My first moments in America *10 first impressions*
With only a few hours in the USA under my belt, I scribbled some first impressions...
This Newsletter post has been a long time coming, but here it is. I want to describe some of my thoughts of arriving in America for the first time.
I’ve actually done a few videos on this following greater consideration and having traveled to multiple cities in the US, but I’m starting this post way at the beginning of my explorations - during my very first moments in the USA.
People are curious about these early first moments, and as I’d been taking notes in a journal, I will use this space to recount them.
Admittedly, I knew nothing back then, so you can take my musings with a very large pinch of salt. It was summer 2017, and we were blissfully unaware of the the incoming pandemic and two-year travel hiatus that has since darkened our lives.
Aside from my extensive US sitcom habit, I didn’t know what to expect. Incidentally, I captured these early first moments (I look so tragically young) in a YouTube video, which I’ll share below:
To set the scene, this voyage was day one of my Exploring American Values tour with the US embassy to London, and three Scots (John, Kate and I) were flying from Edinburgh to New Jersey for a connecting flight on to Washington D.C., where we’d be making camp for a few days.
Impressions started coming to me from before we’d even stepped on one of your fine American airliners (we were flying with United). In order of how they appeared to me, here they are:
Army veterans get to go on the plane first. I don’t know why I thought this was unusual at the time, and there’s obviously nothing wrong with it, but I guess I’d just never seen such an overt display of pro-military sentiment anywhere else I’d been to. I mean, we are all proud of our armed services, but I think we can be quite discreet about it in the UK. Arriving in line for our plane at Edinburgh, however, United Airlines made it clear - US Veterans go first (alongside the elderly and disabled people).
I caught sight of New York City (the Manhattan skyline) on our approach to Newark Airport, and it was utterly magnificent. I’d seen this vista hundreds of times online and in TV, but never with my own eyes. It is much more impressive in real life. I wanted and needed to see more of this mythical place. ASAP. And I did!
Every American we met - from the airline staff to shop staff in the airports, were very friendly and welcoming.
The airport security, however, were scary motherf*****s and made it clear with their mannerisms, eye movements and commands: do not mess around in here, or you’ll find out!
The pandemic has forced us all into self-service technology at restaurants, but back in 2017 I’d never really seen this before. At Newark, we had to order our own food and beers on an iPad and it was quite a novelty for us at the time. It also didn’t work very well at the time, and we still had to tip!
If you go to a generic food/bar at the airport or city centres in the UK (Wetherspoon, I’m looking at you!) prepare for the most inedible, dried out, freeze-burned, cursed excuse for food you’ll find anywhere. Meanwhile in America, the same type of places served surprisingly edible food and - shock! - cold pints of beer.
Having arrived at Washington D.C. and being transported around the airport and its perimeter, the first thing we noticed - the vehicles were all gargantuan. Seriously, I gazed in awe at these earth-shuddering machines that, rather than being used for mining great pits in the land, were mere people transporters. They were epic.
Flags. Flags everywhere. This, along with my other first observations, is not a criticism, but merely an observation. We saw a lot of the stars and stripes. And they were huge, and everywhere. At the airport. Flying over the airport carpark. Houses all the way from the airport to the city. Office buildings. Offices. If there was unoccupied airspace within reach of a poll, a flag was thus hoisted.
Why wouldn’t I think Washington D.C. should be warm in the middle of summer? I’m not sure, but it was very warm, and humid. I spend the first few days, and nights a hot, pink, sweaty mess. Your nation’s capital is hot, and we were not used to it.
The food is large. Not only that, but great. As soon as we had dumped our bags in the hotel, we washed up and headed out for a meal at the first place we could find. The food was very large and very good. We feasted on chicken wings, fries, nachos and burgers, before getting drunk and getting pizza slices for the walk home. All of it, to my best recollection, was great.
So there you have it. These are my rudimentary first 10 impressions of America, having been in the country for no more than a few moments. As mentioned at the start of this post, I’ve since built up a much better picture and will be sharing these thoughts in future posts right here in Scottish Man in America.
Thank you for reading,
Shaun
