April 22, 2003

Two-faced bastard

Expatriatism is not about losing your own precious mother culture, it's about gaining a wonderful new culture. Which means that when travelling somewhere outside the two countries that have some claim over your soul, you will feel embarrassed at the antics not just of those wacky Americans from the culture you were born into, but also at the frightening behavior of those alcoholic Swedes from the culture that has smothered you to its shapely and fashionable breast.

That is, you will be embarrassed if you are me.

The good thing is that when I see Americans loudly gushing over something or other and taking up way too much personal space, I can suddenly break into Swedish with the husband. And when I see Swedes drinking bloody marys at 10 a.m. on an airplane, followed by more bloody marys, then wine and then cognac and maybe even another bloody mary, I smile and ask the husband in English whether he likes the movie or not.

Sadly, I don't have the sense to realize that people from all cultures do obnoxious things, especially when they're away from their usual stomping grounds, so there's no reason to feel embarrassed by anything, as if I were somehow wearing a sign on my forehead that reads "I'm with that American asshole over there."

I wish I could be more rational about it.

Posted by Francis at April 22, 2003 05:32 PM
Comments

That is so put well put! I have felt exactly what you describe.

It is amusingly human though - really, just trying to distance yourself from the offending party.

Posted by: shelley at April 23, 2003 05:05 AM

That's disgusting behaviour! Everybody knows that one should stick to gin and tonics on aeroplanes!

Posted by: des at April 23, 2003 01:53 PM

Though there's a lot to be said about the loss inherent in this process, too. When I lived in the UK for a couple of years, I realised - when I visited home or whatever - that I wasn't either. I was no longer an Australian, though parts of my identity as an Aussie (pride in some of what we can do, say) had firmed up. But I wasn't a Brit, either, because though I knew all the signs, the language and could pass off as one of a crowd of Londoners, I wasn't really one of them. The international traveller - the sort who stays in a city for months or years - becomes, more often than not, a strange, gauzy being that doesn't really fit in. Maybe that's what wanderlust really is? I dunno.

That said, I avoided drunken Aussie pubs like the fucking plague, filing away my nationality whenever The Walkabout approached.

Posted by: Luke at April 24, 2003 01:00 AM