United States impressions: Expensive and divided but still a beautiful, spotless nation

(This is the last of a four-part series on my recent visit to the United States.)

NEW YORK – I’ve heard expats like me have officially gone native, not when we become fluent in our adopted language, but when we feel like strangers in our home country.

Call my recent 11-day jaunt across the United States, A Stranger in a Stranger Land.

It’s not like I didn’t recognize the U.S. The homeless crisis was alive and not doing well when I last visited five years ago. But I found myself at odds with so much about America, I couldn’t wait to get back to Rome. It’s not just because I was going through major pasta amatriciana withdrawal. It’s the prices, the pace, the lifestyle.

As I sat in my expensive hotel room on the Upper West Side waiting to take two trains to JFK Airport, I jotted down a few impressions of the U.S. Not all are negative. The U.S. still has a lot going for it. The next piece of litter I see will be my first. I also only went to New York City, Oregon and California, three liberal, progressive areas that are in lockstep with my politics.

But some things startled me as if I was a European backpacker on my first trip to the States. Here are my notes scribbled down the side of a subway map:

Prices

Jesus H. Christ on a cross! I returned to the U.S. after five years and it turned into Scandinavia. Unfortunately, the comparison with Scandinavia is only the prices. American healthcare is still at its Paleolithic, every-man-for-himself level. The homeless situation (see below) proved that. But my sticker shock was even worse than when my American friends warned me before I left.

I hadn’t been in the U.S. an hour when the first price gobsmacked me. Arriving in New York on a steaming, humid day, we went to a rough-and-tumble sports bar on the Upper West Side called Blondies. I asked for a bottle of Budweiser. How expensive could that be?

Eight dollars.

Bud sucks. 

One reason we had an extra day’s layover in New York was to try ethnic restaurants we don’t have in Rome. Someone in my Travelers’ Century Club Whatsapp group recommended a West African restaurant in Harlem called Ponty Bistro. It was a simple, casual, neighborhood place with minimal decor. 

Nearly every dish on the menu was $25-$40. We didn’t order the outrageously priced alcohol and I still spent $78 for two. Great food. My chicken in onion sauce was excellent and different. But it was one dish with one non-alcoholic drink. 

It was foreshadowing of things to come.

Yes, I know. It’s New York. It’s always expensive. But New York is worse now. The city’s average hotel price hit $300 a night for the first time.  I found good deals on the Upper West Side for $256 a night at the Hotel Belleclaire (Where Babe Ruth once lived) and $207 for the Hilton Garden Inn Central Park South.

But it wasn’t just New York. In Oregon and California I had three meals where I paid at least $130. Breakfast at IHOP in San Luis Obispo, California, was $46. I never saw a glass of wine for under $15.

A three-day rental from Hertz in California was $243. In 11 days for two people I spent almost $6,000. When I backpacked around the world alone in 1978-79 I spent in a year a little more than $4,000. I know. It’s a generation later. Yes, I’m now an old man on my lawn. But I’ve never experienced such sticker shock in 46 years of international travel.

And while the Olympics just ended, the U.S. would sweep the medals in price gouging. At my 50-year high school reunion in Eugene, Oregon, our Graduate hotel charged me $165, a reasonable price. But on the weekend of Oct. 12, when Oregon hosts national power Ohio State in a college football game, the Graduate is charging $800 a night with a two-night minimum.

A hotel employee confided in me that he heard the price had gone up to $1,000.

In the last eight years, I have visited every country in Scandinavia and also Japan. I am now convinced the U.S. is the most expensive country in the world to visit.

A friend in California I met when she lived in Rome recently wrote saying a gallon of milk is $6. It’s only one reason she’s moving back to Italy. I am charging the tenant in my Denver condo $1,900 a month. At my nephew’s wedding, a young couple who had just moved to the Denver area and struggled finding affordable housing said I’m undercharging.

For 23 years my mortgage payment for that same condo was $533.

For a brief moment – very brief – I could see how Republicans could be angry with Pres. Biden. Then I realized it’s not his fault. The U.S. is a free enterprise democracy. Neither Biden, nor any other politician, can tell a restaurant owner he can’t charge $28 for a hamburger.

Inflation is happening all over the world, even in Italy. My grocery bill in Rome has jumped 25 percent since Covid.

Also, the U.S. inflation has slowed remarkably. It has plummeted to below 3 percent for the first time in 3 ½ years after jacking up 8 percent in 2022. The unemployment rate of 3.5 percent under Biden last year was the lowest since 1968. https://www.investopedia.com/historical-us-unemployment-rate-by-year-7495494.

The U.S. economy is fine. Especially if you don’t drink milk.

United States politics

Ever since Donald Trump started campaigning for president in 2016 I’ve been hesitant to visit the U.S. I’ve scuba dived since 1983. I’d rather meet a shark than a Trump supporter. Sharks swim away. Trump supporters do not.  I was always afraid I’d wind up in jail for murder or dead from being shot.

Which, of course, in the U.S., would be his constitutional right.

In Europe over the last eight years I have met only three Trump supporters. All three encounters ended badly. Within seconds we were nose to nose, screaming like a baseball manager and an umpire. 

Now imagine my hesitation of entering a country where nearly half the voters think this man, just convicted of 34 felony counts for falsifying campaign funds to hide his tryst with a porn star three months after his wife gave birth and facing three more felony charges more serious that that one, that this man should again lead the free world.

Fortunately, New York City, Oregon’s Willamette Valley and Southern California are three liberal bastions Trump won’t go near during this campaign.

In 11 days I didn’t see one Trump sign. The closest I came was in Santa Barbara, California, where we pulled into a beach parking lot for a picnic. We entered alongside a pickup with a giant U.S. flag draped over the cargo bed. The driver was right out of central casting from a Trump rally: fat, bushy mustache, dark glasses, ballcap.

I didn’t see what the ballcap said but I saw the flag. He saw me see the flag. He stared at me and glowered, like “I dare you to say something.” I glared back. We glared some more. I finally smiled slightly and slowly shook my head. I parked and as we walked to a palm tree, I kept listening for a trigger being cocked.

People

It wasn’t just Trumpeteers I wanted to avoid. I’ve soured on Americans in general. In 10 years in Rome, the only rude people I’ve met have been Americans. Many American tourists are loud know-it-alls who are quick to argue without listening. A guy from L.A. in my soccer pub even shouted at me about how L.A. is more humid than Rome.

Besides not discussing politics, I told myself in the U.S. to let arguments go. I’d use my travel philosophy on meeting strangers I don’t like: I’ll never see these people again. Just shut up unless they attack me personally.

Turns out, I need not worry. The entire time in the U.S. we met no one but nice people. In New York we met kind shop owners, bartenders, cops, even a maintenance guy in Central Park who showed me his picture collection of exotic birds he photographed there. Uber drivers were talkative and informative.

In Oregon, while waiting for our train, the clerk gave me a brief history of Portland’s Union Station. Mom and pop shop owners on the Oregon Coast discussed how they make their homemade goods. All my old classmates at my reunion were kind, inquisitive and respectful.

In California, a man in Santa Barbara complimented me on my car. It was a rental. The desk clerk at our Wyndham hotel by L.A. Airport directed us away from the hotel’s pricey snacks to the convenience store across the street. Everyone at my nephew’s wedding was friendly and open.

OK, Americans. I’m sorry. All is forgiven.

Beauty

One thing that hasn’t changed is the U.S. is spotless. It looks as if there is capital punishment for littering. Coming from Rome, without question the dirtiest capital in Europe, traveling around the U.S. was like entering a fairy tale land where all the flowers bloomed with butterflies fluttering all around.

I make fun of the U.S. for its great swaths of ugly landscapes. I once joked that Kansas was used for the 1983 film The Day After as it looks the same now as it would after a nuclear war.

But we saw some remarkable beauty. We took two dips in New York’s Central Park. Once notorious as a feared murder den, its crime rate has dropped nearly every year. During the day it is a maze of bicycle paths, man made lakes and spectacular city vistas. I could imagine back in my youth playing baseball on one of the fields where my batting eye (background) was the New York skyline.

We toured the Portland Japanese Garden, a tranquil 12-acre garden overlooking the city with a beautiful view of Mt. Hood. Narrow, quiet paths led us past a cultural village of Japanese architecture, ponds lined with Japanese plants and filled with koi and a tea house. Numerous benches allowed us to sit, look and listen to the birds. We were in Japan in March and this topped any gardens we saw then.

Santa Barbara is one of my favorite places in California. Its beach is lined with palm trees that stand like sentries for miles between the street and sea. People jogged, cycled and strolled along the bike path. A surfing lesson was held. I love my life in Rome. But California Livin’ is not a cliche.

Homeless

We braced for this. In our previous trip in 2019, we saw more homeless around our hotel in San Francisco, near Union Square, than I have in 10 years in Rome. On this trip we didn’t go to areas where they congregate. We stopped for a beer in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood where the bartender said one-bedroom flats go for more than $4,000 a month.

We saw our share of mental illness. One man in Santa Barbara just dropped his filthy pants and peed at a busy intersection. One guy babbled nonsense while he roamed the parking lot of our LAX hotel.

But in Portland, the problem remains. We walked the mile from our hotel to Union Station and the closer we got, the more homeless we saw. It wasn’t just old, unshaven, rumpled men. I saw men in their 20s and 30s. They could’ve been returning from a job interview. They sat in the sun, talking quietly to men who’d been there way too long. They just had nowhere to go and had nothing to eat. 

According to the city, from 2015 to 2023, homelessness in Portland increased 65 percent to 6,297 people. https://www.investopedia.com/historical-us-unemployment-rate-by-year-7495494.

Portland is liberal to the point of too much acceptance. But Oregon started a Supportive Housing Services Measure in 2021 and in two years helped 4,984 people find housing. It also provided support for 16,382 people to avoid homelessness. 

Conclusion

I will cut the U.S. and Americans more slack. I will never use the cliche “It’s the greatest country in the world.” It may be for many Americans; it isn’t for me. But it does have so many good qualities I tend to forget while I’m engulfed by its insane politics.

Now that I’ve seen the costs, however, I don’t see myself going back for another long time. My South Eugene High School has our 55-year reunion in 2029. I can see myself coming for that. But I have so many exotic locales lined up for next year: Oman, Beirut, Botswana, Turkmenistan, Tobago. And if Trump wins again in November, I’ll add another one.

Jupiter.

(If anyone is interested to know what it’s like living in Rome, please read my new book. “The Cappuccino Chronicles: An American Journalist’s Decade in Rome” tears the veneer off the Rome tourists see and reveals what it’s really like. From the lousy public services to the corruption, with a backdrop of spectacular food, wine and beauty, the book will take you well past the guidebooks and puts you in the deepest bowels of the city. Here’s the link to Amazon: //www.amazon.com/dp/B0D774L9GJ)