One funny thing about traveling is that your country becomes your first identity. You may even find yourself strangely attached to your history or just forced to think about it more. One night at my hostel I was woken up by, “Who saved you???!” coming from a drunk American of course arguing about World War II and America’s involvement towards the end. Between swearing at this British girl, I could hear her saying, “You can’t just say all these things and not let me say anything.” Lying in my bed, hardly surprised by the arrogance of someone from my own country, I was very tempted to stick my head out the door and tell him that he’s further contributing to the ruin of the American reputation. I later found out that he told a girl from Finland that the war that her grandfather had fought in with Russia didn’t exist and he actually attempted strangling a Canadian guy hours later in the night when they were walking back to the hostel in the absolute middle of nowhere in the desert.
“So, that means you can say you traveled all over South America and the only aggressive person you met was a guy from Florida?” I asked him.
“Yes, looks like it,” he said, “It was strange, he wasn’t quite right.”
Apparently the Floridian was yelling about how he hated Canada and had a crazy look in his eye, perhaps from lack of medication or too much of some other substance. This Canadian, who actually has been living in Australia and London for the past eleven years, would retell the story later as the day he was almost murdered. As we were sitting around a fire in the middle of the hostel, a guy from Seattle was trying to break the wood with his foot by stomping on it, since there was no saw.
“You can do it! You’re an American!” I cheered.
“Yeah, pretend its Canada!” said the Canadian.
A day later I overheard a conversation from my hammock, happening at a table nearby about different holidays.
“Today’s an American holiday,” said an Australian girl, G-chatting with a friend back home.
“It is?” responded a guy from Seattle.
“Happy Memorial Day!” I said from my hammock, realizing the date.
“July 1st… isn’t that when you celebrate the slaughter of your natives?” continued Australia.
“That’s July 4th,” responded Seattle, “It’s our independence day.”
“Right, Canadians celebrate the harvest and you celebrate the slaughter of your natives,” said Australia. She continued, “We take good care of our natives you know.”
“Well, we give them nice plots of land…but your country didn’t always take such good care of the Aborigines,” replied Seattle.
“Right, well we’ve apologized for all that now, and that was all the British anyways,” defended Australia.
“I think the Queen should actually apologize,” chimed in the English girl.
“I know! I was absolutely furious about that. It’s really your queen that needs to apologize,” said Australia.
“Well, the monarchy was really German anyway,” responded England.
You hardly get people’s names either when you meet travelers. When you meet them the first questions are about traveling and where you’re going or where you’ve been and what you think about it. Then, after spending two days with the person or people and they leave, you suddenly realize that you never got their name. They were always just, “that couple from Barcelona” or “that guy from England” or “the girl from Australia”.
“Miles… feet… inches… all these crazy American measurements,” said Canada.
“We keep our measurements even though the Metric system makes absolutely more sense. We actually learn it in school… we use it for science and math…” I said.
“So the entire world agreed upon a system and America refused to join?” asked Canada.
“It’s how we maintain our bubble. 12 inches in a foot, three feet in a yard. Our rulers have centimeters and millimeters though, I believe….” I replied.
“What’s a yard?” asked Canada.
“Well, it’s similar to a meter,” said Seattle.
“Miles, pounds, ounces, quarts, gallons, cups…” I listed, trying to think of all the ridiculous names.
“Cups?” asked Canada.
“Yup! Do you have acres?” I asked Canada.
“No, you use hectares, don’t you…” pondered Seattle.
“That fire is about… 2 feet high or 24 inches.” I said, zoning out into the fire, “So, how about knots – is that universal?”
“I don’t know where it comes from, but I love that measurement. And at least everyone measures horses in hands,” said Seattle.
“Hands? Where did that come from?” I asked, laughing.
“Some king wanted to measure a horse so he thought, ‘Hey, how about I use my hand…’” responded Seattle.
“What about a dozen?” I asked.
“Yup, we use a dozen,” said Canada.
“How about a baker’s dozen?” I continued.
“Yeah, I think I know that one… that’s six, right?” answered Canada.
“Nope, 13!” I said.
“Because you know the baker!” said Seattle.
“In America, you know the baker.” I said.
“Six is when the baker hates you,” said Seattle.
Across from us the Chileans sat listening to Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” singing along to some of the lyrics, then switched over to Chilean music, then back to something English. They turned on the song that Coolie used later for his Gangster Paradise, to which my western companions began singing the rapper part absent from the original version.
“Power and the money, money and the power, minute after minute, hour after hour!”
The most common conversations between travelers usually revolve around language, measurements, wars, entertainment, travel stories, pronunciation, colonization, and Americans not learning enough about the world in school. I was talking with two Scottish girls about Scotland’s contributions to the world, asking if the country had invented the library system. They then asked the Chilean what his country had invented, to which he responded after looking a bit confused, “motels.” I said that I thought those came from America and our car culture, though I’m not sure. I think he was on his second or third glass of straight Rum at that point.
Travel stories come out. A horrible movie seen in La Paz, where the theater was freezing and they were sitting in movie seats on the floor watching a girl explicitly getting gang raped. A leather jacket a guy had handmade for $40 in La Paz, after simply showing a guy a picture of what he wanted. Past travels up through Greenland, north of Scotland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands as a cruise ship librarian. A journey to North Korea for four days where you saw all the lights in the city get completely shut off at night and a guard keeps you company most of the time, making sure you don’t take pictures of the people. You hear about people wanting to go to Colombia, figuring out how to get to Peru when the border is closed in Bolivia, how Brazil is so expensive for Americans to enter, and tales from Easter and Galapagos Islands. Comparisons of food, money, and long bus rides are exchanged; travel becomes this present reality that of course after awhile you become accustomed to, take for granted, and sometimes even get tired of.
“Are you guys headed to Peru tomorrow?” I asked.
“I really don’t want to get on another bus,” said Finland.
“Well, we could go to Arica for the night and then Cusco the next day,” suggested Australia.
“If we don’t take night buses both nights, we’ll have to find a place to stay,” reminded England.
Sometimes you feel tired and it’s difficult to fully absorb everything between jumping on and off buses and snapping photos. At Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon – named because the landscape resembles the surface of the moon) Rosario and I followed our tour up the sand dune and later found ourselves suddenly alone after sunset and running back down through the sand to our waiting companions. Sometimes these tours push you to move a little too quickly and you’re only left with pictures to dwell on and process later, wondering, “Where the heck was I??”
Although, the travel is great and really bends your perspectives - or breaks them. I’ve tried to find differences between all these cultures, attempting to generalize how Americans are, or Europeans, or South Americans. Though there still seem to be personality differences between them all, I feel like at the end of the day, we’re really all quite similar. Some people are crazy and hate other countries, some people are more relational, others are more critical, and some are very efficient while others are laid back. I think sometimes it’s easier to step back and look at this cultural collage and just admit that people are really just people wherever you are and that when you step into a new place, its more about trying to leave as many of your own cultural filters at home, trying to understand the history and context of the people you are now interacting with. It’s more about observing and accepting than impressing your own beliefs onto other people. Traveling tends to break you down a little bit and stretch out your own ideas as you move through these places where you realize you don’t know much about anything anymore.
