I flew to Detroit, then back to Rochester. Finally a chance to see the GM-Building (General Motors, the dark towers mid-left), and drop by American Jewelry to kick up a fuss
Stuffed
Let's start with bashing American (junk)food. How original. Although I have to admit that during my previous visit nearby Minneapolis, the average person really wasn't all that large. It seems the kilo's added up when going towards the east-coast. Or maybe it was just the sunny weather and barbeque fumes that lured the big-guys out of their barns this time.
I've been eating in a couple of restaurants, ordered food at work, got fed in the airplane, et cetera. And although a bit too salty, I can't say I didn't enjoy. In fact... when nobody was looking during breakfast in the hotel, I nicked a banana… and a cinnamon roll. Yep it's all too easy to spoil yourself. You can just buy fruit and vegetables of course, but watch out not having your veggies come together with a 4 kilogram buffalo steak. Or having your apples covered in cheese. Everything is stuffed, covered, sprinkled, injected, gassed or raped with cheese. Had a folded egg kind of thing for breakfast and darn, it was filled with cheese. All healthy things go hand in hand with fat sauces, stuffing, and at least two beasts of meat per meal. And otherwise your Health-watchers diet gets ruined by a massive desert, containing a sugar plantation including slaves.
Guilty. Meat at 6:30 in the morning. And cheese stuffed eggs.
Chemtrails in the water
As for drinking, you hear slurping and slirping from cola/smoothie/milkshake buckets (>> drums >>containers) the whole day at the office. Not a big surprise, with all the salty junk food. So I come back in the hotel and try to kill my thirst with some tap-water, and ppprrfft what?!! For some reason it tastes like chlorine. Come to think of it, the water tasted and smelled weird during my previous visit as well. Now that I was paying attention, I even tasted that odor in the juices during breakfast. That. was. not. orange.juice. Screw it. A bucket of Coke is probably a healthier choice than chemical water. What a strange finding for a first world country where hi-tec technology comes from.
How are youuuu??, my name is Kaleyyyy!! How can I help youuuu? That stereotype is quite true. Enter a random restaurant, and you'll be greeted by two or three girls in a row, asking how you're doing and introducing themselves. But why really? Do the managers really think this "personal approach" (you get 3 seconds of attention in total) makes me think "holy shit, that lady really like me for being here!"? But moreover, why introduce yourself if every table has a computer where you can order extra drinks and pay the bills? That's right, the waitress is getting partially replaced by a small touch-thing on your table. The thing kept asking me if I want a new drink. Shut the hell up, in Europe we finish our glass of beer before ordering a new one. Fake smile or not, I'd rather have a human serving me. The Americans should have a look at Belgium or France, where people sit down, talk, and enjoy their food, rather than just walk-in, get stuffed (with cheese) and get the fuck out. Don't look at Holland or Eastern Europe though. Here you don't get served by robots (yet), but often by cocky people that never learned to say "Hello I'm Kaley! How are you!". In Poland I have been served by Slavic discus throwing ladies several times, that give an impression they really hate to cook for you.
Restaurants are everywhere, and the formula is more or less the same each time: parking lot, 3 girls greeting you, some TV screens with Basket- or Baseball, not too expensive, not too qualitative either. Just food/meat/cheese for the whole family, so you don't have to cook at home. Quite different from European restaurants that try to make you feel like an emperor (but often fail in doing that just as well).
The heroic Town Center adventure
Had to show my goddamn ID for buying a beer by the way. I don't look like an old rockstar, but c'mon, I almost could have been the father of some of those waitresses. Beer and Americans doesn't seem to be a very good combination anyway, although the popular micro-breweries might change that. My impression is that most people either just don't drink at all, or get berserk after 5 Blue Pabst Ribbon. But I could be wrong though, unfortunately I didn't have a real chance to find out. Because there is no such thing as a town center with pubs. An insult to the British and Irish (and Dutch, who also like to misbehave and puke all over the place every Friday night).
Instead of only working, going to a restaurant, and drop dead in the hotel again, I decided to go out. Finding a shop to buy a souvenir (and yeah, a real American flag is waving in my daughters room now!). On foot... Now that was a ridiculous trip. Basically, you can't walk much further than 10 meters once outside the hotel doors. Cars stop right in front of the hotel (don’t walk with luggage fool!), and the pavement stops right after the ashtray at the hotel corner. Now you're entering Car-Domain. American soil is made of asphalt, parking lots, and grass. Nice grass I must say, most houses had a big lawn, and Americans do a good job mowing.
The never ending road story
To enter the town, I had to cross a viaduct. For an African or some drunk soviet country I can understand that there are no pedestrian bridges or bicycle strips. But nothing helps the pedestrian in America either. I walked more than a mile before I saw the first signs of pavement, and had to cross that viaduct just by walking asides the road, cars speeding by with 60 miles per hour. Crossings at intersections? Hell no, just run and pray you don't get hit by a 40 ton lorry (stuffed with cheese). After walking a while and seeing absolutely nobody on foot or bike, I got a feeling passers would be thinking I was on Crystal Meth or chlorine tap-water. Who the heck walks?!
Without exaggerating much, walking from one building to another is quite dangerous, especially when it gets darker. And it gets dark pretty soon, as it takes ages to reach your destination. Just crossing the parking-lot of a Walmart already took me 5 minutes. In Holland, such large lots are unthinkable. And although Holland might be a bit too crowded and claustrophobic at some places, I actually like the idea of hopping from one shop into another. And I say that as a man who hates shopping from the bottom of my heart. All that people everywhere, zombie-ing around with stupid bags of your stupid girlfriend. But having to pick a car to drive from once lot to another... that's even less romantic.
The thing is, I couldn't find a "center". Maybe Americans consider giant shopping malls as a center, but in Europe, we think about squares and plaza's surrounded by dozens of small shops, pubs, restaurants and (cultural) sights. At least if you don't want to enter a terrible shoe shop, you can hang out and smoke a cigarette with other bored men, or piss in a fountain. In America (or at least the places I have been) that seems to be impossible. People don't gather and clutch together in narrow streets. Either they walk from their car into a building, or vice-versa.
Benches? Panflute musicians? Ice-cream vans? Fountains to piss in? Anything?
M-M-Mega stores
All in all, I couldn't find a central place or street with souvenir shops and such. I bet they are there, but scattered all over the place. If my girl had to buy shoes there, she probably had to buy yet another pair during the walk, because the distances are insanely large. Anyhow, I still didn't have a souvenir... but wait a sec... didn't I dwell over a gigantic Walmart parking-lot previous night?
Yep. I’d rather go into a little shop and ask an enthusiast man or woman with passion for the stuff he or she sells. But without having much choice and a Humvee for transport, I entered a Wall-mart. Holy shit. It literally sells anything. Cookies, cars, kitchens, elephants. Not really in Holland, but in the somewhat more stretched countries in Europe, we have big shopping malls as well. But of course, the American variant is yet one size bigger.
Useless automation
People say that Americans are lazy. I don't know. The guy who picked me up for work, was still sweaty from basketball or something, early in the (Monday!) morning. Sitting down and drink a beer in the hotel was impossible, but they did have a gym and swimming pool. And even overweight people watch baseball or American football on the many restaurant TV screens. I'm not the fittest either, and another guy who helped me that week was an enthusiast cycling fan (and I mean not only watching Toure Du France on TV with pop-tarts).
But I'm not talking about lazy as in (lack of) exercise, eating too much or excessive use of cars yet. I'm talking about their dependence on useless appliances. My colleague had his coffee mug placed on some sort of platform… Until I saw a wire I didn’t realize this was an electrical “coffee warmer”. Yeah, I hate cold coffee just as much anyone else, but maybe you could just drink it instead of keeping it warm on a desk? Just a silly idea.
And how about this one. In the hotel, there was a machine with a single button and some lamps on it. So I pressed it, the lamps turned on one by one, and in about 30 seconds a pancake rolled out of the machine. Quite nifty. I would almost buy one. Until you start thinking why the heck you need a pancake machine for. What is wrong with a lady + frying pan, and a kitchen stinking of oil? For centuries and generations, we've been using the good old frying pan to make pancakes, and now in all of a sudden we need a pancake robot?!
Americans wouldn’t be Americans if they didn’t invent something on all those little daily annoyances. Cold coffee, making pancakes, coke bucket holders in cars, driving your car into the hotel so you don’t have to walk with luggage, fully automated barbeques, “digital waitresses” on your restaurant table, extensive air conditioning, robot lawn mowers, and so on. Of course, we in Europe aren’t living the dark ages either anymore, and some of those gadgets can be quite handy. But it’s just too much. No miracle all those Teleshopping programs have American origins. Problems first have to be thought of, in order to introduce a new revolutionary energy-eating piece of shit you don’t really need.
People are more and more aware about their health, exercise and their food. Yet sporting still won’t help if you use a robot to help lifting weights, finish off with a smoothie sugar bomb, and drive home in a big car. It’s not a surprise that his country consumes far more energy for far less people, compared to most other places in the world. It would be good to drop some of that “materialism”, and get back to basic. After all, isn’t a real American depicted as a freedom loving cowboy on his horse?
Taco taco burrito
Although… a white cowboy male on a horse… It’s getting replaced with a Mexican on a donkey. Or in modern times, Hispanic in low-riders. In movies and games like GTA, they are making fun of everything being outsourced, and waves of south American migrants, mowing the lawn for a penny. Well, I don’t know if and how big the problems with migrants truly are. America is more or less based on foreigners anyway, and the average person I spoke doesn’t feel threatened by it at all.
But I just found it funny to see and hear Spanish commercial signs. British, and also Americans I spoke often apologize for speaking English only. Some Dutch turd visits, and speak English fairly well. They feel ashamed of not mastering a secondary language, but always make promises. “I’m planning to study Italian / French / Japanese / …”. But obviously, you won’t properly learn a new secondary if you don’t have to use it often. Most music, movies and the internet are still English. And without having close neighbour countries that speak differently, there is no real urge either.
Well, the good news would be that Spanish is becoming a true second language quickly then. Shops and services advertise with “Hablo Espanol!”, to reach the growing Hispanic population as well. Hence, there are even entire Spanish TV stations (including a commercial of a little boy who wanted to grow a cool Mexican moustache, just like his uncle, by eating kick-ass taco’s).
Ich bin ein American
Some of us Europeans, at least in Holland, we're ashamed to show any patriotic feelings. We only show our flags on a few special days, or when something terrible happened (like the recent plane crash). But other than that... the flag is hidden safely. Kind of strange though. Watching documentaries about shitholes such as North Korea or the "new caliphate" by IS, we shouldn't complain. In fact, we should be proud of what our ancestors founded.
Yeah, ‘Murica. Bold eagles, overweight people, useless appliances, arrogant attitude, shotguns on the counter. Is it all so bad then? Nah. The stuff above are merely funny findings and experiences. The bottom line is that all Americans I've met so far, treated me very good, the landscapes are stretched and awesome, they make nice machines, they (still) speak English, and I stuffed myself with cheese more than once, so I'm just as guilty.
And times change of course. More and more Americans are swapping hamburgers for healthy food. The superstores are a bit out of favour, as people are bending towards “fair products” and craftsmanship again. And some of the “Hi I’m Joceline!” ladies in the restaurants had genuine fun in the short conversations we had. Hence, Americans were interested in a real sport for a change, as they followed the Football World Cup during my visit. They even pronounced the names “Robben” and “van Persie” somewhat properly.
Admiring their guts compared to our passive wise-guy European attitude, being a fan of houses with a veranda and freedom (read not having neighbours and billions of rules like we do in Holland), I’m a pro American. I’m not talking about their politics and questionable acting on the international podia. I’m talking about the people and their way of living. A Russian guy on TV recently, who was shopping fruit in Poland due the current boycotts, said it very well: “Making war is for the higher chiefs, we’re just people, and I like fruits”.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete