You know, I’m almost there with the ref (music, music……agghhh) but the combination of old age and trendy Ireland mean it ultimately escapes me. It’s embarrassing, but sadly true.
As there seems to be some confusion over my statement:
I’ll admit that part of it was said to be pithy (I’ve certainly been called a pithy bastard before. No, wait- that was pissy); certainly, not everything different is bad.
But I also must admit that I am somewhat provinical; part of my nature is a fear/distrust of change, so I enter into new surroundings and circumstances not with a feeling of excitement at new opportunities but with an overwhelming sense of anxiety over what might go (or I might do) wrong.
I in no way wish to give the impression that (bombastic taunting in other threads aside) I feel that the U.S. is the end-all-be-all, or that I feel that Ireland, the U.K., Holland, etc. have no merits. If my statement did give that impression, I apologize.
What I was trying to convey was my own anxiety and uncomftorableness with my foreign trip, and how the things which made me comftorable and at ease were the things I didn’t need to travel to find; and the things that made me nervous and uncomftorable were the things that were the very reason it was a ‘foreign’ country.
I’ll also say in caveat that what my foreign travel experience really taught me was never to go to a foreign country as part of a tour (as then you have no say in what you get to see and do), and never go to a foreign country- especially one where you don’t speak the language well- without having someone with you who is very familiar with the place.
Hold on john you dont get away with it that easy
ok, you do. 
London_Calling… Adam and the Ants.
DAMN !!!
You’re right about the tour. However, some countries are very fun to visit despite lacking fluency in the language - hell, I had a great time in Scotland without an interpreter or a guide.
Heh heh heh. 45 and counting.
neuro (and, by extension, Chief Wahoo)- it has been reasonably established in various Pit threads that the influx of Briton posters are not trolls; rather, there was a good bit of misunderstanding and miscommunication early on, and all involved have decided to let bygones be bygones and start anew.
Gary- Scotland? Without an interpreter? You’re a braver man than I, sir. I don’t think I’m ever going to watch Trainspotting until they put subtitles on it; traveling to Scotland without someone reasonably intelligible to parse the accent for me would be unthinkable.
Then again, I do completely understand everything Boomhower says on “King of the Hill”*, so I guess it’s just a matter of exposure.
*For non-American posters: King of the Hill is an animated TV comedy series set in Texas. The character Boomhower talks with a serious Southern accent and- to make matters worse- a nearly complete lack of sentence structure.
I had a harder time understanding cockneys in london than I do people in scotland - which apparently has one town with the clearest spoken english in the world (called Nairn, but it just begs the question of who measures these things and how). Even cockneys don’t compare to the gibberish I heard at a gun show near Bryan in Texas - not a glottal stop to be heard and vowels used interchangeably.
…Uncle Sam sent me to a lot of forign countries. I learned that no matter where you go, you will find that some people are assholes and some other people are candidates for sainthood. Either group is to be avoided like the plauge. It’s the vast majority between the two that are worth hanging out with.
What it boils down to is that people are basically the same where ever you go.
But it is fun to sneer at the Froggies (sorry ‘bout that, Rene. Shoot me an E when ya get a chance, ya snail-scarfin’ tongue-fuckin’ degenerate bastard).
Perhaps he was saying that foreign travel is overrated. Read what the guy typed.
Foreign travel frequently sucks shit, even if the country itself is nice. If you don’t have a lot of time abroad you’re jetlagged half the time you’re there. You have to spend a lot of time in airports, which are hell on earth in any country. Travel packages are usually overhyped and undervalued, and you get fucked by overpriced everything at every turn; this would be especially true for an American (or in my case a Canadian) for whom anything in Europe is insanely expensive. Tourist areas are terribly crowded. It’s tiring, expensive, and in my experience people always end up getting really sick, probably from the exhaustion, jetlag and shitty recycled air on the plane.
I travel a lot on business, so frankly I don’t like to travel for pleasure unless I know it’s gonna be worth it. Travelling really bites it. It’s expensive, tiring, disruptive and never works out exactly the way you planned.
Um, aren’t these reasons to avoid travel packages and tourist areas rather than foreign travel in general?
BTW, there are parts of Europe – Spain, for instance, and most of the east – where most items cost the same or less than they would in America.
Which is, in my opinion, one of the neatest things about it. To each his own.
BWAAAAA HAA HAAH AH AH AHH HAHAHA
Now THAT was worth staying late at work on a Friday night just to read to the end of this page…
Thanks man! I really needed a good laugh!
“Am I alone in hating the French?” – Al Bundy