G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land." I don’t know what that means, but what better way to begin a dispatch from Oxford than a travel quote from a Briton. What I do know is that my recent expat status has vitalized both my investigations of the Continent and my reflections on contemporary American society. This combination has rendered me a veritable goldmine of insight comparable to an exiled amalgamation of de Tocqueville, Hemingway, and Dante. Such, anyway, is my belief after a few pints at the Keble College Pub. The reality probably resembles something closer to Larry, Moe, and Curley, but nonetheless I have much to share with my readers.

First, in spite of Francis Fukuyama’s recent change of heart on the matter, cheap American lagers are just as tasty as their European counterparts. American GIs did not die face down in the mud in Belgium so that I could pay four euro for a Stella Artois. Give me a Coors Light any day of the week thank you very much. Speaking of the Battle of the Bulge, a quick kudos to English pub fare is in order. Although much maligned by French culinary connoisseurs, a large portion of "bangers and mash" (English for "say goodbye to the munchies") is a better compliment to a pint of Guinness than the truffle-gilded tripe they give you in Lyon. If I want to eat an assortment of entrails I would go to Scotland and enjoy a healthy serving of Haggis. What, you ask, could possibly be better than a grab bag of sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs? Answer: a scotch-soaked grab-bag of sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs cooked inside said sheep’s stomach. Specifically soaked in Talisker scotch distilled on the picturesque Island of Skye a few jiggers of which will have you agreeing with Robert Burns: "But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer, / Gie her a Haggis!"

But Scotland is not all sheep organs and fermented malt. They also have fantastic ales. The Caledonian IPA took the prize in my book. It also required me to quiet the distressed dispatches my liver was sending me. But if my Cognitive Science major has taught me anything it’s that inhibitory neurons are more easily bought than a Russian bureaucrat. So after promising a cessation of frontal lobe scrutiny, my soon to be frolicking brain cells transmitted to my liver the neurological equivalent of a flaming sack of excrement. While old man liver wiped off his shoe I sampled a pint of Belhaven’s Best Ale. Limbic system: one. Liver: zero.

To be fair to Amsterdam, my traveling companions and I were not met with quite the excess that we expected. (Perhaps we missed the season?) Apart from the obvious, the Red light District was not that different from Athens on a Friday night, for the hordes of disaffected Muslim youth must have still been summering on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. I must admit that my journalistic search for truth could have been co-opted by my quest for pastries. Baked goods have never been so accurately named. Between the coffee shops and carnival lights I knew it was time to relinquish rational thought when I saw a headline having something to do with the House Foreign Relations Committee ruining U.S.-Turkey relations to rebuke the Ottoman Empire. At that point I must have been on the midnight train to Absurdistan with Nancy Pelosi as the conductor and Smurfet riding shotgun.

A chocolate-covered waffle brought me back to some sense of reality, and I rejoined my considerations of European malaise. My timing was serendipitous because I was subsequently accosted by a coke-pushing benefactor of Holland’s relaxed drug policy. At that point I decided to pause my musings and concentrate on making it back to my hostel alive. Cognitive resources must be carefully allocated when simultaneously navigating dangerous foreign alleyways and pondering the great questions of the hour, namely: why are Europeans so passive about the collapse of Western Civilization and why can’t Smurfs ever outrun Gargamel? Once safely returned to the confines of my domicile it hit me that the answer to both questions is actually the same: "because they are all three apples high."