Could you elucidate more about this – an example of what you saw? I find your observations to be chillingly accurate, at least for the US side.
For Shame!
Don’t laugh at the country bumpkins. They can’t help it that they aren’t as sophisticated as us residents of the London Borough of Bumfuck.
Me too 
I think I fit in pretty well. I was working for a US based software company with offices around the world. They transfered me to the UK for a 3 month trial period in 1994 and moved here full time in 1995. I live in Farnborough, about 30 miles as the crow flies from central London. There’s a mix of people who work locally and those who commute into London. I work in what’s called the ‘Silicon Corridor’, a group of towns southwest of London between the M3 and M4 motorways.
I like the climate (not too hot or cold), and the compactness, and I love the pub culture. It’s true what GorillaMan said about it being a social leveller. In my local you’ll get everyone from company directors to unskilled labourers and no one feels above or below having a chat with anyone else. For many of us the pub isn’t just about drinking beer, but about trying and enjoying a wide range of really good real ales. My local has 5 regular beers and 5 that change regularly so there’s almost always something I’ve not tried before.
They’re few and far between. I found one in Toronto years ago (it was run by an English couple), and it was much as the UK Dopers here describe. I became a regular and spent many happy times there, but I’ve never found anything like it in the years since. I don’t think there is any comparable institution in North America. I wish there was, actually.
My American sister-in-law moved to England a few years ago, and ended up moving back to the US. The pub culture was the deal-breaker; she simply couldn’t understand how and why people would spend so much time in bars. (IIRC, she never used the word “pub”; to her, they were all “bars.”) They must all be alcoholics if they have to go to a bar every day! Of course, that wasn’t the case at all, as the UK Dopers here have explained quite well, but because she refused to understand this, she made very few friends and ended up, as I said, moving back to the US.
The UK drinking culture scares me, and I’m Australian.
That said, I’m sure it’s fine for the average intelligent doper. But the reports of entire towns being taken over by chavs late at night are making the papers here. Of course, it happens here too, and the 20 year-olds are doing things to their livers that astonish me (we used to get pissed, but not like that). but there does seem to be a problem in the UK that is freaky enough to be getting press in Australian papers (and these are sober [hehe] broadsheets).
Just to clarify my above post: this isn’t about nipping down the local for a pint. Our two countries’ cultures are very similar on this. I’m talking about the vomit-stained hellishness that is 21st Century UK drinking for young people.
I agree completely with this and love the fact that I have pubs within a 10-minute walk of my flat serving Fuller’s, Young’s (and Wells), Badger, Adnams and Wychwood ales. However, I usually confine my drinking to weekends and hate being hung over so don’t drink until I’m legless.
And like TheLoadedDog, I also find the binge-drinking culture scary and am glad I live in London and not a smaller place where it might be more difficult to avoid. Having said that, I like living in the U.K. just fine (I’m American and completed my 12th year in London at the end of last month) and have no plans to move, particularly now that a Waitrose will be opening within a block or so of my place by Christmas, yay! (In the Woolworths store on Edgware Road, one of four London outlets that Woolies just sold to Waitrose.)
I’m a middle class American living in a small village in rural England (East Anglia). I’ve been here 7 months and have run into no problems, except for figuring out where to park and what times stores are open. Everyone cuts me some slack because once I say something, they understand that I’m not from around here.
The only warning I have is what I warn everyone who goes overseas anywhere: don’t be an ugly American. No one likes foreigners running down where they live. Go with the flow and ask questions respectfully. Things are different than America. Different doesn’t equal worse.
ColonelDax, I have a Co-op store 3 blocks away. I love being able to walk there for groceries.
I’ve seen the Ugly American and the Ugly Brit here in Sydney, and also the Ugly Australian when I’ve been overseas. I can only second the above advice for anyone anywhere. The only thing different about the Ugly American is that often they seem to be nice people. The Ugly Brit or Ugly Aussie tends to be a young drunken idiot. I’ve seen Ugly Americans like this too, but they also seem to have their own special group - people who seem very decent and would no doubt be personally horrified if they knew how they were being received. But they can be pushy and loud, they think they can fix anything by waving greenbacks about (though sadly this is probably accurate quite often), and they speak in loud baby talk to anybody looking remotely “foreign”. And yet all the while, they are unfailingly polite. I think they’re mostly retirees.
Not if you are over 25. That kind of drinking is incomprehensible to me, especially from a doctor (you are a doctor, right?) My in-laws are British, and their drinking was astonishing at first. I have gotten used to it, and fortunately since my SIL had a child everyone in the family has cut way down.
Aside from the focus on drinking, I could probably settle in England. It would be hard to get used to a smaller house, etc, but other things, such as the ease of travel, would make up for it.
Chiming in as a non-drinker Brit. I can confirm that there is life beyond the pub, I rarely go into them and usually have dinner with friends instead. That said I don’t really have a group of friends, most people I know separately of each other (although I do things in groups as well, of course).
About the Tube stopping early:
A hijack, but I’m not at all clear on the terms “same way” and “reversable lines”. Chicago’s L is a lot smaller than the London Tube system or New York’s subway system. But everywhere it’s two tracks, whether elevated, underground or at ground level (in a few places). All the trains are composed of pairs of cars with a driver’s cab at each end. They manage to shift all the stock by running trains on the regular lines. Do London Tube trains not have a cab at each end?
The L may be 24/7, but the commuter Metra train stops around oh, 11:27 pm and starts up again around 4 am.
I have always wanted to live in England (it doesn’t look likely at this point, but who knows), at least for a few months. I like the people, the culture and the climate (yes, I do–I’d trade 40 and raw, windy sleet for 102 heat index and killer humidity here in August–I live near Chicago).
I’m not sure I could “do” the pub culture, but I’m willing to give it a try. I did all my hard drinking in college (where most of us did binge drinking), and I struggle now to finish a half pint (the carbonation in the lager fills me up). But, I’d be happy to sit there or learn to play darts or try to follow the jokes (I also become slightly deaf while drinking alcohol, so I probably wouldn’t understand much of what was said).
But I’d want to be outside London. London is scary expensive (for me), and more cosmopolitan than friendly. Plus, a woman alone needs to be a bit more wary…
When I was there about 12 years ago, I ran into several Brits who seemed to think that since I was there, I was made of money. I’m sure that’s changed with the exchange rate (although the only Americans who can afford to go now ARE the really well off!). That and they would hear I was from Chicago and would say “bang bang”–like Al Capone hasn’t been dead for 60+ years. :rolleyes: I guess that makes up for all those Americans who still say, “we won the war for you!”.
Yes, but (with very few exceptions) if you take the Metra train rather than the L, you don’t actually live in Chicago. You live in a suburb. London is a great cosmopolitan city that shuts down far more early than a great cosmopolitan city really should.
Never used either system, but I am a train nerd, and I guess it’s not so much to do with the trains themselves but with the track configuration and signalling. To run “wrong road” regularly, you need lots of places to cross over and also bidirectional signalling. You also need timetabling that can handle such a thing. If you’ve got a system like London’s with close headways, then you’re pretty much tied in to having all the trains doing the same thing; rerouting one will cause serious knock-on effects on that line. It’s vastly easier just to close the line in the wee small hours and use that time for any weird movements of rolling stock. There is also the spectre of modern day insurane liability and safety regulations, which may preclude having maintenance workers on live running lines. They used to maintain the tracks here in Sydney when I was a kid by having the workers simply get out of the way when a train went past. These days, they close the line and put buses on.
It’s not “hard drinking.” It’s perhaps better expressed as “socializing.” If you do not wish to drink alcohol, nobody will make you. It’s certainly not “order another beer or get out and make room for paying customers,” as I’ve experienced in the US and Canada. If you want to sit there and drink Coke all night, well, go for it. Heck, if you want to have one beer or mixed drink, and then drink Coke all night, nobody will mind. What counts is the fact that you’re there, you’re part of the crowd, you’re among friends. This is what I found in our own little pub run by the English couple, and what I found when I visited the UK: You don’t want to drink? That’s OK; you’re still welcome. It’s a far cry from “drink 'till you’re shitfaced or get out,” as we have in many places in North America.
This all is correct for London’s system. The twin-tube system used for many lines means there’s very few crossover opportunities in the central area, and no possibility of adding them. An additional point is that in these deep-level lines there is in many places no space for the workers could get out of the way at all. Add to this the age of the system increasing the work necessary in the first place.
Brynda- yup I’m a docto, and since I don’t smoke, do drugs or eat fast food, I cut myself some slack with the drink.
While we might be in the pub for about 14 hours straight, I think the average alcohol consuption is probably 10-15 units. Yes, I know it’s more than the recommended amount in one sitting, but it’s not as bad as you’d think from “all day drinking”.
Personally, I’ll have a pint which I’ll nurse for a couple of hours, then some soft drinks during the match, then a couple of rum and cokes, and finish the night with a shot or two. I rarely top 6 units, as that is my own self-imposed limit. My husband will probably stick to Guinness and have 7 or 8 pints and a couple of shots, but he has a much higher tolerance than me.
But then, my group of friends can turn an engagement BBQ held in a marquee in a friend’s parents’ garden into an all night party that finally wound up at 4am with an impromptu mass sing-a-long accompanied by guitars, so maybe we’re just unusually sociable.
While we do have rounds, it’s fine to ask for a coke or to skip a round if you don’t want a drink. The fastest drinker will usually buy their own rather than force everyone else to keep up, and it’s fine to opt out if you want to save money (nobody expects a designated driver to buy their own drinks or to participate in a round).
No, it’s not. London came and swallowed up hamlets, villages and boroughs. London is a massive, sprawling wonderful place, but to expect it to “act” like NY or Chicago (I do wonder what you would do in L.A. with practically no public transport at all) is just misguided. London has its suburbs, but many of them are linked via Tube. I think you a mistaking the Tube for the subway (ie downtown mass transit). The Tube is both downtown mass transit AND suburban commuter lines, with limited ability to repair or move vehicles around, as garius already explained.
Now, if you want to insist that the City remain open 24/7, that’s different (London is not the same as the City). No doubt some financier would like it to do so, but most of them want to go home at the end of the day, just like we do.