Not tourists, but locals
As any Scot who's been to the US of A knows, virtually every American seems to claim Scottish ancestry. Well, my parents were in deepest middle-of-nowhere-America once (Nebraska I think) having a meal when the waiter picked up on the unusual accents. He asked where they were from and when my dad replied "Scotland", he looked blank and said something like "Oh yeah, that's good". Hadn't even heard of the place! Almost refreshing in a strange way.

As someone pointed out earlier, ignorance when in a foreign country is excusable - you can learn as you go along. I think Americans should be encouraged to travel outwith their borders as much as possible. I was working over there recently and an American colleague, who had travelled to Europe a few times, hit the nail on the head. He said that it's only when he travelled outside the US that he realised why the world hates America so much. If any of the outcome of 9/11 can be called positive, it has at least raised the awareness of Americans to life on the rest of the planet.

On my last trip there a couple of weeks back (as it happens, to the Indianapolis Grand Prix that wasn't, but that's another story!) I was watching the Weather Channel, it being the most interesting one I could find, and the international forecast came on. It was for the Bahamas!

Great country America. I go there quite often, I have a lot of American friends, but a large chunk of the population needs to see the outside world a bit more.

I seem to have drifted off topic and into a rant. Sorry.

But I'm proud of my length.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 8 Jul 2005, 9:41, Reply)