September 10, 2007
Pin the Tail on the Yankee
by Ruth Crossman
"I don't know how things work in America, but I'm sorry, you're not going to find a single bank in London open on a Saturday."
I was standing in front of the Willesden Green Tube Station with all of my earthly possessions in a pile in front of me, on the phone with the manager of London Accomodation. Five minutes earlier, her Australian secretary had assured me that there was an HSBC in Tottenham Court which was open on Saturday, and so if I was willing to make the schlep I could go there and deposit my meager severance packet. But Lady Posh had a point to prove and I was in no mood to argue. I had just been sacked from my job at an EFL summer camp after an unfortunate incident involving a bomb scare at a national monument, and I was desperate for a room. I just sighed and said that in that case, I would be paying half the deposit in cash and putting the other half on my nearly-maxed American Visa card. I had gotten used to acquiescing to the Brits, especially when I heard the phrase "I don't know how things work in America, but here in England..."
I had been the token American at the summer camp, and had begun to wonder if "take the piss out of the Yankee" was some kind of national sport. The string of questions and comments was endless-"why do you smile so much?" "why do you say like all the time?" "why did Bush get re-elected if so many of you voted for Kerry?" At first, I had tried to play the role of the cultural translator. But after a while I just started staring my tormentors down and fixing them with a grim smirk. That usually shut them up. At least in Westonbirt, I had been gainfully employed and given free room and board. London, as I was soon to find out, would be a whole different story.
Camus once compared the concentric canals of Amsterdam to the circles of hell, and I began to feel much the same way about the Tube zones in the Big Smoke. A city full of immigrants rubbing against horrified locals, each group of foreigners occupied their own level. The Desis ran the off-licenses and sold the cell phones. The Poles unclogged the toilets. The French waited tables and ran the kitchens. But the most ironic level was reserved for the native speakers-the Aussies, the Kiwis, and the Yankees. The others were there either out of dire economic need or a desire to learn the language. Our reason for coming could usually be summed up in two words-"pound sterling." We were the paper pushers, the petty bureaucrats, or, in my case, the substitute teachers. English culture has a strong streak of xenophobia to it, but the English seemed to reserve a special brand of contempt for the Americans. I remember explaining to a Polish friend of mine that while the Londoners seemed to resent the foreign influx, my case was rather special. They might feel guilty for the misery their empire had brought to India and Pakistan. They might pity the Poles because of the history of their country. They might look down on the Aussies and Kiwis, but they saw them as brothers in the commonwealth, bastard children of the Queen Mum. For the Americans, they had not a shred of sympathy. I saw a definite glitter in the eyes of my landlords and employers when they realized I needed something from them. So, Yankee, the tables have turned. If you want my money, if you want my flat, be prepared to get on your knees and beg for it. And I did.
I spent a miserable four weeks fighting for survival in London before I gave up. I had a free apartment and a cushy teaching job waiting for me in Slovakia in mid-September, so in the last week of August I scraped together all the money I had left, bought a one way ticket to Bratislava, and made a call to my new boss. I fell in love with Slovakia the minute the plane touched down. The people were warm hearted, they were loud and flashy, and they were emotionally demonstrative, like the Americans. Despite the language barrier, I felt a hundred times more comfortable with the Slovaks than I had with the English.
But Britannia gave me one last parting shot. I was in a hostel, preparing to move into my new apartment, when two English girls with the kind of posh London accent that sets my teeth on edge walked into the room.
"So how long have you been here?"
I could have pretended I didn't speak English, but I decided to be civil.
"About a week."
"It's a bit of a dive, don't you think?"
"You mean the hostel?"
"No, the city. It's really a mess, isn't it? So dirty and ugly. Not like Vienna."
My gut reaction was to slap them across the face and tell them to home if they hated it so much, but I bit my tongue and chose my words carefully.
"You know, the thing about Bratislava is that the people are nice. The same cannot be said for London."
And with that, I grabbed my backpack and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind me like an uncouth Yankee.
Ruth Crossman is a free lance writer and English teacher currently based out of Bratislava, Slovakia. Her interests include language acquisition, travel, and international politics.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 11:24 AM | Permalink
Comments
When I moved to England, it took me almost two months to finally be able to open a bank account, the bureacracy was incredible. But when I came to America, the account was ready and open for me even before I landed.
I have never seen a place where people are so proud of how inconvenient they can make life for themselves and everyone else like London.
It is a matter of pride that banks are closed most the time, that everything takes forever to get done, that bureaucracy will stifle anything you want to do and delay it. America has excelled in making everything convenient to everyone, and the British seem to want to make it a point to differentiate themselves by making everything complicated, drawn out, inconvenient and unfriendly. It can't get more un-American than that, and so the British seem to like it a lot.
Posted by: Saifedean | Sep 10, 2007 3:35:41 PM
the English seemed to reserve a special brand of contempt for the Americans.
And every American ought to reflect on why this is so, given that it is only two generations after the massive outpouring of love and respect following the second world war.
Posted by: Nick Smyth | Sep 10, 2007 4:29:29 PM
Brits hate Americans for many reasons. But one of the most important has to be the constant reminder that Britain doesn't count for much anymore. That Britain theoretically "won the war" but lost everything in the peace afterward and was forced into one hasty imperial exit after another. The US even helped things along in Suez.
It must irk that everyone in the British elite knows that they must be Washington's poodle to have real influence in the world.
Posted by: Hektor Bim | Sep 10, 2007 4:54:29 PM
Weird, I had the opposite experience living in London: opened a bank account no problem, worked no problem, found British tax forms enviably easy to understand. Customer service representatives, sales staff, plumbers, etc., seemed much, much more competent and helpful to me than their counterparts in New York. My girlfriend and I arranged a private tour of the Houses of Parliament with ease simply by writing to our local MP (imagine writing your Congressman to do the same). I rented a cottage on the North Sea and an old farmhouse in Wales and the owners were welcoming and efficient. I drove a Renault 5 at high speeds everywhere and loved that people actually drove in the right lane and used the left for passing. I also found the country so pleasingly conscious of the fact of rest of the world by comparison to the U.S. - perhaps, strangely enough, a positive colonial legacy.
I'm sorry your experience was so bad, but think about giving an entire country (of sixty million) another chance.
Or perhaps my anecdotal experience is no more representative of social truth than yours.
Posted by: Asad Raza | Sep 10, 2007 5:17:12 PM
Actually the Brits treat everyone like that, even themselves. Maybe even especially themselves - the Welsh, the Scots, the Eastenders, the Upper Class, the Chavs, the Northerners... Why should they treat you any different? At least they didn't fingerprint you at the border.
PS: Asad - it is more usual to use the right hand lane for passing. After all one drives on the left in Britain. On the other hand using whatever lane is available on the motorway to pass is pretty common in the UK.
Posted by: Tim | Sep 10, 2007 7:09:26 PM
There's a mid-century British term that applies here -- "to muddle through." The Brits would say about the difficulties of the war years, for instance, that they "somehow muddled through." Though they might not define it quite this way, what it appears to me to mean is to exalt courage over competence, custom over logic, and almost everything over foresight -- which, if you had any, would prevent your muddling through, because you would have accurately assessed your chances of survival, and probably caved. Instead, you muddled through -- and survived. Losing this winning attitude - and it is that, if you're in London for the Blitz -- doesn't actually appeal to anyone but Richard Branson.
That bank Ruth tells us about might well think it's muddling through well enough without having to open on a Saturday. Repair persons (speaking from bitter personal knowledge here...) sometimes give the impression that while they're muddling through without a skill-set, you just expect more and other than what is reasonable and customary, so the problem is yours. Oh, I could go on. Jonathan Raban writes wonderfully about it. I didn't get it at all until one day I saw that those behaviors that enable survival in times of inconceivable stress, stress that lives on in public memory in a way few native-born Americans can appreciate, are the very last behaviors to be abandoned, ever.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Sep 10, 2007 7:30:05 PM
Oh yeah, Tim - ha. It's been too long since I've been over there. I once drove from London to Rome though and driving sitting on the right side of the car while on right-hand drive roads was disconcerting. Also being passed on twisting, mountainous roads by Italians in Fiats going 160 kph.
But I hold to my claim that English drivers are more competent than American.
Posted by: Asad Raza | Sep 10, 2007 7:39:23 PM
Asad, you need to drive from London to Rome again, this time with the girl who passes the Downtown Parking Test. The idea now being to see whether she can spell you as the driver on this non-stop trip. If she not only drives on the wrong side of the road without damage to her good humor but -- without becoming enervated -- finesses Fiats speeding on /tornanti/ in southern Italy, then you'll have to face the fact you've found a keeper.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Sep 10, 2007 8:01:30 PM
My girlfriend and I arranged a private tour of the Houses of Parliament with ease simply by writing to our local MP (imagine writing your Congressman to do the same).
Actually, they do that every day. That's why they have interns. I used to work on Capitol Hill, and most offices run 3 or 4 private or group tours a day when Congress is in session.
Posted by: a | Sep 10, 2007 9:00:22 PM
Asad,
I'm genuniely fascinated you would say this! It seems all of your good luck in London was taken from my share of luck.
3 years after leaving London, I'm still waiting for the plummer to fix the heating that broke in December 2003.
Not a single customer service call ever lasted less than 30 minutes with me.
And did you ever get hungry and try to find something to eat after 9? Sod that--did you ever find anything decent to eat in London at all that didn't cost 50pounds?!
And no, I do not hate the country, I like it a lot and follow things there very closely, from politics to football; I just don't think I could enjoy living there.
I guess the real lesson for both of us though is to be careful of generalizing our personal anecdotes!
Posted by: saifedean | Sep 11, 2007 12:23:54 AM
goodness, asad,
painless bureaucratic experiences in london must not be a genetic blessing. i had an absolute disaster of a time as well setting up house here. i was royally fucked with banking, had to wire money to live while countless deposits etc. were "processed" (who wires money?), and the amount of anguish spent trying to sort out anything with BT...
bureaucracy and quality of life (a term i never thought about with such longing and sensitivity in new york) in terms of services are the last two reasons i'm staying.
god. now i'm trying to figure out what those were... the strength of the pound?
Posted by: jaffer kolb | Sep 11, 2007 3:30:59 AM
Actually the trick is to visit with a substantial enough bankroll that the local bureaucrats and service people can be entirely ignored when they're on duty (off duty is quite a different matter -- generally they're entirely amiable then) and to make sure there is time for a visit to the provinces where everything is so much easier and the provincials groan and roll their eyes about Londoners just as Americans do about New Yorkers. Possibly with similar justification or otherwise. At least you don't have the complaint Canadians do that when their accent is recognised in London it so often provokes the gratuitous comment, "Oh, you're Canadian, aren't you. How boring."
But generalisations are always invidious, so perhaps even the foregoing can be safely ignored. Stereotypes even more so. An Indian Muslim friend has been moonlighting at an airport here in Australia as one of the functionaries who asks outgoing passengers to empty their pockets and bags and to surrender their liquids and gels (he and I agree that someone has a good sense of humour to have hired him for that job, all things considered) and he reports with some perplexity that prima facie expectations about how various nationalities might respond to this particular nuisance are entirely confounded. Australians are business-like and matter-of-fact; it is Americans who are are surly and rude; East Asians are beyond surly and rude, and are so unpleasant he has taken to pretending with them that he can't speak English; Brits are, he reports, invariably not only polite and co-operative but so nice about an inconvenience that obviously cannot be blamed on anyone here present that it is a positive pleasure to deal with them.
Posted by: Mac | Sep 11, 2007 6:17:14 AM
I moved to London 7 years ago from the states. I equally love and hate this town.
I enjoy the fact that you can meet people, get to know them over time, and never know what they do for a living nor care as long as they're rousing conversationalists.
I like that when you say you're going to take a holiday here, the response is 'sure', as opposed to 'we'll have to see about that' and you can take a few holidays a year not just one and it's expected!
I like the muddle through mentality, it's more on par with reality than the endless pursuit of happiness.
I've had 2 religious based conversations since I've been here, both of them with Americans. I like the fact that these prickly topics are wisely left to the side. I've had innumerable conversations about the weather though, which is fine because it's not what you say, it's how you say it and the meaning is in the subtext.
It's easy to spot the American who never takes the opportunity to envelope themselves a bit, forget about their cultural neurosis, shut up, look and listen for a bit. I avoid them like the plague.
I also feel intrinsically freer here than I did in the states. It would take an essay to qualify that statement, but I'll just leave it at that for now.
Posted by: N Miller | Sep 11, 2007 10:01:27 AM
It's easy to spot the American who never takes the opportunity to envelope themselves a bit, forget about their cultural neurosis, shut up, look and listen for a bit. I avoid them like the plague.
Luv, I sincerely, sincerely hope that comment was not directed at me. My father is an East Ender born an bred, I am the proud holder of a UK passport, and as a teenager I spent every summer living with my grandparents on the Isle of Dogs. I love the provinces, especially the South, and I certainly was not enveloped in a little cloud of Americanism, I couldnt have been even if I wanted to, as a matter of fact I barely spoke to other Americans while I was there, just because I didnt meet any.
The point of this article is that London is a whore city. It didnt used to be, I was actually shocked to see what it had become. I blame the EU and the weakness of the Australian Dollar...Everyone uses the city for something, most people who come, and I say most, not all, are there either to learn the language or to make money, and the locals know that and so they resent us for it.
I lived in France for six months, and I have to say that the level of anti-Americanism there paled in comparison to what I experienced in England. I am sorry, but the English dont have much ground to criticize American foreign policy. The English military is occupying Iraq as well, and in fact, it was English foreign policy that created the Middle East as we know it. Balfour Declaration anyone? In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that a large part of the reason the English come down so hard on us Yankees is because they see themselves when they look at us. And if you have a desire to cluck your tongue at the ugly American abroad, I would urge you to contemplate the antics of your average English stag on holiday in Prague or Amsterdam, or your average English football fan at a match in Slovakia...
Posted by: ruthc | Sep 11, 2007 10:43:26 AM
Ruth, your experiences sound so frustrating. I would only say here that we probably should take care when using anecdotes as evidence for generalizations. Choosing anecdotes as evidence is usually colored by things extraneous (emotions, personal matters, etc.) to the anecdotes. Take these two:
Last time I drove in London in a tiny fiat, I nearly got consumed by a lorry. Other things in my life were not perfect: I was poor and had just had a fight with a friend (in the passenger seat) and it was probably raining. I decided in the heat of my frustration that all drivers in London were terrible. I'm pretty sure that I spent months telling everyone I knew about my new-found "fact."
Last summer, however, when on blissful vacation with my partner in Scotland, I thought it was downright charming and delightful that the rules of driving on single-lane roads were so impenetrable to me. We later spent a good twenty minutes laughing raucously about how I managed to drive *over* the round-about when I got confused about driving on the left side. I still laugh about it. The fact that one became evidence for a generalization while the other became fodder for warm memories has little to do with the facts and more to do with the circumstances.
Posted by: Maeve Adams | Sep 11, 2007 11:43:30 AM
I am not trying to make any kind of generalizations. My experience was my experience. I tried as hard as I could to steer away from bloody generalizations when I wrote the piece because I knew if I made one false move I would have a pack of angry Brits at my back. Note my gratuitous use of "it seemed" and "they might." I will stand behind the statement "As of 2007, London is a whore city" and I challenge anyone who cares to to come up with a cogent and well worded refutation.
Posted by: ruthc | Sep 11, 2007 12:19:56 PM
Alright, Ruth. I wasn't talking about you specifically. I was thinking more about the way the comments seemed to try to refute your claims with their own anecdotes AS IF what you were saying was a generalized fact that required refutation through reference to other personal experiences.
I did not in any way refute a single claim you made. I was simply making an observation about using anecdotes as any kind of evidence. I didn't mean to spark such anger.
I'm not sure, however, that I buy the idea that "London is a whore city." Maybe I don't understand the formulation. I'm not sure I understand exactly how London is significantly different from other big cities where people arrive from many different places to take advantage of its resources. But, I'm curious about how you think London is unique in this regard.
Posted by: Maeve Adams | Sep 11, 2007 12:44:25 PM
Characterizing a city as "whore" and daring someone to refute you is the opposite of cogent; it's silly, imprecise and meaningless.
Posted by: Asad Raza | Sep 11, 2007 4:30:25 PM
Anti-Americanism is a sign of severe weakness. Why is no one anti-Belgian? Imagine if Belgium would be the world power, now that would suck. Especially the hacking at each others with machetes thing a hundred years after they'd leave planet earth.
Anti-German, anti-Russian, anti-communist, it all makes sense, but anti-Americanism, and lecturing Americans on democracy (go Hitler! elected on a platform for a united Europe under social democracy) instead of thanking the founding fathers daily for enshrining individual rights that allow prosperity and peace seems uneducated and reactionary.
And yes Brits are "full of it", especially when they are in Amsterdam or at the Mediterranean coasts, but Bratislava is fun for us because of its raw, pure, gloriously neglected Austro-Hungarian Communist poverty -- in direct comparison to London it is a Whore City.
Posted by: humanliberty | Sep 12, 2007 3:17:39 AM
I think what this article and thread is really missing is some generalisation
Posted by: Fridgemonkey | Sep 12, 2007 6:38:52 AM
Darlin' I must have gotten confused in regards to your initial comments about how everyone played "take the piss out of the Yankee". The born'n'breds asking why you said 'like' and why you smiled all the time. Having spent many summers here, one could conceive that you might have realised that it was simply a very British test of your mettle. To see if you could laugh it off, not take yourself too seriously, perhaps even engage in the very British past time of self-effacement. But instead you get your back up, stare them down and smirk. They take the piss out of people from the next village over, let alone across the pond.
In regards to its lascivious and whorish mentality, there is nothing new, it is a commonly held belief that has existed for hundreds of years.
“London is a modern Babylon.” - Benjamin Disraeli (1860)
“Nothing is certain in London but expense.” - William Shenstone (1750)
Posted by: N Miller | Sep 12, 2007 8:42:13 AM
The English love to put people in their place. Always have. Perhaps its a remnant of the class system, I don't know, but they are perpetually establishing "rank". And this seems especially true for some reason of intellectuals.
Posted by: DaveH | Sep 15, 2007 9:14:12 PM
I've lived in the UK my whole life, and everytime I visit London I feel as though I've inadvertently parachuted into a chaotic, hostile, incredibly expensive 3rd World toilet of a foreign country.
But then I'm Welsh, and live in Wales - so I suppose that's understandable.
Because compared to Wales, London IS a chaotic, hostile, incredibly expensive 3rd World toilet of a foreign country.
I feel most "at home", when I'm not at home, amongst Americans in rural Wisconsin, where my son's in-laws live.
It's practically indistinguishable from Wales - but without any stuck-up English People to spoil things.
Posted by: Dai James | Feb 5, 2008 3:45:05 AM
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