Interesting stories of America

Before going to the US, you must fill out an online application, where they ask you if you were ever arrested, involved with espionage, sabotage, genocide, or were connected with nazi war crimes during WWII, or if you are entering the country in order to conduct criminal activities… which you must fill out honestly. So if all your answers are NO and you give up your rights, they approve you the entry. To protect themselves against terrorists they make a photo of you, fingerprints of all 10 fingers and scan your eyeballs.

To the shop for bread and a sidearm

»Is this normal?« I asked my guide Eric, after seven days of exploring the west coast, when a group of backpackers stood outside the Wal-Mart to get some food to go on, as he suggested they jump down to the weapon department, to get a gun. »Sure, you’re in America!” he said. “There are some rules about it, but almost everybody in the Sates is armed. I am too! Having guns is wide spread in Europe as well, it’s just that in smaller countries it’s not so obvious,« he explained. »But,” I said, “we don’t buy guns at grocery shops… I mean, we don’t have the habit of coming home with a loaf of bread, sidearm, and some orange juice. «

»You don’t like the US, do you?« a Danish girl Stine asked me. I do like the variety of the landscape, the beautiful natural parks, different cultures, many languages, culinary specialties of all over the world mixed up, parks, campuses, grand libraries, skyscrapers… and the American talent to make a spectacle out of everything. It sometimes feels like it’s just movie scenes changing in front of my eyes. I like the beat of the big city and the silence of the nature. But such mentality is agreeing with me less and less …

Overcoming taboos

»We’re the ones who start wars. We’ve split up Yugoslavia. Forgive us,« a middle aged man started talking to us at the New York subway, while trying to figure out which language we were using. »Slovene you say, is Zagreb in your country? I remember Tito,« he started putting the pieces together and thus proved our stereotype about stupid Americans wrong.

A man from Berkley, around 60 years of age, also proved the stereotype wrong, when he started talking to us. »Slovenia, you say. The northernmost part of Yugoslavia, with Ljubljana as the capital. You’ve only got a small part of the Adriatic coast,« he said. He was in Slovenia twice, so he knew where to place us on the map. »You know, most Americans is plain out stupid. We think we’re the most important and don’t need any knowledge about anything else. Most people don’t see beyond their state. Only 20% of Americans have a passport and people just stay in one place,” he informed us.

(Too) fast life style

After the break-up of Yugoslavia, when people of all its nations moved around the world, many came to the US, to – let’s say – New York. “I’m from Sarajevo. I live here for 12 years. Before that we lived in Germany,” a woman said serving me čevapčiči with kajmak and Cockta (čevapčiči = traditional Balkan food of ground meat; kajmak = a Balkan dairy product similar to young cheese; Cockta = Slovenian soft drink, type of coke), said the waitress in a Bosnian restaurant in Queens. “New York becomes an addiction. The atmosphere of the city hypnotizes you. But this isn’t America, it’s more Europe,« she said about living in the city, that doesn’t sleep.

A 24 year old Frenchman has different experience of the US, when we met him in Las Vegas on a business trip. “America is great! But I don’t like the life style. The food is artificial. If anybody mentions diet coke or soda I’ll just scream. The diet is unhealthy and doesn’t agree with me. They all just hurry somewhere, don’t know how to enjoy things,« he said.

What rules?

But many people find their piece of heaven in this fast paced land. “Tell me you’re joking,” the waitress at the hotel bar told me, in the city of Angles, when I gave her the Champaign coupon and my Slovenian passport to prove I was old enough to drink. »I’m from Slovenia too,« and we switch from English to Slovene. She’s in the states for four years now. She lives without a permit and works without a permit – it ran out long ago. But she likes how relaxed US is. “Oh, what rules! They don’t complicate for every little thing, like they do in Europe,” she said. She has no life insurance, drives without a driving licence and with stolen licence plates. “everybody does it, it’s normal here,” she confined in me.