Question: What is the best thing about any foreign country?
Answer: McDonalds.
Now please, unbunch your panties and hear me out. This is a sincere defense of the Golden Arches and its comforting presence in unknown lands.
Tell me, what is the greatest concern for any traveller? Greater than cultural difference, language barriers, or even safety? Finding a public toilet.
Imagine yourself in a strange land, traipsing around a foreign capital, far from the comforts of your hotel. It's an hour or so after lunch and suddenly that local wine is making its presence known in your nether regions. Explaining your predicament to local shopkeepers through hand gestures and charades is out of the question, and that public pay-WC looks more like a homeless shelter. Not to mention the unfortunate surprise known as the squat toilet... You need to go, but where to go?
McDonalds. You find a McDonalds and you've found a toilet. A clean, free, Western toilet with soap and water. A toilet no one will ask you to make a purchase to use. A toilet you don't need a key to open. A toilet in a restaurant that most likely has English-speaking staff. And, of late, a toilet that also has free wifi.
McDonalds is a traveller's half-way house, oasis and personal saviour all in one. Seeing a McDonalds in a foreign country should not elicit scorn or shame, but relief. You can scoff at the way it brings the worst of American cuisine overseas; you can cringe at its lack of local "authenticity"; you can even complain about the cookie-cutter taste eerily present from Des Moines to Delhi. You are absolutely free to be a total cultural and culinary snob about the house than Ronald built. But you can't tell me that seeing his creepy clown face is anything less than the most beautiful sight in the world when you're far from home and about to wet yourself.
Bring McDonalds your tired, your hungry, your wifi-enabled masses, yearning to be free of overloaded bladders. And thank George Cohon while you're at it.
Answer: McDonalds.
Now please, unbunch your panties and hear me out. This is a sincere defense of the Golden Arches and its comforting presence in unknown lands.
Tell me, what is the greatest concern for any traveller? Greater than cultural difference, language barriers, or even safety? Finding a public toilet.
Imagine yourself in a strange land, traipsing around a foreign capital, far from the comforts of your hotel. It's an hour or so after lunch and suddenly that local wine is making its presence known in your nether regions. Explaining your predicament to local shopkeepers through hand gestures and charades is out of the question, and that public pay-WC looks more like a homeless shelter. Not to mention the unfortunate surprise known as the squat toilet... You need to go, but where to go?
McDonalds. You find a McDonalds and you've found a toilet. A clean, free, Western toilet with soap and water. A toilet no one will ask you to make a purchase to use. A toilet you don't need a key to open. A toilet in a restaurant that most likely has English-speaking staff. And, of late, a toilet that also has free wifi.
McDonalds is a traveller's half-way house, oasis and personal saviour all in one. Seeing a McDonalds in a foreign country should not elicit scorn or shame, but relief. You can scoff at the way it brings the worst of American cuisine overseas; you can cringe at its lack of local "authenticity"; you can even complain about the cookie-cutter taste eerily present from Des Moines to Delhi. You are absolutely free to be a total cultural and culinary snob about the house than Ronald built. But you can't tell me that seeing his creepy clown face is anything less than the most beautiful sight in the world when you're far from home and about to wet yourself.
Bring McDonalds your tired, your hungry, your wifi-enabled masses, yearning to be free of overloaded bladders. And thank George Cohon while you're at it.
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