Another one that needed archiving here on the blog… -Jack
(this was a response on the other social media page, to this viral thing where some Euro thinks Americans are crazy to think America is as diverse as different European countries)
The thing where Europeans don’t grasp how diverse America is makes me laugh.
But anyways I’ve been to England, France, Germany, Czechia, and Denmark. I’ve been to every US state except Hawaii, Alaska, Maine, and the Dakotas.
Other than speaking the same language (sorta) there is as much difference between San Francisco and Oklahoma City as there is between Prague and London. The difference between “the south” and everything else alone would blow your Euro mind. I say this with love as an adopted Alabaman.
Then even in that one region of America, the difference between the groups is a hoot. Cajun is in the south, but it is it’s own thing. That’s not even getting into the racial differences. Then you’ve got the rural vs. urban divide that exists everywhere. Tennessee is wildly different from Mississippi. Both of them look at Virginia like WTF, while most of Virginia points to the north and says don’t blame us. Then there’s Huntsville, where you can meet somebody who looks and sounds like a total redneck, but who does calculus in his head for fun.
America has got a couple hundred subcultures with deep philosophical divides between them, which follow geographical and historical lines a lot more than they follow state borders.
Then we’ve got the ethnic subcultures and their geographic enclaves in America. Something which we’ve had since the beginning which Europe is suddenly trying to deal with for the first time and not doing so hot. Hey, you smug Euro bastards who’ve been sneering at America’s crime rate from your–what up until recently have been–peaceful homogeneous oatmeal countries.
Anybody who thinks every part of America is the same, that tells me they haven’t gone very far off the freeway.
Big chunks of America are culturally Latin (and there’s big differences between being Mexican in Fresno and being Cuban in Miami), or culturally American black (and there’s big differences between ATL and LA) or culturally Scandinavian (and tell a Yooper that he’s the same as a Minneapolis liberal and you’re gonna get stabbed), or New Englanders (hell, within the Boston city limits there are more social divides than regular people can keep track of). Hell, I come from a place where you were either Portuguese, Mexican, or Okie. And the difference between those was the same as the difference between France and England, only in one valley.
Now I live in the Inner Mountain West, as in cowboy country (you know those lists of rodeo kids where the names are so cowboy they go viral? Those are literally my neighbors) which to me is normal, but to big chunks of America it is so different and alien that they think Yellowstone is realistic.
On that note, spare me the excuse about how us Americans all watch/listen/read the same entertainment, because A. only kinda. and B. you guys consume our entertainment products too. I got annoyed while I was in Europe trying to listen to European music in the rental car because most of your radio stations were playing boring American pop (which again, is subdivided by those geographic/cultural things I pointed out above, but is dominated by lame artificial LA crap mostly)
And we consume your entertainment products. That’s why I visited all those countries, to cater to the European subcultures who like my books. (don’t worry, most of the proper Europeans still hate my stuff!) š
But back to my current region, there are huge cultural differences between roughneck Wyoming and Mormon Utah. Same region. Hell, same town half the time, wildly different cultures. (and don’t get me started on the ProgMo liberal Mormons of the super urbanized Wasatch Front, because they’re all going to hell and the rest of us know it)
But, but, but you Americans all eat the same food! Yeah, the national chains. Which turns out, you guys have too. But again, get off the freeway a bit. Depending on the town you can get some really good Vietnamese/TexMex/Somali. Same way the good food in London is Thai or Indian, and the “traditional” British food I ate was a friggin’ war crime. Y’all need to treasure Gordon Ramsey for helping you fix your shit.
People say America is like 50 countries in a trench coat… eh… It is more like 200 countries bouncing on a trampoline. America is actually more like India with its clumped together mixture of hundreds of groups reclumped again under a few umbrellas. Some US states do have national pride/identities, but within those states there are subcultures who don’t, and others who are all in. (Texans and Floridians know exactly what I’m talking about).
Then one thing America and Europe have in common, all our sane normal people hate the big lefty cities which dominate us politically. So hundreds of subcultures, clumping under two distinct umbrellas. Us, and Those Meddlesome Fuckers. So culturally the people of rural Idaho have more in common with French farmers who are spraying cow shit on government offices than they do with the liberal Californians who now infest Boise.
That’s another cultural difference between America and Europe, we move around. A LOT. Europeans had centuries to clump into their chosen regions (or invade one, or get kicked out) so the like minded could be born and die in the same spot. Most of the American subcultures are like eh, fuck it, I’m gonna move a thousand miles to a very different place and work there instead. And we do that constantly, so the whole construct is always shifting.
Then geographically, we win. Period. We’ve got a bunch of stuff Europe doesn’t have, while having everything Europe has except for fjords maybe? I think. I’d have to check. Alaska might. Hell if I know.
Ultimately US states are crazy diverse, and the difference between states is nuts. The further you get away from the national chain shopping center right off the freeway off ramp, the more apparent this becomes. The homogeneous parts of America were the bits that we all agreed that we liked and adopted. Which ironically, I saw the exact same thing driving across Europe, as I bought Kinder Bueno in every single country. š
My experience when I lived in Europe (and, granted that was 40 years ago) is that many (if not most) Europeans don’t really grasp how big the US really is.
I once was telling a Spaniard where I was raised. I showed them a US map and pointed to central Indiana. They said “oh, that’s nice, you were close to the ocean.”
Um…no. They were visualizing the US in terms of the size of Spain.
There’s an old saying: “In the US 100 years is a long time, in Europe 100 miles is a long distance.” There’s a lot of truth to that.
This spring my wife and I took a vacation. We hooked up the camper and drove from the east coast of Virginia, to central Indiana to see the Eclipse (I still have family and friends there), then to the Grand Canyon, then home again. The entire trip was 5,200 miles beginning to end.
If I superimposed our route over Europe, we would have started somewhere in Moldova, passed through Ukraine and across Poland, then into Germany, south across Czechia, Austria, a little tip of Croatia and into Northern Italy, then west across Switzerland and most of the way across France…on the return trip we took a more direct route so it would have been France, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Romania and back to Moldova.
And we didn’t even go all the way across the US…we were about 400 miles short of going coast to coast (Neither of us had any desire to visit the People’s Republic of California).
The point is that to imagine that every culture within a distance that covers 13 separate countries in Europe (All of which, to my knowledge, speaking different languages) is exactly the same is ludicrous.
Reminds me of a Signonella deployment where we got in a discussion with the locals about going up to Lerici to SACLANTCEN. Not a single one of them had been further ‘north’ than Rome! And they thought California was ‘a few hours drive’ from Florida.
I live in NW MN, very close to ND and Manitoba. Norwegian relatives have come, twice, separated by years, to visit. First time, they were sitting in my grandparent’s kitchen on the farm and talking about their plans. A three day trip to NY (1515 miles), followed by a day trip to the Black Hills (660 miles). Fast forward a generation and I’m being asked if they have enough gas in the rental van to make it from Grand Forks to Minot (210 miles), or do they need some jerry cans, and would there be any places to stop along the way to feed the 8 month old. They love visiting, especially the Bakken oilfield in ND, since they’re all employed in North Sea oil back home.
central Indiana. They said āoh, thatās nice, you were close to the ocean.ā
LOL. Yes, they do believe that. Until they come here and realize you can’t go from Virginia to Florida to visit relatives on a day trip.
I read a book 35-40 years ago The Nine Nations of North America. In the introduction, in order to give an idea how big the US is, compared the distance between Madrid and Moscow as being similar to the distance between Portland ME and Portland OR. No further explanation needed.
I happened to mention to a friend from Europe that I’d live to go to Starbase and see a Starship fly. He said, “Well, you’re in Texas, so just drive down and see it.” Then I had to explain it’s almost 13 hours EACH WAY. š¤¦š»āāļø My COUNTY is as big as one of their COUNTRIES.
Texas is BIG, y’all!
Even in the US, there is a huge difference in what distances mean.
In the East, 50 miles is a long way.
In the West, that may be your daily commute, or what how far you drive (one way) to meet a friend for dinner.
I was chatting with my taxi driver in Singapore, and somehow it came up that my daily commute to the office was 26 miles or *headmath* 42 kilometers. He exclaimed, “That’s bigger than our country!”
Similar to when I was stationed in England, and as a single young man with my own car and refueling it on an American airbase at American prices in gallons rather than English prices in liters, I didn’t have a problem deciding that I was just going to pop over to Bath or Dover or Nottingham for some weekend exploring. The incredulity on my English friends’ faces… as if an hour’s drive by car was somehow an epic undertaking.
When was that? At some periods an hourās drive in an English car WAS an epic undertaking. Hell, when a lot of British Leland cars were on the roads, an hourās drive was likely to end in a cloud of steam.
Can confirm. I live in NW Minnesota, close to ND and Manitoba. A friend at work drives 60 miles each way from tiny Kennedy, MN, closer to the border than I am. 60 minutes, door to door, unless he hits a deer or the snow drifts are bad that morning. I drive 10 miles, takes 12 minutes if I have to wait for one of the lights. Wife and I will head to Grand Forks, ND (45 miles) for Sam’s Club, Menards, or to try a new restaurant.
Texas is bigger than Europe and Africa together.
Well, not in pretentiousness. Europe’s got Texas beat five ways to Sunday in the size of its pretentiousness.
Not even close.
Africa: 30.3 million square km
Europe 10.2 million square km
USA: 9.8 million square km
Texas: 0.7 million square km
You need to get out more.
That “whoosh” was the sound of the joke flying over your head.
BTW, if you didn’t think he was joking (which your “You need to get out more” reply seems to indicate), I’m afraid that would simply reveal your own prejudice. Texans are not, as you seem to think, ignorant of the size of the world; we (I live overseas for my job and haven’t lived in Texas for over a decade, but I’m still a Texan at heart) know how big Texas is compared to the rest of the world, we just like to joke about it.
Mustering on the tarmac of an airbase in central TX for morning roll call we used to joke:
Nowhere else can you look so far and see so much OF NOTHING!
Son, start in El Paso, then drive to Houston, and finish in Texarkana, and tell me you haven’t crossed several continents and had to change your money at Buc-ee’s at least twice.
If Alaska were cut in half, Texas would be the third largest state.
ā¦And no true Texan would ever admit it.š
Oh hey, it’s the reason I find Alaskans to be some of the most annoying people in the world. You want to know what happens every time an Alaskan meets a Texan?
Alaskan: Where are you from?
Texan: Texas.
Alaskan: You know that…
Texan: Yes, I already fucking know that Alaska is bigger than Texas because it is the first thing every Alaskan says when they meet a Texan!
Alaskan: But I didn’t tell you I was from Alaska yet!
That’s because as Alaskans, when we meet somebody we always know right away if they are from Texas. Because it’s usually the first fucking thing out of their mouth.
Texas is big, but not that big š
And it’s still better than both. Except for elephants. We seem to have over-hunted our hairy ones a few millennia back. It’s the main reason they stopped exporting elephants from Africa – they didn’t want us to breed them bigger and badder. š
“Then geographically, we win. Period. Weāve got a bunch of stuff Europe doesnāt have, while having everything Europe has except for fjords maybe? I think. Iād have to check. Alaska might. Hell if I know.”
Puget Sound is a fjord system, and yes, Alaska has some as well.
As for state identities, I find it interesting that a lot of state stereotypes are very incomplete. For example, “Washington state” in many people’s minds is rain, overcast skies, coffee shops, spooky forests, and spooky towns next to forests. And yes, you can find all that, all over Western Washington. Very little of it applies to Eastern Washington. What representations exist of the state are basically of central Puget Sound and a bit of the Kitsap Peninsula. The other 70% of the state doesn’t exist. This happens for other states, too. California is basically LA, and sometimes San Francisco and the Bay Area. Anything outside of that is terra incognita.
Ellensburg looks like Kansas
Yeah… Downstate Illinois, or as we like to call it Not Chicago, IL
As an Alaskan, I will confirm, we do have fjords, also, rain forest, temperate forest, swamps, tundra, plains, and even a small desert.
I grew up in New York City, then lived for thirty years in the Albany, NY region. Both urban and rural. I now live in rural East Tennessee. I was also fortunate enough to spend time in Europe and the Middle East when I was younger.
There are at least six distinct regions in New York state alone. Albany, NY is somewhat similar to lightly urban areas I’ve visited in other parts of the country, but with its own unique flavor. New York City is practically its own country. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it in all my travels.
Though their understanding of winter is very different, rural New York and Rural Tennessee are close cousins. They have similar traditions and culture. Even some of the same radio stations.
These United States are an extremely culturally diverse collection of social groups, roughly organized into counties and states. The only thing they really have in common is language. And between slang, jargon, accent, and dialect, even that isn’t certain.
“These United States are an extremely culturally diverse collection of social groups, roughly organized into counties and states. The only thing they really have in common is language. And between slang, jargon, accent, and dialect, even that isnāt certain.”
You can say exactly the same thing about Europe, only we don’t have the same language in common.
Used to: Latin (FTMP).
I’d actually love to get Larry started on ProgMo liberal Mormons but he has books to write and minis to paint.
He could write out his frustrations in a scathing satire! That’s what fisking is for, right? (kidding, I’d also rather he write books)
For me it’s the Californians who keep moving to my rural area and looking down their noses at the locals. We MUST be stupid racist bigots because we were raised in the sticks, don’tcha know! Never mind that most of our men and women spend 1 1/2-2 years of our youth in other countries, speaking languages you probably didn’t know existed, and that more than half the people who chose to stick around have advanced degrees from the local (originally agricultural) college. They may act and talk like Western rednecks, but also probably do complex variables for fun or participate in the downtown opera or hold their own in scholarly debates in their spare time.
There’s something I noticed right off at library book sales.
In SoCal, it was all current fiction, kids books, and similar fluff.
Here in the Northern Wastes, it’s mostly high-end reference books, advanced college texts, and the like. In Small Town no less.
Mitt Romney is a parody of himself and Huntsman is worse. I think they have both written books that can be found cheaply on the remainders table.
It’s a longer trip from San Francisco to New York than from Lisbon to Moscow.
I once spent 3 weeks traveling over 9,000 miles on a motorcycle, from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back. Visited or rode through parts of about 30 states. Didn’t get within 700 miles of about a dozen states.
Saw a sign in Utah: BIG DRY CREEK. Next to it was…a big dry creek.
Several miles farther on was another sign: LITTLE DRY CREEK. Okay.
In Montana I saw an exit sign pointing to some little town, with a buzzard perched on it, glaring venomously at the world. I doubt they got many visitors that day. š
I’ve had, erm, words with people on other blogs about this issue. Like one guy in Norway who absolutely loves his electric vehicle, while thinking going farther than 60km in it is crazy. He also posted his 3 day trip to a town south of him in the winter in an ev van and returning.
Beyotch, please. I live in Florida. Fortunately in the north central portion, so any big swirly winds get slowed down by the time they get to me. But Florida? Starting at Key West, staying on interstates and toll roads and you can travel to Mobile, AL, in 14ish hours with no stops at all. If the traffic is calm. And the weather is calm.
During a swirly-storm evacuation? You’re lucky to go 10 miles an hour on interstates during an evacuation, especially from the Keys or such. Do that in an EV? Bwahahahahaha. Yeah, right.
See, the funny thing is, said swirly storms don’t come during the time of year you can reasonably leave the windows down and not die from being baked in God’s Convection Oven (humidity, heat and wind.) Nope, it comes during the time that God’s Convection Oven is on ‘past friggin high, Hell is nicer’ and having the ability to run one’s a/c in one’s vehicle is very nice, almost a requirement. Which you can’t do in an EV with a range of 120 miles max loaded without the a/c on.
I’ve driven from North Central Florida to middle Mississipi, to Chicago, to the Smokies and Kentucky. Even to Texas. Lived in New Mexico (not that I remember it) and California back before it was borked. Lived on a military base in the middle of the Pacific (and got to land on Johnston Atoll, really weird story there.) I’ve travelled far farther on a normal vacation day than most Eurotrash have traveled in their lives. And yet I still haven’t seen 2/3rds of the states, nor Canada or Mexico.
‘Murica is one big place. With lots of stuff that others have and some stuff that others don’t have.
We also have a continuity of governmental style that’s lasted over 237 years (we don’t count the time from Independence to singing the Constitution.) That’s far longer than any of the French Republics, or ‘Germany’ or a unified Italy have been around.
And England has changed hands lots, too. Lessee, there were the Britons, then the Romano-Britons after Rome invaded, then the Anglo-Saxons after the Saxons invaded, then the Danelaw, then the Normano-Brits when the Normans invaded, then the Plantagenets when Geoffrey of Anjou’s family ruled, then the whole ‘War of the Roses’ era which was ended by Henry Tudor (with a French army, of course) then the Stuart dynasty, the Parlimentarians, the Stuart Dynasty Part Deux, the takeover by the Saxe-Gotha Coburns, then the fall of England to Islam (of which we’re watching right now, sadly.)
I know you meant signing the Constitution, but I can’t pass this up . . .
Wasn’t “Hamilton” all about singing the Constitution? And that wasn’t 237 years ago . . .
I would imagine that your time at Johnston Atoll was a real gas. š
Plane windows covered up. We land. Get off the plane in a covered stairway to a covered bus to a covered building and then repeat the process back to the covered plane and then once airborne a ways we could uncover the windows.
It was one massive cover-up. Really surreal in some/many ways.
Really weird thing to do to a hyperactive 7 year old.
And then, as an adult, got to read up on the only place we accidentally nuked… twice. Crazy place, glad I never spent more than an hour or so there.
No need to check, Alaska has fjords.
Downeast Maine here. Mount Desert Island has Somes Sound, a natural fiord; back when I was in the USCG as a small boat engineer we used to run up the sound to check our heavy weather moorings…
You got ahead of me on that one. Theres a wholenational park.. Kenai Fjords National Park.. The boat tours of it are a good time
” America is like 50 countries in a trench coatā¦ ehā¦ It is more like 200 countries bouncing on a trampoline. ”
Heh, Perfect description. That’s a keeper.
I was working a Nuclear power startup in eastern PA in the 80s. Lots of non-natives there so the obvious question when you meet someone is “Where are you from?” Asked by a native, I replied “Idaho.” Not bothering to give specifics unless asked (he wouldn’t recognize the town I was from anyway).He replied “They grow a lot corn out there don’t they?” Obviously confusing Idaho with Iowa. I replied, “Yeah we grow some corn, but we’re more known for our potatoes.” (It’s on my license plate: “Famous Potatoes.”š) The guy hadn’t been more than 100 miles from Philadelphia in his whole life. His knowledge of the country pretty much ended at the Appalachians.
Back in the ’90s I met a guy who was 40 years old and had never left the Bronx until he flew across the country to visit his internet sweetheart.
Literally. Like he’d never even been to Manhattan or Brooklyn. Just the Bronx.
NYCers are the most provincial people I’ve ever met. “The View From 9th Avenue” is real.
Twenty some years ago when I traveled constantly for work it was not uncommon for ID checkers in bars on the east coast to have concerns about an Oregon driver’s license because “that’s not a state.”
New Mexico Magazine used to have a funny monthly column entitled “One of Our Fifty is Missing” about all the headaches and laughs people got from misunderstandings about NM. Or messing up the geography of the state (Hollywood made it possible to see the lights of El Paso, TX from Roswell, NM.)
To be fair, we Americans generally tend to return the favor when it comes to ignorance of foreign locations & cultures.
Which shouldn’t be surprising, as ignorance is an inexhaustible resource.
Yeah, but we don’t make the pretentious know-it-all claims of Europeans about it.
SOME of us don’t. But there are some where ignorance is a prelude to arrogance. ‘Cause humans.
Can confirm statements about the South. Especially Huntsville redneck- or farmer-sounding fellow who enjoys calculus.
Paraphrasing Rand Simberg (maybe quoting someone else): “Just because someone talks slow doesn’t mean they think slow.”
I agree on the British food thing. I was in the UK for a tour during summer break some decades ago (mid 1980’s) and made the observation that if it weren’t for the mustards, the food would have no taste.
I lived in New Zealand for 6 mos. in 1977. Great people. Brit food. They made something they called pizza with cheddar cheese. Bangers ( sausage) tasted like sawdust. Meat pies werenāt bad. Lamb was great. MÄori and Samoan food was interesting. Dozens of local beers, all good. Wine was just getting started, not bad at all. The milk, delivered to your door, was the best I ever had.
I imagine things are vastly different now, but I hope the beerās still as good.
I was in NZ in 2013 and you describe perfectly. Wine got better.
I’m not much of a drinker so I can’t comment on the wines and beers, but when I went to NZ about 6-7 years ago I discovered Bundaberg’s Lemon Lime and Bitters soda. (Yes, I know Bundaberg is an Australian company, but I’ve never been to Australia so NZ is where I discovered it). It quickly became my second-favorite soda, just behind Dr. Pepper.
Sad thing is, I haven’t been able to find their Lemon Lime and Bitters anywhere else in the world. Lots of places import Bundaberg’s excellent ginger beer, and their root beer which I don’t have an opinion on (never having liked root beer much). But their Lemon Lime and Bitters soda is something the rest of the non-ANZAC world seems to be missing out on, which is a shame.
Here’s one of my favorite discussions on the topic of root beer:
https://youtu.be/3bskhLaJYd8
I’m born and raised in Holland but now a US citizen in NH. Holland is tiny: 200 miles end to end; small enough that mail delivery is overnight from any place to any other. We thought of going on vacation in Austria as a major journey (600 miles or so, we took 2-3 days for that).
Going to college in the midwest gave me a bit of an idea of the size of the USA. Vacationing with my parents in the SW during that time even more so. I clearly remember one time we were driving north on a state road in central AZ, after sunset. The road was halfway up the side of a wide valley so you could see a ways. At one point we could see a car coming our way, headlights in the distance. Kept waiting to meet it. Finally did, an hour later! Mind you, that was at highway speeds…
In honor of my naturalization we drove a big loop around most of the country (a 6 week trip). One thing I noticed is that the landscape changed just about every day. MN: green meadows with cows and fences. SD: tan meadows with cows and fences. NV: tan fields, no fences. We met interesting people, like the hotelkeepers in Winnemucca, NV, who had a Basque flag on the wall. I didn’t recognize it but they appreciated that I knew why it was there once they identified it to us.
On languages: I have an article saved somewhere about a street in Brooklyn where 100 languages are spoken. And you can find lots of them all over. Spanish of course. Any number of American Indian languages are still alive and well and I assume a bunch of them are still in regular use as primary languages in their communities. I know of Navajo broadcasters, and Cherokee newspapers (and of course you can find those and more as Wikipedia languages).
Today, I just drove from London to Liverpool…
Wait, no, I drove from Grand Rapids (MI) to Detroit (MI) taking the longish route by staying on I-69 almost to Port Huron and then went south. Or if you prefer, I drove the breadth of England (UK) today. Without leaving Michigan.
Going from the southernmost point in Michigan (I-75 at the Ohio line) to the tip of the Keeweenaw? 650 miles if you stay on I-75 rather than going up US-23…
Which gets you from London to Thurso in the UK (basically, nearly the length of England)
Couple years back there was a web site that you could pick two locations (countries, US states) and overlay them at the same map scale (so it corrected the usual Mercator projection map distortions) Rather amusing to see how many European countries can fit in New York City, and still rattle…
My sister lives between Grand Rapids and Lansing, and when I visit, I take the plane to Chicago and drive from there. It’s only ~230 miles each way and less hassle (and cheaper) than changing plans to try and get closer.
On such site is http://www.thetruesize.com .
I overlaid Texas onto Europe, with El Paso at London. Texarkana ended up in northwestern Poland, near Bydgoszcz, and Brownsville / Harlingen were down around Venice & Trieste, in northern Italy.
It’s always fun showing Europeans just how insanely different things are in the US.
I’m from that bizarro mutation of a city known as Las Vegas, where there’s like thirty different subcultures. You got the super urbanites who just stick to The Strip, the affluent types in the gated communities with three story houses, then you got some of the most heavily armed gun nuts you’ll find who flock to the gun shows like they’re the holy land, and the adventurers who grab jet skis, do mountain skiing, mountain climbing, hunting, and then occasionally someone who owns something like a cannon or a tank. This place is great for guns. You know Burt and Heather in Tremors with the giant gun basement? Yeah, we got folks like that. Only thing keeping me from doing that is economics. Oh, and then Las Vegas China Town and apparently we’ve got a Little Ethiopia. When I was working in Idaho apparently most of the seasonal bee keeping gear was being bogarted. To where? Las Vegas. What? Apparently this place has a large number of bee keepers.
Of course you have the Californians plaguing this place now like locusts cuz they made their own gorgeous rolling hills, beaches and forests so untenable that they decided living in the Mojave, where soldiers from all over the world come to train for fighting in the Middle East, was a better option. There’s kind of an unspoken unity through the various western states I’ve lived against Californians. Not outright hostility, but lots of side eyes and weary sighs. … Actually, I take that back. There is some hostility. Bumper stickers saying “Don’t make this place like California” are selling pretty well.
My family and I moved from Commifornia to Potatopia (Idaho) about 7 years ago now. I am very careful to specify that I ‘escaped’ California, instead of just moving from. It’s an important point, and it heads off a lot of the hostility. “I escaped with my family across the Sierra-Nevadas’ is starting to take on tones of ‘I escaped with my family across the Alps with the VonTraps.’
I, and a surprising number of ex-Californians, do the same up here in north-central rural Minnesota.
The Twin Cities are a couple hours south, but I can a year or more without driving down there, except when my Korean groceries run out.
I fully understand. I moved from Fresno, CA (which isn’t reallyCA) to Houston( which is only barely TX) back in 2010 for a new job . when I got there I had to let people know ” we did things like this in California.. So don’t do it that way.. Its stupid!” I came as a warning, not a missionary. I’m now living up in Alaska . where its nice to see how many Texas license plates are on the roads. I’d guess they’re either oil folks or military stationed at JBER
Driving in Iceland on a trip, I was pleased to hear, on the radio, Icelandic music (and commentators), with an occasional English song thrown in.
Listening to the Gaelic stations while crossing the Highlands and Hebrides of Scotland was nice, too.
People from outside of North America are boggled that I went to a college that was over 800 miles away (13 hour drive) from my hometown. For most Europeans, that’s at least 3 or 4 countries away.
And for graduate school?
Try an 8 day drive– West coast of the USA clear to the East coast of Canada. Oh, you can do the drive in fewer days if you’re a crazy machine, but you miss a lot of changing scenery that way.
Many years ago, my mother was driving a Brit friend (from Fandom) from Boston to Iowa. On the 3rd day of driving through cornfields (this in a 1960’s VW beetle), he came out with, “It does go on, doesn’t it?”.
Then, when my wife and I visited England & Scotland in 2006, we drove from Tintagel up to Carlisle in a day, a local commented, “Oh, such a long drive!”. We just looked at each other. We had been accustomed to drive from NC to Central Lake, MI in one day. Do that in GB, you’ll be very wet!
Australia is another country that can fool with the outsider’s sense of scale. Sydney to Adelaide looks so close on the maps, but is a 14 hour drive.
As I was planning our trip to Oz I thought (briefly) about hiring a car and driving from Cairns to Melbourne to visit my emigre cousin. When I plotted a similar trip on the US the trip went from the Florida Keys to Minneapolis.
When we were there I was told by multiple people that night driving was a VERY bad idea due to the risk of hitting a ‘roo crossing the road. I drove locally in town which was enough of a challenge.
I get that Americans get pissed when Europeans don’t understand how big the US is but how often does this actually happen? We know. We’ve been there. Low IQ dipshits exist in both places.
And anyway, I grew up in Africa. If you think the USA is big, you ain’t seen nothing.
New York to Los Angeles: 2,445.55 miles.
Cairo to Cape Town: 4,499.74
The difference is, the only people who think Africa is one country are the sort of twits who think Kwanzaa is an authentic African holiday.
Invented by an FBI asset.
Yes, apropos to compare a single country with an entire continent (that even in white, “colonial” enclaves has different cultures). That’s kind of the point we’re making here.
And yes, LOTS of Europeans who are otherwise smart people actually do NOT grasp just how big AND varied the US is. Maybe spend your effort educating those folks?
In my experience, most Europeans I’ve talked to don’t quite conceive the size of the US correctly unless they’ve tried to travel across the country (Non-muscovite Russians being the only exception). Do we get pissed? Only when they get snooty about how they know so much about the US, but American’s don’t know much about Europe. One real life example, one German student my brother was in school with in Hong Kong asked him “Why don’t Americans know the capital of Switzerland?” . My brother then told the guy it was Bern then asked him if he knew what the capital of Texas was, since it was bigger. This stuff gets annoying, so yeah people get irritated.
That said, most of the time I was just amused by missing the scale, or trying to gently disabuse them of the notion they’re going to visit the US and road trip from New York, to Chicago to LA in a week for a relaxing sight seeing tour (yes, had that or similar conversation with a number of Europeans of variety of education levels).
As for your bizarre comparison of a continent to a country, here’s probably a better comparison-
Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa: 4,499.74 miles
Anchorage, US to Mexico City, MX: 4,888 miles.
But who cares? This isn’t about “My country is biggest in the world!” It’s a discussion of silly tropes and misconceptions, something I believe is generally brought on by US’s exporting its entertainment industry and some fast food chains. No one think we’re the biggest country. Heck, we know our neighbor to the north is geographically bigger than us.
“One real life example, one German student my brother was in school with in Hong Kong asked him āWhy donāt Americans know the capital of Switzerland?ā . My brother then told the guy it was Bern then asked him if he knew what the capital of Texas was, since it was bigger.”
Your brother was technically wrong, the worst kind of wrong: Switzerland doesn’t have an official capital due to its legal status as a confederacy. The major government things are spread around the country, Bern has “just” the legislature.
Oh, that’s great. I’ll be sure to slap him down with that!
Plenty of fjords here in Alaska. You should come see them sometime, then leave your money and go TF home, like a good tourist. 8^)
I came, I saw, I caught my limit of halibut and failed to snag even one salmon. Cap’n Thad said I could come back, so I can’t have behaved that badly. š
The fjords, glaciers, and mountains are really, truly stunning, but I have enough trouble with Utah winters; I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t survive the long dark in Alaska.
Technically, some of the channels off of Puget Sound are fjords as well, just almost completely flooded (while many of Alaska’s are as tall above water as they are deep)
It isn’t just Europe who thinks America is all the same. New Yorkers think America only has two groups: New Yorkers and hillbillies. Los Angeles only thinks there are two groups: those who Are Somebody and Nobodies who should be immediately disregarded. Washington DC also uses only two classifications: Players and plebs. If you’re not on the take with the wink-and-nod crew, then you’re a sucker.
We used to find strength in unity. Now… fractures are growing and spreading and people are learning that the factions don’t care about mom-and-pop or your particular family whatsoever. Government in particular seems to have stopped even pretending that it is working for any interest of the citizens of the United States. Who, exactly, they’re working for remains something of a mystery but it is one I think we all need to figure out quickly.
They work for everybody that’s bribing them. The communist Chinese, Soros, the WEF, Zuckerborg, on and on. Ordinary American citizens aren’t even on the list. America is occupied by a foreign dictatorship ā its own government.
It is farther from Miami to NYC than it is from Berlin to Moscow.
It is farther from LA to NYC than it is from Madrid to Moscow.
There are parts of Texas that are closer to California than they are to certain other parts of Texas.
And sometimes it shows …
(Typed from that part of Texas that is closer to OKC, Denver, and Santa Fe than to Austin. )
Which was one of the inspirations for my āRepublic of Texas Navyā books. š
If you’re in Texarkana TX, you’re closer to Chicago than you are to El Paso.
L.A. to El Paso is a shorter drive than El Paso to the LA stateline.
It is farther from LA to NYC than it is from Madrid to Moscow.
But our roads are better, and NYC doesn’t have Moscow winters*. Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you said Paris to Moscow. š
(* Now, if Floridians tried to invade Michigan in winter, or North Dakota, you might have an argument….)
(Yes, that’s all a lame 1812 joke. No, the other 1812.)
Having lived in Europe 3 years, I was always amused by how many of my European friends thought they understood our country because they had seen American TV and American national news was covered by their media sometimes. I rarely, if ever, could explain in a way that they could understand that American media was made by people in LA and New York, which, which large, represent a very niche part of American life. A couple got it, but it was hard for them to get because they had seen so much US media and assumed it explained things. My favorite was the Russian lady who asked how we could stand to drive in the US, what with all the car chases.
We were living in Ireland when Hill Street Blues came out, and it was picked up by RTE. To say the Irish were shocked is an understatement. “Are American cities really like that?””Well yes, parts of them anyway, especially the big ones.” Followed by head shaking and “Oh, dear.”s. They were used to stuff set in a glossy LA or stuff like Dynasty. No, the US has bad areas and poor people, just like every where in the world.
We also found it amusing and frustrating for an Irishman to find out my father’s family was from New Jersey and promptly inquire “You must know my cousin, X McY?” Well, no, we don’t. There are many times more people in NJ than in Eire. Of course, once we came back, my parents would mention they’d lived in Galway, and an expat would invariably ask if we knew their cousin in Galway, or Clare, or Cork, or where ever, and we usually did.
NH is terrible. Weather is poor. Everything is expensive. People from everywhere else are coming and bringing their various politics with them in the vain belief they can be the same here but pay less. There’s a pol who’s slogan is, “Don’t Mass up NH.” Please, don’t. NH is awful. Crime is skyrocketing. Rights are disappearing. You seriously don’t want to live here. Stay away!
Coastal Maine has fjords.
One thing I ran into in Brasil a lot was people thought Texas and Arizona were different names for the same place. When I told them they weren’t, they thought they must be neighbors. I had to explain that that was like calling SĆ£o Paulo and Mato Grosso neighbors.
But anyways Iāve been to England, France, Germany, Czechia, and Denmark. Iāve been to every US state except Hawaii, Alaska, Maine, and the Dakotas.
I’ve been to ALL 50, two territories, a protectorate, and 30 foreign countries.
What you said, in spades.
while most of Virginia points to the north and says donāt blame us
Heh. Yes, “They all moved here and took over” is a common response.
spare me the excuse about how us Americans all watch/listen/read the same entertainment
Unfortunately, that one is a problem. Way too much of our entertainment is provided from a couple of very similar sources, and is all of the same culture/worldview (Progressivism). It is dulling some of our richness (i.e, accents aren’t what they used to be). Blame the giant sanitizing multi-national corporations. Blecch.
But, but, but you Americans all eat the same food!
Yes, we do! We all eat Thai and Indian and Mexican and Chinese and Somali and Jamaican and …. And even our “bland, national chains” all have niches that include all kinds of stuff we came up with ourselves and appropriated others’ foods. We have to actually label restaurants “American” here to distinguish them from the other million sorts of food (that is all “American” in reality).
while having everything Europe has except for fjords maybe?
If not, Trump REALLY does need to buy Greenland if he manages a second term. Just to have the fjords. (Does Greenland have fjords? I think they do, but in Danish?)
You didn’t even mention the climate difference, where some large chunk of America is at the same latitude as the Saharan Desert, all the way to the Arctic circle, and some Pacific islands, too. š
America is beautiful, for sure.
I was born in California in 1946, but my parents returned to Louisiana when I was very young. I grew up there, then joined the Air Force in 1964. From there until I retired in 1991, I lived in Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and South Carolina. I spent time overseas in Panama, Germany, Vietnam, and England. We did a lot of traveling in Europe and the States, adding several dozen states and nearly as many countries to the list. It’s a BIG world.
Europe changes every hundred miles or so. You can drive from Clayton, NM, to Wichita Falls, TX (about 350 miles), and very little changes. From Denver, CO to Omaha, NE it’s all prairie (550 miles, a decent day trip). I told my landlady that I would drive from Denver to my home near Alexandria, LA, (about 1500 kilometers as the crow flies, more like 2000 driving) in two days. That’s about the same distance as from Frankfurt, Germany, to Gibraltar. She couldn’t fathom that.
It’s the same planet, but we live in different worlds.
There are a lot of changes between Clayton and Wichita Falls. That is, if you know what to watch and how to look for the shifts in climate and topography. Once you get off the Llano Estacado, it becomes more obvious (the Low Rolling Plains). Its just not as dramatic as parts of Europe. (Although, the train from Krakow to Warsaw was all valleys between low hills. Lovely, green, but not much variety compared to some stretches.)
A gal came over from Europe and did videos of her intro to US size and culture. Her reaction to a rodeo, especially the kids portion, was fun to watch. If I remember correctly, her name was Eva zu Beck.
D.A. Brock, get busy on the next book, hey?
Anyone who says that any country in Europe, barring a few tiny ones like Monaco, is all the same is taking the short end of a bet. To apply the same though to the US is the height of absurdity.
Perceptions have also changed a bit over the decades in the US.
My parents were about 20 in 1960. Interstate 75 wasn’t completed through Kentucky until 1974-75. Mom, especially, thought driving from the area north of Cincinnati to her parents’ place 20 miles east of London was an all-day affair (or the same these days going the opposite direction, which would be from our house (that she was raised in) to her sister’s in Hamilton.
Of course, when she was driving originally, that meant getting off the interstate at Richmond, Mt. Vernon, or Wildcat Mountain, because the road/dam at Wood Creek north of London was a gap in the interstate. Before the interstate, is was a 6-8 hour drive.
Now, her sister, brother-in-law, and nieces, now come down 10-15 times a year to cabins near Lake Cumberland, and to visit here. It’s not a major thing to them. And, I am perfectly willing to make a single-day round trip up to their place to go shopping at Jungle Jim’s (3 hours up, an hour visiting relatives (optional), 2-3 hours shopping, 3 hours back) – without mom realizing I’ve gone more than 50 miles away.
In the states away from the crowded coasts, the interstates, and even the US highways/state highways have been optimized and reoptimized several times over the last 70 years, in a way that’s only been occurring across national lines in Europe for the last 20-30 years (and Germany’s autobahns were probably the closest to it before then).
Most Europeans are just now learning the economy of efficient long distance car travel (as opposed to terrain-hugging roads that follow renaissance trade routes, or even Roman roads) even as their governments are trying to de-car them.
America is enormous, and we don’t all live on top of each other in relatively small cities. For example, did you know Dallas-Fort Worth is almost twice the size of Luxembourg?
I used to have a two and a half hour train ride (each way) to work in DC, one of the more densely populated areas in the USA, with multiple government funded mass transit options. I rode with people who drove over an hour just to get to the train station.
Trains roll from yard to yard. Ships sail from port to port. Airplanes fly from airport to airport. Cars carry you from your home to anywhere you want to go. THAT is freedom.
Stop spewing stupidity. Trains only work when hundreds of people want to go from one place to the same other place at the same time and they don’t have to stop at intermediate stations every 3 minutes.
I was without a car for a week. Had to take public transit. That 35 mile commute, which took 40-50 minutes by car, took more than 3 hours by bus and train. I took the first bus at 6:00 in the morning, and got home on the last bus of the day after 9:30 PM. That is the reality of ‘de-caring’ in a country that’s bigger than all of Europe.
I just mark all of Mark Hood’s posts as spam when I see them now. He’s too stupid to live but he keeps coming back under a whole bunch of different IDs.
“āDe-caringā isnāt as bad as most (North) Americans think it is, and it has a lot of benefits (environmental ones mostly);”
If I recall correctly, that’s far from a blanket truth. There are certain use cases where trains are more energy efficient (and therefore cause less pollution). However, there are many other occasions where car or plane travel actually end up being far less polluting.
See, for example, this Forbes article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2024/08/30/caltrains-great-new-electric-trains-replace-gross-polluters/
I don’t mind trains, I’ve used them and public transit plenty of times in the past, but its important to look at the hard numbers vs. believing the panacea promises many dole out about things.
Something odd ā a comment by ‘correia45’ has become a link to nowhere, along with one of mine and the comment mine and (I presume) Larry’s were replies to. They are:
114842 by McChuck
114843 by Imaginos1892
114850 by correia45
Is this because you removed an annoying comment, or is it some sort of glitch? I’ve seen it happen before, and I’m sure we’re missing a few gems from Larry smacking down some idiot trolls.
Although calling some of them trolls is an insult to Melvinā¦ š
The three comments you mentioned are back, and in Larry’s 2:50 PM comment with ID 114850, he mentioned marking a troll’s comment as spam. So I think you nailed it: deleting the spam comment ended up hiding the other comments that had been replies to it (and whose “parent” comment was the now-deleted one). But then someone (probably Jack) re-parented the orphaned comments to the main thread, so that they are visible again but the troll they were responding to is no longer visible.
Naw, it’s that Lionel dork. He’s super annoying, I think he might be literally nuts, has twenty different emails and a VPN, and won’t shut up. So from now on I’m just marking all of his comments as spam as soon as I see them so he wastes his time screaming into the void.
Bueno should really be renamed Damn Bueno, because it is
I’ve seen examples of otherwise educated European s not getting it about the distances here my German cousins were coming to visit for a few days and wanted to see both Death Val!eyand Yosemite over a weekend yes, really!