Taking advantage of my time spent in Europe, I have been traveling almost every weekend. There are a lot of things that I have experienced that I did not necessarily expect. This past weekend, I went to Rome for Thanksgiving and upon my return I had a very interesting experience at border control when I landed in the UK. The British officer did not refer to London and the rest of the UK as being a part of Europe. She continuously asked me how long I was in Europe for and I was confused as to what she was asking. I let her know that I had been in Europe since the end of August, but I was visiting Rome since the previous Thursday. She continued to explain to me that the UK is not considered part of Europe. This was news to me because I had never heard that before. I wondered if that is because of Brexit and people are jumping the gun of leaving the EU? They acted like I was going to a completely foreign place when in reality I felt like I was just crossing state lines.
In a lot of my classes here the main topic is globalization and how Brexit is going to have a massive effect on the country. There is a lot of turmoil because Londoners are horrified about what is going on in their country. Lots of questions are being raised about what is going to happen to immigrants that contribute so much to the workforce. People are beginning to flee the country in hopes of making a living in places such as Ireland.
With that being said about the British government, all Europeans seem to be fascinated with US politics. They want to know about life under Donald Trump’s presidency on top of all of the knowledge they already have. When I came to London, I knew very little about their political situation when they are so invested in our system. I think there is a correlation between the two systems and the chaos is something we can both relate to.