Perhaps, there is no country about which we know as much as about America. The dominance of Hollywood films, computer terms and Americanisms, and popular mass culture have stepped so deeply into the orbit of our life that our knowledge about America, willingly or unwillingly, is comparable to encyclopedic. We know how they speak, how they move and think, what their cities, cars, clothes and symbols look like. We know them.
It is for this reason that I was struck by the fact that I see extremely little new around me. This language – yes, I have been hearing it for a whole decade! These people – as if they were my old acquaintances. These names – Broadway, Empire State Building, Wall Street, Madison Square Garden, Times Square, Arlington Cemetery, the Pentagon, and the fence of the White House – I can find my way around here with my eyes closed.
So from the first minute I knew how to behave, and a smile never left my face – it was so funny to find myself in the setting of another American 'blockbuster'. That first minute was my exit from Washington's Dulles Airport: I unerringly sat in the back (!) seat of a taxi, although at home it would never have occurred to me, and the driver, an elderly Black man, opened my three-day business trip with the words:
- Hi there, how're you!
Washington is a small quiet city in which buildings must not exceed the height of the Capitol. We have known this truth since school. In reality, Washington is not that small – you can't walk it on foot. The city is a relatively deserted cluster of huge vacant lots and buildings in the classical style, each of which houses some government building. In the pre-Christmas days, the occupants of these buildings clearly lived elsewhere.
But America would not be America if homeless Blacks were not sleeping on benches in the squares. And they do sleep. Moreover, besides these bright representatives of the American way of life, there are few people on the streets. Apart from simple-minded tourists from the Wild West, there is no one at all. The metro is deserted and leisurely – each subsequent train arrives about six to eight minutes after the previous one. I did not encounter a single city bus – although I won't claim they don't exist, maybe they just carefully avoided me.
On Sunday, when I used my brief free time to visit the Smithsonian museums, I recklessly decided that I could get back to the hotel by public transport. That was not to be. Taxis disappeared from sight instantly. The metro was not working – without any explanation. It started to rain, and it rained on my single-breasted suit, which had seemed respectable before the trip, the whole time as I moved to the hotel at a faster pace, while cars splashed me with mud. In the following forty minutes I did not meet a soul who could tell me what Americans do in such a situation.
Despite the abundance of cars in Washington, there is no feeling of an automotive glut. Apparently, there is so much free space here, and the roads are wide, and there is always an opportunity to park (unlike Europe), so there is no impression of a universal traffic jam, which never leaves a tourist in Paris, Geneva, or Moscow. Among passenger vehicles, Jeeps, minivans, and station wagons lead. The more volume a vehicle holds, the better – this is tirelessly stated by TV commercials, which exclusively show bulky cars. Perhaps, classic sedans, which Russians are offered for 700 thousand rubles - http://nenovosty.ru/sedan-za-700-000-rublej.html, account for about 20 percent of cars, while subcompacts are simply despised. Only pizza delivery drivers pay attention to them. I did not see a single motorcycle either in Washington or in New York.
In the city center, there are many expensive restaurants. The attempt to find a modest but cozy cafe like the French Croissanterie ended in failure. Ordinary Americans eat hot dogs (30% of people on the street move with a hot dog in hand) and drink coffee or cola from paper cups (60%, no less). All this is bought at the famous cafe chains Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, which, it seems to me, are on every street. There are three or four Black men sitting in McDonald's, which, after our domestic queues (yes, don't argue, there are always queues in our McDonald's), also seemed typical of America to me.
If an American wants to eat, he will buy himself a hot dog. If he wants to eat more, he will simply buy two and add French fries. On the train Washington – New York (departure at six in the morning) from the first minute I was surrounded by the sounds of devouring hot dogs. Everyone ate them – huge Black men, small children, slim (so far) girls, and respectable gentlemen in ties. All as one washed it down with paper cups. I simply couldn't conceive of consuming food at such a time. But after an hour of pandemonium, I went to the buffet and also bought a hot dog and a Coke, which I devoured in front of them, thus joining the most advanced civilization on the planet.
Washington's sights are known to all of us from infancy. This is the White House, to whose fence the aforementioned American provincials press; the Capitol, the buildings of various ministries, including the Pentagon (for the uninitiated – the Ministry of Defense), which I tried in vain to photograph, because only a negligible part of the wall fell into the frame. Almost nothing that would strike the imagination of a tourist.
The only discovery I made for myself in the US capital was the already mentioned Smithsonian museums – a wonderful place for an inquisitive person. The Museum of Aviation and Cosmonautics (Air & Space Museum) displays originals of many different aircraft, rockets, and manned spacecraft. You can walk around it all day. Visitors freeze in front of the Pershing-2 and SS-20 rockets standing side by side, and duck their heads from bullets in the trenches of the World War I hall. This is exactly what, in my opinion, museums of the 21st century should be like – with interactive halls, video and audio effects, life-size models, and themed bookstores. The second museum I managed to visit was the museum of American Indians, where for an hour a specialist clearly explained how to build a real Indian catamaran. It seems to me that many visitors took this workshop to heart. On the second floor there is a huge store with traditional Indian souvenirs, which residents of reservations earn their living by making today. Judging by the prices, these residents earn at least as well as I do. Here I bought for myself a priestly staff of the Pueblo tribe for my souvenir collection and, to compensate for that purchase, a woolen scarf for my wife with an embroidered bear made by the Navajo tribe.
To be continued.