Taking trips

I thought that 2 weeks in Europe wouldn’t be enough. I thought that at the end of the trip, I would want to stay for another 2 weeks or more. But I find myself satiated halfway through the second week. I’m totally good to go home now.

Perhaps I just want to get away from my dad and sister, who periodically drive me insane. Perhaps it’s the language insecurity. Or perhaps, and I think this is the biggest reason, I’m just perfectly content to stay at home.

In high school, I seemed to be very outdoorsy. I went camping several times per year. I took a lot of mini-hikes when I could. All that changed when I started college. I suddenly became too busy to make these kinds of outings. I was also poorly equipped—I had a sleeping bag, but no tent, ground mat, backpacking pack, heavy camping clothes, etc. So these outings drastically decreased in frequency. And the surprising thing, now that I look back, is that I didn’t really miss it all that much. There wasn’t necessarily a void in my life that I needed to fill by going on a big trip or being out in nature. Anything beyond a day trip meant to me a lot of mental preparation to separate myself from my safe space.

When I was with my ex, he talked about hiking often or taking multi-day trips to Yosemite. The idea of those things for some reason just did not appeal to me—I would rather have stayed in with him, perhaps went and got some food, and cuddled on the couch while watching TV or a movie. I was perfectly ok with staying at home rather than taking a trip anywhere far.

I recently began wondering if I had just been so busy that taking trips was just not on my mind. But now, while in Europe, I’m realizing that maybe I’ve just lost that desire to go on longer trips. That hypothesis would explain a lot of things. It explains why it’s taken me until now to go to Europe. It explains why while I was in DC, I was counting down the weeks until I could return home. It explains why I haven’t bought a ground pad or a tent yet. It explains my desperate desire to live in San Francisco. It explains why I can spend every night of the week at home and be content with it. And it explains why on this trip, I have had the goal of travelling to and staying in cities rather than the countryside.

Thoughts at the Berlin Wall

I visited the one remaining segment of the Berlin Wall in Germany. At the base of it is an exhibit, a series of images and text chronicling life in Berlin and Germany from the late 1920’s through 1989. Perhaps the most stunning thing for me about this exhibit was how truly unbiased the history was. I thought that because I had had a college-level history course, I understood the Cold War fairly well—not so. While viewing this exhibit, I realized a huge bias in my schooling that I had been completely unaware of before.

The bias comes from the following premise: the Western World and capitalism are inherently good, while the Eastern World and totalitarianism/communism are inherently evil. The history books always paint East Berlin as dark and devoid of life, and West Berlin as the noble hero striving to unify the city again. West Berlin was another protagonist alongside Washington, London, and Paris. Not much is said about East Berlin other than the stories of people attempting to cross the wall from the East side to the West side and getting shot. If these are the only stories shared, then of course students like me will get the impression that East Berlin was a place where residents were trapped and were desperately trying to escape because it was so horrible. The pictures of families being reunited after the wall came down further amplify this perception.

But the exhibit at the Wall does not speak ill of East Berlin. It presents it in a totally neutral light. The exhibit gives an equal voice to the lives of West Berliners as well as East Berliners—and no, East Berliners were neither starving nor fearing for their lives. It even shows the dark side of West Berlin, namely the corruption of the elected judges in West Berlin. This is conveniently glossed over in American history classes (I honestly had no idea that that happened). The exhibit’s attitude toward the wall is more or less, “Yes, this happened. Your point is?”

The point here is that any history comes with a bias. Different players in history will have differing stories to tell. And it is wrong to think that American history books will give us an accurate history, especially when it comes to foreign players.

Language Imperialism

I think the first thing I began to think about while on this Europe trip was language. This is the first time in my life where I’m in a place where my language is not the primary language. (Okay, Israel falls into that category, but I travelled with a group, so I was very insulated from the experience of not knowing the dominant language(s).) My first realization was how alienating it is to be in a place where you can’t communicate freely with anyone. Even my Airbnb hosts, who “speak English,” speak a different language than I—there are so many colloquialisms that I have to adjust in order to communicate. It opened my eyes to how hostile it is when Americans say, “Learn English before you come here!” If we want to uphold that mantra, should we in turn not be allowed to travel to places unless we know the official tongue? Perhaps that should be another airport screening measure.

I learned on this trip that buried inside me, I had what I will now call “language imperialism.” As mentioned, my hosts “spoke English,” but a different English than mine. But is their English wrong? They, as well as millions or billions of others around the world, learned English in school, likely from instructors who have the same accents and idioms that their form of English has. These accents and idioms were therefore inherited in their version of English, just as my accent and idioms were inherited in my version of English. Therefore, who is to say that my American English is the gold standard of what the English language is? And why, by having this implicit bias, did I not apply the same standard to British English? British English is just as varied from my American English as German English, or Swiss English, or Danish English, or Indian English. So I give the title “language imperialism” to the ideology that assumes that my home language is the “correct” form of the language.

There were several times on the trip where I considered filtering my English through a European accent so that I would not be so easily identifiable as an American. I can’t tell if that’s offensive or not.

Misleading commercials

When I was a kid, I watched Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune regularly. There was one commercial that repeatedly aired, and it sticks out in my memory.

Scene: a white husband/wife couple in their house.
Husband: I'm going to go check the mail.
Wife: No! There's an unexpected bill out there!
Husband: [looks out window, sees man standing next to mailbox wearing a t-shirt that says "BILL"] Let's hide; maybe he'll go away!
Wife: I don't think so.
Narrator: When an unexpected bill shows up, come to Advance America Cash Advance. [Couple enters Advance America facility. Shown talking to agent at counter. Narrator says some more stuff that I can't remember.] So come to Advance America and say, "Bye-bye, bill." [Couple turns around and waves good-bye to Bill who is standing right outside the building. Bill looks sad.] Call 1-888-68-CASH-NOW.

This commercial is quite misleading because it shows Advance America customers as white, middle-class, home-owning, "normal" people. This is usually not the case, as evidenced by the fact that you will almost never see an Advance America location in places like Marin County, Montclair, Pacific Heights, Westwood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, etc. You will find them in places with a noticeable presence of lower-class residents. Because that's how places like Advance America make money--they profit off exploiting the vulnerable. They advance your next paycheck, and then you must make the repayment on time or else you get charged an insane interest rate (Try 456.25% per year). Places like Advance America know that loaning money to financially insecure customers is a risky investment. But they end up profiting from interest on these loans, because they know these customers will probably not be able to repay on time.

Customers in this vulnerable situation are rarely homeowners. You will see a lot of low-income people of color who are struggling to make the rent payments each month asking for these cash advances. They can't afford to make a down-payment on a house. Those are the people that companies like Advance America profit from.

I'm not calling for a different course of action. I'm just calling out bullshit where I see it. The commercials were deliberately unrepresentative of the market served. ("White home-owners go to Advance America too!")