I’m back from the UK, and I think I’m suffering from Post Ex-Patriot Withdrawal Depression Syndrome (PEPWDS (pronounced: pepwids)).

Each time I come back from a trip to the UK (or continental Europe), I wish I hadn’t. People talk about culture shock going to a place, but I’ve always found that the real culture shock is coming back.

After a few days of good public transportation, great conversation, excellent Indian food, and not getting mugged, coming back to the states is kind of tough. It’s not that I don’t like it here, but just that it’s not nearly as exciting. Aside from all the wackjobs with guns, ‘Merica is a very safe place that doesn’t do a lot to challenge my noggin. And I mean that culturally rather than as a place where you’re likely to get your limbs blown off by a disgruntled postal worker (or child (or dog of slightly above average intelligence)).

I feel like the differences between Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco are smaller than the differences between Soho, Kensington, and King’s Cross (if you’re not geographically informulated, then just know that Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco are three cities, each in its own state, whereas Soho, Kensington, and King’s Cross are just three neighborhoods within the same city).

In other words, my impression is that I can find more cultural diversity by taking the tube ten minutes in one direction than I can by getting into my car in the states and driving for three hours.

That’s not an insult, by the way. We have it good in ‘Merica. That consistency makes it relatively easy to get around and live any old place you like. The downside is that there isn’t much of a reward for packing up and heading out. Not a lot of adventure.

Note, as well, that this is just my opinion. I’m sure that there are readers foaming at the mouth right now, preparing to hit the comments with all sorts of contradictory arguments.

One thing, then, that I like so much about London is the diversity. It’s like the Star Wars cantina. You walk in the door and can’t figure out if something is male, female, both, neither, or if the label should even apply. Is this thing I’m talking to vegetable matter? Is it a large, intelligent fungus? There’s no telling, and that’s what London is like.

I asked a lot of people about their accents. Everywhere I went, I met someone with some new and strange accent. Some I could place, but most I couldn’t. What a fantastic place.

People asked me why I stayed in a hostel with eleven other guys instead of staying in a hotel room by myself, and the two reasons are very simple:

1) Money

2) Experience

I didn’t have a lot of dough for the trip, so had to do this on the cheap. At about US $20 per night, I think I managed that. Granted, it was by sleeping in bunk beds stacked three-high, but it was worth it. I’d get up in the middle of the night and find someone in the bathroom brushing his armpits with what looked like a small porcupine. He’d look at me and grunt. I’d grunt back. Anything else might have been unsafe. You have to ask yourself if nodding to the other person might be a challenge to a duel to the death in his country. You never know. So you make a little noise and try not to look threatening (which is tough when you’re all buff and scary like I am). After a few nights of such exchanges, you muster up the courage to say, “Hello.” Then the person answers back and you have a conversation in very broken English about the differences between living in Oregon and and the Cydonia region of Mars. Wonderful.

Now I’m back on US soil, and I am, unfortunately, feeling like coming back was a mistake.

I’m in Atlanta, Georgia for a conference for MS employees, and there’s nothing to do. I know that I’m within spitting distance of a steak house, but that’s about it, unlike my crappy hostel in Holland Park which was a ten minute walk from a ten minute tube ride which could take me to a place where the streets were packed with people swearing in as many languages are there are bricks in St. Pancras Station, funny cars the likes of which I’ll never see here, natty gents dressed like models, and woman after beautiful woman in summer dresses thin as my patience.

I will go back.

Oh, yes, my friends.

I will go back…