Prime Time 7, Coursebook plus Semester Self-checks

3 Back home in America Before you read Brainstorm facts about what’s typical for American life and American cities. Make a list and compare it with that of your partner. Reading: Back home in America Read the text and underline typical aspects of what life in the US is like. 1  2  I was away. For six years, except for short visits now and then, I was in Europe – Germany mostly – away from the United States, my homeland. Upon my return I found that my country had not changed a great deal during that period. But I had. It seemed as if my eyes had changed, as if I could see colors and shades that were just gray before. Aspects of American life, of the American landscape, that once blended into the background, now pop out at me. I notice how waitresses refill your coffee cup – once, twice, as many times as you want, for free. It’s called a “bottomless cup”. You pay for one cup, but you can drink a whole pot. Sure, American coffee is spineless stuff compared to its European cousin. But it works the same way, if you drink enough of it. I notice the extra wide aisles in the supermarkets; and I see why they have to be that way. Americans are fat. Not all of them, but too many of them. If supermarket aisles weren’t wide, people would get stuck between shelves of peanut butter and counters of T-bone steaks and hamburgers. Emergency crews with heavy equipment would have to pull them out. I notice the overwhelming presence of advertising in the US: radio and television commercials, billboards, print advertising. Messages are everywhere. “Buy Something Now!” Some shout at you, some whisper in your ear, but it is constant and everywhere, and more intense than in Europe. I notice the paving of the American landscape. This is perhaps the most disturbing sight for the expatriate coming home. America is spreading out of the cities and into the countryside: It has been doing this for years, as a matter of fact, but I never paid much attention to it until now. Cheap land and cheap gas have allowed Americans to escape the cities and move out to the suburbs where everyone has a huge house, a lawn and a two-car garage. All around you are other huge houses, with lawns and two-car garages. There are no stores, no workplaces within walking distance. You have to drive there (only poor people take buses). You have to drive everywhere. The growth of the suburbs would not disturb me, if it were not accompanied by two other developments. One is the decay of the central cities, the downtowns. Empty buildings that used to be stores dot the city centers. Often whole blocks are torn down and replaced by parking lots to serve office buildings – about all that remains in some downtowns. The second development is the growth of malls and huge discount stores. There are two kinds of malls. The most common is the strip mall, a series of 10, 20 or even 30 stores next to each other and facing a vast parking lot. The second kind is the indoor mall, generally a huge collection of 100 or more stores under one roof, surrounded by an enormous parking lot. Shoppers walk from store to store along wide, well-lit corridors leading to courtyards filled with plants and fountains. Strip malls are convenient – with free, plentiful parking right in front of the stores. Indoor malls are wonderful places to shop in very hot weather (they are air-conditioned, of course) and when it is very cold, too. As for discount stores, these are generally wide, squarish stores, each with enough floor space to cover a football field – or maybe two. They are like warehouses with everything you might want to buy in one enormous room. Like the strip malls and indoor malls, discount stores come with acres of parking. The prices here are the lowest anywhere. So what’s the problem? The problem is ugliness. 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 38 Regional identities Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentu des Verlags öbv