View of America from an Aussie tourist. Right?

In My Humble Opinion
61

I have an Aussie friend who has been living here in the Boston metro area for 4 years now. When she first arrived (in March) she remarked on the deplorable condition of the roads. Then several of the ones she traveled on regularly were repaved over the summer. Come the next March she remarked that she now understood why the roads were in such bad shape in March - the daily freeze/thaw cycle wreaks havoc on pavement. A 2-foot wide pothole can appear overnight when a snowplow catches a crack and lifts a big chunk of asphalt out of the road. A smooth drive to work on Monday can be an axle-chomping rollercoaster on Tuesday. Then the warm weather comes back and we patch and repave.

Local, state and federal budgets also have an impact - lesser streets and roads won’t be repaved often enough, and just get patched. Snowplows love to grab patches and pull them up!

62

I have no reason to disbelieve her.

I don’t have the necessary information to render such a decision.

It’s not consistent but whether it’s due to cultural blinders or the relative uniqueness of the cities she’s visited, I can’t say.

It’s quite possible that she does have a point with the food. Salads are pretty much everywhere but to be honest, I don’t know of any places where I could get a cheap fish dish that’s not fried and breaded. Not any chain restaurants at any rate.

I’ve never stopped to consider the colors of the cheeses. Kraft’s a bit Day-Glo-y but it’s a kid’s food.

Visible homeless people are less common the less of a cultural center/colder place you are.

Roads are roads. Sometimes they suck. Winter’s a bitch.

63

Well, that might be pushing it a bit … even Captain D’s has grilled seafood and salad options on their menu, and they’re a fast-food joint.

Not saying I’d recommend Captain D’s to someone who’s accustomed to fresh seafood on a regular basis, but it’s not like seafood and salad options are impossible to find, either. Particularly in major metropolitan areas in the U.S.

It sounds to me like the OP’s friend didn’t do an awful lot of researching for food options when planning the trip. I bet if I went to New York for a week and confined my eating to an area within a few blocks of my hotel, I’d be less than impressed with the selection and prices as well.

64

Definitely not raw. Perhaps they meant cold (cooked) chicken? That’s quite common, especially during the summer - buy a roast chicken at a supermarket, eat it lukewarm or cold with a salad or in sandwiches.

65

Not that it’s relevant for the OP’s friend but the nearest Captain D’s to me is 405 miles away. Bit far to pop over for dinner.

66

Obviously you’ve never had their hush puppies. Food of the gods, I tell you.

67

I’ve never seen cold chicken served except sliced on sandwiches.

68

Born and raised in Hawaii, now live in LA.

In both Hawaii and LA, inexpensive and healthy eating options are available. You just need to know where to look. Which, I think, is the heart of the issue. Visitors tend to stay in visitor areas, and notice the brighter, flashier restaurants, where prices are higher and fun junk food rules. Variety, lower prices, and the real experience of a place come with veering off the tourist path.

Hawaii and LA should both have been great for cheap simple foods or seafood.
I don’t know where she went in Hawaii, but grease and orange cheese are not staples of the local diet.

Both Hawaii and LA have homelessness, but I wouldn’t call it “everywhere.” San Francisco, now that’s fucking everywhere. Hawaii has the additional problem of colder states exporting their homeless via one-way tickets so they can panhandle in paradise. Beach dwellings are common, but it varies by beach. The worst places for it are where the surfers or locals go, not the tourists.

Again, I think this may be in part due to staying in touristy areas. They tend to be super-high traffic and roads see much more wear there. It’s also harder to perform maintenance in those areas too as counties tend to want to minimize impact on tourism.

Speaking of traffic, I’m surprised she didn’t comment on the traffic. LA and Hawaii own the top 2 spots for most amount of one’s lifetime lost to the gridlock.

69

Regarding food - even McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s offer salads - some aren’t even half bad.

Roads - yeah, there are some weird laws that have put infrastructure on the back burner of late - but we also have entire sections of freeways that seem to be under construction for years and eventually get fixed. I think everyone, in every state, has the old joke that their state flower is an orange traffic cone.

When I lived in NYC, I lived in a loft and we didn’t have “official” garbage pick up there - so we would have to take our bags when we left the building to find a dumpster somewhere along the way to the subway. But some cities do have garbage pick up every day (for instance, here in Nevada), but different neighborhoods each day of the week. This means, no matter where you drive, you will run across at least one area/neighborhood that has “trash day” and the street looks like crap until the garbage is picked up that day (or sometimes, later in the evening, or crack of dawn the next day, etc.).

I lived in Germany for many years and would have to agree that American cheeses are kind of sucky, and for that matter, so are the breads…there are exceptions, but nowhere near the quality and variety you find easily in any European city/village. Lots of Americans pretty much never eat any other cheeses other than the processed crap you find individually wrapped, and their idea of great bread is any bread without mold.

It is pretty easy to rag on any other country you visit, with regards to what you know and like about your home country…and as a tourist, it is often more apparent when you are only visiting the tourist traps. I have seen truly dismal areas of Berlin, of London, of Paris - not every neighborhood is exactly worth a picture postcard. And trust me when I say I still get the heebie-jeebies when I think of some of the pub food I had in London and some greasy fish and chips that were inedible.

So I don’t doubt those were some real impressions that your friend had, but often you find what you are looking for and maybe gloss over some of the nicer/better things you also discovered. My German visitors to the USA are shocked at the huge cups FILLED with ice for our soft drinks, and Americans are equally dismayed at having to beg for more than one ice cube in a drink in Europe. Different strokes.

70

Sounds like your ‘friend’ saw exactly what she wanted and expected to see and nothing more.

71

I’m a bit dismayed at some of the defensiveness. Of course a visitor making a one-time trip is going to go to Los Angeles, New York, Washington, and the other well-known big cities. That’s what tourists do. They’re not going to go to a service station in Kentucky that sells firearms. That’s ridiculous.

But those places that are the biggest attractions are also the places where many of our problems are most concentrated. And given the picture of the United States painted in the popular culture, it’s almost inevitable that people coming here on only one trip are gonig to be somewhat shocked by the differences between fantasy and reality.

  1. In countries outside North America, it is often possible to easily find food in the major cities that is tasty, healthful, and cheap. It’s a peculiar result of our cultural, social, and economic systems that make it difficult to find that combination here.

  2. While it’s true that good food is available, for a first-time visitor who is mostly going to tourist areas, it’s not going to be easy to find. As in any other country, tourist areas are not the best places to eat well cheaply.

  3. While the salads at places like McDonald’s might be borderline healthful, they are absolutely awful.

72

I am truly baffled by the assessment of the food. In DC, you can find any kind of food you could ask for, including tons of healthy downtown office-worker lunch spots. I’ll grant that it’s not cheap, but nothing is cheap here.

But seriously, if you wanted to spend a week only you for vegan or West African or regional Chinese restaurants, you totally could. I can only guess she only saw the lowest-common-denominator tourist restaurants that sell horrible food to tourists that are too tired (and whose kids are too whiney) to make good decisions. You find that on literally every country on the planet.

73

I don’t think you can draw meaningful comparisons between the US and Australia; the population of Australia is somewhere between the population of Texas and New York, which are the second and third most populous US states respectively.

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I’m guessing her impression on the homeless came from Hawaii. Homelessness has become a big problem there because, well, its Hawaii. Can you think of a better place to be if you were going to be homeless? Apparently things have gotten so bad there recently that some politicians had the idea of offering the homeless a one-way ticket off of Hawaii to wherever they wanted to go. It’s unclear whether there have been any takers yet.

75

It’s not baffling. I always take visitors on an eating adventure in Washington. Without me as a guide, it would not even have occurred to them to look for these things or to think that this is the place to try it. Actually, I’m biased toward N. Va. I think the food is better and cheaper than in the District, but if you’re a tourist getting around by Metrorail, you would never get nest it.

76

Are you also seeing what you want to see in this thread?

My parents do a lot of international travel. Often they see exactly what they expect to see, or they tell stories about other people doing the same. I’ve run into the rare tourist here in MN or more commonly in the Black Hills who has odd preconceived notions of what the US is like and doesn’t seem interested in challenging those notions. Instead they’re busy looking for things that match what they expect to see, so they can tell themselves how right they are.

“Bah! You can’t find good food around here!”
“Did you try X or Y?”
“X is too busy, I’m not going to wait, and Y is too far”
(really? X is busy BECAUSE it’s good and you came half way around the world, drive scores of miles every day sight seeing and Y is too far??? Nah, you just want to be right.)

77

There’s an interesting ambiguity in this comment: in British English, that would mean “It’s all bad,” whereas in American English, that means, “It’s pretty much okay.”

I took a vacation once to the Bahamas, and was astonished at how clean the streets were. I didn’t see any trash, even in the poor neighborhoods. There was more pride of place there than there is here. I live in San Diego, and there is trash visible in the gutters of most streets. The freeways are lined with a visible rime of trash. It’s a sin and a shame.

We have people going out into the center dividers of major roads begging for money. That, at least, is part of the American liberty we’re so fiercely proud of. We have the right to beg for money, just as we have the right to say what we want about Obama or Bush. Americans are remarkably expressive of our opinions!

The food? I dunno. I don’t have anything to compare it with. I’m happy with “mix stuff together and microwave it” home cuisine. I once had Beef Burgundy at a fancy restaurant in Los Angeles, and I think that may have been the best thing I’ve ever eaten.

78

Thanks all for the responses and the lack of defensiveness, I appreciate it.

I agree that the trip wouldn’t have given her a true picture of all of America, that was why I put the thread up to see if her observations were representative of the rest of the country or not.

I can also see how the fast food joints would dominate the visual scene and the other smaller eateries would be harder to find.

I think the issue wasn’t that she saw what she expected to see, but the opposite. She had some picture of a magical place in her head and was a little disappointed by the reality. That’s not to say she had a bad time, she thoroughly enjoyed the overall holiday.

One funny footnote was that the locals often had difficulty understanding her Australian accent. Once in Washington someone at the hotel asked her where they were going that day and she told him “The White House”. The bloke looked at her quizzically and said “What?”. Tried again, got the same response so she said “Where your president lives”. “Oh, the white house” replied the bloke.:smiley:

79

Just a note about dining. Of course fast food can be dreadful & it’s hard to afford the very best places. And lots of my local favorites are obscure. (In fact, Houston is “obscure”–hardly a tourist spot. A native could show you around but good luck with a guidebook.)

But, if I want simple, cheap, healthful food, I’ll cook it myself. If I had to limit myself to eating out, even in an area where I know the best options, I’d get tired of it after a few weeks…

Also, our great cities that may have some troubled areas also offer matchless things to see & do. If you really enjoy things like fine architecture, museums and interesting places to shop. By “shop” I’m using the female definition of poking around & checking things out–not necessarily buying stuff. And it helps to know something about the history of the different places you visit, and use the visit to expand your knowledge.

80

Ahh yes but it is made of actual cheese rather than “processed cheese food”