From The Lost Continent (Bill Bryson, 1996) p265-6
I had an excellent dinner at Happy’s Chinese Restaurant. The room was empty except for one other party consisting of a middle-aged couple, their teen-aged daughter and a Swedish exchange student who was simply radiant blonde, tanned, soft-spoken, hypnotically beautiful. I stared at her helplessly. i had never seen anyone so beautiful in a Chinese restaurant in Idaho before. After a while a man came in who was evidently a passing acquaintance of the family and stopped at their table to chat. He was introduced to the Swedish girl and asked her about her stay in ldaho Falls and if she had been to the local sights the lava caves and hot springs. (She had. Zey were vairy nice.) Then he asked The Big Question. He said, ‘Well, Greta, which do you like better, the United States or Sweden?’
The girl blushed. She obviously had not been in the country long enough to expect this question. Suddenly she looked more child than woman. With an embarrassed flutter of hands she said, ‘Oh, I sink Sweden,’ and a pall fell over the table. Everyone looked uncomfortable. ‘Oh,’ said the man in a flat, disappointed tone, and the conversation turned to potato prices.
People in middle America always ask that question. When you grow up in America you are inculcated from the earliest age with the belief no, the understanding that America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth because God likes us best. It has the most perfect form of government, the most exciting sporting events, the tastiest food and amplest portions, the largest cars, the cheapest gasoline, the most abundant natural resources, the most productive farms, the most devastating nuclear arsenal and the friendliest, most decent and most patriotic folks on Earth. Countries just don’t come any better. So why anyone would want to live anywhere else is practically incomprehensible. In a foreigner it is puzzling; in a native it is seditious. I used to feel this way myself. In high school I shared a locker with a Dutch exchange student and I remember him asking me one day in a peevish tone why everybody, absolutely everybody, wanted him to like America better than The Netherlands. ‘Holland is my home,’ he said. ‘Why can’t people understand that it’s where I want to live?‘
I considered his point. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but deep down, Anton, wouldn’t you really rather live here?’ And funnily enough, in the end, he decided he did. The last I heard he was a successful realtor in Florida, driving a Porsche, wearing wraparound sunglasses and saying, ‘Hey, what’s happening?’ which of course is a considerable improvement on wearing wooden shoes, carrying pails of milk on a yoke over your shoulder and being invaded by Germany every couple of generations.
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