Been there for a month and he was still startled by things. Waking up to a clock-radio with blue-glowing numbers instead of red or green. When the traffic light turns purple, you go, god damn you. A month living on a parallel Earth. It's not like he didn't try to go home -- but the local Professor Cyril was an alcoholic poet who worked for Pottery Barn and didn't really do quantum. "I wrote a poem about Schroedinger's Porpoise once, if that's any help." It wasn't.
Lots of things were the same. Tequila, for example. Or the dumb-ass running the States. Other things were not the same. People wore togas in the street. People paid hundreds of dollars for bedsheets to wear to the office.
He'd expected big things, like maybe Vietnam conquering France. He didn't expect the purple traffic lights or that ice cream was sucked from waffle boats instead of cones.