1 week in Europe: I missed the good and old USA

[Savago]

Visited  Spain for 4 days attending a work related conference and UK to visit my company's HQ in Cambridge.

About Spain: Great food (I mean really great, I gained 6 pounds!), low prices and generally warm and welcoming people. It is a bit insane, but even the potatoes tasted better there, being a local specialty what they call 'Padron peppers' and fried salted octopus with olive oil.

Prices for everything are low, in the region I visited (Galicia, kind of north-west of Spain) you can buy a decent house in a good neighborhood for 50K euros (around 58K dollars).

People in general *don't* speak English, but they are always willing to help you out.

What I didn't like: general infrastructure is kind of lacking (e.g. sidewalks are not perfectly leveled, city streets could be cleaner, etc) and drivers are insane (I was almost hit by a car while in the crosswalk). The smell of diesel in week days is kind of bad, but you can say the same for the rest of Europe.

Sorry for Diesel lovers, but USA got it right reserving diesel only for heavy duty applications.

About UK: lots of history, this time I could visit the King's College Church in Cambridge. Imagine that its construction started in the middle ages (1446) and took like 4 or more Kings to get it done.

The city has lots of students riding their bicycles all over the place, the downtown is neat (some really old and interesting architecture). The beer is kind of OK (sorry, we got better IPAs in California), food doesn't come even close to Spain, drivers are a bit more educated (but they drive in the wrong side of the road!).

They speak English, not American mind you (so expect to sometimes being politely corrected while speaking with the natives).
:-P

But after 9 days I was really looking forward to come back home. What I missed the most from the good and old USA:

a) The wide and spacious roads: Europe got this cities that were founded back in the middle ages and they never got to build its roads in the modern way like in America.

Having a big pickup truck or a SUV in Europe is definitely a bad idea.

It is kind of funny, but I have the impression that everything over there is smaller (e.g. cars, steak knives, the ceiling height in buildings, etc). I almost hit my head in the ceiling in quite a few places (I'm 6ft1 or 1m85cm).

b) The food: not in Spain, but in UK you can say they only have 'honest food'.

c) The people: Americans are warmer and more easy going than their cousins in UK.

d) The steak: damn right! We got huge and American sized beef here!

e) Weather: here I'm kind of spoiled by the Californian weather.

Overall, it was a quite interesting and productive week but I felt really happy when I was finally back to home.
:-)

[Rams]

Welcome back.   

Glad you didn't witness or experience any of the terrorism over there.

[Savago]

Politics (Just skip this if you are not interested):
I was asked repeatedly about the mass murder in Las Vegas and what were my views on the subject, to which I expressed deep sorrow but I can't ever support any attacks to the second amendment because I saw first hand what happened in Brazil where the government *against* the will of the people seized guns and prohibited citizens to have access to weapons. The result: exponential climb of violence and murderers.

What I wished is that it was cheaper in USA to look for mental health care than to buy a rifle, but that is another can of worms. Maybe metal detectors in hotels? Dunno really.

People in Spain were concerned about the Catalonian referendum, even though they think the referendum was kind of bullshit led by a few left wing politicians, they were really pissed off by the way that the Madrid's federal government decided to handle the situation (kind of proving why Catalonian people don't wanna be ruled by Madrid).

In UK, all the people I talked to were deeply concerned about the uncertainty around Brexit. Young people (18-35) were always against leaving EU and even older people that I talked to who voted for Brexit now realized that they have being lied to. Real state prices stabilized (and in some cases are starting to decrease a bit), economy is suffering and there isn't any positive signs about what is going to happen (quite the opposite with Angela Merkel being re-elected and Theresa May loosing support from her own party).

I would say that if you consider their problems (economy, terrorism, etc), USA is doing great. We only have this controversy about NFL players and other bullshit that is not really relevant (exception of what happened in Las Vegas). Let's just hope that the economy continues doing fine and we don't get the country involved in any new war.

[Savago]

A few photos of King's College Church:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/1qpHLS5tzF0AO0j42

[Jess from VA]

Thanks for the report Savago.  I was all over Europe (including Spain), 30 years ago.  There were a few tense moments, but mostly I had a blast.

When I see these beautiful giant old churches, I am always impressed.  And I always wonder how many local people were starving to death while they were being built.

St Francis is more my style..... in churches and in governments.