A famous Russian expatriate writer said: "America doesn't smell" (a literal translation would be "America doesn't smell nothing.") This reminded me my first years in the US, when I was puzzled over similar experience. I tried to smell something, just something, when walking along sterile American streets, and there was nothing, just nothing to please, or at least upset, my desperate nose.

Then there is a popular Russian song about a fellow emigrant, who smelled "dust of foreign roads, where flowers don't smell and the moon doesn't shine."

Then my Colombian friend complained that American food is terrible. Tasteless. She had to cook everything from scratch. I was certainly able to empathize, because my experience was the same. I knew the food I was eating was damn good, but somehow I couldn't feel much of its taste.

I spent a lot of time contemplating this problem, and finally hacked out a theory. According to my theory, our experience in a new country is overwhelming. It's too much for our brain to process, so our brain shoots down certain modes of perceptions as a mean of self-defense. The most important modes of perceptions, sight and hearing, are left intact and less important, smell and taste, are sacrificed.

Only after several years of expatriate living my long-suffering senses started to return to me.

As for my home country, it doesn't smell as much as it stinks. :)