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September 27, 2007

The British

I have met some truly exceptional British people in my lifetime. People so bright and witty that as an American you felt as though you have been thinking and speaking in a second language your entire life. That is not how I felt tonight.

What truly strikes me about the vernacular traveling Brit is their ability to throw bollacks to the wind from coming from a good education, a cultured and cosmopolitan country and to be the rudest, most tasteless and condescending literates on planet Earth.

Since coming to Logroño tonight was my first time hearing my own native language being spoken in the wild. It happened when, over a steak and a glass of wine, I heard three men talking to each other with distinct accents: one sounded something like a Scots accent, the other something from somewhere north of London, and the third something like Dutch. If I didn't trust my ears I could see dark pints lined up on the bar.

I went over and introduced myself. One thing the world has taught me is that the British rarely refuse a free round and so I went and offered one up and was quickly offered a spot. Two of the men were from the UK: Newcastle and Manchester respectively, the third with the Dutch accent turned out to be Deutsch, he was from Bremen, Germany.

Within minutes I was told how I could be sleeping with the bar made ("the way you ordered those pints, you're fluent!"), or sleeping with the woman next to us at the bar ("you're fluent mate!"), or at the very least sleeping with the hookers up the block ("have you seen them?"). They asked if I had a girlfriend, and if I did it did not matter because I should be sleeping around on her. Where were we? Ah the wine is fine here, but it sure doesn't beat a pint no matter how stale in Spain. Thank goodness Guiness is half price tonight!

Very often the surprising thing is that these people are traveled. We talked about visiting Eastern Europe, the Americas, Asia...count these folks as the second set of Brits who are more impressed with the Filipina hostess bars in Cairo than the pyramids of Giza. Newcastle didn't mention the cosmopolitan culture of Zamelek, but he did whip out his mobile to show me live motion underground Egyptian pornography. She was doing all of that while wearing fishnet no less. Wait, let him rewind it again so he can re-watch his favorite part. Another Guiness please?

No, I'm sorry I never have heard of that player from Newcastle United. Oh, he's the coach? Yes, I am sorry we use the word soccer. No, I never gave a rats ass about David Beckham either.

The worst part of the entire arrangement is that, as an American, there is never a possibility to exist on the moral high ground. First there was the story about the man who asked one of the Brits if they celebrate Christmas in England. Then there was the story about the hotel clerk in North Caroline who said to Newcastle, "gee, you aren't from around here are you, you must be from Texas." Then there was the story from the German about the American policeman who wouldn't take his German passport as proper proof identification. For every Egyptian porn toting, pint-swilling, football crazed one of theirs we've got three that are dumb as stumps. And it is hard to be chopped lower than a stump.

Posted by jordanh at September 27, 2007 5:29 PM

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