I've been to forty-seven countries and the thing I've learned is that everywhere has a version of my neighbor Clyde — a man who knows everything about nothing and won't shut up about either. The accent changes. The confidence doesn't.

In Buenos Aires, Clyde wears a leather jacket and argues about Messi. In Tokyo, he has opinions about train schedules. In London, he's certain the weather is getting worse, which — to be fair — it always is. But the fundamental Clyde-ness of him is universal: the unearned certainty, the volume, the absolute refusal to consider that he might be wrong about the one thing he's most wrong about.

Travel doesn't broaden the mind so much as confirm its suspicions. You go looking for the exotic and find the familiar. You seek enlightenment and discover that the food court at Heathrow looks exactly like the food court at RDU, just with worse coffee and more apologizing.