Sitting here in my temporary abode watching Daniel Craig in his first outing as 007, a film I first saw with a young inmate from the prison where I was working who was out on his first community visit, I had a brief thought about traveling done recently and realized that the world, in terms of travel versus the USA, are two very different experiences.
Despite the fact that quite a number of people in these modern times are accomplished world travelers, many having visited more exotic places than I ever have, there is still a large portion of the average man or woman who haven’t bothered to traverse the borders of their home country, indeed, some have never left their home state, or county.
Cruising the Internet, one can find any number of jobs that advertise for writers who want to travel. Presumably these men and women can provide information for Joe or Jane Average who may want to visit Guadalajara or some third world destination not yet on everyone’s tongue. A golden opportunity for those who wish to explore this rapidly shrinking globe and not too bothered about the pay packet being overly generous.
The part of the film that triggered this random observation was at the beginning. Bond is chasing the parkour specializing villain across a number of different film sets and the baddie is finally caught, and dispatched, at a foreign embassy of some African nation. This brought South Africa to mind, as I’d been there in 2013, hunting down several sources that informed the publication I worked for in those days that the great Nelson Mandela had died back in June. The world believed that Madiba was still fighting for life on a number of support systems and the man was not “allowed” to die until December that year.
All this travel and adrenaline pulsing investigative journalism was very heady for an aged beginner. I met a few people who had very interesting stories to tell and one lady, a television news broadcaster, invited me back to speak with her as well as the chance to meet her husband who was a bright man rising pretty rapidly in the same political party as Mandela.
The trip had been scheduled for four days and there were still people I needed to meet. The ability to extend the ticket, and my stay, was not overly expensive, but enough that the publisher refused to borrow any more funds to allow the publication to continue questioning other sources.
Still, despite the shortness of the journey, much was learned. While not all of it was about the former world leader’s dying, or death, all facts gleaned were fascinating and not a little disturbing. For instance; there are a lot of Chinese in South Africa. Not just private citizens either. In the peninsula as well as Johannesburg and surrounding areas, there are military troops, weapons, vehicles and at least one, if not two, army bases that the Chinese out rightly own.
Other interesting facts included that many, as well as the government, believed that when Mandela was declared dead, massive civil war would break out and officials were prepared to turn the entire country into a police state and instigate martial law. This information was received from a very interesting source who was prepared to react to the prophecies of a Boer named Van Rensburg.
He was not alone in his beliefs, as quite a number of people were/are hoarding food, weapons, medical supplies and ammunition. Even the military were aware that something was happening. An Army major had information about Madiba’s June death and in the end; the man went into hiding after getting death threats. Before dropping out of sight, however, the officer told of how the police and the government were getting ready for civil unrest on a regular and very “low key” basis.
But the point behind this article was not the troubles of South Africa; it is about travel and the freedom of it in a country that still features wide-open spaces. For around 32 years I lived in a civilized yet crowded world. England was, and is, considered part of Europe by the US, although the truth was, and is, far different.
Travelling around Europe changed somewhat after the formalization of the EEC. Eventually there was that common currency, the Euro, which Great Britain never embraced and never will and the promise of border free travel never transpired either. England never agreed to the line of hassle free entry to the country and never will.
Border free travel meant that the showing of passports, travel visas and other documents would become passé. Reality, however, was very different from the envisioned “United States of Europe.” As anyone who worked in the Her Majesty’s Prison Service can attest, illegal aliens flooded into the country with a variety of fake IDs, visas and other falsified documents.
Proof that these forms were still required. Al Qaeda along with 9/11 and other world terror attacks also proved that border constraints were needed, even though these passport control points do not deter terrorists. Other criminals also thumb their noses at these legal obstacles. In the UK, the only smugglers caught on a regular basis with a van full of cheap fags (cigarettes) or booze were the Terry and June couples who wanted to make a bit of side money.
(A side note of explanation: Terry and June was a very popular 1970s British sitcom about a middle-aged couple (Terry Scott and June Whitfield as Terry and June) who were perfectly cast as a comedic Mr. and Mrs. Average and the show was a classic.)
Professionals rarely get caught at the border, even those who specialize in human trafficking, Chinese immigrants along with other nationalities, are never caught unless it is by accident. While working security at a yeast factory near the docks of Felixstowe port in Suffolk, the police stopped by to warn me that around 40 Chinese immigrants had escaped from their cargo container and were roaming the grounds around the harbor.
The Port constable who spoke to me warned that they could be dangerous and not to approach them, but to ring them directly if spotted. He also said that this was not an uncommon occurrence despite an increase of officers around the port.
Certainly the US has Mexico to the south of the country and apparently there is still an issue of illegal aliens crossing the border. Years ago, Mexico and Canada were the only places where one had to show passports on the same continent. Of course people are still stopped before entering California, but this is in the area of pestilence control, not people monitoring.
In essence, the entire country of the United States can be traversed without one bit of international identification. A driver’s license will suffice, or a driving permit, or other type of ID card will do nicely but none of these are required to pass from one state into the next. In fact if one pulls out an International driver’s license, the individual looking at it will pause and ask, “What’s this?”
Of course one thing that both forms of travel have in common is the difference between people met at different locales. Just as Europe has countries with different customs, ways of speaking and traditions that have been tailor made for that area, so too do states and within those states, various areas.
Just as the American people were divided into the North and South during the Civil War, there are divides between the East and the West as well. Clashes of vernacular, tastes in particular culinary specialties and slang terms for everyday things all vary, sometimes wildly, from town to town as well as state to state.
This is not peculiar to the US alone, in England there were also different terms for similar, if not the same, items. The humble sandwich was known as a “butty” and “sarnie” in various parts of the same country.
Still, this rumination is not about slang terms either. It is about travel and the way the rest of the world do it compared to the American mode of transport and the fact that average people do not need to have a passport to get from one end of the continent to the other.
The USA is really the “land of the car” and anyone who doesn’t believe that has never been without a vehicle for an extended period of time. In England, and Europe, public transport is commonplace. Certainly buses are used to a large degree in bigger towns and cities in the US, but in the UK alone, buses run not just in the cities and towns, but between small villages as well.
In Europe, trains run practically everywhere and British Rail may not have quite the same reputation as, say, Holland whose trains are rarely late, the train service in England does try to reach most areas.
In the US trains are used mainly for movement of cargo and not people. In all honesty, that could have changed over the 32 years I lived overseas, but since my return, I’ve not seen one train station.
Cabs, or taxis, are expensive no matter where you reside.
So there you have it. My thoughts, such as they are, on travel. Nothing earth shattering, but some food for thought. I have realized that over 32 years in England spoiled me. Despite the fact that I, along with every other Brit living on that island, loathed public transport; it was available and pretty easy to figure out. No such system appears to exist outside, say New York or some of the larger metropolis type cities. What do you think? And before you answer, ask yourself this, “When is the last time you had to use your passport?”
21 January, 2015
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