Nearly a year ago, Harry Fuller wrote about his expatriate experience. He's working in London these days and what he wrote is a lot like first impressions. He may have further thoughts this far down his road and with more international developments. I have enjoyed his travel letters from other parts of Europe (the one from Estonia has been my favorite so far), but this is the one that suggested some reading connected to his experiences. It's fitting that his thoughts follow my comments about Bill Bryson's latest book, since another of Bryson's topics was life in Britain. Additions, elucidations, and other reactions are welcome. "Being in Europe during this time following September 11, 2001, has been instructive and challenging. The attitudes about the U.S. range from ignorance to fear to amazement. Our willingness to sue anybody over anything, our wealth, our cheap energy prices, our big cars, our provincialism (real or imagined) are all trumpeted and widely understood. Anti-globalism posters star the US and its disproportionate consumption of everything imaginable. Political writers love to point out that some miniscule percentage of our Congress (14%) have a passport. They know that Bill Gates has more money than many small nations of the world. All this existed even before President George W gave unilateralism a brand new credo. "Perhaps the single most amazing statistic I have run into, which one never notices in the U.S. even if you see it in The Economist or Newsweek, is the fact that the GDP per capita in the US is about 50% higher than any major European country. "We have fifty percent more stuff and services than they do. Staggering. Here nobody bags your groceries. Two small light bulbs can cost $6 US. The mail does not bring a huge quantity of paper ads and junk mail. There are not endless catalogs sent to your doorstep. Energy is expensive. Jobs are less central to life, and vacations are at least five weeks per year from the day you start work ã not after forty years. The Europeans have largely opted for security and economic protection over wealth and competition. Many other countries are just next door and widely visited by the middle class. I actually know people who vacation in places like Malta, Azores, Prague, Scotland, Greece, Crete and Dubai. They get there faster than you can drive from San Francisco to L.A. "I have decided after re-reading Tolkein's great trilogy that the basic English person is often simply a real-life hobbit. Tolkein only had to parody his neighbors to get his beloved hobbit. They love social occasions that require frequent eating and social drinking and story telling and remembering people they know and are related to. They distrust long-distance travel and strange places, preferring to travel in drunken packs wherever they go. The British are now seen most places in the world as the worst tourists: louder than Aussie or Texans, drunker than all and prone to bad public behavior. If they had Americans' shopping power it would be really ugly indeed. "I also understand now how the British could have ruled the world for nearly a century from their tiny island. They can suffer stuff that would enrage or destroy most people. They could sail all over on boats with bad food and water, fire cannon from a wooden ship, sleep on tossing waves, get on land once per year or less, and secretly revel in the agony. The British are the greatest at complaining even when there is no reason. they are never optimistic, thus when it is really wretched, it is exactly the condition they expected and have been in training for since birth. A desert in Egypt, jungle in Kenya, a rainforest in India, the ice cap of Antarctica, a ship at sea ã all the wretched extremes of nature they can endure because it reinforces the horrors they have always expected. "In my striving to understand those around me, I have found some helpful books: "Pepys--his diary still rings true to the quality and tenor of life in London "Julian Barnes, Something to Declare ã a fine British contemporary literati talks of his beloved France and especially of Flaubert "Michael Sadler, An Englishman in Paris ã a Brysonesque look at erudite Brit trying to be Parisian and doing a fine imitation. Especially good on the inherent gluttony and the convoluted grammar and rhetoric of France. His book led us to a superb French restaurant on rue d'Assa ã Helene Darroze. It is pricey and worth selling your car and mortgaging your kids to eat in this one. "Julian Green, Paris ã An American ex-pat writes poetically and lovingly of his beloved Paris. "Jimmy Charters & Morrill Cody, This Must be the Place. These are the chatty memoirs of the famous bartender from the Twenties. A Brit who loved his American ex-pat drinkers and their honest, free-handed ways. "Elliot Paul, The Last Time I Saw Paris a touching, near-brilliant novel about the lives and residents along rue de la Huchette in Paris, from 1920 until World War II. The real street is still there on the Left Bank running east from Place St. Michel. "Gertrude Stein, Paris ã don't bother to read this book. Her affected style is not effective. "Waverly Root, The Paris Edition. This is about the days of the drunken newspaperman of the Paris American-language press. You gotta love it. Root became a life-long Parisian and food expert. "Edith Wharton, French Ways and Their Meaning. A slender volume of essays by the great writer to help our Yankee troops deal with wild and unusual France during World War One. Next I am going to read her travelogue of the trip she and Henry James took around rural France in her limo. "Then, there's this great mystery set in London: Blue Last by Margha Grimes. This will devour the hours on the longest airplane trip or a snowbound weekend if global warming will ever grant us such a thing again."