Not So Basic Tourists

We recently visited the United States, specifically the New York and Boston areas. While traveling along the East Coast, many things, weather included, felt familiar. In fact, Boston was so cold that we found ourselves correcting locals’ perception of Finland as a chilly country. At least this winter, the days we spent in Boston felt a lot colder than the frosty weather we’re used to in southern Finland.

Naturally, there are other differences as well, and they’re hard to miss in everyday life. When you go to a restaurant, you never really know what the final bill will be. Almost without exception, taxes and a tip are added to the menu prices you see. In many cases, you can decide the tip amount yourself, but not tipping at all is considered extremely rude—unless the service truly was downright awful. Apparently, that can happen, though we didn’t personally encounter it this time.

We did, however, experience rude customer service on the bus and at the airport. Some so-called customer service professionals seem to think they are above everything and everyone, especially when they have a name badge on their chest. We recommend avoiding the Greyhound bus company. We paid extra for front-row seats, but an arrogant company supervisor/manager was sitting in our seats, insisting they always sit there when on board. When we tried to resolve the matter at the station, we were told to contact customer service. We never received a response or got our money back. Geez, I thought Finnish service culture needed improvement.

For a European used to paper straws and plastic bottle caps that stay attached to the bottles, the amount of plastic used and the lack of recycling options in the United States can be quite shocking. Hotel breakfasts are served on disposable dishes with disposable plastic utensils. Well, “served” might be an overstatement. In many places, breakfast consists largely of white bread, bagels, and sweet pastries. Fruit and vegetables are conspicuously absent—apart from the occasional lone banana. To aid digestion and prevent stomach issues, you might need to head to a local pharmacy, where the shelves are loaded with supplements in pill, tablet, or candy-like gummy form. Drug commercials appear so frequently during TV ad breaks that it feels like there’s a pill for just about every ailment—rather than focusing on the root causes of health problems.

A car is almost essential in the U.S., especially outside major cities. On the drive from New York to Boston, through three different states, we noticed how services are scattered here and there, and how vast the distances are. In the middle of nowhere, there’s a casino on an Indian reservation, where your dollars can vanish into slot machines in the blink of an eye. A few miles away, there’s a movie theater, and another few miles down the road, yet another shopping mall. And they’re everywhere, there’s no shortage of shopping opportunities. Outside urban areas, you’ll find gigantic retail paradises (or nightmares, depending on your viewpoint) that offer almost everything under the sun. If ever there was a place built on consumption, it’s America. Even small towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants can have traffic jams comparable to the worst rush-hour congestion on Helsinki’s main roads.

One especially noticeable feature in New York is the people. Not so much the locals themselves, but the tourists this perhaps most famous city in the world draws in. I must admit, we’ve never come across such badly behaved tourists as in New York—even though we’ve witnessed rowdy, intoxicated tourists in several Southern European resorts, and we’ve visited London and Paris, which arguably attract even more tourists than New York. In NYC, people shove, cut in line, burp at breakfast or in pizzerias, and shout and carry on without any regard for those around them.

Even though the piece we took from that big, slightly rotten apple was quite small and our contact with the United States rather superficial, it does make you appreciate Europe—and Finland in particular—in a whole new way. It’s truly a good thing that in Europe many aspects of life are more strictly regulated than on the other side of the Atlantic. There’s still a kind of authenticity here that seems impossible to find, no matter how hard you look, in America’s glossy, business-first society. Silence, untouched nature, and remote locations—could these be the essence of Finnish authenticity and the secret to happiness?

Check out the video from our adventures in New York by clicking here!

If you want more Not So Basic perspectives from around the globe, be sure to subscribe to our blog and leave a comment if you’ve had similar adventures in the land of American wonders. See you out there—or in a slightly quieter Finland!