h/t illustr8r
While waiting with a friend on the southbound platform at the crowded junction of Medellin, Colombia’s two Metro elevated train lines in February 2017, a short, bespectacled, wavy-black-haired, thirtyish man approached me and asked, in Spanish, where I was from.
I answered, “Los Estados Unidos.”
He replied, “Gracias para derrotar Alemania en la segunda guerra mundial” and walked away, smirking.
I can say most of what I want to say in Spanish and understand most of what natives say to me. But after Japanese, Spanish is the world’s second fastest spoken language. Sometimes, as on that occasion, I don’t immediately comprehend what Spanish speakers say.
Thus, it took me about five seconds to figure out that the Colombian had said, completely out of context, “Thanks for defeating the Germans in World War II.”
I chuckled. Incongruity amuses me. I told my non-Spanish-speaking-friend what the man had said. My friend also thought it was funny.
Many a truth is said in jest. But some people who aren’t joking still love America for something it did eighty years ago. No thanks to me.
And of course, even given the passage of time, the death of young soldiers is the opposite of funny.
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I haven’t been to Europe in 38 years. For reasons I mentioned a few weeks ago, I prefer to travel in the US and Latin America. I appreciate that Europe has countless elegant, old buildings. Some book I read, perhaps William Manchester’s A World Lit Only by Fire, accurately described Europe as a 500-year art, architecture and historic preservation project. Needs more trees though.
Rick Steves is known for his European guidebooks and hundred-plus episode public TV series portraying Euro destinations. Steves is a cultural archetype: an affluent, androgynous Caucasian from Seattle who spouts progressive platitudes and complains about climate change as he jets around the world and encourages others to do the same.
Home alone tonight, I switched on the TV. PBS showed a new, uncharacteristically dark Rick Steves installment entitled “Fascism in Europe.” more
Pretty good synopsis about why I opted out of the Covid hoax. I recognized in late 2019 and was posting here that something of this nature was being cooked up for the spring. I didn’t know what the bastards had in mind exactly, but I recognized the pattern that had been developing. They were shutting down reader comments in every major paper and news site in the country and preparing the environment for an assault on liberty.
Where I shit the bed was when I said that by April Fools day 2020 a significant majority of Americans will tell them to piss off. By May I had enough and threw the kids in our truck and headed east to free north Idaho and hung out at Silverwood with about 10K others in an amusement park that can accommodate 20K and we had a great time. Everything open, no masks, no social distancing and enough red blooded Americans to have fun, but no lines to get on any rides. Then we continued east to the high desert of Montana for a few weeks and went on about my business, which was making sure the kids were having fun.
JD: Same. But only for a week. I flew from Michigan to Salt Lake, drove up through Idaho to Yellowstone and then back down through Wyoming to S.L. again. I got so depressed flying back to the concentration camp after experiencing all that freedom.
Rick Steves has presented some admirable trips to various countries.
But for me, I have spent my time travelling throughout the North American continent. There are too many places in the USA that are fabulous. Yes I have been to Europe, South America and the Caribbean. I still prefer to visit the USA, speak English, enjoy our country as long I don’t get stuck in some hillbilly local jail cell for not using my turn signal soon enough
or having my tire cross the white line while dodging potholes.
My last trip to Europe was 1993.
Like in America, they were doing the Covid oppression on the citizens, but NOT to the illegals.
You’ve been to America, then you’ve been to Europe. Pfft.
It has been what, 3 years? I’m still pissed off. lol
Can’t go wrong with Frommer’s travel guides. Pauline Frommer’s carrying on the tradition started by her late father Arthur who had a guidebook of Europe on 5 dollars a day shortly after WWII when he was with the US Army during wartime .
Did you know that Rick Steves is an anti-Semite and anti-Zionist?
BookWormRoom tells all: https://www.bookwormroom.com/2020/03/02/did-you-know-that-rick-steves-is-an-anti-semite-and-anti-zionist/
Marooned – Glad he isn’t a total idiot.
@ Jason MONDAY, 19 MAY 2025, 13:54 AT 1:54 PM
The kids’ mom said: You know how you don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks about you? Well, your oldest daughter is even worse.
My response: It’s not that we don’t give a shit what others think about us, but that concern shrinks to insignificance compared to what we think about ourselves.
I went to a Halloween party dressed as Rick Steve’s.
Everybody said I looked like a Dork yet I didn’t win best costume.
My first and last trip to Europe was in the mid 80s. Went to England for a week and it was great. Will never go back.