Buffalo is a strange old place. It may well be in the state of New York, but its nothing like the Big Apple. As soon as I got there I recognized the grey dreariness of the buildings and tendency to walk with your face pointed firmly at the floor from my 21 years in England, and the Buffalo streetcar looks eerily similar to the Manchester Metro.
However, the fact that there didn’t seem to be an eatery or drinkery for miles didn’t sit well with me. That’s a lie; there was a Timmie’s!
I finally found a little café and sat pondering the fact that I was in the US of States over a caramel latte and a grilled veggie sandwich. Across from me was a lady on the phone, having a blazing row (about how he’d betrayed her trust but she had no where else to go) with someone I thought was her boyfriend, but turned out to be her “realtor”. That’s American for estate agent. She seemed horrendously stressed out and kept referring to her problems and how she was working through “the lowest point of [her] life. It was fairly tragic, especially the amount of gratitude she described when the person on end of the phone was nice to her despite not working in a “touchy-feely” profession.
Within this conversation lies everything that bewilders me about America. There are such things as “touchy-feely” professions; it’s fine to have a forthright argument with your estate agent over the phone then make up like lovers ten minutes later; sitting crying in a coffee shop and describing your depression to some sort of service provider is an everyday occurrence. In England you’d simply write a strongly worded letter and complain about the whole situation for weeks to mere acquaintances, or if it really had to be sorted out on the phone, that phone call would be made in your house.
Filled up to the brim with emotional turmoil and cream, I wandered around 'downtown' Buffalo, being careful not to get lost as we all know I have the sense of direction of a blind hedgehog in a bag. The only nice buildings in Buffalo seem to be banks, the offices of insurance companies or churches. Now, I'm not one to make sweeping statements (ahem) but if I was, I'd say that this is very telling of the country as a whole.
I was, however, impressed by a sign that said "CAUTION! Snow-melting tubes buried in sidewalk!" Why would you have to be cautious about this? Presumably they're not trying to escape. Anyway, I really enjoy the idea that you could sit for a few hours in winter and watch the invisible warmth beneath the streets melt away patches of ice...and to be fair, I bet that's all there is to do in Buffalo in February.
You might have guessed by this point that I did actually make it over the US border. I sit writing this in Little Britain (Jam-rod's genius nickname for our flat), which should tell you that I even made it back into Canada. Truth be told, it was a doddle, especially dealing with the Canadians, who, true to form, were delightfully helpful to me and abusive to the Americans: "Yeah, they're a bit humourless...and anal. Oops, did I say that?"
Honestly, though, it seems to me that American border guards, and immigration, and police for that matter, are essentially good people, twisted and trained to be intimidating and sometimes pretty racist. The cynic within me can't ignore the fact that, as the only white chick on a bus full of other ethnicities, I was the only person to whom the US border guards melted a little, joking around with me and not even asking to look in my bag. An Indian woman in front of me with scars on her face was told she would have all her luggage searched, and mocked as she went to retrieve it from the bus.
Yet in Buffalo bus station, a potentially nasty situation really surprised me. A black American woman and her three kids had (somehow) managed to travel into Canada without passports, and were now trying to re-enter the States. The police had to deal with the family, but the tense confrontation between her and an armed cop quickly turned into a good-humoured and honestly caring conversation, with this big flak-vested guy laughing with her kids and eventually finding her a hotel room for the night.
This, if anything, is further proof that its not actually Americans that are a pain in the arse (as we believe in Europe) - it's America as a system that sucks.
