Sweet Tea and Culture Shock

In 2013, my husband and I took a slow trip up the east coast from North Carolina, spending three days in each location, and I decided this would be a kind of social experiment. I called it the “Sweet Tea Tour”.

Although I was born in New Jersey, I grew up in small middle Florida towns from the age of five. Even though Florida is just a transplanted north now, back then it wasn’t so much. So I am considered a southern woman. Our six years in South Carolina and fifteen years in North Carolina as adults cemented the deal.

Sweet Tea is it.

Our first stop in Roanoke, Virginia didn’t count, for obvious reasons.

D.C., here we come!

My first shock came at an Outback Steakhouse just outside of Washington, D.C. I ordered sweet tea, and our poor waitress developed a nervous tic.

“Uh, we don’t have sweet tea…?” Like she was asking me a question.

“Do you have tea?”

“Yes. It’s hot tea.”

“Ok, do you have ice?”

“Of course.”

“Do you have sugar?”

The light bulb over her head exploded and she slid away.

I got tea, ice and sugar in separate containers, and I was grateful for it.

Although sweet tea tastes better when you add the sugar while it’s hot so it blends to perfection before you add ice...you know what they say about beggars.

Next I stood in a locally famous sub shop in Philadelphia that was in a long hallway. Or at least it felt that way. I was happy that I could see the kitchen behind the guy who took our order. A crowd of people stacked up behind me, as it was now lunch hour.

I had already blown the man’s mind with my order of a philly cheese steak without the cheese, plain, with just meat and mayo.

“What’ll ya have ta drink?” He asked in a poor imitation of Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky.”

“Do you have sweet tea?”

He leaned back like I held a knife on him, crossed his arms and did another impression of Rocky.

“I dunno! Do you?”

He played to the crowd, and the crowd snickered.

“Look, lady, I got drinks in cans, okay? Pick one.”

After looking around a little more, I was happy to drink out of a can.

In New Jersey, we went to an Italian restaurant in Freehold, where I spent the first five years of my life. Oh, how different I would have been if we had stayed near family.

I love Italian food, but I had sworn off soda, and I think you know by now what I ordered.

The waiter just wrote it down. No questions, comments, etc. I wanted to cry.

Especially when I tasted the tea.

Raspberry tea.

I hate flavored teas. I feel like the only flavor in tea should be sugar, and lots of it.

My lasagna was so good.

With diet coke.

In New York City, I knew it was going to be an uphill battle—well, more like an up-mountain—but I was not prepared for what happened. And it wasn’t just about the sweet tea.

We stayed in Rahway, New Jersey and took the train to Penn Station one dreary day. I’m disabled and sometimes I can’t get out, so the first two days were wasted. This was our last opportunity to get to NYC, so rainy or not, we went.

The train wasn’t too bad, but we had never been on a subway. After we figured it out—kind of—we took a leap of faith and got on.

There were no seats left, this day being the Friday before Memorial Day weekend (bad timing, I know). When the subway car jerked, my husband’s arm accidentally touched another guy’s sleeve. The man looked like he had just been released from an insane asylum because there was no cure.

Picture a lion that had been starved for a week. He was still angry, and thought it was Bryan who had kept food from him.

And Bryan was also the food.

We got off at the next stop.

Bryan said, “Let’s just get a taxi.”

So that was not easy. I pictured that it would be, because I had seen it in movies. Everything in movies is like real life, right?

Finally this black boat car (a Grand Marquis) pulled up and we got in for the ride of our lives. The driver was from Liberia, but he drove like he got his license in the middle of the desert where there were no signs, curbs, stoplights…you get the picture. I could not get that seatbelt on fast enough.

Then the traffic got 100 times worse, and as I held Bryan’s hand so hard he lost feeling, I whispered, “Let’s go.” He didn’t want to give up yet.

The next time the driver hit a curb and drove partially on it, Bryan spoke up.

“We’ll get out here.”

After paying too much, we scrambled onto the sidewalk, audibly gasped from relief and walked the rest of the way to Little Italy.

At the restaurant of choice (well, the first one we came to), we sat down and expected to order drinks.

“No, no, no, you order the food here. The drinks come from next door,” the waiter explained.

I don’t care where they come from, as long as I get one.

Bryan said, “So you get them from next door?”

“No, you get them. From the bar.”

“Oh, we aren’t ordering alcohol,” I said.

He stared at me as if I had a snake crawling on my face, then turned to Bryan.

“All drinks. Next. Door.”

Well, if that isn’t the weirdest thing I ever heard of.

I didn’t dare ask for sweet tea.

Stay tuned for the next installment, my search for ice and air conditioning in Germany and Austria.