Age and languid style isn't always a bad thing

Many of us in America believe that the world revolves around our country, and that our way of life is not only the best, but the only acceptable one. Traveling through Europe gave me a little bit of a different perspective.

In the summer of 2005, I had the opportunity to visit England and Scotland, both part of the United Kingdom (along with Ireland and Wales). One characteristic stands out in my mind about these beautiful nations. Europeans like to preserve their heritage by keeping older buildings. A drive around the countryside reveals many people living in residences that date back 100 years. I stayed in a marvelous bed and breakfast in Old Deer, Scotland that had been a bank in the late 1800s. The woman who lived there rented out her upstairs bedrooms for about $50 a night, a sum that included a good home-cooked meal at her kitchen table with the other guests. The guest rooms didn't lock, but no one stole anything. A short walk down the street and through a small woods led me to an old castle, something you see a lot of over there. And when was the last time you found a bunch of cute cats running around a Holiday Inn?

In the United States, we seem to tear everything down and put up newer, uglier structures in their place. Fast-food restaurants and parking lots are found where magnificent old homes, theaters and courthouses once stood. There are relatively few fast-food restaurants in Scotland and England outside of large cities like London and Edinburgh. Maybe it's a coincidence, but obesity isn't the big problem in Scotland that it is here.

I submit to you that it is possible to drive from the Ohio/Pennsylvania border straight through Kansas on toll roads and interstates and at each exit see the same restaurants, the same "big box" retailers, malls and car dealerships that all look alike. Movie theatres are all multiplexes that have little architectural flair. Most medium-sized city downtown areas are similar. And every radio station on the dial airs the same music and talk shows as its counterparts in all the other cities down the line. Do we really want this? Apparently so, as no one seems to be complaining. Our country has become as unvarying as hamburgers coming off a McDonald's assembly line.

In Europe, almost nothing is standardized, giving the visitor a different experience entirely. While farms do look alike across the continent, the rest of what you see is unique to whatever town or county you visit. Motor around the bend and discover a 400-year-old castle, then a small town having a festival, then a fishing village with family-owned seafood restaurants, then a distillery, followed by a strange museum dedicated to someone or someplace you've never heard of. Many people walk to the store and to school. If a driver encounters a one-lane bridge, as I did several times, he waits patiently for the other car to pass first. Life is a little slower, but there is nothing wrong with that. The past lives.

America moves at a faster tempo, but why? Has all this rushing improved our quality of life? While we remain instantly and constantly connected to each other via various electronic gadgets, many big cities in the Midwest are decaying. Some of our suburbs are attractive, but they look like they were all put up in the last month. In this country, we have a need to change everything and change it immediately. Our rapid pace has allowed us to succeed in commerce, but it seems to have caused a type of culture death. The slate is constantly wiped clean so no trace remains of whatever was important to us yesterday. In a country where there is no sense of history, the citizens are poorer for it.