna Carter’s wife is just killing it. People are singing along, and while the song is cute with an English accent, it’s not the wild foreign experience I’d signed up for. It felt a lot like being in New York. Or Gainesville. Or Las Vegas.  Or Berlin.  Why is Beyonce so popular here, I think, she’s ours! Don’t they have their own Beyonce?  (“We gave you Adele, Ed Sheehan, and Jessie J, so ease up.” – Great Britain)

Just when I reach inner peace with our joint custody of Beyonce, the next song comes on and this one kills them the exact same way and confuses me even more.  It’s not that I didn’t like the song. I did. Everyone did. It went to #3 on Billboard (Both in the US and UK) and was certified gold. I know every word.  It’s just surprising because there’s been a lot of music in the fifteen years since clubs went nuts over Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me.”

In the beginning of the movie Contact, there’s a sequence where the camera pulls out to space and you hear all of the transmissions that Earth has ever sent out.  The first couple transmissions are recent, grunge music, spice girls, etc. By the time you get out to the furthest edge of our galaxy the skips are larger, from MLK’s speech to music from the 20s.  Maybe our popular music is like that.  By the time it’s (SLAP ME) crossed the pond, 1999 and 2014 are basically the same.

I’m immediately jealous.  We place such a high value on newness with our music in the states. If a song isn’t so old that it’s a classic or so new that the artist is still learning the words then we’ll boo or we’ll pout or we’ll climb into the booth and slit the DJs throat for not having the latest s@#t.

It’s a shame though,  there are songs I would rock out to RIGHT NOW that just aren’t old enough to be cool again.  So for a moment it’s refreshing to be in a place that seems to like music without worrying about whether or not we’ve decided it’s okay (or not) to listen to that music.

(The King’s Head Inn. Ever been to a bar where there’s pictures from a history book on the wall? Just portraits of kings. Classy. Not even one girl in a bikini. I’ve been to bars where the walls were JUST naked girls. Ripped from adult magazines. True story.)

We make our way upstairs, and there’s tables and… no bouncers. It’s nice, comfortable even.  No one tells us we need to move. No one says you need to order food to sit here.  No one cares at all.  I want to turn to the Blokes/FemaleBlokes around me and say “Do you know how many pounds it would’ve cost just to sit here if we were in Los Angeles? Well I don’t know either because I’m bad at converting, but trust me, you wouldn’t like it.”

My girlfriend and I hang out for a bit and then decide we need to go someplace even MORE local.  I want someplace British. Some place COVERED in Union Jacks, someplace with people singing “I’m Henry the Eighth I am” while mugs filled with mead slosh in every hand, the menu has nothing but fish, and chips, and bangers, and mash, and fish covered in chips and bangers filled with mash-flavored-fish-chips. A place so British that I’ll worry that they’re going to re-colonize America right there starting with me.

BLOKE:  Hey you, in the dreads. Yeah, you. You just got colonized.
ME:  I’m intrigued, but honestly man that sounds a LOT like Slavery.
BLOKE: It’s not Slavery.
ME: Ok….Does this mean I’m British now?
BLOKE: Right-O, mate!
ME: Hell, yeah! I’m in. This bar is —
Bloke clears his throat in a very polite English way.
ME: — this pub, excuse me, this pub is the best. Hail the Queen! Oasis 4ever.

Clearly I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I know it’s not Beyonce mixed with Nelly.  So we soldier on.

The next club looks so much like so many other bars that I take a video just because I know when I get back I won’t believe it.

So very much the same, but so different because there’s a -garden- that the sign is inviting us to go partake in.  Here, come  to the garden… this way. Yonder. Through to Garden. And then we’ll have a bit of tea.  Here… in the Gaaaarden.

American bars don’t have Gardens.  It’s just a sweaty box where you get groped and lung cancer. No Garden.  If you’re lucky there’s a patio.  But it’s never presented as “Through to Patio.”  It’s more “Fuck you, yeah there’s a patio here, try not to puke on anyone.”

We go Through to Garden.

People are smoking, drinking, talking to friends.  We didn’t have friends so we sat at a table and made friends.

The conversation was nice. Having grown up in a small town I’m intimately familiar with the small town list of grievances.  Salisbury, which is lovingly called Smallsbury, is “too small” and “everyone is in everyone’s business” and “I know everyone here” and “there’s nothing to do.”  It’s the exact inverse of the LA list of grievances “It’s too big” and “Everyone is a stranger” and “I think I’m carrying Adrien Brody’s baby.”

Someone asked for a cigarette and when the box of cigarettes appeared I laughed out loud. At that moment I learned that while America might not hate me, England definitely likes her people more.

Cigarettes cause cancer which causes death. This is the warning sign, mandated by the US Government, on the back of a pack of cigarettes.

In England, and much of the EU it turns out, the warnings look like this.

I don’t laugh though because I can’t, in my inebriated state, explain how great it is that these things are so honest about their lethality.  Not to someone who is currently being lethal’ed by them, anyway. It seems wrong, and I put a lot of energy into at least seeming like a nice person.  So much so that midway through the conversation, the lady I’m speaking to interrupts me abruptly and says “You seem like a nice guy.”

The conversation had gotten off to a rocky start. We started talking about relationships, because that’s my jam, and then she said something that I thought meant “relationships get a little rough” but then she said something which made me think that her relationship got physically Rough.

“I am a nice guy.” I say to her, happy to steer the conversation away from domestic violence.

“You’re probably too nice.” she says, except with her accent it comes out as something you want your neighbors to turn down.  Turn down all that NOICE, we’re trying to sleep. You might say.

This was very clearly a trap.  I figured I’m a garden so things couldn’t go that badly. “Too nice for what?”

“Call me a dirty cunt,” she says.

Have you ever studied a foreign language?

The books are filled with chapters on what you should say in common circumstances when you’re abroad.

Chapter 1 is Greetings. (“Hi. What’s Your Name? Where are you from?”).  Chapter 2 is The Restaurant (“I’d like to have some water.”) Chapter 3 The Train Station (“Where is the terminal?”).

I took about dos years of espanol, and un semestre of French, but I don’t remember anything about what to do when someone asks you to call them a cunt, dirty or otherwise.

I give a panicked look across the table at my girlfriend, fearing that she’s hearing all the wrong greatest hits of this conversation “…you’re nice….i’m nice….cunt.”  What could she possibly think?

Furthermore,  I’m pretty clear I’ve never even said that word in front of her at this point.  She’s wrapped up in conversation with DirtyCuntLady’s friend. (In the world of nicknames there is nothing worse than Dirty Cunt Lady. I’ll admit it, but it’s just the only shorthand that works for you and I right now, right? You know I’m not *actually* casting aspersions about any part of this lady’s vagina right? It’s just about the request? Cool? Cool.)

Feeling pressured — I think she’s trying to trick me into getting kicked out of the pub or something,  I try but I just… I can’t.  I just can’t find it in myself to call her a dirty cunt. It seems wrong in every possible way.  I just won’t. I …c(u/a)n’t.

Instead I challenge her, thinking she’ll back off and we can get back to talking about cigarettes, “Okay, you call me a fucking wanker!” I say, feeling triumphant.

I had barely finished saying “wanker” before she says, with glee “YOU FUCKING WANKER!”

Emboldened, I yelled “YOU DIRTY CUNT!”

The table froze. My girlfriend was shocked. She spun and called my name, assuming that this is what it looked like right before you got kicked out of England, on your very first day.

Without missing a beat the lady turned to my girlfriend and the rest of the table and announced “Ahahaha I am a cunt,” then she smiled and added “But I’m a lovely one.”

This is not a garden. This is a patio. This is Salisbury. I fucking love it.

Last Week: The Part before this part.
Next Week: StoneHenge I guess?

Earlier I told my friends that I wanted to find the “Gainesville, Florida” of England.   I grew up in Gainesville and having spent time in a number of American cities, I know how useless some of them are for experiencing America. My presupposition was that visiting London would be fairly useless when it comes to experiencing England.   During my time abroad people will tell me they’ve been to “The States” (that’s how they refer to it, holding on to that colonial ownership ’til the bitter end), and explain that they’ve been to New York.  I tell them that New York is so weird that other Americans go to New York to see how weird it is, and when they get home they breathe a sigh of relief that they don’t live in New York.  Being in New York is just not indicative of anything other than being in New York.

Gainesville, Florida is a nice innocuous city, population ~120k, with a footnote: “Home of the University of Florida.”  Salisbury, England is similar, except the footnote is “Pretty close to Stonehenge.”

Except that’s not entirely true.  This is the problem with Europe.  Even your small ‘nothing’ town is SO old that it is just teeming with history.  Castles, everywhere, religious artifacts, significant wars.   There are people watching TV right now that are almost as old as America.

In addition to being Pretty Close to Stonehenge, it’s also the home of The Magna Carta, which you’ll know of as being something that Jay-Z referred to in his album which you’ve already stopped listening to.  The Magna Carta something something Democracy something Constitution something Church something old document.  To be honest, I didn’t even know that much about the Magna Carta.  It’s weird to think that, decay aside, there exists a piece of paper with my handwriting that proves that in 8^th grade I almost certainly knew a LOT about the Magna Carta (and had to prove it to Mr. Beckmann in US History) but that piece of paper is (unlike the Magna Carta) not in a church, not in a Jay Z lyric, and really no one has asked me about it since.  I don’t have the slightest clue where it is.

Years before Mr. Beckmann’s class, I was at J.J. Finley, which, being kids, we renamed JJ Junkyard.   How did we know what Junkyard was? We were like… seven years old.  This was before we learned that you shouldn’t “shit where you sleep.” There’s something very sad about a group of children making fun of the public school that they’re currently attending.

KID 1:You know what’s terrible?

KID 2: This place where we are creating the academic foundation that will determine the course of our lives?

KID 1: Yeah, it’s not unlike a Junkyard.

BOTH: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Anyway.

JJ (Junkyard) Finley was the first time I’d heard the word Salisbury because of the lunch program.  The way it generally worked at Finley was that white kids brought “home lunch”: a paper bag, which had things like sandwiches, capri suns, and fruit roll ups.  The black kids had “school lunch” which had things that were sometimes edible and always gross.   One of those things was Salisbury Steak, a brown square of something we’ll call “meat” for the sake of argument, that I had exactly one bite of and NEVER ate again.

I never really thought about Salisbury again until I wanted to see Stonehenge.   It’s really a testimony of my own inner flexibility that my reflex wasn’t “Salisbury? No, thanks. Let’s check out Cornwall or something.” Childhood trauma sticks with you. I’m a fighter.

We make it to Salisbury by way of train, and then cab it to our AirBnB.  The car stops, and the cabbie reads off the amount and with a sinking sensation I realize that I don’t have any pieces of paper or metal coins that have that exact number printed/molten onto them. I’m going to have to make change.

The currency exchange problem creates a situation where either I have to overpay people, underpay people. Every time. Also as a result I make every transaction take ten minutes longer than necessary while I try to figure out what coin is worth what, and how to convert that to dollars.   I didn’t want to make the guy spend more time waiting for me to do math than he’d spent driving, so I just ballpark it based on weight and hand over some coins.  “Hmm, this is hefty, have this.”

“You do realize you’ve paid me double the fare, right?”  Just by asking, I feel he’s earned it, it’s only…fair.

The house is super English and adorable.  I’m not sure when architects invented the “closet”, but it was sometime after most of the houses in England were built.  As a result, most of the rooms have a Narnia cabinet in them, because…you know… clothes, right?  The host is super English and adorable and says things like “The English are a bit mad about horses.”

 We see pictures of her (grown) kids who send letters addressed to ‘Mum’.  There are absolutely no pictures or references to a Man/Father/Husband type, so I make a mental note to place him in the Voldemort box, never ask about him and think “Well, at least she got the house.”

By now it’s pretty late, and we’re kind of slap happy tired but it’s also Friday night so we head down to the bars pubs.

The bar scene in a quaint English town is different, and I have to overcome a bit of resistance to the idea.  There’s something strange about discovering a quaint Hans Christian Andersen town with cobblestones and then immediately trying to get drunk in it.  The first bar we go to is called The White Stag or something.  The bartender smiles when she sees me (during our entire stay in Salisbury I see two black people, and none with dreadlocks), and then almost falls apart when I open my mouth to order a Perroni.  WHO HAS THE ACCENT NOW?

I’m halfway around the world, drinking a Perroni with my sick American accent, thinking about what a world traveler I am and how foreign and different everything is, how far away I am from everything and everyone I know when suddenly the club goes wild because the DJ has started the next song.  Beyonce.

Next Week: More Salisbury, probably some Stone Henge,  and why that lady asked me to call her a dirty cunt.

Last Week: The UK Customs Lady tries her best to determine if I’m here to do ruinous things to her nation.

Soooooo…. the customs agent isn’t fucking around.  That much is clear because my usual smile and friendly banter does not engender the same.  She asks why I’m here and I tell her that I’m here to attend a film festival.  Not coincidentally, this is exactly what I wrote on the form.  Is she fact-checking?  Maybe she thinks I wouldn’t be able to remember my lie for the whole thirty seconds between handing her the card and her verbal double check? Maybe she thinks I’ll say “Uhh, wait, what did I write down again?” BUSTED.

(Or maybe she’s making a VERY subtle Monty Python joke.)

The customs form also has a field where you fill in the address where you’re staying. Mine reads “Don’t know. AirBnB.”  Because my girlfriend booked it and I couldn’t be bothered to ask her.  I had every intention of asking but then people around me started being Clever and British and I got distracted.

The customs agent doesn’t like this answer, and asks me, incredulously “You don’t know where you’re staying?”  That’s what I wrote on the form, and why I wrote it, I think, but do not say.

A second customs agent (the one that was talking to my girlfriend) comes over to my agent and says “She says they’re going to a Film Festival, is that what he says?”

Holy shit they are fact checking us!

This is both surprisingly intense and intensely stupid. It’s a level of scrutiny that wouldn’t catch even the FLIMSIEST of terrorist plots.  This method will only stop the old, the forgetful, and the disorganized, which would be a really tasteless name for Clint Eastwood’s very last Western.  If this is how you’re going to fact check people you might as well open up the gates and pass out your giant keys (wait for it).  Do you know how hard it is to pick an address from a map and say “Visiting some friends from uni?”  Very easy. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do.  “AirBnB. Don’t know” guy is not the guy coming to blow shit up.  The guy who says “626 willowby lane my aunt lives there and I am coming to visit her for two weeks before returning to my home, I will be staying at 626 willowby lane. 626. God save the queen.”  Well, I’d ask that person a few additional questions.

—

There’s a few things you should know about England, should you pop by for a bit.  Keep in mind, I am an anglophile. I love England. If they would have me, I would move there, tomorrow.  Truly.

1. England has Relationship Baggage

Have you ever broken up with someone, and then months later they’ve started dating someone new, and that person is better than you in every single meaningful and measurable way? That’s England.  A few hundred years ago they sent some people to date The New World and create England 2.0. New England.

Those people said “Oh, sweet, thanks” and started their own country, which quickly eclipsed England.  Then said country went on to claim their very language (English) and spread it all over the world, and now when people think of speaking “English” they don’t even think of England. They think of your ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend, basically.  It’s rough.

Then, on the rebound.  England dated Australia.  To make this metaphor work you could think of Australia as England’s jump-off (or booty call, or town harlot, depending on your age), but it was the jump-booty-harlot in the sense that Australia was basically a penal colony (like Fiorina 161, for the 1 of you that is *that deep* into David Fincher). Australia was where England sent their worst convicts as punishment.  “Worst” is subjective because back in old-school England there were over 200 crimes that carried the death penalty, including (but not limited to) cutting down trees, or stealing rabbits. Still, they sent some 160,000 people to Australia to teach them a lesson.

Typical day in England.

Typical day in Australia.

The lesson of course is that life in Australia is sunny and really fucking awesome, and there’s a plethora of trees and the rabbits here are huge and awesome and carry baby rabbits in their fur stomach pockets. Have you learned your lesson convicts?

After the 160,000 convicts were sent to Australia for taking things that didn’t belong to them, they pooled their taking ability and collectively took Australia away from England  in 1932. And now, according to Kayak, Londoners have to spend roughly 900 pounds to go to a place that was punishment just 100 years ago.

British people carry this in their heart, every single day.

2. England is a Pirate Economy – #1

Do you see this key? It’s really glorious right? When you walk around with a key like this it makes every day feel like a grand adventure, which is especially important when you live in a place which has had only three to four days of sunshine since Richard the second.

What would you guess this is the key to? A carriage?  A vault of swords? Narnia? You’d be wrong. This is the key to an apartment. Not even a particularly nice one. Three of the four places I rented in England had keys that looked like this.  I’ve lived in apartments, so I know what apartment keys are supposed to look like. They look like this.  Or like this.   British keys look like pirate keys because every single British person’s great grandfather was Blackbeard. True story.

3. England is a Pirate Economy – #2

Change in America has become so meaningless that entire phrases have gone extinct.  Due to the sinking American economy (more on that later) these phrases have had to (ahem) change with the times.

ORIGINAL

“Here’s a quarter, go call someone who cares”

“That and 50 cents will buy you a cup of coffee.”

ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION

“That and 50 cents will buy you a cup of coffee as long as the original “That” was an additional 50 cents because coffee costs a dollar at the *waffle house*”

“Here’s a quarter, go find someone who cares enough to give you another ten cents because that’s what it costs to make a call these days, oh nevermind there aren’t any more payphones are there?”

A quarter is so useless that there’s almost nothing you can do with it by itself.  And a penny?  If I drop one penny, it doesn’t even *occur* to me to stop what I’m doing to pick it up.   Minimum wage in California is 900 pennies per hour, which is 15 pennies per minute.  Stopping to pick up a penny is actually a net loss in the value of time. In America if someone gives you a handful of coins you are completely entitled to tell them to go to hell and stop being such a condescending piece of shit.

The British are socially immediately downstream of pirates and you can see it in their economy.

You could buy a kidney with any *one* of these coins, I think.

In England if someone gives you a handful of coins you can go pay your rent with it. It’s an astonishing amount of money. I will push British people out of the way if I hear a coin hit the ground.

I didn’t say that, and as a result we made it through customs.

Next Week: The lady that asked me to call her a dirty cunt.
Last Week: Why the English accent is the best thing in the world.

I think they are being misused.

This is an unpopular opinion (and maybe even an ill-informed one) . Everyone that I respect who travels (which at last count is every single person I know) swears by these guides. It’s not a question of accuracy or value. His opinion is steeped in one hundred percent experience.  This isn’t your friend who went to Spain once helping you pronounce Gracias with a lisp.  This is Mr. Steves’ thing. Not even like his side job, but his 9-to-5.  He pays the bills by going to places and writing books about them.  It begs the question what he does for his 2 weeks yearly vacation. I hope it’s something like “work in a cubicle and have crappy meetings.”

Although this question-beg begs an additional question, can you really take travel advice from someone who travels for a living?  Even if they tried to dial down their experience to match yours, that’s someone that is still pretending.  Like when you’re playfightingwith a little kid and the kid is trying as hard as they can to destroy you while you’re simply messing around, and at one point they can sense it and they get frustrated and maybe start to cry.  Basically it’s condescending and no one likes that, Rick.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

It’s not his fault that his life is travel-awesome, and that’s not even why I can’t yet swear on a stack of Rick Steves guides, and to be honest, I’m disappointed that I don’t, because I really wanted to.  There’s the obvious reason of “having my travel plans sorted out,” but there was a side perk:

When all of your friends are into something, and have been into something that never crossed your mind there’s the distinct feeling of having been left out, systematically, for a long long long time.  This isn’t “my friends threw a party and didn’t invite me”, this is “my friends have partied every Tuesday for years and never noticed I wasn’t even there.”

I imagined that by embracing Rick Steves full on, I’d become part of a larger Rick Steves community. Me and my fellow Stevians could give each other knowing smiles, maybe even quote Rick to one another. “The Cotswolds are an absolute delight by car!” [“Rick Steves’ England”,The Cotswalds] Later as we rose through the church of Steve we’d become even more cryptic. “England? Page 525? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.” We would laugh in all caps together, just like that. It wouldn’t be quite as menacing as it looks in writing though.

Things between Rick and I started off well initially.  I started reading and it all seemed like exactly the kind of things I needed to know.  Currency exchange? Great.  What time of year to visit? Cool.  Basic local customs? (“Don’t talk loudly on the train!”) and then there was a really great thirty seconds of confusion when I read this passage and thought Rick was making weird hip-hop jokes.

“There’s no T.I. outside the city gates, but just inside there’s a smaller T.I.”

Ha ha Rick, you know there’s no such thing as a smaller T.I., and why do they keep him inside the gates, bring ‘im out, bring ‘im out!

Of course I (not as quickly as I should have) figured out that he meant Traveler’s Information center or something like that, but for a minute Rick Steves was my GUY.

But then… it just got to feel a bit too limiting.  After the basic overview of the city, Rick pretty much has traveled for you and just bumper-bowls you through the country, slapping stars (he uses black triangles because why not) on things that he thinks are good and slapping fewer triangles on things that he doesn’t think are quite as good.  It felt like watching a movie with someone who’d seen it before and insists on evaluating each scene just before it starts. “This part sucks. Oh you’re going to love this. Oh wait til this next line comes, it’s great.”

Then after a few pages he drops the evaluation facade and rolls out his real master plan where he just straight up schedules things for you. “Okay, if you’re going for 7 days, do this. But if you’re going for 3 days, do this, and in this order.” Good intentioned, sure but … it just kinda felt like I was just going to be following Rick Steves’ dotted family-circus-line across Europe.

On paper, this makes sense.  If you’re an American and you only get two weeks of vacation in your life total, don’t screw up and spend 10 days of it having an awful time because you went to the wrong place, and saw the wrong things, but… I don’t know.  There’s a point where that level of evaluation might not be necessary. I’m not sure anyone is traveling to (say) America with an itinerary that says “7 days De Moines, 3 days New York.”     Also. Contrast. I think sometimes, people will appreciate those three black triangle things more because they saw a no black triangle thing the day before.

Monday: Eiffel Tower(▲ ▲ ▲)
Tuesday: Empire States Building(▲ ▲ ▲)
Wednesday: Dubai’s 3 (▲ ▲ ▲) building.
Thursday: Horrible jet lag.

That’s an awful tour, despite it being 100% triple black triangle from end to end.

Also, if I’m going to see (say) Stonehenge, I don’t want to hold my perception of it up against the imaginary scorecard. “‘Henge you BETTER three black triangle me or we are going to have some harsh druid words.”  

I closed the book and took a good look at Rick Steves on the back cover and issue #2 occurred to me.

Rick Steves and I probably don’t like the same stuff.

I’m confident that (if) as I get older, I will age into someone that likes the kind of stuff that Rick Steves likes.  But right now, it’s a safe bet that Rick Steves target demo is someone that is a lot like him, and that the closer you get to being like him the more enjoyment you can wring from his guide about the things that he likes.  Chances are, he will very specifically filter out some things that I like A LOT. The disconnect between us wasn’t immediately apparent, but maybe it should have been.

When he mentioned anti-pick-pocketing strategies  I immediately went to Amazon.com and bought a money belt. You know, a belt with a zipper and a hidden compartment where you can stash bills. The glee and smug satisfaction in the reviews were palpable “I just go to the bathroom and I take out my money for the day and then I’m good to go!”, “I would not use a wallet in my pants pocket to avoid the bulge that attracts thieves.” I feel like these reviewers were all a little pissed that no one tried to pick their pockets on vacation.

My friend was unimpressed what I told him about my money belt.

“Why do you have one?”

“So no one robs me. It’s kind of a theft thing. And if they do, I’ll just give them my mostly empty wallet.”

“Phil. You’re 6’4”, 200 pounds, black and you have dreadlocks.  Any one of those things takes you off the ‘Easy Mark’ list, and you’ve got all four. No one in Slovenia is going to rob you. The people that bought those money belts are buying them because they are scared of YOU.”

I never wore my belt, and was never robbed.  Unless you count the giant-money-suck that being in London is, because $16 USD is a bit much for a budweiser any way you spin it, but don’t spin it, it’ll spray everywhere when you open it because that’s how carbonation works, jeesh you shouldn’t travel at ALL.

Ah. To be fair. Rick Steves is pretty up front with this.  His books aren’t even titled “Travelers’ Guide To Europe” or “Visiting England” or even “100 Things you should see in London.” It’s just the possessive.

RICK STEVES’ EUROPE.
RICK STEVES’ ENGLAND.
RICK STEVES’ FRANCE (2009).

“This is MY England, Phil McCarty, PERIOD. Full Stop.  Because what am I gonna do? Write RICK STEVES AND YOURS, STRANGER WHOM I HAVENT MET’S ENGLAND?”

You could almost rename any one of his guides “A curated list of restaurants, sightseeing spots, hotels, and travel tips for [Country].”  Because at that, they excel, and I will certainly buy them for future trips.  That’s only half of what I wanted out of my Travel though.  The truth is you can have a fantastic trip to Europe eating wherever occurs to you and skipping every single sightseeing spot available.

[Author’s note: Having traveled a bit now, I do have what I think is a much more practical way to make a Travel vacation which allows for more adventure, and also gets closer to the heart of what makes a country right for someone, and not for someone else, , as well as a list of things you should know/do before you travel that Rick has skipped over, but more on that later. Cliffhangers, yo.]

First. England

(also, I really hope you saw TI in the picture of the city gates. So much so that there’s this postscript about it.)

I stopped by and she asked which books I needed. Still being in my “discovery phase” I wasn’t sure, so I started naming cities and countries to see which ones she had.

London? (Yes.)

Germany? (Yes.)

Paris? (Yes. There may have also been an eye roll.)

She could tell that I was just trying to sink her No-I-Haven’t-Been-There battleship so she pulled out her box of Rick Steves books.

Let’s use adjectives.

So she pulled out her giant box of well worn Rick Steves books.  Some books had been bent, creased, and worn down to the nub from use.  Others were in better condition but only because they’d been replaced with the 2^nd and 3^rd (“new for 2014!”) editions for the 5^th and and 6^th time she went back to said country because she needed to know what new things were going on or skip it and go back later when said country had pulled their act together and made it worth her while.  She later apologized because she only had a handful of books for Europe (“Most of my traveling is in the third world.”) She also gave me ambien but that’s neither here nor there.

Going to a country that all your friends have already been to is a little bit like… well it’s nothing at all like having sex with a prostitute but that’s the first thing that sprang to mind and I’m not one to argue with my subconscious (That’s a lie. That’s really the only activity I’m ever engaged in.) The point is that visiting a country that all your friends have visited is a lot like that Robert Frost poem about prostitution. The one about the less traveled path. Or that Poe poem. (“Quoth the raven, she’s a whore.”)

The image of me coming back and telling all of my travel stories to all of my friends as they nod politely and think “Yadda yadda yadda yeah yeah yeah big ben arc de triumph I get it I get it, bro I was there like yesterday” made me feel filthy inside.  The only way to get clean was to go some place that NO one had been.

So I pulled out a map.

That’s a lie.  If you say “I pulled out a map” you sound so cartographic that the next thing you say better involve a compass and a protractor.

I hit alt-tab and opened another window and visited google maps. Then I hit that social network thing and used this (cool-but-stalkery) feature where you can search “Friends that have been to [Country].”

The feature will then give you a list of every single one of your friends that have visited the aforementioned country.

Here are the rough numbers in my increasingly well Traveled circle of friends.

The United Kingdom: More than 100
France: 85
Italy: 61
Spain: 53

I haven’t even spoken to 53 different people in the last month, but they have ALL been to Spain. I was quickly running out of untouched Europe, but in researching I made a startling discovery.

Much like moving to LA and learning that LA is, in fact, five different cities.  (Your friend in Santa Monica does not live in the same city as your friend who lives in Silverlake.)   I learned that there’s not just one Europe. There are, according to my understanding at the time of this writing, at least three Europes. It just so turns out that while all of my friends have been to Europe, most of them have only been to the first Europe, Western Europe.

Western Europe is fun-vacation-study abroad-honeymoon Europe. Italy, Spain, France, England, and though geographically distinct you can pretty much toss all of Scandinavia in there (not that anyone has been anywhere except Amsterdam).   Western Europe is the accessible Girl Next Door of Europe.  Cute. Friendly. Not likely to take your wallet or be war-torn. In an effort to have a different experience I figured I’d go the exact opposite end of the continent. Eastern Europe.

What’s that term when people kind of dust off old beliefs and interests and values and taste and change their clothing and facial hair because they prefer the old ways to the new modern ways in sort of a nostalgic way? Retro? Hipster?   Well, according to Google, it turns out that Eastern Europe can be VERY hipstery about black people insomuch as they hate us.  They are retro about racism.  Not all of Eastern Europe of course, but enough that well… here:

In The States people will tell you about the bad part of town.  In Eastern Europe people will tell you about the bad countries.  Entire longitudinal lines that must not be crossed if you don’t blend in. Ukraine, Poland, …well Ukraine’s not safe for anyone right now, but you get the idea. If you google “White Guy” + “Romania” the first article is about fun things to do, and a funny tour guide.

You probably haven’t, but… have you googled black guy romania? So many exclamation points.

Does this mean if I visited Romania I’d get murdered? No. Does this mean if I visited Romania and got murdered that anyone would feel any sympathy for me? Also, no. (“Man did he even TRY to Google it?”)  That left the third Europe, Central Europe.

Central Europe, in my mind was kind of Question Mark Europe, filled with countries that I was just completely unfamiliar with and always sound made up when you hear about them coming in last (again) in the Olympic sports you care about. Countries that are forever merging, unmerging, declaring independence, losing it, re-declaring it, losing it, that kind of thing.  One of those countries that invariably used to be Czechoslovakia.

Croatia:11
Hungary: 12
Slovakia: 6
Bosnia and Herzegovina:3
Slovenia: 2.

Finally. Success. Only two of my friends have ever been to Slovenia? I can handle 2.  Plus I barely even know those two people so chances of me running into them and boring them with my Slovenia stories? Slim.  And, to be honest, one of them I don’t like very much at all…

Now it’s 1. (Screw that guy.)

In a real coup my friend did not have the Rick Steve’s Guide to Slovenia, nor had she heard of it. I was already winning.

Amazon didn’t have it either. What the — oh. Turns out, Slovenia is kinda small.  Slovenia is so small that Rick Steves pretty much skipped through town on his way to Croatia and bundled it together. Rick Steves devotes one complete book on things to do in the city of London.  The entire country of Slovenia is an add-on to some other book.  I can almost hear him saying “Well let’s just throw in Slovenia, we can’t stick it in with Belgrade.”  Is Belgrade even a country? I’m so ignant cause that’s almost definitely a city in Germany. Ignant and lazy I guess because I can’t be bothered to Google it.

So, with great excitement, I started to read the Rick Steves guide to Croatia and in a much smaller font Eh-Why-Not-Slovenia.
Next Part Three: Rick Steves & Croatia

A film I’d directed was accepted to a film festival in London, so I decided to use it as an excuse to Travel.

I’ve traveled. I’ve never really Traveled.

Sure. I’ve been places.  Toronto twice, once for a film festival where I spent the great majority of the time in movie theaters.    And then there were the day-excursions from cruise ships, although Cancun at this point feels more American than much of America.  While, technically, I used my passport to go to both, it was only because I insisted. Both customs agents would’ve been okay with a thumbs up and my drivers license.   It just doesn’t feel like Travel if, were shit to hit the fan, you could pack up your things and drive home.

To be clear, I thought I’d Traveled.  Toronto is in a different country! They use loonies!  In Cancun people spoke Spanish when pressed!  It was only when sharing my upcoming trip with my friends that I discovered that, comparatively, I hadn’t traveled at all.  It’s distinctly possible that I hang with a bunch of overprivileged fuckers but damn if every single one of them didn’t have a story about truly stunning amounts of time that they’d spent abroad.

These weren’t the expected week-long trips to Paris for a honeymoon or whatever.  That window of time when we lost touch? I thought it was because I was being reclusive, but really it’s because they were living in a cheateau in Marseilles for SIX MONTHS perfecting their ability to make crepes because why not? [That’s just the friends who weren’t currently abroad when I asked them the question.]

“Well the first time I went to Europe for three months I …”
“OH PHIL, my second semester in Prague I …”
“Ugh, Stockholm, really? Well I *guess* you could go there…”

That level of disdain is something I’m only used to hearing in reference to things like…Wal-Mart. Starbucks. Nickelback.  I’m not even sure what kind of life I’d have to live in order to have an “Ugh, Stockholm” in my heart but it certainly sounds appealing, because if I’ve learned anything in life it’s that being bored of shit that other people fantasize about means you are in the lead. (and we all want to be in the lead).

That particular friend had seen a big chunk of Europe when she was on the road with Snoop Dogg so maybe she meant “Ugh, Stockholm with Snoop? I guess you could do that…”  Truth is, I can’t. Snoop and I aren’t cool like that.

A lot of her travel stories involve border-trouble.

Now, I’ll admit that that part of the reason we do cool shit is so we can tell our friends we’re doing cool shit to hide the overwhelming sadness that ever threatens to crush their lives. Aggressive vacationing. To vacation AT someone.  There are a couple of ways To Vacation at someone, it in addition to the reflexive “Ugh, Stockholm…” approach.  The most popular is the pit-trap.  This is ingenious because it plays on an assumed level of conversational politeness we all begrudgingly adhere to. The person’s politeness will allow you to shine.

1. Greeting.  You dig a small hole. (“Hi!”)

2. Pleasant Inquiry. Place your spikes.  (“How are you doing?”)

3. Deeper Inquiry. Cover the hole with Debris. (“Oh really? Going anywhere special?”)

[at this point the person will make you listen to whatever candle of hope they are hanging in the distance of their own personal happiness.  Just wait it out and nod encouragingly. If while you’re internally prepping your awesome response you find that they are, in fact, going to Europe for like, a year or something, then you’ll have to modify your next response and simply say. “Must be nice.” to make them feel guilty for trying to find happiness in this life.  Move on to a new friend. However if they’re just going to a movie or something they’ll invariably ask you about you.  This is where you spring your trap, and they fall into the hole.

4. Innocent Response. (“Oh me? Well, actually…”)

I’m no exception. I’ll Vacation at people all day long, it’s just a way to pass the time you know? That said, part of my sharing was practical.

The film festival was 14 days long. I booked a 21 day ticket which would give me seven days of exploration, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t fuck it up, pick the wrong countries and end up having a bad time.  It’d taken me the better part of three decades to get to Europe and what’s to say that I’d ever get back?

You know what I discovered? Everyone really loves traveling, and traveling is like… a bonafide aspect of many people’s lives.  I always thought this was something boring people said when you asked what their hobbies were and they didn’t want to say TV. (“Oh I love food and traveling.”)  Ask your friends, and try to find someone who doesn’t identify as a foodie that loves traveling. You can’t.  [It’d be refreshing though.  “I’m kind of a meat and potatoes kinda person and I mostly just like staying at home to be honest.” ]

There’s a gender skew though, while everyone likes traveling,  girls LOVE traveling.  Now that I think about it I’ve never, not once, ever, heard one of my guy friends say “Hey bro, you know what I fucking love? Traveling. Traveling is the fucking best.”  A girl will stop whatever activity she’s engaged in short of childbirth in order to gush over how much she loves traveling.

[I mentioned this to my friend and suggested that maybe this means girls appreciate art, culture, and food a bit more than guys.  He suggested that “Girls like the distance from their peer group and the chance to ho out a bit without any social repercussions. Guys can do that at home.” ]

So that said I mostly turned to my female friends to figure out what countries I should visit with my spare time, having taken the initial financial hit of flying across the Atlantic Ocean.

Crossing The Pond: A loathsome phrase that people use as a substitute for “flying across the Atlantic Ocean”. Back in the day (~1600s) the trip across the atlantic took somewhere between one and five MONTHS, and people died on it.  The British, being British, like to both wallow in and downplay their misery, so the colonists referred to this nightmarish trip as Crossing the Pond.  Now the same trip takes about six hours and you can watch 22 Jump Street and X-Men The Last Stand during, so the litotic nature of the phrase has lost pretty much all weight. I hate this phrase.  If you ever hear me say Cross The Pond you have the right and responsibility to smack me full on in the face with the back of your hand.

There was very little consensus about which European country to visit.  Based on a casual survey Europe is wall-to-wall awesome. Every country is magical. Every trip will be fantastic. You can’t go wrong.

The only three things that people seemed to agree upon were:

1. London is Expensive.  Not in an eye-roll way, but in a re-mortgage your house way.

2. France is Great. The French are not.

3. OMG RICK STEVES YOU HAVE TO READ HIM.

Rick Steves was a “new” thing for me so I decided to track some down and see what the fuss was all about.

Next in part 2:  The Three Europes