The other day I heard that only about 1 in 10 Americans had been outside the USA. Can this be true? Does anyone know the accurate figure and have any idea how this compares with other countries?
I wonder if they were counting in all the day trips to Tijuana. Cross the line, have a wild party, come home and be part of the statistics.
Could those people count?
They'd probably count rabbits crossing if it improved their tally.
This reminds me of when I went to the Czech Republic during the Iron Curtain era. On every occasion that I entered there was an hours long delay at the border (if I recall correctly there were about three sorts of borders to go through). Well, one of them featured barbed wire, and I was always impressed how sparrows used to perch on it before flying off either to the west or the east or vice versa. - WITHOUT the hassle of visas and over-regulation. It taught me just how 'privileged' mankind was at that time.
I went to Hungary while it was still under occupation. I was quite appalled by their poor standard of living. And the Customs at the airport needed to know every detail about each item in my luggage. Fo instance, why did I need several pairs of nylons for only one month! Later I learned that the women would darn them very neatly whenever there was a run.
The standard of living was very poor indeed, but I always found that 'they' had retained a lot of the values that we'd thrown away.
Anecdotally, I always used to buy some Chanel No. 5 to take over to one of the girls over there, thinking it would be the utmost luxury, only to be latterly ishown a cupboard full of the stuff - evidently every western visitor had obviously had the same idea. She no doubt thought it was very cheap.
True enough. What would have been a luxury would have been a dozen pairs of nylons. That was something they had difficulty obtaining.
Also plastic carrier bags (especially if they had western advertisements over them). Where else have you been?
Just down the east and west coasts of the States. On the east coast, the highlight of the trip was the Smithsonian and the National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. On the west coast, driving through the redwoods was fascinating, and I also remembr a Japanese deer park that was beautiful.
Never been to the Sates at all. I wonder why I had some feeling that you had once paid a visit to Scotland?
I would have liked to visit Scotland. My brother-in-law was a Highlander from Inverness. A very fine gentleman, indeed.
I'm sure he must have been - to have such a sister in law.
Even better, he had my sister. He was a fortunate man.
Indeed. Did your sister move over to Scotland?
No, they met and married in Montreal, moved to Vancouver for four years, and then back to Toronto. They hated it there, so moved to Saint John and lived happily ever after until he passed away.
This sadly is very true. I have a friend who would fit that saying perfectly (he's never been outside of the midwest except he went to Ireland for a week a couple of years ago). I have been to Canada, I am going to travel more when I get older problem we haven't gone anywhere is the fact that the country is huge so my family decided to see that first. (Been in every state east of the mississippi river plus kansas, arkansas, louisiana, texas, Colorado and Washington state.) Another factor why we haven't gone to Europe is the fact that my grandma lives in Florida and we always visit her during the summer so that basically takes up a lot of travel time. The greatest vacation I went on was in '00 where we went to Niagra Falls, down thru New York, stayed at Washington D.C., went down the eastern sea board to my grandma's again. Then we went to Boston and Cape Cod one year. That was the last 'real' family vacation because since then dad is always working and can't get time off so its just me (doing all the driving) mom and sis.
But yeah a lot of midwesterners never leave the midwest in there life, ever. My cousin in laws family never leaves dresden, tennessee, ever. If they do its only for a night, they won't even stay at my cousins and his wife's home which is only 2hrs away!
A lot of Congressman boast that they don't have passports. The reason U.S. - Canadian relations have gone in the crapper is because the people running washington have never been to Canada and are from the south so they aren't used to or know of the special relationship between the two countries.
Over the next year I plan to do something with habitat for humanity to build houses in South America or Eastern Europe. (should be fun)
And I've got trip ideas for Quebec and Vancouver. The Quebec one will be a family one because my sister is taking french while the B.C. one will just be myself wondering in the great unknown for a couple weeks (saved up a bunch of money) in British Columbia. Friend ask me why have I become crazy about Canada (same guy thats never left the midwest except to go to Ireland). I don't know why its just natural for me to explore I guess but then again I've shed all my midwestern roots over the past 4 years so I don't see myself as a midwesterner anymore.
I know more Aussies and New Zealander travel abroad than the Yanks.
The Japanese are great tourists too.