The New Young Brits
In the train, before crawling into my compartment, I stood out in the hall and had a great conversation with a bright energetic young Brit (Richard) attending Cambridge. He had been traveling by himself on college break all through Morocco. (There were thousands of European students on college break traveling all over Europe during this time.)
He explained, when asked, that in Britain at these schools you pick a subject and then only study that subject-and his subject was Modern History. He was full of questions about my 1965 trip to Europe and about my activities during the Viet Nam War. He was fully aware that in the U. S. more Viet Nam veterans have committed suicide since the war than all the 40,000 men who died during that war.
At first I thought Richard was French because he was speaking so fluently in French with someone else in another compartment but he explained that he grew up bilingual.
My generation in America has grown up with a view of Britain as the great colonialist country but perhaps it’s citizens have learned a great deal from it’s own history and Britain now has one of the most culturally sophisticated generations in the English speaking world. The upcoming generations of Americans would do well to learn from them-indeed it must especially if we are to learn how to get along with the rest of the world. But it won’t happen without exposure to other cultures on a pretty broad scale and at a pretty young age. For example, Richard’s first travel experience was at the age of 15 when he was sent to India alone by his parents for several months. What parents do you know that would allow their 15 year old children the same experience-alone? Richard said that words cannot describe the feeling you have when you step off the plane for the first time in Bombay-and you only have a first experience one time-he noted-and you never forget it.
He left me thinking that if this generation of youngsters will be in charge of the world in the next 20 years we will be ok.
The next morning we took a ferry from Tangiers to Algeciras; ate at a great family run Tapas Bar around the corner from the train station-snails in tomato sauce, Potato Ruso, fried calimari, seafood salad in mayonnaise sauce and beer and then took the train from Algeciras to Madrid. Arrived 10pm in Madrid and picked up another night train to Barcelona. Same kind of sleeping compartments as night before in Morocco but hey-we’re old hands at this now! Even got to sleep in middle beds in the compartment and no one shut the window!
Tags: African Continent, Algeciras, Culture, Europe, Food, Morocco, Reflections, Spain, Trains
Zoe