We are sitting in front of the telly, watching Murray playing at Wimbledon and drinking a cup of tea. And the tea is proper, decent tea. Sometimes we have to wonder if we have even left England!
Somehow it seems wrong to be doing something so normal, and so obviously 'English', when we are living in Argentina and aiming to get beneath the surface of a new country. So is it wrong to still do 'English' things?
We had this discussion as we sat in a bar last night. It started because the beer and food there was predominantly not from Argentina. We decided that this was OK because the people in the bar were Argentinian, so we were just doing as the Argentinians do. It is a bit like going for a curry in the UK - it isn't traditionally English, but it has become a part of who the British people are and somehow you wouldn't truly get a taste of English culture without it - you just have to make sure you try the fish and chips too.
So we were allowed to sit in the bar, but should we be drinking tea and watching Wimbledon? It's tricky because we don't want to form our own little ex-pat community and go to places that remind us of home - that isn't the point at all. We may go along to the 'Irish Pub' that we spotted, but only because it is always fun to see how completely off the mark they are. When we go out, we will aim to go to places that the locals go to and eat and drink what they do. We do want to experience the different cultures and nationalities. We expect that we will absorb some of the cultures as we travel, and we will see things that might radically alter some of our perspectives and beliefs, so we will be different to how we are now.
But at the same time, we are British, and we have no desire to pretend that we are something else; whilst we are happy to add to who we are, we do not want to abandon who we have been. Someone suggested to us before we left that we should not take i-pods as we should only be listening to local music. We disagreed, because the music we have listened to and enjoyed is part of who we are. We can and will add new types of music, but we aren't going to pretend that the last 40 years (or 42 for Nic!) didn't exist. Our music history is part of us and so is our Englishness. If we try to 'become' every country we visit we would be pale imitations of something else and won't gain anything in the long term. What we want to do is to learn from the experience and take with us the best of everywhere.
So we decided that we can watch Wimbledon, as long as we don't do it all the time and we still get out there and see Argentina too. On which note, we will be heading out shortly for our first Spanish lesson, so that we can mix with the locals more - whatever kind of bar they happen to be in.
Hello. You are perhaps trying hard to justify what you want the answer to be - its called Franklin's Gambit! Now that international travel is so extensive, countries are losing their identities - they are increasingly blending into the same thing (with the exception of the weather!). That being so, I think I would try to experience what made them distinctly different before it is lost... When don't you see a busy-with-locals Macdonalds, for example?! 'Peoples' are being assimilated into an American model. When the experiences begin to lose their shine and you need some 'you' time, something familiar - as you surely will - then Wimbledon and Irish bars are the thing to do. Aim 'distinctly different' first though... says this extremely jealous armchair traveller! Lisa x p.s. impressed with your weekly 20hr Spanish lessons.
ReplyDeleteYou may be right, and generally I think the plan is 'new first'. We have certainly been working our way around the more traditional Argentinian restaurants! Seeking out the differentiators has become increasingly difficult. In lots of places many traditions and customs are now historic and only exist for tourists, which is why we want to go along to festivals and the like, because they are the times that the locals most embrace their own traditions. But I think the tourist focused history is still worth seeing as it helps to explain how the people got to where they are now. In any case, tonight we are off to a bar (any one we can get into) to join the locals in watching Argentina -v- Colombia in the S American equivalent of the European Championships. We expect to see some of the true culture there!
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