Foreign Attitudes

I’m finishing up a week’s vacation in Montreal. Every year I take my children on a New Year’s vacation; last year Amsterdam, in other years to such far-flung places as Cancun, London, the Galapagos Islands, and the Amazon jungle. The first few trips the crew consisted of the four of us, that is, my three kids and me.  Soon significant others had to be included, and then close friends.  This trip we’re a group of eleven!  I pay transportation for my family and hotels and meals for all.  We go because, as a father, it’s a duty and privilege to broaden my children’s minds.

So this year we ended up in Montreal in the depths of winter.  It was 10 degrees and snowing the day we arrived, dragging our stuffed suitcases up the steps of the Metro station and down the street towards our hotel on a windswept sidewalk, shivering and wondering if maybe Belize might have been a better choice.  The second day we enjoyed a heat wave, 24 degree high, followed by plummeting temperatures of highs in the low single digits and nighttime depths of well below zero.  Even with two layers each of gloves and socks, our little digits felt frostbit with every outside journey.  In this case, part of the adventure included testing one’s tolerance to environmental extremes.  It’s not often one can enjoy a snowball fight on the Mississippi Coast.

 Montreal has a European feel.  French is the official language; all signs, televisions, and people presume you speak and understand it.  Most everyone is bilingual, and the service people (waiters, hotel clerks, etc.) will accommodate Anglos, except for government people, such as Metro workers, who stubbornly insist they don’t understand English speakers asking for directions, even though they probably do.  But there’s more to the Continental feel than just the language.  Public transportation, little boutiques and restaurants crowded everywhere, and amazing museums.  Well all these are typical of big cities, even in America.  No, the European feel is this city’s attitude; a socialistic, environmentally friendly, athletically oriented, humanistic approach that pervades their lifestyle.  Talk politics with a cabbie.  Read the paper’s editorials.  Saddle up with some locals at a cozy pub and you’ll find people are friendly everywhere, though with different attitudes.

Foreigners wonder why the United States allows regular citizens to have guns, thus having a murder rate thousand times greater than any other industrialized country in the world.  They ask me why United States medicine is run by the insurance industry for profit instead of governmentally socialized, thus providing one of the worst levels of medical care in the industrialized world (despite what Americans are misled to believe).  Citizens of other countries want to know why in the United States do the rich get the largest tax breaks, thus putting the burden of taxation on the middle class and poor. 

There are marvelous aspects of being an American, I tell them.  I have a delightful home, incredible occupation, wonderful friends, and comfortable lifestyle.  I love my freedoms of speech, religion, and peaceful assembly.  However their questions are valid.  I tell them, and I tell you, my readers, I recommend travel to foreign lands to see other possibilities ... even if it means a bit of chilblain on the fingers and toes.