Back in the UK: Culture Shock!

So I am back in the UK for a few months, after spending a week in New York en route from Florida. 
I also managed to get caught up in the Storm Desmond drama when I eventually arrived back in the North of England (more on that later.)

I had a great time in New York, staying with my old friend Ed at East Northport, near Huntington, on the north coast of Long Island.

Northport, Long Island, New York.

I arrived on a Saturday morning and we had a quiet day eating, drinking, and catching up on people and events since the last time I was in New York, seven years ago.

We went into Manhattan the following day and did poetry readings in the city and then Brooklyn, which as fun.

Ed and I on the F Train.

 

Me and Ed with poetry host, George Wallace outside the Parkside.

Me reading my cheese poem in Brooklyn (photo thanks to Dasha Bazanova)

I had some great time exploring Long Island with Ed, and met up with my old friend, Lorraine, who showed me around the last time I was in New York, as well as hosting a poetry event in Valley Stream.

With Lorraine in Sip This, Valley Stream, NY

I also went into the city on my own and visited the Natural History Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, I loved the dinosaurs and there was a Jackson Pollock exhibition.

Me with Ed.  He had lost a lot of weight by this point and was becoming increasingly aggressive(!)  ;)

I walked through Central Park from the Natural History Museum to the MOMA

Jackson Pollock painting at the MOMA

It's difficult to cover everything during my action-packed week in New York and all the folks I met, but it was wonderful.

All good things come to an end, however, and the time came for me to journey to my next destination, dear old Blighty.  I was travelling to the northwest of England, Kendal, Cumbria, to be exact.
 
Due to heavy traffic, I arrived late for my flight check-in at JFK.  The lady at the desk saw that as personal insult, and was consequently a cow, but I survived (she made me jump through numerous extra hoops just to show her displeasure).  

The subsequent flight to Iceland went pretty smoothly, however.  I was impressed by all the improvements they've made to Reykjavik airport.  It used to look like an old (I think it is a former hangar), now it's like something from an IKEA catalogue.

My flight from Reykjavik to the UK was delayed by 45 mins but nothing remarkable otherwise.

I arrived in Manchester the following morning feeling tired and hungry, but pretty good.  Then I found out that due to Storm Desmond and the intense flooding in the North West of England, there were no trains running north of Preston, Lancashire.  It was a similar story with the coach/bus service.

The storm had flooded out whole areas of some towns, including Kendal, knocked out the power, damaged bridges, roads, and caused mini-landslides.  I was stranded just one and a half hours from my destination.

The options for me were to stay in a hotel in Manchester or Preston; stay with a friend in the area; or get a ride home by car from Preston.

After talking to my parents, I caught the train to Preston.  The station cafe bar was full of stranded people: families; mountaineers; students; businessmen; old people, young people, and others.  I consoled myself with a couple of quality pints of draught dry cider (a relative rarity in the US).

In the end, I was lucky enough to get a lift from my parents from Preston to Kendal, but the journey took twice as long as normal, thanks to the flooded roads.

"The Auld Grey Town" of Kendal at dusk

Culture Shock

A few things I've needed to adjust to since arriving back, both good and bad:

• I got confused by British coins initially, I thought the 5 pence was worth ten, because it is a similar size to a dime.  Kind of embarrassing.
• The roads were unnerving for a while, as I thought we were driving on the wrong side.
• Pleasantly reminded of the low prices of beer in the pubs.  In the US you have to take out a bank loan to go out for a night of beers(!)  Prices are less than half here in the UK and you're not expected to tip on top for every beer too. (Liquor is cheaper in the US, including Scotch whiskey, but that's another story!)
• The English seem so quiet, gentle, and reserved, when you are used to Americans.
•  English customer service continues to improve, although it is still not always great.  America is still the king of customer service.
• Americans think the English are super-polite, but the truth is that it is very variable here.  You can go into a shop or stand at a bus stop and chat to some super polite person, then walk down the street and hear young children call each other f**king c*nts.  Courtesy and rudeness tend to rub shoulders much more.
• Drivers here are almost always way more sane and courteous than Florida, however.
• I'm still a little jet-lagged, my sleep patterns can be erratic at the best of times, but throw in a five hour time shift and things get interesting.

Living in the USA: My Culture Shock Top 10

I read with great interest and was amused by the directness of an essay by Sophia Angelique about the culture shock of moving to and living in the USA, after being in the UK, and I recognized much of what she said - although I must admit that I was a little troubled that she was still undergoing culture shock a full eight years after arriving there.

Some of the videos she posted up on there are excellent too.  The one of Stephen Fry (Brit) talking to Clive James (Ausie who lives in the UK) stood out as particularly outstanding and again, much of what they say is very recognizable to me.  (I’ve included the vid at the end of the top 10).

I thought it would fun to summarize some of the top 10 things that can be surprising and difficult for a typical Brit living in the USA, based on a variety of sources including my own experiences and those observations mentioned above.

I’m writing from a purely British perspective, of course, so I don’t know how much you will relate to it, if at all, if you’re non-British, or if you have never experienced living in the USA.  It also occurs to me that younger Brits might find it easier than older gits like me to cope with the culture shock, as I am probably stuck in my ways to some degree.  But anyway, in no particular order, here goes with my top 10.

1. As Stephen Fry points out, coming from a monarchy, you kind of expect the US to have more republican values of “all men are equal”, but in fact American values are quite different from that.  Individual freedom is seen as more valuable than equality and justice in the US which gives it a different value system to the UK (and indeed the majority of republics).  Fry argues in the video that it’s rooted in the way that the American constitution prioritizes things.

2. As I mentioned in a previous blog, it’s difficult to underestimate and understate the importance of religion in American life, whether it’s in everyday life, or in general society and politics.  Outside of respectable religion, I would also say that superstition and hokey beliefs are also much more common too.

3. It’s much more commercial and materialistic here compared to Blighty.  Practices that would be considered mercenary back in the UK are much more commonplace.  Money seems to trump all in the USA, maybe even religion.  It certainly runs the political system.

4. As a Brit, you get told that we’re a class ridden society - and we certainly are compared to places like Germany, The Netherlands, Scandanavia, but in many ways the British class system is nothing compared to the US where there is a stronger sense of hierarchy, and social and economic status really is the be all and end all for most people.

5. American politics.  Things are shifted so far to the right here compared to the UK, I still have trouble working out who’s who.  Often a ranting politician that I think is a rightwinger, turns out to be Democrat.  The loony, foaming at the mouth, religious nut, I discover later is a respected Republican Senator.

6. The lack of infrastructure can be frustrating here, if you’re not used to it.  Outside of the big cities, there is very little public transport.  Whereas you will get shops and pubs in the suburbs of towns and in rural areas in the UK, there is very little of that in the USA.  Not only is it a convenience thing, but local shops, post offices, pubs are where a British community would meet and builds ties.  (It was interesting to read that this was one thing that Brits found difficult about moving to Australia in a BBC article that I read).

7. As Fry points out, America is an enormous place with lots of semi-autonomous states that often have a strong sense of self-identity.  People often have more in common with and identify more with their state than the country as a whole.  (In the UK, of course, we have Scotland, Wales, England and Ulster, but it is different.)

8. Americans really believe in things.  British people tend to be skeptical about pretty much everything.  We make good scientists but poor dreamers.

9. The right to bear arms and the gun thing is difficult to understand as an outsider.  I am not particularly comfortable with all the violence that you get in America movie and drama either, although sometimes I think it just acts as a lazy plot device, it can seem to come uncomfortably close to romanticizing violence.  I am no pacifist, by the way, I just don’t think real violence is in any way romantic.

10. As Fry says, the American ideas of “liberty” and “freedom” are very difficult for a Brit to understand.  For us, “liberty” and “freedom” are essentially concepts, which makes them essentially wooly.  That doesn’t mean that we see them as bad ideas, we just don’t understand them as being solid things.

Ironically, after a year of living in the USA, I quite often feel that I understand it less now than I did when I arrived.

 

The difference between the English and Americans