Imagine returning home after spending 20 years overseas. You would feel a little lost, and in need of some help reorienting yourself in now unfamiliar territory. You would go looking for things that were there when you last saw them.
The problem, as renowned author Bill Bryson found, is that things have changed.
"I didn't know that road maps in gas stations weren't free anymore," he said.
Bryson left for England 20 years ago, and hitchhiked around until finding work with newspapers. He worked as a copy editor, and later as a news editor, for The London Times and The Independent. He moved back to the United States four years ago, and lives in Hanover with his wife and children.
Bryson chronicles his experiences getting reacquainted with "this big, unruly, crazy country that had become a foreign land to me," in his new book, "I'm a Stranger Here Myself."
The book is a compilation of two year's worth of columns Bryson wrote for The Mail on Sunday, a British publication. A friend in England had asked him to write a weekly column about an aspect of American life and culture rediscovered upon moving back to the United States after living in Europe for a long time.
"A lot of it was little everyday things - going into town for coffee, or the joys of the American post office," Bryson said. Other columns focused on weightier issues, such as American attitudes towards the death penalty. "Very often the starting point was something I had heard about or read about," he said.
He said comparing life in England with life in the United States is difficult.
"In some ways we have a much more interesting climate here in Hanover," he said, but England has better gun control. "It's like asking which is better, New York or Los Angeles ... it depends on whether you're going to the beach or getting mugged."
Bryson was particularly astounded by "how much more of everything there is in America."
When he left the United States in the 1970s, televisions only carried four channels. After life in England where only four television channels are broadcast, cable TV with 65 or more channels was a whole new experience.
"I can't handle a television system that offers more than four channels," he said. "More doesn't actually mean there is more - that things are actually better."
"I'm a Stranger Here Myself" is Bryson's fourth book. His most recent book, "A Walk in the Woods," describes his travels on the Appalachian Trail.
Bryson discovered the AT when he moved to Hanover four years ago. "We discovered quite unexpectedly that this famous trail runs right through town," he said, "just poking around, the way you do."
"Bowled over" by the opportunity to just start off and hike to Georgia, he impetuously decided to hike the AT. He said he was most taken aback by the beauty and sheer size of the United States.
"The thing I came away with was ... a real appreciation for just how big the world is," he said. "When you're talking about distances, and you say such and such a place is 100 miles away, you'd be thinking of driving. When something is 600 miles away, you'd be thinking of flying. One hundred miles to someone on foot is quite a long ways ... [t]here isn't any way to prepare for the scale."
Bryson said the Appalachian Trail is far removed from the rest of American life. "The Eastern woods are just a backdrop until you get out into them. It's another world out there, Davy Crockett could have been wandering around. It's a world 200 years behind the times," he said.
He did not complete the trail from start to finish, from Georgia to Maine. "The whole experience was wonderful, even though we were utter failures. It was a catastrophe in terms of doing the whole trail," Bryson said.
The point he wanted to make with his book, however, was to have a good time on the trail, and not be tortured if it can only be hiked in parts.
"So many people regard the trail as an all-or-nothing experience," he said. Other hikers thought his perspective about only partially hiking the trail was "too irreverent a notion, and not respectful enough for the trail."
Bryson is currently writing a book about Australia. "It is a really interesting place, but nobody knows anything about it," he said.
He also wrote "Notes from a Small Island," which examines his 20 years spent in England. The book "is essentially making fun of the British in a very affectionate way," he said.
Bryson's other books include "Neither Here Nor There," about his travels in Europe, and "The Lost Continent," about travelling around the United States.
