Coming to America

North America - Canada and the United States - is by far the easiest place to travel in the World. Compared to European standards, renting a car is cheap, gas is less than half the European price, food and accomodation are available everywhere at affordable prices, the road network is excellent. Everything seems easy.

There is a sense of spiritual freedom when you travel in North America. Large horizons are wide open to you and you have the sense of being able to master your own destiny. Americans are generally nice people and optimistic. Rarely, if ever, you see an American complaining about life or the government; after all it is their government.

Politics do not play a big role in America, certainly much less so than in Europe. Most Americans do not like politics. They do not aim at changing their country, much less the World; they are content to be left alone and live within their often small communities. Americans like themselves and their country. They celebrate their achievements and their heros. Their museums are the most entertaining in the World, you learn while being entertained.

It is impressive the role that books play in the life of Americans. This is a country that lives by books. Their libraries are the best and the easiest accessible in the World. You can find excellent bookstores everywhere. Even at gas stations you can buy books. The number of religiously inspired books produced in the United States is huge. Pope Benedict XVI is a popular author in the USA these days. In Western countries I know of no other people so religious as the Americans.

Americans are curious, but not deeply interested about what is going on in the World. One reason is that America is a World in itself where all the peoples in the World are represented. Another reason is that lots of people go to America to run away from what is going on in their own countries - hunger and violence are often the motives. I took a taxi half a dozen times in the US last week. Not one single driver was born in America. As I recall, one was from Sudan, another from Ethiopia, still another from Somalia. These people did not miss what they left behind.

As I left the United States, Neil Diamond was on TV doing a concert in Rockefeller Plaza, New York. He was singing Coming to America. This is one feature of America's greatness: when there is trouble in the World people come to America.