Learning Strategies

First I was told that Churchill said it. Then I was told that it was Wilde. But actually it was Shaw who described England and America as “two countries separated by a common language.”

Language is part of culture, so we’re also separated not only by a common language by also by a common culture. In both cases the differences are striking and interesting. The following observations are based on a mere week in England, so take them with several grains of salt — although I did spend several weeks in England several decades ago, for what that’s worth.

• Everybody’s whining about gas prices in the U.S., but petrol in England was up to a pound per litre on my last day there, and that works out to about seven dollars per gallon. Frankly, that’s a good thing, as it discourages driving.
  
  
• This ad appeared in many Underground stations and elsewhere:
  
  
  
  
• Fortunately our gracious hostess was willing to drive us around everywhere, so we didn’t have to cope with driving on the wrong side of the road. After a year in England, she has gotten used to it. The roundabouts (rotaries) were my principal worry — well, actually, they were #2. It was making a right turn that always seemed the worst. There was also this concept of “mini-roundabouts” or virtual roundabouts, as I liked to call them. Imagine an ordinary T-intersection with a circle painted in the middle of it; the circle makes it a virtual roundabout, which changes the right-of-way rules so that whoever is “in” in the virtual roundabout has the right of way, instead of the usual rules.
  
  
• Despite all the influences of American culture, the Brits still seem to queue up more often than we do. Probably not as much as 40 years ago, but still...
  
  
• It’s not clear what the situation is with the double-decker buses. My guidebook claimed that they are a thing of the past. A report on NPR claimed the same. But there they were, all around London. Hmm...
  
  
• There were security cameras everywhere. I suppose it’s a reaction to the terrorist attacks in the London Underground a year ago. Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me, and I din’t feel that my privacy was being invaded.

Food and drink:

• Food was definitely much better than I had expected. We had to try the ubiquitous fish and chips, which wasn’t bad, and most of the other meals were downright good.
  
  
• But there were chips with everything (sounds like the title of a play); even an Asian or Greek meal that came with rice was also accompanied by chips (“half and half”).
  
  
• Surprisingly, almost every restaurant we went to offered at least one vegetarian entree, usually marked with a V.
  
  
• Also surprisingly, many of the restaurants were totally non-smoking, and most of the others had non-smoking sections. At the end of this calendar year the entire country is going non-smoking in restaurants and bars, following Ireland’s example.
  
  
• Coffee is still bad in most restaurants — usually instant. But Starbucks is everywhere, and many restaurants and cafes are serving excellent brewed coffee.
  
  
• We had an excellent Asian meal in London — mostly dim sum — at Yauatcha, an Asian restaurant with a Japanese ambience but mostly Chinese food.

Labels: food, travel