Shutdowns, strudels, and stark contrasts

I am writing this in the lobby of the Washington D.C. hotel I have been staying at for the past five days. Work brought me here, and work wrung me out. I am physically worn down but quite pleasantly sleepy, halfway between connectedness with the world around me and floating in the netherworld of dreams and spirits. It is a beguiling and somewhat pleasant sensation and I would like to hold onto it all the way past the many, many stops of the metro journey back to the airport, then up to the check-in desk, through security, over to my gate and then along to the door of my aeroplane, until I can finally flop into my seat and let it crawl over me, body and soul, and drag me into sleep. It seems unlikely that I can maintain it for all that time, as we are talking about another five hours before my flight takes off, and doubtless many experiences and interactions that I will have along the way that could snap me out of it and bring me back to wakefulness. I can but try, however, and writing this somehow seems to help.

This sleepiness that fills every fibre of my being has come about not just because I worked long and hard while I was here. Over the last few days, there has been a brutally cold wind that has blown at a fearsome rate of knots, reaching a peak yesterday when it lashed at my face until the tears streamed and pushed deep into my clothes, seeking any route in to attack my body and with such force that I could not fully keep it out. That was the day that a colleague, who is also a close friend, and I decided to take a tour of the monuments; the most moving being that to Martin Luther King; the most impressive, naturally enough, that to President Lincoln. By the time we finished, we were exhausted from battling against the elements, although somehow it all seemed rather fitting, given the sombre nature of our tour. We sipped hot drinks in the only coffee shop we could find open towards the end of the afternoon, grateful for a respite from the cold and a chance to heat up our bodies, at least for a while.

Washington D.C. has not been itself for the duration of my visit, my first in the US capital. The government shutdown, which ended today and therefore too late for my trip, has meant that all the museums and galleries were closed, and anyone who regularly reads this column will understand how disappointed I am to be unable to explore the national art collections. I have passed several galleries and museums on my daily walks from the hotel to the conference centre, and I have had small but tantalising impressions of what might lie beyond the locked glass doors. But to no avail. They remain shut to me and it is not unrealistic to assume that I may never return to Washington. It is an opportunity sorely missed.

The reputation, in Europe at least, that American cuisine is poor quality and that you cannot find a decent meal at a decent price is, in Washington, unfounded. We ate well, and with much variety (although one could hardly call any of the meals we ate ‘cheap’), and there were many places to which I would be happy to return on a further visit, should it arise. However, the best place that we tried was Ama, on New Jersey Avenue SE. The waiter told us that the menu is inspired by the food in Liguria, in north western Italy, and neighbouring regions, and I can say that the Trofie con Pesto Genovese is about as authentic as it could possibly get outside of the trattoria in and around Genoa. I had a special—seafood tomato pasta in a fish broth—that had so much chili in the sauce that the delicate marine flavors were quickly lost to me and the tomato notes melted in the heat. A pity, as I have the sense that there was a good dish underneath all of that, but my apple strudel dessert, on the other hand, was divine.

Washington itself was enjoyable to walk around, which is not often the case in US cities, and small enough in scale (in the centre at least) that it could be explored by foot. For once, the government shutdown helped, as it has meant that the city was practically devoid of tourists, and therefore half-empty. The roads were quiet, often silent, and we had none of the intrusions that can make exploring a city sometimes a chore. Our hotel was in an agreeable part of town, by a middle class neighbourhood that could have happily adjoined itself to Islington in London such no one would really have noticed the difference. Another aspect that struck me was the unabated kindness and accommodating nature of the people of Washington, who were always happy to help, even if they have a rather reserved attitude. The contrast with the brusqueness and slightly grudging persona I have got used to over several visits to Chicago was marked.

Before I started typing this, I whiled away an hour or two after my friend left in an Irish pub. It calls itself an Irish pub but there were few similarities with what one might find in Dublin or Cork, or even with the kind of Irish pub that is found in every town of any decent size in Europe (which, for the record, are closer to the genuine article). But it did have two qualities in common with its ancestors across the Atlantic ocean: a laidback atmosphere; and an understated welcome that instantly puts you at ease. A pub is, after all, a public house, but there are many that forget about the ‘house’ part. In its ideal form, a pub should be a home from home, and the one I found in Washington was just that.

But the dark corners of life that are ever-present in any big city, and surprising close by in American ones, were not hard to stumble across, and more than once, less than 15 minutes’ walk from the great buildings and landmarks that define this world-famous city, I found myself doubting whether I had taken a bad turn and should change direction. There is pain and hurt here, etched into the city by generation after generation, and the pure sheen of probity and sobriety that the American state, and many Americans, would like to project onto the seat of their great nation can at times seem ironic, if not downright insulting in its duplicitousness, when walking the streets of the capital. Any nation, but especially a great one, should put its own house in order before it makes any noble claims for itself, or preaches to the rest of the world.

I am now on the metro, listening to the stilted, cold rhythms of the AI female voice announcing the stops. She puts me in mind of some kind of slippery slope towards the dystopian world of Bladerunner, especially as we glide past endless silent, empty office blocks set against the pitch black sky. I remind myself of the fluffy clouds, tinted a soft pink, that I saw from of the hotel reception as I started typing this. I decide that, as in all places, the US is a mass of multi-layered and occasionally interacting contradictions, in which baffling contrasts sit hard against each other.

The difference here is the contrasts seem starker, and contradictions more blatant, than elsewhere, and the intensity with which people insist on their individuality, and their personal territory, is so much greater. There are clearly many historical reasons for why that might be the case, but that such a friendly and welcoming people can seem so dangerously close to a fracturing of the civic contract that binds them is sad. Perhaps this is why the USA fascinates and puzzles me almost more than any other country I have visited. It draws me back again and again but I am not sure I could live with it every day. Maybe time and circumstance will prove me wrong.