In a Foreign Land with a British Accent

Spending this summer in a strange land with incomprehensible accents, strange customs and great quantities of intriguing food I discovered a country with an innocent naivety about the outside world. I was of course in America. My time was split between the biggest cities in the US, including New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Los Angeles. I was both excited and terrified in equal measure by every place I went, but was never alone, comfortably accompanied by a gaggle of wide-eyed Brits at all times.
It was hardly surprising that much of what we encountered revolved around the general election between Barack Obama and John McCain. I was in the US in 2004 during the run up to the election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, but this election feels completely different to that one. Barack Obama has ‘rallied the troops’ in many ways and all around America you seen street stalls selling Obama merchandise. He has definitely got people excited about politics and I include myself amongst his admirers.
One of the things that I probably won’t get used to any time soon is the habit that some Americans have of overhearing you speaking, and then sparking up a conversation based on my nationality. In some ways I find it endearing and will go along with it, but it is something you don’t really experience in other countries. The real truth is that Americans don’t really travel outside of their own country as much as other nationalities do. When we were staying in a youth hostel in San Francisco we met a group of people from Lawrence, Kansas. They were very friendly and older than us but I was somewhat taken aback by the fact that one of them, until coming to San Francisco, had never seen the sea.
Whilst on a fishing trip off of the Californian coast (and feeling so very, very seasick) I got talking to the man next to me. He told me not to judge America based on one place, and that you can go 50 miles up the coast and everything is different. He was right, but I was too busy being sick to appreciate it at the time.

Chris Aikman

Tags: America, British, elections, USA