Culture Shock

From the Slavonian farmlands. . . to sunny Zagreb. . . to the bustling hub of Munich. . . to fireworks on the Fourth over NYC. . . to a ghost-town in Buffalo, I had journeyed 24 hours. In Croatia, my wife made last-minute arrangements for our four kids to be taken care of while she worked full-time and I traveled for a week.  Flying over Germany The primary purpose  of all of this was so I could be with my grandparents for their 70th anniversary celebration.  Robert and Delphine Bohall July 5, 2015 Seventy years!  Perfection? Perhaps as close as it gets on this earth. Seventy years of marriage represents a combination of God’s grace and human commitment; gifts of life, health and patience intertwined with hard work. It symbolizes the sort of unity many of us strive for.  Seventy years speaks to the past. It shows that a decision made at a time of innocence and  naivety  can be honored long after  both have worn off. A...

As I sat down on the subway in Boston last week and looked around, I was amazed by the number of people who had their heads buried in some kind of flat hand-held web-surfing rectangle.  Now, don't get me wrong.  It's not that Croatians (and other Eastern Europeans for that matter) don't use small electronic devices.  The point is that they're not constantly browsing the Internet on their BlackBerry.  They're not looking at pictures on facebook with their Itouch.  They (generally) simply text and are done.  I would guess that most Eastern Europeans would be shocked if they saw what I saw the other day.  I sure was.  At the risk of promoting a rather hypocritical advertisement (isn't the point to get you to use their phone more than someone elses?) this commercial exaggerates, but is dead on:

It was the most mellow sound I had heard in years.  A slow ballad backed a smooth trumpet melody and accompanied the delightful five minute interval between my descent into the Boston T-station and my entrance onto the red-line train. My hearing wasn't the only sense stimulated by an everyday event everyone else was accustomed to.  The diversity of the soon-to-be passengers both entertained and confused my vision.  "Where am I?", I had to ask, despite the fact that I knew I was in melting-pot America and more specifically Quincy Massachusetts - only 5 subway stops from the heart of Boston. Quincy is classic Boston in more ways than one.  Named after John Quincy Adams, it's a city, but a suburb, urban, but historic, diverse but united by its appeal.  The same could be said for Salem - our residence during my final year of college and the most popular place to celebrate Halloween in America. But the point isn't Quincy, Salem or even Boston.  I...