Think you can escape America? Think again

Horrified by what I was seeing from Americans, I left the country a decade ago. But I came to learn that wherever I go, the American people determine my fate.

On 2 November 2004 I made a fateful choice. I was living in Chicago at the time, and was watching that year’s presidential election results at a friend’s apartment. We were all pretty sure that Democrat John Kerry was going to win. After all, sitting president George W Bush had been completely discredited by the Iraq War debacle, right?

It didn’t work out that way. Despite polls predicting a Kerry win, Bush emerged victorious. People at the apartment were perplexed, some were crying. I left by myself and walked to Lake Michigan. I stared out at the water and decided I did not see a future for myself in the United States. I vowed to move to Europe.

For the first time, I'm considering leaving Europe

Europe and America are both facing problems, but Europe's governing structures are more vulnerable and seem ready to collapse. It's left me pondering my future.

Since I first moved to Europe ten years ago, I've been surprised by how often I am asked one particular question - "will you ever move back to America?"

It always struck me as unusual, because I don't think a European who moved to America would get that question all the time. But in the four European cities I've lived in, people have seemed genuinely perplexed about why I'm here. Why would someone prefer to be in Europe rather than the United States? The question always annoyed me, and my answer was resolute.

"No, I'm not planning to move back," I responded. "I have a better quality of life here, I'm no longer in an American bubble separated from the rest of the world and, most importantly, I feel more hopeful for the future here than I did in the United States."

As we come to the end of 2015 I have to ask, is there reason for me to feel hopeful for Europe any more?

New flat

At long last I’m in my own flat. Well, my own room at least. So far it seems ok, although it is quite a bit louder outside than I thought it would be. It faces a courtyard, but it’s a courtyard where everyone enters and the noise really echoes. So right now I’m listening to a chorus of slamming doors, door buzzers, a howling dog, and airplanes flying over head. Hopefully once I get a loud fan it will drown out the noise. The planes are really loud flying overhead, I must be under a flight path. Oh, if only I wasn’t so neurotic about outside noise! Maybe I can train myself. At least I didn’t sign any kind of long-term lease, so I can always move if it gets to be too much.

I did make it to Benedict Arnold’s grave yesterday, after a long pilgrimage with Francis. It’s at this random church in Southwest London, nowhere near any tube stops. And it’s just this relatively unextraordinary grave in the cemetery next to it.

First week - made it!

I’ve made it through my first week in London. Work was good, the people in this office seem generally nice. A lot of new people are actually starting this week, so the whole office went out for drinks Wednesday night. It was fun - got to know a lot of people – although after I had had a few the conversation of course veered into politics and I was probably a little too virulent in my rhetoric. But people seemed interested by my take on Europe and the UK, even if they did disagree with it. I think a favorite hobby of mine here is going to be challenging the Brits’ perceptions about the world and their place in it.

Interestingly Tony Blair just gave a big speech on the subject yesterday. Speaking to an audience of defense experts and military personnel in Plymouth, he said Britain faces a choice, continue to participate in international military intervention or cease. He warned of the dangers of the former. But the problem, as many military experts here have pointed out, is that the UK doesn’t have the money to increase its military budget to the degree needed to continue the kind of military intervention its engaged in in the last six years. Britain will shortly be withdrawing 1/3 of its troops from Iraq, and internal government sources are saying by the end of the year they will have withdrawn their entire force there. It is widely understood to be an acknowledgement that the Iraq misadventure has failed.

But in my mind there is an obvious solution here. If Europe were to band together and form a pan-continental army, there would be no need for any country to increase its military budget. In fact, many countries, such as France and the UK, could decrease their military budget. But that’s never even posited here as a legitimate option.

And when I asked my coworkers if they really thought it was a tenable position to be reliant on the US for protection in the 21sy century, they insisted they didn’t need the US’s protection. Oh really? What’s going to protect you? Trident? NATO, they insisted.

I hope that people who don’t know me here don’t think that my harping on the fact that Europe depends on the US for military protection is because of some sort of jingoism. Obviously, readers of my blog will know that it’s not. Still, one of the first things I’ve been struck by here is the naiveté with which many Britons perceive their place in the world, particularly their future place in it. It’s interesting to me. The jist of it is they don’t see military power as being all that important in today’s world. Maybe they’re right, and maybe I'm approaching the issue from an outdated geopolitical perspective. But my gut tells me they’re not. Perhaps I will explore this issue more in the future.

They think about the future in other ways here, certainly. They are, for instance, single-mindedly fascinated by global warming at the moment. Every newspaper on Tuesday morning had an article which started with some variation of “The effects of global warming left New Yorkers sweltering in the heat Monday…” I mean you seriously can’t get away from it. But there’s a lot of frustration too because Britain, and the rest of Europe, is doing so much to reduce its carbon footprint, but in the end it will make no difference if the US, China and India don’t cooperate.

Anyway I’d better head out, I’m hoping to do some proper clubbing tonight, even though it means an agonizingly long trip home on the night bus. I cannot wait to move into my flat on Sunday! Then I can stumble home whenever I want to.

Flat hunting

Day three here in the UK, things have gone ok so far. I looked at some flats Friday and Saturday, and have settled on one in a pretty cool area right on the cusp of Clerkenwell and Holborn. There are a ton of bars and restaurants around, so it should pretty much be the polar opposite of Roosevelt Island! It’s a good location because it’s a 15 minute walk to work and a 15 minute walk to SoHo, basically right between the two. So no having to take the tube ever!

I looked at an apartment in the Barbican that was truly amazing. The Barbican is sort of like Roosevelt Island, a planned community with its own stores, a movie theater, arts center, etc. It was a gorgeous 4-bedroom apartment with some amazing modern amenities and a huge balcony. The other rooms were three guys. The only downsides were the room faced a fairly busy street, and it was the kind of deal where it was clear it would be heavily dependent on me getting on with my roommates. This other one in Holborn, on the other hand, is a very big bedroom in a 3-bedroom flat with no living room. So it will be kind of like my studio in Chelsea, sort of like having a studio with a shared kitchen and bathroom. The owner is an older Eastern European guy, and the other renter is a girl about my age who is also a finance journalist, and she seems nice and says she hardly ever sees the older guy. This other apartment also requires no long-term commitment, so I’m free to go at any time. The Barbican one required 6 months.

Land ho!

Well I'm officially here! They let me in and everything. I am now officially a UK legal worker, like a green card holder in the US. I wish the UK cards had some kind of cool color. Alas, they don't.

I narrowly missed catastrophe this morning when I was on my way to JFK Airport in a car service, and sudenly got the urge to check my info to make sure I was indeed taking off at JFK. I came to find out I most definitly was not, my plane was actually leaving from Newark. So I had to scream "Newark!! Turn around!!! It's Newark!!!" and we had to race through the tunnels, through Manhattan, over the NJTP, it was a mess. But, thanksfully, I made it. Thank god I checked otherwise I'd still be in New York tonight!

It's 3am here and I can't sleep. I felt bad that all my tossing and turning for the past 2 hours has been keeping Aaron, who I'm staying with, awake, so I just took an ambien and went into the living room to write a blog while I wait for it to kick in. Jet lag is tough.

Tomorrow hopefully SOMEONE will show me their flatshare, noone has been responding to me. I must not be selling myself very well, is it the American thing? Maybe they don't want to take on a foreigner. Maybe my search radius is just too small, but I really want a flat in Clerkenwell, where my office is. Maybe I just need to have a little patience.

Counting down...

I really can't believe there's just a little over two weeks till I move. I'd say at this point I'm experiencing about 50 percent excitement and 50 percent apprehension. It's kind of coming in waves. At times I'll start thinking about all the things I want to do once I'm there, where I'll travel, etc, and I get really excited. But then other times I start thinking about the stability I'm leaving behind, and I start wondering whether I really have the ca-hones to do this.

I mean it is a pretty major move. I'm going to be thousands of miles away from my family and friends, plopping myself into a city where I know just one person. I try to reassure myself by remembering how well my move to Chicago went, another time when I was coming into a city not knowing anyone. But in that case I did have a grad program, so I had kind of a ready-made group of friends and support system immediately at my disposal. Same goes for DC. In London I won't have that.

London

Hello from sunny London, England. It's been fun so far, but I haven't been working so it's been pretty laid back. I shouldn't have done an overnight flight Thursday, I really need to stop booking those. I can't sleep on planes so I feel like I've spent the last three days just trying to catch up on sleep, sneaking naps in wherever I can.

I went to watch my brother's rugby game on Saturday morning, that is some weird shit. I had no idea what was going on! They do all this crazy stuff like lifting each other up and locking arms and charging into one another. And when a player gets tackled, everyone just comes over and starts kicking him in the face, while he covers his head and braces himself. And all without any gear or protection. It's downright barbaric.

I haven't really done any touristy stuff, I feel like I've already done most of it, and since I just got back from Switzerland I'm kind of touristed-out. Tomorrow I start at the London office. I'm curious to see what it's like. I've heard some not-so-glowing reviews from people in the New York office.

I stayed with my friend Josh, who moved here a year ago, last night. He's doing well, finishing school soon and thinks he will stay here.

Right now I'm exhausted, I'm just staying in my hotel on Hoxton Square and watching some Sky TV. I'm a little nervous about going to the office tomorrow, I hate meeting lots of new people all at once. Ah well, I can suck it up. But I think I'm going to sleep now. Cheers!

London calling

So my boss pulls me aside yesterday to tell me I should go to London next week for a conference and to meet with some IP folks. I'm certainly not complaining, but it's really short notice! I'm scrambling to make reservations and schedule some meetings. I'm actually going to fly over there this Thursday because my brother is actually going to be in London this weekend for a rugby game, so that way I'll be able to see his game on Friday. Should be fun. I'm staying with Aaron over the weekend and then staying in a business hotel in the city during the week next week. I figured it would be bad form to stay in a hotel over the weekend and expect my company to pay for it when I'm obviously not working. So I figure I'll pay everything till Sunday myself and then get comped for everything after that.

This will be a good opportunity to see if I really want to go ahead with this move. The last time I was in London was over a year ago so it will be helpful to have some fresh experience there. It will also be helpful to see what it's like to be in the London office (I'll have a desk and everything while I'm there) and see how I like the people there. I know I've heard that the London office has a very different vibe from the New York office. This office is very laid back and everyone's fairly pleasant. We'll see how the other one is.

So by the time I get back I should have a definite idea of whether I'm going ahead with this or not. Right now my biggest concern is over money.

Leaving the country

Well tomorrow’s the big day, I fly out to Zurich late tomorrow afternoon to visit my family, who just moved there two weeks ago. I haven’t even begun to think about packing, although I tend to usually do that at the last minute. Still, I should probably get on that seeing as I’ll be there for a few weeks. I’ve set up a few business meetings there too so I have to bring a suit.

I’m not bringing my laptop because there would be no way to charge it there, but my family already has their computer set up at the house so I’ll be online pretty frequently I imagine, aside from when I’m traveling. I’ll write updates in here regularly and regale you with my tales of Swiss life. There will be pictures, anecdotes, witty banter, you name it. I’m looking forward to it, it will be great to see the house and my brother’s school, etc. And I can help them with the things they’ve been having trouble with. Next weekend we’re driving through the Swiss Alps to Bern, Lausanne and Geneva. Should be amazing.

All in all this trip couldn’t be coming at a better time. I recently realized I’ve been at this job for 7 months and have not yet taken a vacation. Funny, I’ve now been at this job longer than I was at Medialink, the company I worked for the year after I graduated college. It doesn’t seem like that at all, but there it is.

When I get back, it will be time to make a decision about whether or not I’m going to move to London. I think this trip should help me decide. So much of the reason I want to move to London is because I just want to move to Europe, as I have this powerful obsession with the continent. Spending a few weeks there again (I haven’t been to Europe except a few trips to the UK since I left Prague) should help me decide if it’s really what I want to do.

Europe

Note: Welcome to my Euroblog. This blog spun out of a personal blog I've been keeping for years. After I decided to devote a new blog to European politics, I took all entries from my personal blog from the last few years that pertained to Europe and brought them over here. Enjoy. New blogs written for this site exclusively began in June of 2007.
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Last night I went out with a friend, and during our dinner conversation we started to swap stories about our respective travels through Europe. I realized as we were talking how intensely I miss it.

My semester abroad in Prague was the best semester of my entire undergrad experience, and probably the only redeemable semester I had at NYU - the only one where I actually learned something. I remember when I left Prague to come back to New York to finish my last semester. I was so incredibly miserable.

Even the whole time I was in Prague I was having slight anxiety about having to leave eventually. I would keep having these dreams where it was time to leave and go back to the US, but I wasn't ready to leave. Then I would wake up in a panic, and realize that it was only October and I didn't have to leave for a long time.

But eventually I did have to leave, and it was difficult. Once the semester was over I went to Paris by myself for a week, but had a hard time enjoying myself because I was so depressed about my semester ending. My last semester at NYU was quite melancholy. I didn't want to be there, I was angry with NYU for having wasted so much of my time and money. And I just wanted to be back in Europe, where I had felt so excited and engaged.

So now I've been thinking, why not just go back? I had entertained the idea before, and I was planning on doing the "Global Journalism" quarter in my program, where I would work for a broadcast news agency in London or Dublin for a quarter.

However, now that I'm doing this fellowship with PBS, I feel as if it would be foolish to pay full tuition for a quarter of working unpaid, when I'm essentially doing that now here, paying no tuition and being paid. And I would just be producing at one of these placements, which is what I'm doing now.

Of course, I could do a print placement, work for the AP in one of their European bureaus, maybe even Prague. But, now that all my quarters have been pushed forward, I would have to do the global quarter in the fall and then come back to do my last quarter in DC.

My original plan was to do the global quarter last and then stay in whatever country I did my placement in. I figured I could either try to get a job where I was placed or use my time there to do some job searching. But, maybe instead of spending all that money for tuition, I could take that money and use it to just get a ticket to London, find a flat, and try like hell to find a job. Maybe I could even travel around Europe for a bit first, handing out resumes.

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that Europe is where I want to spend the rest of my life. When I think about my passion, the thing that I daydream about or maintain an affinity for, it's not really journalism, or filmmaking, or anything like that. My passion is really Europe. In my spare time I study Europe, I go into random chat rooms in Europe just to talk to people there, it's all I think about really.

The fact is I'm excited about where Europe is going, and I'm concerned about where the US is going.

I'm reading T.R. Reid's "The United States of Europe" right now. It's really fascinating the way he ties together all of the trends happening in Europe right now in a way that creates a larger picture of a new Europe that could potentially be on its way to becoming the newest superpower, a counter-balance to the United States. Since the most recent expansion in May 2004, the EU now has a larger population, higher GDP, and more trade than the United States. And it's a society which has a different moral orientation than the United States. It's a society that takes care of its citizens, provides a safety net. It operates a social model which I personally find more appealing than that of the US.

So I guess there's plenty of time to mull that over. But somehow I've got to make it happen. When I graduated college I had contemplated going to Europe and trying to find a job, but I wasn't ready. The idea of living so far away from all my friends and family was pretty daunting. But being in Chicago has, I think, prepared me for such a drastic move. We shall see.