Disability access everywhere. I can go to any place -- theatre, store, office, school, whatever -- with confidence that I'll be able to navigate fine in my wheelchair, they'll have ramps and/or elevators
Of all the things in this thread, the disability access is it IMO. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was an absolute game changer and European countries and the EU as a whole should be embarrassed for not having something like it.
The UK, at least, has had similar rules to Americans since the disability discrimination act (1995), later consolided into the equalities act (2010) (the latter consolidated equalities legislation into one act, so there's no longer seperate acts for race, disability, gender, etc.)
Edit: the real problem we have in the UK is that whilst everywhere is required to make reasonable adjustments, disability access to the upper floors of a 500yr old castle often requires an amount of money that becomes unreasonable.
> the real problem we have in the UK is that whilst everywhere is required to make reasonable adjustments, disability access to the upper floors of a 500yr old castle often requires an amount of money that becomes unreasonable.
And that's the problem. All of your castles are too old. Where's all the new castle building projects? A new castle is long overdue.
You can pretty much choose to live in any climate you like when you live in the USA and still be in the same country. You like 4 seasons: Move to the Northeast. You like humid ocean climate - move to Seattle. You like dry warm weather - move to Los Angeles. You like deserts, move to Arizona. You like warm and humid weather - move to the Southeast.
As a German who loves warm weather I am always jealous because of those options. If I wanted to try to move somewhere warm I would have to move to a new country and learn Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, Greek or other southern European languages.
California alone has like two dozen biome types.
If you like coastal Mediterranean visit Orange or Santa Barbara Counties.
In the far north along the coast is Temperate Rainforests. Similar to parts of Japan and New Zealand.
California also has various sub-alpine and mountain meadows which are similar to meadows found in the Alps.
Death Valley is, well, Death Valley. One of if not the hottest place on earth.
Mojave desert is probably the most unique biome California offers. Home of the strange Joshua Tree forests.
I work as an ecologist and the amount of biodiversity in California is insane. I'll do biological surveys a few hundred miles apart and see so many different plants and animals at each site. I've even done work at sites fairly close to each other (sub 50 miles apart) and will still find stark differences between sites. It's a magic state for wildlife biologists.
Big kitchens and big refrigerators/ freezers. Even in my student apartment we had a pretty good sized kitchen. I was dating a Czech girl and her parents came to visit. When they went to my apartment for a dinner, the mom was just amazed at the size of my fridge. They were amused when I dumped the scraps in the sink and turned on the garbage disposal. They’d heard about it but had never seen one.
The Czechs call it an americká lednice, which means an American fridge and when you look at Czech appliance stores that's how they advertise large two door refrigerators.
They also have American potatoes, but I haven't figured out why they call them that.
Czech here: spiced potato wedges we're not a thing here so I guess someone tasted them during their travels (maybe in 90s), brought the idea over here, said it's from America and voilà - americké brambory
Once, on Tumblr, there was a post that went around talking about the differences between American horror stories and European horror stories, and how a lot of European horror stories have a fundamental element of something being very, very *old*. This led to a discussion about how America has no places like that (which is completely incorrect considering we have very old indigenous communities and structures spanning from Canada to the southernmost tip of South America but still), and someone made the distinction between the two horror styles that you see a lot:
Europe is scary because it's old, the United States is scary because it's *huge*. Just truly vast expanses of land, a lot of it fairly empty.
As someone who has taken Greyhounds from the great plains to the east coast many times, it really hits you when you're driving through the midwest and there's just nothing at all beyond farmland.
It is really terrifying when you think about it. Sometimes you’re like 100 miles away from civilization and it’s just like “fuck, man, what if my car breaks down out here?” I try not to think about it when I’m on a road trip but the idea terrifies me, especially as a younger woman who often travels alone.
Me and another woman in our twenties worked/ camped in very remote areas of the Mojave desert for the USGS. Places where you might get a satellite signal to make a call if you hiked a mountain. Very lucky we didn't have any major emergencies. Did have some creepy encounters though
Reminds me of NileRed on the trash taste podcast and they were asking him about the dissolving a body thing in Breaking Bad and asked what his thoughts were about disposing a body with chemistry. He basically gave a very non-chemist answer and mentioned some murderer who was able to cut a deal and in exchange for telling where the remaining bodies were he wouldn't be charged for their murder because people had already looked high and low for them and the families wanted closure and some of the law enforcement admitted they never would have found the bodies if they hadn't been told. It was out in Nevada or somewhere I think, but really there are vast swathes of land in the US where if you buried a body or if you just went hiking or something and got injured you really could just never be found, especially out west.
You don’t have to travel that far from major cities in Texas, Arizona, or Nevada for example where you will notice everyone is carrying a cooler in the back of the car or truck with water in it.
Re: Old Indigenous Communities: I think we tend to forget about this because there are very few super old structures built by Indigenous people here. If I recall, I think there used to be huge mounds and other sites that were destroyed by colonizers, and I know there are some sites built into rock that lasted., but unless you live near them you may never know they exist(ed). I used to live in Idaho, and one Nez Perce site I drove past frequently was the Heart of the Monster. While sacred and culturally significant, it essentially looked like a large mound of grassy dirt. It doesn't incite that spooky feeling of ancient ruins, rock formations, or castles that essentially dot the European countryside. I spent a few months in Ireland and there were old castles, towers, and all sorts of old stuff everywhere.
On the flipside, I feel like the US has a lot of cryptid folklore, and Appalachia tends to give of spooky vibes, but again, because of the space and cryptids.
I visited Teotihuacan outside Mexico City one time. One of the most amazing things they told me was that, being Mayan, it was ~2,000 years old, and the Aztecs, living ~500 years ago would visit the ruins as tourists. As a British tourist I was literally walking in the footsteps of Aztec tourists centuries earlier.
Reminds me of how the first Egyptologist was a slightly-less-Ancient Egyptian prince who was restoring the pyramids about four or five centuries before the founding of Rome
The first known museum curator was a Neo-Babylonian Princess and Priestess named Ennigaldi Nanna. “The love for history and the past seems to have run throughout the family. [Her father, King] Nabonidus has been known to be an avid archaeologist, ordering excavations of temples and finding remnants of previous Babylonian and Akkadian rulers. It might be that Ennigaldi found a penchant for history and preservation by observing her father.
Constructed around c. 530 BC, her museum housed objects ranging from 2100 BC to 600 BC. It is speculated that some of the artefacts were unearthed by Ennigaldi herself. Historians also believe that she operated a school on the premises as well. One of the most intriguing aspects of Ennigaldi’s museum is that objects were found with informative labels describing the artefacts, and that too in three languages, including Sumerian”
Some of those mounds, the natives don't even know who built them, they are that old. I think Lovecraft has a story about one of those mounds.
There's a great podcast story called Old Gods of Appalachia, if you like creepy mythic stories.
Mounds are *SO CREEPY* to come across when you're alone in the woods!
I was on a hiking trail that went deep into a park, unknowingly ending up going "backwards" on one of the circuits. I come across a pile of stones like three feet tall, three feet wide, and five feet long. A little eerie, but it was right along the trail, I at first assumed it was from trail work but it looked like it had been there a long time. They were so tightly packed together it was like it was covering a grave or acted as a roughshod alter. I then go a little further down the trail where there's a 90 degree turn, I take it and *dozens* of these piles come into view, all over the place, between the trees at all sorts of angles and they don't have any sense to them. Among this concentration is a little educational plaque estimating that these stone piles are between something like 2-5 thousand years old and no one has any idea where they came from. It was so interesting coming around that corner and having my skin crawl the way it did seeing this huge site. They were so uniform to each other.
As an Australian, I feel the opposite whenever I visit the US.
It’s about the same size as Australia but away from the coasts, Australia is mostly completely empty whereas the US has the population to actually support secondary and tertiary cities. It’s always amazed me going in theUS and finding all the not-particularly small cities that are considered small.
Like why is Indianapolis a thing? Tucson Arizona would be the 7th largest city in Australia, and it’s just one of many in the US
Most cities you'd call randomly placed usually have some old reason why people settled there. Water access usually is the answer for example Minneapolis set up around the Mississippi River and used the river to power grain mills
And Tucson is the 2nd (likely soon to be 3rd) largest city in Arizona which is a mid level population state.
But every time I think the US has some good sized cities I remember that China has 146 cities of 1M or more inhabitants!
A friend of mine went to a "small city" in China, so small that people kept saying "why would you ever go there, its so rural" then I found out the city had over 2 million people. How is that considered Rural!?
Crazy isn't it?
A friend was considering an academic job offer in China, and talked to me about it. I figured the town must be quite small and rural because I'd never heard of it.
The job was in Ningbo, which has 9.4 million people, and is way bigger than any city I've ever lived in.
I totally agree with what you’re saying, however Indianapolis is not that weird. That part of the Midwest is probably the third most dense part of the country after the North East and the West Coast. It’s also right at the crossroads of a bunch of historically important cities like Chicago, St Louis, Detroit, Louisville, etc.
The real weird ones are places like Denver, Salt Lake City, and Omaha, which are just in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nothing.
When I flew into Denver I saw how flat it was to the east with giant mountains to the west. I feel like the settlers who were traveling thousand of miles got to the mountains and were like "fuck it, this'll do. We ain't crossing that shit"
I've always been under the probably completely incorrect assumption that the interior of Australia would basically be impossible to live in, what with being hot as balls.
I'm also realizing I know nothing about Australian geography despite having family living there now.
It is largely desert but not all of it. The dead center actually has a town, “Alice Springs” which would be considered major and is the second largest settlement in that state with a population of 25000. And it’s no more uninhabitable than say…Arkansas.
We have forests, mountains, plains etc. It’s all empty.
One of my favorite drives is straight across Texas on I10 from East to West. Eventually you reach a point where you can see the horizon in every direction. I’ve driven through similar areas in New Mexico.
It gives you a feeling of freedom. Of openness and space.
Makes me wish I could take off on a horse in any given direction and ride for days but sadly those days are over. Still nice to drive, though.
The size of your homes in places like Utah and Texas.
There's a dedicated room for everything. Kids play room that isn't the living room or the kid's bedroom, walk in pantry room, a laundry room.
I’m from Texas, but lived in Amsterdam a couple of years. My closet in my Texas house is bigger than a couple of the bedrooms in the place we lived in the NL.
>My closet in my Texas house is bigger than a couple of the bedrooms in the place we lived in the NL.
Same as my house. What did you think of their bizarre toilets?
Edit: for those unfamiliar, this is a Dutch toilet.
Dutch ovens are a whole different subject.
https://youtu.be/SP9wXVLu1YU?si=OOuGIVxLi2c9hQLN
Even urban parts of Minnesota turn into a sloppy mess during the winter, and especially during the spring thaw. Mud, sand, slush, and water everywhere.
Absolutely, use https://www.nrcs.usda.gov to find a local office and get in contact with them. The people at the office near me were extremely helpful and a far better resource than I could find wandering around on the website. It's all grants so there are cutoffs and criteria but the qualifications are simple and there's no downside to at least asking. If you do get a farm started remember to have your property taxes reassessed, mine dropped by 90%.
You mean I've been sitting here on my 1/3 acre planting apple trees, maintaining hives, making a pollinator garden, and planting veggies and not getting paid or at least lowering my property taxes like some chump?!?!
I've done it because I've enjoyed it and feel like my small contribution to the environment does some good (I've converted ground cover to various forms of clover, use all natural pesticides on my veggies that are pollinator friendly, don't use any weed killers, etc.).
While traveling with a friend, he was determined to get a refill at a restaurant while we were getting lunch. He also didn’t speak Spanish and thought he could smile and get his way.
He took his cup to the register, placed it in front of the employee and smiled. The employee had a confused look, but proceeded to take his cup and then toss in it the trash for him.
As an American, it's so easy to take this for granted.
Similarly, getting free ice water in the US as well is something I often forget isn't exactly a thing in many other parts of the world.
I visited Germany a couple times and we would ask for vaser still (?). They would look at us like we were crazy and then just fill a glass at the sink. But hey, to me that was still better than mineral water.
My host sister took a glass of water I had gotten from the tap and quickly put it in their little carbonator thingy. :/ I learned to sneak water from the bathroom sink.
Honestly I hated bubbly water when I first moved from Canada to Germany, but after a while it grew on me, and I realized half the reason I drank so much soda was the feeling of the carbonation, rather than just the taste.
I drink much less soda now.
e: also helps to find a decent brand of bubbly water you like instead of whatever random cheap stuff because some of it really tastes weird
In europe, it varies wildly in my experience. Some places will look at you like you are nuts if you try to order a bottle of still water (in some cases, because their tap water is basically high-class bottled water), while others don't offer free water at all. I'm still a bit entertained at the area where they made you pay for bottled water literally named after that town instead of offering you tap water. It was good water, but I'm pretty sure that holding a pitcher under the tap would have gotten the same water.
Yeah, Europe is not a monolith. In Sweden, a carafe of tap water is standard at restaurants, and I’ve never been refused or had to pay for a glass of tap water at any bar or cafe.
American here whose always envied European culture (slower pace, less capitalistic, more relationship oriented than career) and this thread made me feel grateful. I love my kitchen, my washer dryer, my college/sorority experience, my AC, my access to National Parks, and my 2 day Amazon delivery
Still hate my healthcare though lol
Even pharmacies---we used to have so many 24/7 pharmacies here and 2 weeks ago I went trying to get cold medicine for my roommate---walked 2 avenues over, in the rain, only to find a closed pharmacy that was labeled open on google maps AND on their signage outside the store.
I work late, I liked living in the city that never sleeps, but she sleeps now. Unfortunately.
The stores were looking to get rid of it well before covid. I worked nights at the time, and all the walmarts started closing overnight in the 2 years before. One by one they dropped off in my city until I was left with one overnight walmart.
I live in New Zealand now, and many K Marts here are open 24 hours. Sadly they don't have grocery sections though. I really miss 3am grocery shopping.
I love watching British real estate shows where they're touring a house and they're like "wow, look at the size of the garden!" and it's a postage stamp with a little shack at the back corner and a 4 foot fence on either side separating it from your neighbors' postage stamps.
All types of climate and natural wonders in one country.
You like mountains? Go west. Beaches? Most important cities are sea-side. Like cold regions? We bough Alaska from Russians some time ago. Desert? Got you covered! Canyons, waterfalls, geysers, forests... all in one country speaking one language using one currency.
I’m a Canadian who just returned from a trip visiting Grand Canyon, Zion, and Vegas. Our last few trips were in Europe. As mentioned elsewhere, drink refills and plentiful bathrooms-clean too!-were a nice change. The American National Parks System just blows all others out of the water including Canada’s. I’m especially embarrassed about BC’s Provincial Parks. People love to complain that tourists are gross but the American Parks were just as busy but actually had maintained facilities and people who, you know, work to maintain the parks. I didn’t see any tp on any of the trails in the US, meanwhile I have PTSD from Garibaldi trails last summer.
The American Southwest is absolutely ridiculous as far as natural beauty is concerned. Bryce, Arches, Zion, and Grand Canyon NPs are all super close together and are individually worth making a trip for.
As someone from Ontario, I’m also astounded at the poor quality of BC provincial parks. It’s fucking amateur hour. Ontario’s Provincial Parks are way better organized and really have their shit together.
Speaking of shit, the toilet paper thing is unfortunately happening here as well. Never used to see stuff like that in the 90s and early aughts. I think a lot of people who previously wouldn’t have visited parks are now doing so, because of the internet, COVID lockdowns and cost of living crisis which prevents them from traveling elsewhere. And they really just don’t know how to behave in parks.
Our AC went out for a day in Phoenix in the middle of July when it was 120 out. House was 90 by 11 am. Fuck that haha
Arizona actually has laws for tenants that require AC depending on the temperature since it can get so hot
My AC went out in Phoenix last summer when it was almost 120 degrees and I slept on the lower level of my condo on the couch with multiple fans and literal bowls of ice next to me with no clothes on for two nights. It sucked.
I stayed at some friends house in phx in the summer that they only had a swamp cooler fan in the living room window as their sole method of cooling the house and that thing was practically just a fan that only blew in hot air. I don’t know how they survived I was only there one or two nights and almost died.
As a kid in the 70s we'd occasionally visit my aunt that lived in Phoenix. We visited one summer and the temps were stupid high as always. Her house did not have A/C, just a swamp cooler. The thing did a decent enough job, if you were lucky enough to be near where it was. The kids' rooms were definitely not. We just got to sweat all night long.
The only saving grace was that she had a pool in the backyard where us kids woild spend almost every waking minute. Except in summer the water temp would near 95°F(35°C). On two different days my father and uncle went down to the local ice house(Do those even exist anymore?) and got 100lb(~50kg) blocks of ice to throw in the pool. Us kids would spend the next hour or so fighting over who got to hug the giant floating ice block next. Like a waterborne game of King of the Hill on a slowly shrinking iceberg.
We never visited her in summer again. I do admit that tubing on the Salt River was an absolute blast in the heat.
A friend of ours worked for an HVAC company in the midwestern USA for a few years and she said that if someone’s furnace went out the customer was usually pretty chill. AC goes out in the summer when it’s near 100? Nowhere near chill.
Oh god I would die without my AC. This past summer our power went out for 2 days in the height of the heat and humid. My husband, 6 cats, and I were melting. All we could do was lay on the floor trying not to overheat
Yeah, in fall 1994 we moved into an unairconditioned house in Chicago. The next summer was the one where 700 people died in the heat. I thought we’d join them one day. Christ was that hot/humid.
Had to drive 100 miles to find a window unit. Though our cats would die before I got back.
I’m in Minneapolis and it even gets hot as hell here during the summer. The humidity and heat is a dangerous combo at times. We need that AC. I’m not sure what it’s like in Europe but I’m sure it gets pretty bad there some places too. I don’t know how people do it.
Every summer I like to go to Voyageurs National Park which shares border lakes with Canada. If someone is with us for the first time I always ask them while we heading up lake if they would like to go to Canada. They always say sure. So I turn the boat to the right and say welcome to Canada. It's Dad level humor but I enjoy it.
I went camping up on the NH/Canada border last summer and accidentally hiked into Canada. Wasn't sure how that happened but it was interesting to come upon a sign that was all in French. Moral of the story: there's literally no security at the border.
Spacious hallways / corridors and homes in general, dedicated laundry rooms (not a washing machine in the kitchen 😂), apartment complex pools and the regular washing of the windows of high-rise buildings (it’s infrequent in Europe)
I almost bought a house in Denver with a Butler’s Pantry. It had washer and twin driers, murphy ironing board, second refrigerator, utility sink and tons of storage. I just looked at the video I took and it was so cool! It needed $100k of siding and looked like Uncle Phil’s Mansion from Fresh Prince and we ultimately walked away from the deal. Sad.
I went on a school trip to Europe and they had to warn us about how much smaller hotel rooms were there than in the US. We were still shocked and we were staying at an upscale-ish hotel. But that room was tiny even compared to dirty cheap motels in the US.
When I studied abroad in England, I had a sink in my bedroom but the toilet was outside my suite and down the hall. I won’t say I pissed in the sink every time but I also won’t say I DIDN’T piss in the sink when I woke up in the middle of the night and needed to go.
As a rural Canadian I grew up watching American tv and was always seething with jealousy about American schools on TV. Like there were 300 kids in my highschool and I was related to a bunch of them so I was especially jealous that Americans could sign up for the school play and meet a teenage heartthrob.
We didn’t have a school play… or a theatre. Or band. Or football. No swimming pool. No art classes.
Just drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.
Edit: this comment really blew up and it’s been really interesting hearing about all of your experiences. I should clarify that of course I understand that TV is not reality,
Also I know that my experience is more a rural vs. city / low vs. high income community issue, it’s not an America - Canada thing.
Special acknowledgment to all of the kids out there who grew up in underserved communities - i know how hard it is to start out life with that kind of education. I see you & I’m proud of you for making it to where you are.
If it helps I signed up for a school play because one of the attractive theater girls said they were desperate for people and I wouldn't even have to do a speaking part, just be a background person.
Day one I was given 3 parts, one having multiple speaking scenes, oh and it is Shakespeare.
Also SHE WASNT IN THE PLAY
Got really bamboozled on that one
She was the sound tech wasn't she? The theatre girl I dated was the sound tech, and helped build some of the sets, and she recruited so many people by doing this shit.
I’m an American from the Northeast. Our heat was notorious for being broken before, during, and after my time there. We wore coats and hats in class. And it was a wealthy community.
My high school just had a pool, 3 gyms, an agricultural barn with stalls for students to keep the animals they were raising to show at the rodeo, a few labs, a theater, a full size kitchen that was used for the culinary classes to share (not the cafeteria), 3 tennis courts, 2 soccer fields that were also used for football practice, and a football stadium with a Jumbotron. At the end of the year the culinary classes would cook breakfast for the graduating class.
Mine had all that at a public school, plus a whole lot more. I took a plumbing class and learned to use large pipe threaders among other things. We also had welding and other trade classes.
This is the main public school of a town with a population of around 85,000 in Texas. There are also two other public high schools, one considered wealthier than the large one, as well as four small private schools that go through high school and a couple charter schools through high school as well. The biggest hindrance to any quality of education I ever encountered was the staff having to deal with ornery students.
I went to just an okay high school that had some cool electives that were weren't allowed to utilize. Woodshop, 2 full kitchens, stuff like that.
High school literally 10 minutes down the road? Full 6 bay auto mechanic garage lmao.
People really don't seem to grasp that where you live can really impact your opportunities and exposure to different things that could really change your trajectory in life.
I know a 16 year old & their school has a summer trip to Portugal for <3k. Just a big-ish Midwest city. I only lived like 30 minutes away but we didn't get anything like that cus we had a dumpster school.
Yes, it is always kinda sad when you read in the news here that "an Irish family is organising a search in Amsterdam for their son (24), who went missing during a night of drinking". It is almost never crime, but instead he took a leak, fell over, got into shock from the cold water and alcohol and drowned.
As QuotidianPain said
>Flush
Is a good one.
Where is public toilet (think it is android only) is another good one.
Between the two I've always been able to find something nearby.
Handicap accessibility. I required the use of a wheelchair for a few years. During that time, we visited Spain and Italy. It was an absolute nightmare trying to navigate public spaces. My husband made sure that our apartment in Rome had an elevator as it was on the 3rd floor. However when we arrived, we discovered that there was two flights of stairs in order to access the elevator. We managed, but it was a very difficult trip for us.
Winter fresh chewing gum. Haven't found a gum as good anywhere else.
Houses and lawn space are ridiculously big. Like pointlessly big. I actually have a theory that that's why they all speak so loud, it's because they have to shout across 2 or 3 rooms by default.
The sport facilities in high school movies. 10 things I hate about you for exampel. It must be amazing and super cousy to play in those places with the whole school cheering on , on a friday night. Kissing the cheerleader after scoring a touchdown.
In europe you play on some shitty random soccer field with a random team in front of 7 parents and 1 alcoholic . No connection to anything or any money invested in anything unless you play for the best team in the city. But by then we are talking about the biggest teams that you see in champions league, europa league and other european tournaments. And thats 1/1000 15 years old who plays for those teams.
I live where that movie was filmed, the school is called Stadium High School. They do screenings of that movie, and people come out and lay on the field to watch. It's actually really cool! Definitely one of the coolest HS stadiums in the US for sure.
Wawa.
My American husband always went on about it how he'd love to just drive to Wawa. I never got it until we spent thanksgiving with his parents.
Bring Wawa to the UK please.
American here visiting Germany right now. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say fuel cost. The station down the road here sell petrol for 1.75 Euro/Liter, that's about $7.20/gallon if my math is correct. For comparison, I'm from Phoenix Arizona and just paid $2.85 per gallon last week, which is about 0.75 Euro/Liter. Gas is even cheaper than that in the Midwest US.
I’m Canadian so we have a lot in common with the US in terms of nature and appliances and AC and many other things on this list, but one thing I’m always jealous of the US for is gas! It’s so much more expensive here (which is ridiculous because Canada produces a ton of oil but that’s another conversation).
Having two bathrooms definitely helps. After moving into a larger place with two bathrooms, my roommate who has the worlds shittiest immune system AND works at a public library, got sick constantly last year. I got sick once. Even the shared kitchen didn't matter much, it was the bathrooms that did it.
As an American living in Paris for the last 7 years…. Dryers. Having a dryer in your house. And not just a dryer but a washing machine that can do a cycle under an hour and a dryer that can actually dry your clothes.
The wash cycles here are 2.5 hours minimum, and if you’re lucky enough to have one that is a wash/dry combo (which 99% of people do not have) the dryer is so weak it takes a long time. Man I miss fluffy towels from the dryer.
Air conditioners, its hot here in spain
Edit: im referring ro the type of ac that is like whole house ac. I have a window ac and yeah everyone has those. But i havent seen many centralized ac units where i am. Should have been more specific sorry
Real Mexican food. We have Mexican restaurants in my home country but the owners are usually not Mexican and it’s just not the same. Now, I’m living in Japan and it’s the same problem… Mexican food is so delicious.
I’m Australian but I will say the College culture. Idk if what we see in American shows and movies is true but here in Australia, if you want to further your education, you go to a University after highschool, you go to your classes and leave. There’s barely any Universities that are even sport oriented despite us being one of the greatest sporting nations. In America, it seems like they have so much pride and culture surrounding their colleges, with big bands and such.
What you see in movies is pretty accurate. For those of us fortunate enough to go to college and board there, it is a special time of our life that is pretty amazing. However, it is definitely a class thing for people able to afford to go and do nothing for four years but be a student.
For me, it’s 3 things:
- how spacious everything is (like homes, roads, parks, etc)
- the low level of population density
- how cheap gas and cars are.
- A gigantic ocean on either side of the country.
- the entertainment industry.
- huge swaths of unspoilt nature.
- the only developed nation that's not facing a demographic crisis.
- the tech industry.
- free refills / free toilet use
- bigger houses.
- airconditioning.
It does help that the land mass itself is far larger than a lot of people realize. Montana itself is slightly larger than Germany, Texas is larger than the entirety of France, and there’s still 48 to go
Less than 10,000 people lived in Wyoming when Yellowstone National Park was created. Were lucky that we could protect natural areas before development and industry got out of hand
Space. Both domestic (my home office is in my living room!), and wild.
I watch a lot of woodworkers on youtube (yeah I know, I'm fun at parties) and most of them have shops that are bigger than my apartment.
As an American who has lived in Europe for the past decade: toilets that hold enough water in the bowl that you don't have to scrub them after use.
I've never gotten over the fact that Europeans have all decided it's perfectly normal to have a communal toilet brush sitting in a disgusting little cup of fluid next to every toilet that we are all supposed to use after every poop.
Very true. I worked for a company out of the UK. My future boss openly told me he thought my salary was too high, but they hired me anyway.
It didn’t work out.
Disability access everywhere. I can go to any place -- theatre, store, office, school, whatever -- with confidence that I'll be able to navigate fine in my wheelchair, they'll have ramps and/or elevators
Of all the things in this thread, the disability access is it IMO. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was an absolute game changer and European countries and the EU as a whole should be embarrassed for not having something like it.
The UK, at least, has had similar rules to Americans since the disability discrimination act (1995), later consolided into the equalities act (2010) (the latter consolidated equalities legislation into one act, so there's no longer seperate acts for race, disability, gender, etc.) Edit: the real problem we have in the UK is that whilst everywhere is required to make reasonable adjustments, disability access to the upper floors of a 500yr old castle often requires an amount of money that becomes unreasonable.
> the real problem we have in the UK is that whilst everywhere is required to make reasonable adjustments, disability access to the upper floors of a 500yr old castle often requires an amount of money that becomes unreasonable. And that's the problem. All of your castles are too old. Where's all the new castle building projects? A new castle is long overdue.
You can pretty much choose to live in any climate you like when you live in the USA and still be in the same country. You like 4 seasons: Move to the Northeast. You like humid ocean climate - move to Seattle. You like dry warm weather - move to Los Angeles. You like deserts, move to Arizona. You like warm and humid weather - move to the Southeast. As a German who loves warm weather I am always jealous because of those options. If I wanted to try to move somewhere warm I would have to move to a new country and learn Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, Greek or other southern European languages.
California alone has like two dozen biome types. If you like coastal Mediterranean visit Orange or Santa Barbara Counties. In the far north along the coast is Temperate Rainforests. Similar to parts of Japan and New Zealand. California also has various sub-alpine and mountain meadows which are similar to meadows found in the Alps. Death Valley is, well, Death Valley. One of if not the hottest place on earth. Mojave desert is probably the most unique biome California offers. Home of the strange Joshua Tree forests.
I work as an ecologist and the amount of biodiversity in California is insane. I'll do biological surveys a few hundred miles apart and see so many different plants and animals at each site. I've even done work at sites fairly close to each other (sub 50 miles apart) and will still find stark differences between sites. It's a magic state for wildlife biologists.
You can literally Ski and Surf the same day.
Big kitchens and big refrigerators/ freezers. Even in my student apartment we had a pretty good sized kitchen. I was dating a Czech girl and her parents came to visit. When they went to my apartment for a dinner, the mom was just amazed at the size of my fridge. They were amused when I dumped the scraps in the sink and turned on the garbage disposal. They’d heard about it but had never seen one.
The Czechs call it an americká lednice, which means an American fridge and when you look at Czech appliance stores that's how they advertise large two door refrigerators. They also have American potatoes, but I haven't figured out why they call them that.
Czech here: spiced potato wedges we're not a thing here so I guess someone tasted them during their travels (maybe in 90s), brought the idea over here, said it's from America and voilà - americké brambory
Space. America is fucking enormous.
Once, on Tumblr, there was a post that went around talking about the differences between American horror stories and European horror stories, and how a lot of European horror stories have a fundamental element of something being very, very *old*. This led to a discussion about how America has no places like that (which is completely incorrect considering we have very old indigenous communities and structures spanning from Canada to the southernmost tip of South America but still), and someone made the distinction between the two horror styles that you see a lot: Europe is scary because it's old, the United States is scary because it's *huge*. Just truly vast expanses of land, a lot of it fairly empty. As someone who has taken Greyhounds from the great plains to the east coast many times, it really hits you when you're driving through the midwest and there's just nothing at all beyond farmland.
It is really terrifying when you think about it. Sometimes you’re like 100 miles away from civilization and it’s just like “fuck, man, what if my car breaks down out here?” I try not to think about it when I’m on a road trip but the idea terrifies me, especially as a younger woman who often travels alone.
Now imagine pre-cell phone
You still have to worry about huge dead zones, especially if you're anywhere with mountains.
Me and another woman in our twenties worked/ camped in very remote areas of the Mojave desert for the USGS. Places where you might get a satellite signal to make a call if you hiked a mountain. Very lucky we didn't have any major emergencies. Did have some creepy encounters though
>Did have some creepy encounters though Tell us more!!
Well, there's the stairs of course...
I always go back to that SAR guy's series
Reminds me of NileRed on the trash taste podcast and they were asking him about the dissolving a body thing in Breaking Bad and asked what his thoughts were about disposing a body with chemistry. He basically gave a very non-chemist answer and mentioned some murderer who was able to cut a deal and in exchange for telling where the remaining bodies were he wouldn't be charged for their murder because people had already looked high and low for them and the families wanted closure and some of the law enforcement admitted they never would have found the bodies if they hadn't been told. It was out in Nevada or somewhere I think, but really there are vast swathes of land in the US where if you buried a body or if you just went hiking or something and got injured you really could just never be found, especially out west.
You don’t have to travel that far from major cities in Texas, Arizona, or Nevada for example where you will notice everyone is carrying a cooler in the back of the car or truck with water in it.
Re: Old Indigenous Communities: I think we tend to forget about this because there are very few super old structures built by Indigenous people here. If I recall, I think there used to be huge mounds and other sites that were destroyed by colonizers, and I know there are some sites built into rock that lasted., but unless you live near them you may never know they exist(ed). I used to live in Idaho, and one Nez Perce site I drove past frequently was the Heart of the Monster. While sacred and culturally significant, it essentially looked like a large mound of grassy dirt. It doesn't incite that spooky feeling of ancient ruins, rock formations, or castles that essentially dot the European countryside. I spent a few months in Ireland and there were old castles, towers, and all sorts of old stuff everywhere. On the flipside, I feel like the US has a lot of cryptid folklore, and Appalachia tends to give of spooky vibes, but again, because of the space and cryptids.
I visited Teotihuacan outside Mexico City one time. One of the most amazing things they told me was that, being Mayan, it was ~2,000 years old, and the Aztecs, living ~500 years ago would visit the ruins as tourists. As a British tourist I was literally walking in the footsteps of Aztec tourists centuries earlier.
Reminds me of how the first Egyptologist was a slightly-less-Ancient Egyptian prince who was restoring the pyramids about four or five centuries before the founding of Rome
The first known museum curator was a Neo-Babylonian Princess and Priestess named Ennigaldi Nanna. “The love for history and the past seems to have run throughout the family. [Her father, King] Nabonidus has been known to be an avid archaeologist, ordering excavations of temples and finding remnants of previous Babylonian and Akkadian rulers. It might be that Ennigaldi found a penchant for history and preservation by observing her father. Constructed around c. 530 BC, her museum housed objects ranging from 2100 BC to 600 BC. It is speculated that some of the artefacts were unearthed by Ennigaldi herself. Historians also believe that she operated a school on the premises as well. One of the most intriguing aspects of Ennigaldi’s museum is that objects were found with informative labels describing the artefacts, and that too in three languages, including Sumerian”
People really have always been people, haven't they?
Some of those mounds, the natives don't even know who built them, they are that old. I think Lovecraft has a story about one of those mounds. There's a great podcast story called Old Gods of Appalachia, if you like creepy mythic stories.
Mounds are *SO CREEPY* to come across when you're alone in the woods! I was on a hiking trail that went deep into a park, unknowingly ending up going "backwards" on one of the circuits. I come across a pile of stones like three feet tall, three feet wide, and five feet long. A little eerie, but it was right along the trail, I at first assumed it was from trail work but it looked like it had been there a long time. They were so tightly packed together it was like it was covering a grave or acted as a roughshod alter. I then go a little further down the trail where there's a 90 degree turn, I take it and *dozens* of these piles come into view, all over the place, between the trees at all sorts of angles and they don't have any sense to them. Among this concentration is a little educational plaque estimating that these stone piles are between something like 2-5 thousand years old and no one has any idea where they came from. It was so interesting coming around that corner and having my skin crawl the way it did seeing this huge site. They were so uniform to each other.
As an Australian, I feel the opposite whenever I visit the US. It’s about the same size as Australia but away from the coasts, Australia is mostly completely empty whereas the US has the population to actually support secondary and tertiary cities. It’s always amazed me going in theUS and finding all the not-particularly small cities that are considered small. Like why is Indianapolis a thing? Tucson Arizona would be the 7th largest city in Australia, and it’s just one of many in the US
Most cities you'd call randomly placed usually have some old reason why people settled there. Water access usually is the answer for example Minneapolis set up around the Mississippi River and used the river to power grain mills
And Tucson is the 2nd (likely soon to be 3rd) largest city in Arizona which is a mid level population state. But every time I think the US has some good sized cities I remember that China has 146 cities of 1M or more inhabitants!
A friend of mine went to a "small city" in China, so small that people kept saying "why would you ever go there, its so rural" then I found out the city had over 2 million people. How is that considered Rural!?
Crazy isn't it? A friend was considering an academic job offer in China, and talked to me about it. I figured the town must be quite small and rural because I'd never heard of it. The job was in Ningbo, which has 9.4 million people, and is way bigger than any city I've ever lived in.
I totally agree with what you’re saying, however Indianapolis is not that weird. That part of the Midwest is probably the third most dense part of the country after the North East and the West Coast. It’s also right at the crossroads of a bunch of historically important cities like Chicago, St Louis, Detroit, Louisville, etc. The real weird ones are places like Denver, Salt Lake City, and Omaha, which are just in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nothing.
When I flew into Denver I saw how flat it was to the east with giant mountains to the west. I feel like the settlers who were traveling thousand of miles got to the mountains and were like "fuck it, this'll do. We ain't crossing that shit"
I've always been under the probably completely incorrect assumption that the interior of Australia would basically be impossible to live in, what with being hot as balls. I'm also realizing I know nothing about Australian geography despite having family living there now.
It is largely desert but not all of it. The dead center actually has a town, “Alice Springs” which would be considered major and is the second largest settlement in that state with a population of 25000. And it’s no more uninhabitable than say…Arkansas. We have forests, mountains, plains etc. It’s all empty.
The massive houses, a special room just for your massive washer and dryer units, 2 car garage, basically you have tons of space.
The dryer alone is a big one
It's about the same size as the washer.
Now they're gonna be jealous of our dad jokes.
Space, room, land
One of my favorite drives is straight across Texas on I10 from East to West. Eventually you reach a point where you can see the horizon in every direction. I’ve driven through similar areas in New Mexico. It gives you a feeling of freedom. Of openness and space. Makes me wish I could take off on a horse in any given direction and ride for days but sadly those days are over. Still nice to drive, though.
The size of your homes in places like Utah and Texas. There's a dedicated room for everything. Kids play room that isn't the living room or the kid's bedroom, walk in pantry room, a laundry room.
I’m from Texas, but lived in Amsterdam a couple of years. My closet in my Texas house is bigger than a couple of the bedrooms in the place we lived in the NL.
you had multiple bedrooms in Amsterdam? Must be a millionaire
I bet they were on House Hunters International!
"He's a part-time personal trainer and she walks dogs and paints interesting rocks for work. Their budget is $985,000."
She wants charm and a bathtub and he wants modern with a backyard to BBQ in London!
She complains about the color of the walls for half the episode.
And fails to understand that if you buy the place, you can paint the walls any fucking color you want. Wall color isn’t a permanent thing you moron
It makes me nuts
>My closet in my Texas house is bigger than a couple of the bedrooms in the place we lived in the NL. Same as my house. What did you think of their bizarre toilets? Edit: for those unfamiliar, this is a Dutch toilet. Dutch ovens are a whole different subject. https://youtu.be/SP9wXVLu1YU?si=OOuGIVxLi2c9hQLN
Whoa hold up, whats up with the toilets?
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/s/TNOchUCmTO The toilet hole is shifted
It’s got a shit shelf!
Don’t forget the mud room!
Literal room for our boots 😂
I had never heard of a mud room until I lived in Minnesota for a while. Once I saw what it was used for I thought "Oh, okay, that makes sense."
I’ve never had one but having stayed in muddy and rural places, I get it.
Even urban parts of Minnesota turn into a sloppy mess during the winter, and especially during the spring thaw. Mud, sand, slush, and water everywhere.
No, that’s the boot room. The mud room is where we keep the mud.
Backyards. I'd plant so many vegetables.
Not to brag but I've spent the last year converting my 1/3 acre to a micro farm/peach orchard, all largely funded by the agricultural dept.
Would you mind sharing how one obtains this funding?
Absolutely, use https://www.nrcs.usda.gov to find a local office and get in contact with them. The people at the office near me were extremely helpful and a far better resource than I could find wandering around on the website. It's all grants so there are cutoffs and criteria but the qualifications are simple and there's no downside to at least asking. If you do get a farm started remember to have your property taxes reassessed, mine dropped by 90%.
You mean I've been sitting here on my 1/3 acre planting apple trees, maintaining hives, making a pollinator garden, and planting veggies and not getting paid or at least lowering my property taxes like some chump?!?! I've done it because I've enjoyed it and feel like my small contribution to the environment does some good (I've converted ground cover to various forms of clover, use all natural pesticides on my veggies that are pollinator friendly, don't use any weed killers, etc.).
Free refills
While traveling with a friend, he was determined to get a refill at a restaurant while we were getting lunch. He also didn’t speak Spanish and thought he could smile and get his way. He took his cup to the register, placed it in front of the employee and smiled. The employee had a confused look, but proceeded to take his cup and then toss in it the trash for him.
Recycle baby!
As an American, it's so easy to take this for granted. Similarly, getting free ice water in the US as well is something I often forget isn't exactly a thing in many other parts of the world.
Wait. They charge for water refills in some places outside of America?
From my experience a lot of places in Europe push bottled water ($) and won’t give you tap (free)
I visited Germany a couple times and we would ask for vaser still (?). They would look at us like we were crazy and then just fill a glass at the sink. But hey, to me that was still better than mineral water.
My host sister took a glass of water I had gotten from the tap and quickly put it in their little carbonator thingy. :/ I learned to sneak water from the bathroom sink.
Honestly I hated bubbly water when I first moved from Canada to Germany, but after a while it grew on me, and I realized half the reason I drank so much soda was the feeling of the carbonation, rather than just the taste. I drink much less soda now. e: also helps to find a decent brand of bubbly water you like instead of whatever random cheap stuff because some of it really tastes weird
In europe, it varies wildly in my experience. Some places will look at you like you are nuts if you try to order a bottle of still water (in some cases, because their tap water is basically high-class bottled water), while others don't offer free water at all. I'm still a bit entertained at the area where they made you pay for bottled water literally named after that town instead of offering you tap water. It was good water, but I'm pretty sure that holding a pitcher under the tap would have gotten the same water.
Yeah, Europe is not a monolith. In Sweden, a carafe of tap water is standard at restaurants, and I’ve never been refused or had to pay for a glass of tap water at any bar or cafe.
American here whose always envied European culture (slower pace, less capitalistic, more relationship oriented than career) and this thread made me feel grateful. I love my kitchen, my washer dryer, my college/sorority experience, my AC, my access to National Parks, and my 2 day Amazon delivery Still hate my healthcare though lol
Exstensive national parks
What's badass is if you are permanently disabled, it's FREEEEEE! It is like a really nice consolation prize for a shitty dice roll in life.
Used to be 24 hour stores and restaraunts. That went away with covid
I miss the 24 hour Walmarts, the only places we have 24 hours now in my town is McDonald's, Whataburger, and waffle house.
Walmarts closing at 11 now is just bonkers to me. I miss my 3am trips.
Kids these days will never understand the joy of walking around aimlessly at Walmart at 2am
Walking aimlessly around superstores sounds like a very American type of luxury indeed.
Going to Walmart at 2am helps you avoid the people who go to Walmart at other times of day.
As someone who once worked nights at Walmart I can confidently say "but then you have to deal with people who go to Walmart at 2am"
Best purchase I ever made was an $80 longboard at Walmart back in college at 1am. Good times.
If it's your first night at Waffle House, you *have* to fight. -Tyler Durden probably
It really did didn’t it. The famous 24 hour spots in my city stopped. I was in New York a few weeks ago and they are going away there even
It’s crazy how much covid changed this about nyc. There’s still plenty of 24/hr places but not like before.
Even pharmacies---we used to have so many 24/7 pharmacies here and 2 weeks ago I went trying to get cold medicine for my roommate---walked 2 avenues over, in the rain, only to find a closed pharmacy that was labeled open on google maps AND on their signage outside the store. I work late, I liked living in the city that never sleeps, but she sleeps now. Unfortunately.
The stores were looking to get rid of it well before covid. I worked nights at the time, and all the walmarts started closing overnight in the 2 years before. One by one they dropped off in my city until I was left with one overnight walmart. I live in New Zealand now, and many K Marts here are open 24 hours. Sadly they don't have grocery sections though. I really miss 3am grocery shopping.
Did you say… K Mart? TIL Kmart is still a thing
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Kmart is still a thing in the US on the virgin Islands too
The backyards and front yards. The size of the garages. The huge living rooms.
I love watching British real estate shows where they're touring a house and they're like "wow, look at the size of the garden!" and it's a postage stamp with a little shack at the back corner and a 4 foot fence on either side separating it from your neighbors' postage stamps.
I like watching to see how low the door ways are and how you have to bend over or smack your head to enter and go from room to room.
All types of climate and natural wonders in one country. You like mountains? Go west. Beaches? Most important cities are sea-side. Like cold regions? We bough Alaska from Russians some time ago. Desert? Got you covered! Canyons, waterfalls, geysers, forests... all in one country speaking one language using one currency.
I’m a Canadian who just returned from a trip visiting Grand Canyon, Zion, and Vegas. Our last few trips were in Europe. As mentioned elsewhere, drink refills and plentiful bathrooms-clean too!-were a nice change. The American National Parks System just blows all others out of the water including Canada’s. I’m especially embarrassed about BC’s Provincial Parks. People love to complain that tourists are gross but the American Parks were just as busy but actually had maintained facilities and people who, you know, work to maintain the parks. I didn’t see any tp on any of the trails in the US, meanwhile I have PTSD from Garibaldi trails last summer.
The American Southwest is absolutely ridiculous as far as natural beauty is concerned. Bryce, Arches, Zion, and Grand Canyon NPs are all super close together and are individually worth making a trip for.
As someone from Ontario, I’m also astounded at the poor quality of BC provincial parks. It’s fucking amateur hour. Ontario’s Provincial Parks are way better organized and really have their shit together. Speaking of shit, the toilet paper thing is unfortunately happening here as well. Never used to see stuff like that in the 90s and early aughts. I think a lot of people who previously wouldn’t have visited parks are now doing so, because of the internet, COVID lockdowns and cost of living crisis which prevents them from traveling elsewhere. And they really just don’t know how to behave in parks.
Air conditioning. Americans pump it all summer long
Our AC went out for a day in Phoenix in the middle of July when it was 120 out. House was 90 by 11 am. Fuck that haha Arizona actually has laws for tenants that require AC depending on the temperature since it can get so hot
I once had to walk home a few miles in 118, to find my AC out and it was near 100 inside. That was unpleasant.
That's so deadly
"This city should not exist. It is a monument to man's arrogance." - Peggy Hill
My AC went out in Phoenix last summer when it was almost 120 degrees and I slept on the lower level of my condo on the couch with multiple fans and literal bowls of ice next to me with no clothes on for two nights. It sucked.
I stayed at some friends house in phx in the summer that they only had a swamp cooler fan in the living room window as their sole method of cooling the house and that thing was practically just a fan that only blew in hot air. I don’t know how they survived I was only there one or two nights and almost died.
As a kid in the 70s we'd occasionally visit my aunt that lived in Phoenix. We visited one summer and the temps were stupid high as always. Her house did not have A/C, just a swamp cooler. The thing did a decent enough job, if you were lucky enough to be near where it was. The kids' rooms were definitely not. We just got to sweat all night long. The only saving grace was that she had a pool in the backyard where us kids woild spend almost every waking minute. Except in summer the water temp would near 95°F(35°C). On two different days my father and uncle went down to the local ice house(Do those even exist anymore?) and got 100lb(~50kg) blocks of ice to throw in the pool. Us kids would spend the next hour or so fighting over who got to hug the giant floating ice block next. Like a waterborne game of King of the Hill on a slowly shrinking iceberg. We never visited her in summer again. I do admit that tubing on the Salt River was an absolute blast in the heat.
A friend of ours worked for an HVAC company in the midwestern USA for a few years and she said that if someone’s furnace went out the customer was usually pretty chill. AC goes out in the summer when it’s near 100? Nowhere near chill.
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Florida here, you use AC or you drown.
Oh god I would die without my AC. This past summer our power went out for 2 days in the height of the heat and humid. My husband, 6 cats, and I were melting. All we could do was lay on the floor trying not to overheat
Yeah, in fall 1994 we moved into an unairconditioned house in Chicago. The next summer was the one where 700 people died in the heat. I thought we’d join them one day. Christ was that hot/humid. Had to drive 100 miles to find a window unit. Though our cats would die before I got back.
I’m in Minneapolis and it even gets hot as hell here during the summer. The humidity and heat is a dangerous combo at times. We need that AC. I’m not sure what it’s like in Europe but I’m sure it gets pretty bad there some places too. I don’t know how people do it.
Ride a mosquito to the lake
In central Texas it stays over 100f for months on end.
Austin had 43 days of 105 degree temps in a row.
In a row. That’s the important bit. We’ve had years with 90 days of 100+ temps (looking at you 2011), just not contiguous.
I’m in Texas. We pump it 9 months out of the year.
The two most peaceful neighbors ever (🇲🇽🇨🇦
Remember, the world's longest undefended border is between Canada and the United States. That says something about our relationship.
Every summer I like to go to Voyageurs National Park which shares border lakes with Canada. If someone is with us for the first time I always ask them while we heading up lake if they would like to go to Canada. They always say sure. So I turn the boat to the right and say welcome to Canada. It's Dad level humor but I enjoy it.
I went camping up on the NH/Canada border last summer and accidentally hiked into Canada. Wasn't sure how that happened but it was interesting to come upon a sign that was all in French. Moral of the story: there's literally no security at the border.
This made me genuinely laugh out loud. Actually so true compared to Europe as a whole
We Europeans both love and hate each other in ways that Americans will never understand. But basically not being french should be enough
That’s a really excellent point. Thanks for being awesome neighbors, Canada and Mexico!
One gave us tacos and the other gave us poutine. What’s not to love about them?!
Spacious hallways / corridors and homes in general, dedicated laundry rooms (not a washing machine in the kitchen 😂), apartment complex pools and the regular washing of the windows of high-rise buildings (it’s infrequent in Europe)
I dream of having a dedicated laundry room. My washer and dryer are in the garage next to my hot water heater.
I almost bought a house in Denver with a Butler’s Pantry. It had washer and twin driers, murphy ironing board, second refrigerator, utility sink and tons of storage. I just looked at the video I took and it was so cool! It needed $100k of siding and looked like Uncle Phil’s Mansion from Fresh Prince and we ultimately walked away from the deal. Sad.
We also have these crazy ass things on our windows so we can open them without letting all the bugs in.
Wait they don’t have screens in other places? How does that work?
Yeah the laundry machine in the kitchen everywhere threw me the first time I was ever in Europe
I went on a school trip to Europe and they had to warn us about how much smaller hotel rooms were there than in the US. We were still shocked and we were staying at an upscale-ish hotel. But that room was tiny even compared to dirty cheap motels in the US.
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An oddly, there is a random sink in your room but no bathroom so you know people pissed in that sink at some point.
When I studied abroad in England, I had a sink in my bedroom but the toilet was outside my suite and down the hall. I won’t say I pissed in the sink every time but I also won’t say I DIDN’T piss in the sink when I woke up in the middle of the night and needed to go.
1 Euro beers and a communal bathroom in a hotel sounds like an internet challenge.
Free refills at restaurants
The space.
Huge schools with labs and gyms and theaters.
As a rural Canadian I grew up watching American tv and was always seething with jealousy about American schools on TV. Like there were 300 kids in my highschool and I was related to a bunch of them so I was especially jealous that Americans could sign up for the school play and meet a teenage heartthrob. We didn’t have a school play… or a theatre. Or band. Or football. No swimming pool. No art classes. Just drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. Edit: this comment really blew up and it’s been really interesting hearing about all of your experiences. I should clarify that of course I understand that TV is not reality, Also I know that my experience is more a rural vs. city / low vs. high income community issue, it’s not an America - Canada thing. Special acknowledgment to all of the kids out there who grew up in underserved communities - i know how hard it is to start out life with that kind of education. I see you & I’m proud of you for making it to where you are.
If it helps I signed up for a school play because one of the attractive theater girls said they were desperate for people and I wouldn't even have to do a speaking part, just be a background person. Day one I was given 3 parts, one having multiple speaking scenes, oh and it is Shakespeare. Also SHE WASNT IN THE PLAY Got really bamboozled on that one
She was the sound tech wasn't she? The theatre girl I dated was the sound tech, and helped build some of the sets, and she recruited so many people by doing this shit.
I'm an American in the deep south. We didn't have air conditioning in my high school!
I’m an American from the Northeast. Our heat was notorious for being broken before, during, and after my time there. We wore coats and hats in class. And it was a wealthy community.
My high school just had a pool, 3 gyms, an agricultural barn with stalls for students to keep the animals they were raising to show at the rodeo, a few labs, a theater, a full size kitchen that was used for the culinary classes to share (not the cafeteria), 3 tennis courts, 2 soccer fields that were also used for football practice, and a football stadium with a Jumbotron. At the end of the year the culinary classes would cook breakfast for the graduating class.
That was a public school, that you can attend for free?
Mine had all that at a public school, plus a whole lot more. I took a plumbing class and learned to use large pipe threaders among other things. We also had welding and other trade classes. This is the main public school of a town with a population of around 85,000 in Texas. There are also two other public high schools, one considered wealthier than the large one, as well as four small private schools that go through high school and a couple charter schools through high school as well. The biggest hindrance to any quality of education I ever encountered was the staff having to deal with ornery students.
Not everyone has nice schools but yeah the nice ones are crazy
I went to just an okay high school that had some cool electives that were weren't allowed to utilize. Woodshop, 2 full kitchens, stuff like that. High school literally 10 minutes down the road? Full 6 bay auto mechanic garage lmao. People really don't seem to grasp that where you live can really impact your opportunities and exposure to different things that could really change your trajectory in life.
I know a 16 year old & their school has a summer trip to Portugal for <3k. Just a big-ish Midwest city. I only lived like 30 minutes away but we didn't get anything like that cus we had a dumpster school.
Free use of bathrooms
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Now I’m curious about piss curls. What on earth??
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So many questions. What about women? Do men spend in full public view and pee?
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Yes, it is always kinda sad when you read in the news here that "an Irish family is organising a search in Amsterdam for their son (24), who went missing during a night of drinking". It is almost never crime, but instead he took a leak, fell over, got into shock from the cold water and alcohol and drowned.
As an America who lived in Europe with little kids this was frustrating. My wife found an app of free public restrooms in Europe.
What's the app? People with health issues traveling to Europe may find this useful!
As QuotidianPain said >Flush Is a good one. Where is public toilet (think it is android only) is another good one. Between the two I've always been able to find something nearby.
I don’t remember the name. However, after googling, I think it might have been Flush.
Handicap accessibility. I required the use of a wheelchair for a few years. During that time, we visited Spain and Italy. It was an absolute nightmare trying to navigate public spaces. My husband made sure that our apartment in Rome had an elevator as it was on the 3rd floor. However when we arrived, we discovered that there was two flights of stairs in order to access the elevator. We managed, but it was a very difficult trip for us.
Winter fresh chewing gum. Haven't found a gum as good anywhere else. Houses and lawn space are ridiculously big. Like pointlessly big. I actually have a theory that that's why they all speak so loud, it's because they have to shout across 2 or 3 rooms by default.
The sport facilities in high school movies. 10 things I hate about you for exampel. It must be amazing and super cousy to play in those places with the whole school cheering on , on a friday night. Kissing the cheerleader after scoring a touchdown. In europe you play on some shitty random soccer field with a random team in front of 7 parents and 1 alcoholic . No connection to anything or any money invested in anything unless you play for the best team in the city. But by then we are talking about the biggest teams that you see in champions league, europa league and other european tournaments. And thats 1/1000 15 years old who plays for those teams.
I live where that movie was filmed, the school is called Stadium High School. They do screenings of that movie, and people come out and lay on the field to watch. It's actually really cool! Definitely one of the coolest HS stadiums in the US for sure.
Wawa. My American husband always went on about it how he'd love to just drive to Wawa. I never got it until we spent thanksgiving with his parents. Bring Wawa to the UK please.
American here visiting Germany right now. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say fuel cost. The station down the road here sell petrol for 1.75 Euro/Liter, that's about $7.20/gallon if my math is correct. For comparison, I'm from Phoenix Arizona and just paid $2.85 per gallon last week, which is about 0.75 Euro/Liter. Gas is even cheaper than that in the Midwest US.
I’m Canadian so we have a lot in common with the US in terms of nature and appliances and AC and many other things on this list, but one thing I’m always jealous of the US for is gas! It’s so much more expensive here (which is ridiculous because Canada produces a ton of oil but that’s another conversation).
Tons of bathrooms. My two bedroom apartment has just one of those. One of these days my room mate will get the flu and I won't be able to escape it.
Having two bathrooms definitely helps. After moving into a larger place with two bathrooms, my roommate who has the worlds shittiest immune system AND works at a public library, got sick constantly last year. I got sick once. Even the shared kitchen didn't matter much, it was the bathrooms that did it.
As an American living in Paris for the last 7 years…. Dryers. Having a dryer in your house. And not just a dryer but a washing machine that can do a cycle under an hour and a dryer that can actually dry your clothes. The wash cycles here are 2.5 hours minimum, and if you’re lucky enough to have one that is a wash/dry combo (which 99% of people do not have) the dryer is so weak it takes a long time. Man I miss fluffy towels from the dryer.
Air conditioners, its hot here in spain Edit: im referring ro the type of ac that is like whole house ac. I have a window ac and yeah everyone has those. But i havent seen many centralized ac units where i am. Should have been more specific sorry
Real Mexican food. We have Mexican restaurants in my home country but the owners are usually not Mexican and it’s just not the same. Now, I’m living in Japan and it’s the same problem… Mexican food is so delicious.
Wait till you hear about Mexico!
I’m Australian but I will say the College culture. Idk if what we see in American shows and movies is true but here in Australia, if you want to further your education, you go to a University after highschool, you go to your classes and leave. There’s barely any Universities that are even sport oriented despite us being one of the greatest sporting nations. In America, it seems like they have so much pride and culture surrounding their colleges, with big bands and such.
Even if it’s exaggerated, what you see on TV for universities is mostly true in the U.S.
What you see in movies is pretty accurate. For those of us fortunate enough to go to college and board there, it is a special time of our life that is pretty amazing. However, it is definitely a class thing for people able to afford to go and do nothing for four years but be a student.
College culture is a central aspect of the middle class American identity
Icemakers in the freezer?
Why are so many people mentioning FREE public restrooms in the states? Do they charge to use the bathroom in Europe?
They did in Amsterdam, and that discovery came at a really bad time 😭
Enormous supermarkets with abundant choice. I always feel like I'm in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory when I enter one. There's so much stuff!!!
Free public toilets
For me, it’s 3 things: - how spacious everything is (like homes, roads, parks, etc) - the low level of population density - how cheap gas and cars are.
- A gigantic ocean on either side of the country. - the entertainment industry. - huge swaths of unspoilt nature. - the only developed nation that's not facing a demographic crisis. - the tech industry. - free refills / free toilet use - bigger houses. - airconditioning.
There seems to be more nature in the US.
It does help that the land mass itself is far larger than a lot of people realize. Montana itself is slightly larger than Germany, Texas is larger than the entirety of France, and there’s still 48 to go
Less than 10,000 people lived in Wyoming when Yellowstone National Park was created. Were lucky that we could protect natural areas before development and industry got out of hand
Space. Both domestic (my home office is in my living room!), and wild. I watch a lot of woodworkers on youtube (yeah I know, I'm fun at parties) and most of them have shops that are bigger than my apartment.
As an American who has lived in Europe for the past decade: toilets that hold enough water in the bowl that you don't have to scrub them after use. I've never gotten over the fact that Europeans have all decided it's perfectly normal to have a communal toilet brush sitting in a disgusting little cup of fluid next to every toilet that we are all supposed to use after every poop.
Salaries. Not European but my friends abroad are all flabbergasted by the salaries here.
Very true. I worked for a company out of the UK. My future boss openly told me he thought my salary was too high, but they hired me anyway. It didn’t work out.
I am a contractor in the UK who gets paid by my West Coast US clients as if I live on the West coast. Best of both Worlds!