That Americans are actually not Americans, but illegal aliens from Europe?..
OK, I haven’t been in the US.
Most Europeans are also illegal aliens from somewhere else.
The god damn warning labels on absolutely fucking everything. Bro, I just wanna eat at a restaurant without wondering why the menu has a god damn “at your own risk” label… Also can’t go 1 step in a water park without seeing a life guard, they’re fucking everywhere. Not to mention on the rare occasion they aren’t there, you just can’t do shit. Land of the free my ass, feels like the optimal way to do anything is to always have a lawyer by side.
The menu one is specifically so restaurants don’t get sued when they accidentally serve you raw products or food you’re allergic to.
I suppose that makes us litigious, which is pretty weird and sad.
America runs off lawsuits
I was gonna say “runs on Dunkin” but I don’t wanna get sued. :(
Family eating at shooters (and the whole hooters/twin peaks concept)
Need to take the car for a 500m trip because there is no sidewalk and a highway to cross
It’s illegal to walk to Costco
It’s illegal to cross the street some places
and the whole hooters/twin peaks concept
I haven’t thought about Hooters in years. It always did seem like a dated concept from the 1980s that was somehow still clinging to life in the 90s. It’s still in business, so obviously somebody must be going to them, but I don’t know if I’d call it normal for most Americans.
The car thing really blew my mind. My hotel was 400m from the office but 1.6km by car. Colleagues were waiting for a taxi while I walked. I had to cut over a couple of car parks and a bit of grass (zero sidewalks) and was there in a few minutes while they turned up 15min later since they were waiting for a taxi.
The worst part, they all jumped in cars to go 300m down the road for lunch. Yeah, I walked. With looking for a parking space then walking from the space to the restaurant, they got there after me.
I adore Americans; they’ve been nothing except kind and generous to me in every part of the country I’ve visited but damn, the money they’re wasting alone just starting their engines and the wear and tear on the vehicles blows my fucking mind. Build some sidewalks, guys!
Many of us would like this, but it’s dangerous or even illegal to get to some places by walking in large parts of America. And zoning laws make it really difficult to change.
I noticed too many churches in Texas.
Wait till you get to Utah
Shoes in the house
As an American, it drives me crazy. Then there’s those heathens who lay on the bed with shoes on!
I grew up in a home where we just never thought about wearing, or not wearing, shoes in the house. Like, we obviously didn’t track mud all over the place if our shoes were that dirty, but if we were wearing our shoes inside, nobody said anything or cared, it was just whatever. Married a Kenyan who put her foot down and was like, “Are you crazy?” It’s apparently a big thing elsewhere in the world. In Kenya alot of roads aren’t paved, things get dusty, and it’s just common sense that you don’t walk all over the house with dirty shoes, so I get it from that perspective.
Yeah that’s a huge part of it. Few Americans (me included) frequently walk outdoors on anything but sidewalks or paved roads in their normal day to day travels. When I go hiking I take those shoes off before I get back into the car, but my daily driver boat shoes which rarely touch actual dirt? I don’t have a problem leaving those on in most places, my house included. Same I imagine for Americans where their job is construction or something where your shoes are dirtied, take the work shoes off when you get home, but it’s fine to wear more casual shoes
Edit: what a strange thing to get downvoted about
Double edit: I guess the first downvotes were just from people who very much don’t like shoes in the house under any circumstances. That’s ok. If I come to your house my shoes will come off. If you come to mine, feel free to leave them on if they aren’t muddy.
It’s not the healthcare that bothered me most, although it did.
It’s the cognitive dissonance around the unavailability of healthcare in order to avoid anxiety over the fact that a traffic accident can bankrupt you with no relief. Ignoring the risk takes some serious mental gymnastics and basic math failure to get there, but when brought up in this environment - where a TV show about a teacher who has to cook and sell meth to get hospital money is actually a plausible plot where no one actually examines the mercenary care at all and the main character just pays it - it’s just a part of their existence.
Not understanding that few other people live like this - cubans don’t live like this - is absurd.
When I watch “alone”, it’s so depressing at the end when they ask them what they’ll do with the money they won. And they say “pay for my wife’s cancer treatment”. Like omg America
TSA, but I guess you know that this is not normal?
Also the constant humming of ACs in New York drove me crazy.
as an american i would like to make the presumptious statement of “it’s like, pretty normal actually”
please yell at me in the replies, i thrive on confrontation.
i thrive on confrontation
How does one learn this skill?
German, only having been there once some years ago, so no idea if it still is that way:
Not knowing what I will have to pay in the grocery store until the cashier tells me what to pay. Here the price on the shelf is THE price. I might have a voucher that reduces the price in the end, but nothing is ever added only subtracted, all prices on the shelf are easily comparable, because no matter the weight of one package there is also given the price of 1kg or 100 g for everything.
No kids on playing grounds without parents standing around. No kids just playing on the side walk (often there is no side walk anyway), no kids walking to school. It made me aware of how much freedom kids have in Germany, how independent even 6 y.o. are in Germany compared to kids in the US. They walk to to school alone or use public transport alone, they buy groceries alone, they visit friends by foot or public transport, three y.o. already having a bike and cycling besides their parents to kindergarden…
On the other hand seeing so many very young people having a job, like a really hard job for many hours besides school. It broke my heart, they should be free to be young and having all the time, working comes fast enough and goes on forever. Also I saw very old people doing jobs that should be able to retire because you could see them being in pain and barely able to function, definitely not a “choice” for them.
The amount of medication, especially pain medication, people take in the US compared to Germany and how much of it is freely available while it is needing a subscription from a doctor here. Every time I was feeling unwell I was offered pills that I found to be numbingly strong and switching my brain off? Hard to explain. I found them scary, but was told that they take them on a daily basis and they are harmless … nope.
The children thing varies with region, and had become more pronounced in recent years.
When I was a kid I walked to the bus stop, played outside with a lot of freedom, etc. The rule for most kids was to go home when the street lights came on, and there was usually a border you weren’t allowed to cross - for me it was a road with a lot of speeders and crazy drivers.
A problem with this question is that the US is such a big and diverse place, that you could have this same question posed to Americans only, asking about their experience visiting other parts of the US.
Canadian, so it’s not all that different, but why. can. I. buy. liquor. in. a. PHARMACY?
Don’t know if this is just a California thing, but it was weird as fuck. What’s even weirder, in light of this, is they didn’t go whole hog and sell cigarettes too. 'Cause helf.
Side story: Went into a Dollar General and bought a can of Sapporo. Ok, not so weird, it’s functionally a super basic grocery store with a bunch of other cheap goods. Guy at the counter said, “Oh yeah, they make this beer in some place very far away”. Looked at the can - I’m pretty sure he meant Japan, not Guelph, ON Canada.
He wasn’t wrong but I did chuckle.
In some states you can buy booze pretty much anywhere. I moved out of the country for awhile and when I went back home I stopped into an ice cream shop slash convenience store, and when I was surprised to see the 6 coolers of beer along the back wall I realized I’d been gone a long time.
Here in the UK you can buy booze more or less anywhere that you can buy food. Almost any supermarket or corner shop will supply you what you want.
In the US with all the variety there are places like that, but then places where you seemingly can’t find alcohol to buy and take home anywhere.
There’s differences between how wine & beer, and hard liquor are treated. I’d say the “average” experience is beer in any corner shop or gas station, beer and wine in a grocery store, and hard liquor in specific liquor stores.
American flags everywhere. Like EVERYWHERE. I get a bit of national pride but holy crap, every other house in the street is flying a flag, clothing has flag patterns, bumper sticker American flag, it’s everywhere. And no, it wasn’t even close to July 4.
It’s like Americans are afraid they might forget what country they’re in if they aren’t in sight of a flag at all times.
It’s worse now. Israel flags are everywhere now too.
Low effort patriotism
Fragile nationality
Your public toilets are not private. There should never be a gap around the door. The height should be above what any reasonable person would grow to, and the lower height of the door should hide the person’s feet on the toilet unless you crouch down. It’s weird and very off putting to use one
Right?! A country that’s so prudish and worried about nudity, and yet they observe each other on the toilet? I feel like the whole transgender-bathroom discussion would be mostly gone if they had normal toilets with privacy.
My favorite internet video on the subject: https://youtu.be/WlP9aJnzyZw
This is changing! More and more places in the western US are going to euro-style stalls, or fully gender neutral bathrooms that are entirely walled in. Much, much better. I can’t speak for the other parts of the US.
I was fascinated by glass stalls in Greece. I’ve never seen those before (opaque glass, but still, you could make out shapes). Lots of glass in general, such as highway soundproof barriers, balconies, etc. Much more so than I’m used to seeing. We tend to use a lot more metal or sculpted concrete.
Yeah, I went to Germany … we need to fix this. It could be so much better, we should copy the German’s and use full doors.
Sugar in hot drinks by default. Asking for coffee-no-sugar seems to trigger incredulity. At least this was my experience in the South. New York is another country altogether, no eyebrows raised there.
Hmm? That seems odd to me. As a Southerner myself, I know more people who drink their coffee black, straight (No milk, no sweeteners) than I do people who put stuff in their coffee.
Non-stop televangelism channels are quite something. But probably you know that’s weird.
