Response to "WA Adventure #2"

With a bit of downtime today (next trip is 2-1/2 weeks away and it's a short one, to Lost Wages NV), I thought to check up on the Midland Daily News online. Living in Washington State, the column/blog titles WA Adventure #2 naturally caught my eye. Welcome to the Evergreen State, Mrs. Palka, and if you get across the Cascade Range to the Pacific Northwet side, give this old Midlander a jingle.

But I noted your remark:

So I wonder why it is that we have such sameness across the land? From Birch Run to Spokane, I could have stopped at identical outlet shopping malls. I had the choice of 5 of the same hotel chains everywhere I went. The same 5 fast food restaurants were listed at every major highway exit. The landscape changed beautifully, my retail options did not.

As a too-frequent traveler I rely on the sameness of hotel chains, and sometimes restaurants, to predict what I will encounter. Some of the sameness comes from corporate presence or brand identity -- for example, my employer's products look the same no matter whether you're buying them in Midland, Mumbai or Moscow.

But even though a brand hotel or restaurant may look the more or less the same around the world (though you can't buy beer in an American McDonald's the way you can in Germany), there is another difference: the staff. They can make a big difference: I found the staff at Midland's Hampton Inn to be typically Midwestern: friendly and helpful. In Germantown MD where I have stayed over many years, they're nice enough but hurried or harried. Other places can be worse. (Or much better, as a no-name 3-star old hotel in Bangalore turned out to be: not fancy by any means but if I needed something they were on it instantly -- I'd go there again quite happily.)

Maybe one just needs to travel more to pick up on these differences. All I can really say is that on our visit to Midland my wife and I picked up on the welcoming difference between Midlanders and much of the rest of the world. Restaurants and hotels alike.