I feel like a modern day Roman. Despite following two weeks of deciphering Polish, Hungarian, Croatian, Slovenian, German, and Italian, being greeted with the English language was surprisingly underwhelming. Everywhere I travelled seemed to have, at minimum, one English speaking citizen every fifty feet. Ordering food in Poland is as simple as telling the waiter you speak English and waiting for her to bring the employee who does. Granted, many of the places I visited were tourist locations where English speakers make up the majority of visitors. Even still, I heard two French women use English to bridge the language gap between them and their Italian bus driver.
This is not the bus I rode - though, I wish it was.
Aside from exposing English’s status as the universal language, these past two weeks helped to give me a better understanding of the unappreciated privileges I have had as an American. The “American Dream” hardly exists outside of America. England has a population density of 397 people per/km compared to America’s 33, so most people live in apartments or small row homes. Many of these are old, and I’m sure home repair costs are through the roof. The same probably goes for Italy where every stereotypically beautiful, Italian apartment seemed to be in a state of disrepair. The Slovenian bed and breakfast I stayed in, situated directly next to the country’s beautiful national park, had to be rebuilt after it was occupied and destroyed eighteen years ago when the country was at war with the Yugoslav’s People’s Army. Dubrovnik, Croatia was bombed twenty-five years ago and had to be nearly entirely rebuilt. Aside from the civil war, America has not had to cope with fighting on its own soil; and its people have a lot of space to build their homes.
Believe it.
Capitalism originated in England, but it took a firmer hold in America where the economic system itself has become an export. In all the countries I visited, storefronts and advertisements seemed desperate to emulate the American way of doing things. Successful attempts were pleasing only in so far as advertising in America is, and unsuccessful attempts made clear the ways in which capitalism consumes culture, transforming tradition into no more than petty salesmanship. Thankfully, genuine Italian pizza still exists, and my Dubrovnik host gave me a free glass of homemade wine. Capitalism made my trip to Europe possible; I’m not about to start complaining. But, ever since I couch surfed in Budapest and my host explained to me how some of its people wish communism would return because then everyone had jobs, I have not stopped thinking about whether a complete laissez-faire attitude is the best way to treat people well.
A lot of good can and has come from the adoption of American value systems. But, I think it is important to keep in mind that responsibility for society as a whole is the modern day Roman’s double-edged sword. If dissent is similar to that in the following clip from Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian,” I think everything will turn out just fine.
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