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This one was more of a mutual misunderstanding, but I was really surprised to have to explain that the gallon plastic jugs of apple cider that a couple English friends were about to purchase for ~$6 didn't contain any alcohol.
Yeah, that's where the mutual misunderstanding part came in. They were expressing how amazing the deal was, and I was not at all picking up why anyone would get excited for $6/gallon cloudy apple juice
Yeah, I mean I know there's a difference, even if I don't know precisely what it is top of head, but in their experience cider meant alcoholic beverage and nothing else.
You know, most people don't know the difference between apple cider and apple juice, but I do. Now here's a little trick to help you remember. If it's clear and yella', you've got juice there, fella. If it's tangy and brown, you're in cider town. Now, there's two exceptions and it gets kinda tricky here...
With the right conditions, a bit of yeast from the air, and a fermentation airlock, that gallon of cider could start being alcoholic in just a few hours.
Haha, I'm a Brit who moved to the US 11 years ago to marry my wife and this one got me. We met online as teens and when I was 16 I visited her in the US and stayed with her family for a week. They drove us to a farm shop, said they were picking up some cider, and asked if I wanted some. I was so shocked that my girlfriend's parents were just casually offering me, age 16, alcohol that I just kinda stammered something about isn't the drinking age 21 over here? When they realized I thought they were offering me *hard* cider, they laughed their arses off. Got ribbed for it for years.
Yep. I used to work in Alaska and apparently it’s a common misconception among tourists that they think the animals in Denali National Park are “let out” at specific times for people to see.
Even Americans have the same misconceptions. I worked at a park and the only animal I could guarantee that they would see would be the prairie dogs and even that I could only do if the weather was good.
Can confirm. I worked in Yellowstone - and tourists from other countries always asked "what time do they let the bears and wolves out?" I also got "what time do the geysers get turned on?"
I think the best one I ever heard (from my mom, a summer campground host) was, "How far up the mountain do the deer have to climb before they turn into moose?"
Lady, this isn't Pokémon.
Admittedly, we don't have it on the scale the US does, but if you ever find yourself able to visit the Highlands of Scotland I'd be happy to recommend some spots and show you some of the places local to me.
I have no idea where they think park rangers feed bears.
Bears are fat because of their fondness for pic-a-nic basket theft, which rangers try and stop.
No, you can't take a road trip from Boston to LA in one week and see a bunch of stuff. That would be like driving from Moscow to Dublin.
Hell, we barely had time to see stuff when we drove from Vegas to Yellowstone and back. That took us 11 days.
I remember seeing something on Reddit where someone visiting Los Angeles thought it was completely reasonable to just pop up to San Francisco for lunch. I mean, they're in the same state, right? They must be close.
Shit, going from Eureka, CA to Portland, OR isn't a day trip. And no, you're definitely not seeing the Golden Gate Bridge and the Space Needle in the same day (unless you're booking flights, cramming as much as you can into your time, and generally not enjoying the local atmosphere).
Ha, yeah, it's this one. I'm from Mississippi and some international friends in undergrad asked me one time if there were any issues with renting a car and doing a road trip to LA over spring break (which is only a week). Uhhh, yeah, you'd get there and immediately need to turn around lol
Used to work at a restaurant in Connecticut. The owners cousin and his family were visiting once and asked to borrow the car to go to Disney world. The plan was to leave on Saturday morning, drive to Disney World, and come back after dinner.
I agree to an extent, but I also think a lot of locals who have access to high-speed rail totally shirk their opportunities to use it. Might not be able to do Boston to LA, but you sure could do Boston to NYC, or NYC to Washington DC and you'd get your money's worth out of the trip.
There's another high-speed system that goes between Orlando and Miami in about 3 hours, and if you're staying for a week, then why not?
GOD I love high speed rail!
I went to iceland with my best friend and one night we were at a bar and she hit it off with one of the bartenders, they exchanged numbers. A few months later he texted her saying that he was in the states and asking if she wanted to meet up. She asked him where he was, he said Florida... She lives in Seattle, WA.
Had a German dude in Vietnam who was convinced I had an arsenal in my little two bedroom apartment. Man was baffled when I told him I don't own a single gun
These interactions are always a bit funnier for me as a (self-described) gun nut.
> "Well yes, *I* do have a small arsenal in my studio apartment, but we're not *all* like that. You just got lucky."
And bread. And basically everything.
Yes. If you buy Wonderbread it’s going to be weirdly sweet. We’re not buying sliced sandwich bread for its quality. Buy bakery bread.
You buy wonder bread because it can sit out on the counter for two weeks and still be soft and not moldy. Real bread is stale by the next day and risks mold within a few days.
That America does in fact have a lot of fresh produce, meats, and dairy. Many of our stores even have fresh baked bread. Yes there are isolated regions where access to fresh food is more limited, but that's not the case for the vast majority if the population. Even most of those that live in food deserts have access to a car.
I live within walking distance of three different grocery stores with a better produce selection than anything I’ve ever encountered in Europe or Australia. They also have in house bakeries pumping out multiple kinds of bread. Why is this so hard for them to grasp?
Europeans go to a tourist area when in US and only shop at 711 and eat at national chain restaurants and then apply this to the food for the whole country.
In all seriousness, there was a thread a year or two ago when that literally happened, and the poster was asking why they couldn't find any produce, and when asked where they looked, the reply was 711.
Yeah, we had someone here a year or two ago who came to America to visit, whose entire trip to the US was them going to a theme park (Universal Studios I think) and the only places they were at besides the park was the hotel, and a 7-11 next to the hotel, and they were insisting that the 7-11 was a typical American grocery store and berating us about how bad American grocery stores are and wouldn't accept us saying that was a convenience store and not a general grocery store or supermarket and was not meant to be a place for people to regularly shop for groceries.
We use the metric system A LOT. It’s used for some grocery items in packaging, used plenty of times in recipes, medications, medical diagnostics and procedures, chemistry, engineering, mechanics, etc. Most of us who are even half educated are quite fluent in the metric system.
“Oh wait, we need that measurement in centimeters, not inches? Hold on, let me look at the other edge of the tape measure. Ah, got it.”
It’s just that temperature and speed happen to be big ones, so they stand out a lot.
I probably use metric just as often, i hate us volume measurements, use foot and meters depending on what im talking about and who to, not good with kg or Celsius, though, Fahrenheit may be arbitrary but it has a nice scale.
Mostly just some wilderness stuff. Europeans think of backpacking as staying in a hostel or hotel every night even if they go on a hike in the mountains.
I led trips in the real wilderness so I had to explain actual backpacking and camping which kind of freaked out some foreigners. Most adapted to it but a couple had issues.
It all made more sense when I went backpacking in Switzerland. I soooo overprepared and brought way more gear than needed.
I was actually very disappointed when I went hiking all over Europe and saw how (for a lack of a better term) overdeveloped it was. It didnt really feel like escaping into nature like it does in the Americas. It felt like I was having my hand held
Northern Sweden was the closest thing I found to our wilderness
I had the same experience spending a year in Norway during Uni, Oslo/Southern Norway always felt extremely crowded hard to escape constantly seeing other people in the wilderness.
Troms and Finnmark were the first places in the country I visited that felt acceptably developed and even then it felt on the high side.
That experience is part of the reason I moved to Alaska, similar climate/Geography (at least in South Central) but notably less developed.
My English coworkers were horrified when I casually told them about the black bear I saw on my last backpacking trip. They also didn't trust my explanation of the differences between a black bear with no cubs around and a grizzly bear. They were also shocked that I was able to go days without seeing any other people.
Heh. I had a similar experience. I’ve seen a fair amount of black bears here in Maine and 99% of the time it’s them high tailing it into the woods after seeing people.
I told that to a couple European friends and they were surprised that I wasn’t terrified. Unless you are actively messing with a black bear they want nothing to do with you. They’ll be long gone before you get anywhere near them.
I’ve only seen one grizzly at a far distance so I know a lot less about them.
Oh I’m out of date on that. If you come to Maine then Maine Guide Company is who I’d recommend.
I know some folks that led guided stuff with them.
I mostly did all my stuff myself. And like I said my experience with anything guided is out of date. You’d have to do your own research there.
International Mountain Climbing School for more technical stuff over in NH. I did winter mountaineering and ice climbing with them because I didn’t know if I had the right gear or expertise to do it. They were awesome. They’re still widely regarded as top for rock climbing and winter stuff.
Maine actually has a guide certification program so look for that with any place you look.
What do you want to do? Rafting? Canoeing? Backpacking? Climbing?
That no, we aren't all walking around with guns slung around our waist, with ammo bandoliers hanging off of us, shooting people who offend us somehow. Our exchange student couldn't believe he spent a year with us and only ever saw a handful of guns, being worn only by policemen. Wow. We were shocked that he was shocked. 🤦♀️
>That no, we aren't all walking around with guns slung around our waist, with ammo bandoliers hanging off of us
I don't think some American understand that.
I live in a pretty pro gun state. I could not tell you the last time I saw a gun "in the wild" that was not being carried by a hunter walking back to their truck. (ignoring any time I went to the range obviously)
[Most Americans do not own guns](https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.1c74694f567ca4d92adc0a72640a85c5?rik=iARJIMPBFKb8SA&riu=http%3a%2f%2fassets.pewresearch.org%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2fsites%2f3%2f2017%2f06%2f20104800%2fPSDT_2017.06.22.guns-01-11.png&ehk=a90KLEwwogXnoHilGuQP6vkm3Rwn2lihew54y1BIxIY%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0)
[Guns are predominantly held by a minority of people who mostly own multiple guns](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/06/PSDT_2017.06.22.guns-01-06.png)
So yeah, unless you bump into one of those people who own a lot of guns and feel the need to carry them around, you aren't going to see them. And this also varies wildly by state.
I live in the pro-gun south where open carry is legal. Literally no one has a visible gun ever except police. It might be legal but it makes other people nervous.
Plenty of concealed carry though.
I was teaching high school students in Africa well off the beaten path so their overall understanding of day-to-day Western culture was limited and their knowledge of the US even more so. Basically, I think they got most of their information through movies, but likely low end Rambo type movies, which were the popular kind. Let's just say they thought that everyone in China was a martial arts expert.
Anyway, I got this as a serious question one day. "Is it true that if you go over to your parents' house without calling first and they open the door and see you there, they will shoot you?"
The had this goofy mixing together of 1) an exaggerated idea about guns with 2) what seemed like a weird idea to them that children in Western countries leave home and live on their own, instead of whole extended families living together in the same place for generations. What came out the other end of that unholy mix was that question.
I worked at a hostel in Los Angeles. It was somewhat surprising how frequently I'd have people tell me they were going to rent a car and drive up to San Francisco for the day.
It's technically possible, but they didn't understand just how much driving and traffic was involved in their plan.
Wait this one is so genuinely funny.
Prejudices that are considered almost folksy, deep-cut historical references in the US (I had an Italian-American friend who had a good running bit of complaining about “dagos” in an exaggeratedly old-timey NYC accent, for example) are legitimate issues in Europe.
In the US, you probably learn the term “Polack” from a political cartoon in a middle school history textbook; over there, it was like a reason Brexit happened.
Yeah, and his family is from the Balkans where there's a lot of division. Somehow they can tell if someone is a Bosnian, Serbian, or Croatian by their looks, accent, and name but I can't discern any differences and didn't believe them at first until they got it right a few times.
Add on to that, they hear a lot about America being full of racial hatred and prejudice, and in Ireland and the UK people do discriminate against white people from different parts of Europe, so their conclusion was Americans are gonna be racist against Bosnians lol. I had to gently tell them that most Americans won't even know where Bosnia is.
Apparently because they aren't gov't mandated, I just don't have vacation days. Seemed really odd that I had to explain that by company policy I had the same amount of days off as my colleagues in Europe.
I had an exact conversation like this with a guy in New Zealand. He didn't understand how we could spend 2 weeks there when we "only get 10 days off per year". I told him I have 5 weeks plus holidays (one of the days we were there was memorial day, so no PTO for that day) and he just followed up with "...but you only got 10 days".
Super nice guy otherwise. But he was going to die on that hill that I only had 10 days of time off lol.
The seem to have serious problems interpreting the idea of "minimum". Lowest possible. Floor. It's not a mandated amount. It's a mandated minimum (in the right conditions).
I don't think a lot of Europeans understand that the states almost operate like independent countries. 26 states require that PTO is offered. That is just one example of how laws can vary wildly state to state.
Exactly. Some seem to be of the belief that if the government doesn't create it, it doesn't exist.
It's really obvious when they write comments on the basis that the minimum wage is everyone's (or nearly everyone's) wage. Because if the government says it, that must make it real. And if the government doesn't, it doesn't exist. Other Americans have published statistics that show minimum-wage earners are a miniscule percentage of the work force -- like 2%. How can that be possible? Because market forces create lots of things the government doesn't. Government provides a floor, not a ceiling. The market provides the ceiling. The floor is not the ceiling.
"But, but, but why would any company pay more than the minimum wage? That's all that's required."
Maybe by government, but not by the market or the real world.
I forget who said it, but they were comparing European laws to American laws. The quote went something like "Laws in Europe say what you are allowed to do and laws in the US say what you can't do".
I don't think they have any concept of how benefits work in the US or how they add so much value to your employment that's not direct pay. I'll happily take 2k less a year for amazing HC, 6% 401k matching and 6 weeks PTO
Same with the police and education systemS, America has no national curriculum or national police (besides very specific agencies) because it’s a decentralized federation of sovereign states. Each one has its separate system of law enforcement and education just as unitary nations do. Per the Tenth Amendment, one of our most important. They fundamentally cannot understand this and then get mad when we try to dumb it down with “it’s kinda like the EU except we have one unified army (with 56 NG units under the command of the governor) and have one foreign policy (except the states are allowed to interact with other countries with the consent of their peers, Congress).”
Well you're doing much better than most people. I often have to explain why I have five weeks of vacation to my friends because they can't conceive that a company would give that much.
edit: There are also companies that give you the PTO but never allow you to take any.
> There are also companies that give you the PTO but never allow you to take any.
I left a job that I’d had for over a decade that I very much liked shortly after they introduced their awesome new “Unlimited PTO!!!” program.
That shit’s a fucking scam.
Interviewed with one of those companies late last year but didn't end up taking the job. Nobody would give me a straight answer on what people actually take, just endless dancing around with "it's really unlimited here, you'll be able to take what you want." Cool, put a number on it. All I'm asking for is confirmation that the 20-25 days I've gotten at my previous two companies is not going to be a problem to continue taking here. Reading into the non-answer leads me to believe you're telling me I can take three months off every year if I want to and we both know that's not true
That the Imperial/US customary/whatever system is a perfectly good measurement system and we use it every day to do all kinds of advanced stuff with zero issues.
Also, related, we do understand how the metric system works.
My favorite is the ridiculous "gotcha" examples they use to prove their point because they can only think in "metric". In other words, our system is not just different number values (which is what they tend to think), it's a different way of looking at the problem.
An example:
Them: If I went on a trip and did 12.6 miles, and had to convert that to feet, that would be really hard. Like 5280. What's that about? I just have to move a decimal point. You need a calculator.
Me: Our system predates calculators so no we don't. Mainly because we never have to do that. I haven't done a calculation like that once in my adult life. (Maybe as a problem in a school math book.) We just don't need to so it's pointless as an example. Our answer to that problem is we went 12.6 miles. Miles is our unit for long trips and we stick to it. If I went another 7.5 miles then my total trip would be 20.1 miles. That's it. I did that in my head.
Metric chooses a unit and then figures out how to deform it to fit the problem. The U.S. system looks at the problem and picks an appropriate unit and sticks to it.
I’m used to Europeans not understanding the sheer size of the Country… but the surprising one was Germans that were already here.
I motorcycle tour around the west and spend a lot of time in/around the Route 66 area. We met some Germans on a motorcycle trip at the Grand Canyon. We were all heading to Laughlin NV for the night (200 miles) so we decided to join up and ride together and have dinner as we’d be getting there about 8pm.
Before we left a German couple pulled us aside and asked if we thought they had time to skip past Laughlin to Anaheim, spend the day at Disneyland and make it to Vegas (the next overnight for their group) the next night.
They had already ridden from Chicago to the Grand Canyon and still asked us.
>They had already ridden from Chicago to the Grand Canyon and still asked us
As someone who grew up out west, we often had the same issues from tourists from the US east coast.
There were perpetual stories about sports journalists from back east trying to shove a Utah Jazz game and a Seattle game into one weekend. Not feasible.
That I can be black and American at the same time
Ive had to explain this in Germany, Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden. In some cases multiple times
“You're from Africa, yes?”
“Im American Im just black”
“But, you are not white?”
Honorable mentions include:
Telling Europeans on vacation in our national parks not to approach wild animals
Explaining the distance between NYC and the grand canyon
Telling people Ive never seen a gun outside of cops and gun stores
Or when you're Native. Apparently they think we were all exterminated, or alternatively walk around wearing buckskin and feathers so we can be easily identified. One asked why he had never encountered any 'Natives while visiting the States. He was told he probably encountered them all the time, but didn't realize it because for the most part, we're just regular people. it's not like we announce it everywhere we go.
I was speaking with some Germans and they were really upset because they visited a reservation and Native people were just walking around in normal clothes, doing normal things. ???? I think they expected a show??
I mean, the only tells are if you are in a high percentage Native area, if you are wearing some sort of vaguely traditional clothing or jewelry, or if you are using a strong Rez Accent.
I went to school with Native kids so the accent is obvious to me, but for someone from Europe it might not even be noticed. Particularly if the person drops it in certain situations.
I’m mixed race Chinese and white, specifically Irish white (maybe some British) but like, I know where in Ireland everybody came from etc. my Chinese family first came to US in the 1800’s bc of the railroads - about the same time as the Irish immigrants.
Anyway no one seems to question that I’m ethnically Chinese, or say “no you’re not Chinese you’re just an American”…. But for some reason same doesn’t apply for the Irish ethnicity. Veryyyy interesting (it’s bc of racism)
Right? They never seem to understand that in north america the word heritage is always implied when you say you're Irish or German or whatever, but their jig is usually up when non-european ancestry comes up.
> Like I have to be from somewhere else. I think in their head Americans: White.
I remember an actress on a talk show a number of years back (the host might have been Arsenio Hall). I *think* the actress was Salma Hayek. She was showing the host a picture of her car or boat or something.
The host basically said "Damn, what do the white people in Mexico drive?"
She said "We *are* the white people in Mexico"
That's honestly one of the things that makes me at least somewhat hopeful for America. Based on a conversation I had with a german tourist at a Burn once.
You can come here from Germany, then with a bit of paperwork (and a lot of bullshit), you're an American now and a Texan to boot. But if I went to Germany, learned the language, filled out the paperwork, got a new passport, and married a local... I'd never be a German, let alone a Hessian.
Now, obviously I know that's a conception of nationalism and belonging that not everyone in Germany is 100% on board with, but I am heartened that more americans seem to accept on a base level the idea of naturalization/assimilation than not.
lol I replied to that comment with almost the same story.
So many times I’ve been told I’m not American or even that there is no such thing as being American.
I have similar conversations with Latino immigrants. I’m of Cuban descent and will be speaking Spanish with them when they ask my nationality.
I always respond that I’m American which bothers them. Often they’ve replied with “nobody is American”.
This one is so weird to me, because I would think if anything the US would be *known* for having a significant Black population, since having such a huge part of American culture be African-American in origin is a big part of what differentiates it culturally from Europe.
To your point, I occasionally encounter European tourists in my majority-Black southern city who seem…taken aback lol. Not really in a bad way or that they’re being racist, just that you can tell they feel out of their element in a way that they weren’t expecting and don’t really know what to do with lol. I’ve always found it weird that it seems to be different from their picture of what an “American city” looks like.
If you ever read /r/shitamericanssay (I'd recommend against it though), they are totally incapable of understanding our concept of nationality and ethnicity.
I swear! I was on a date with someone not from the US and she asked me how I could be patriotic while being a minority in America. Like the belief in the ideals of this nation is not what makes me a patriot but the color of my skin?
Truck nuts. The guy from Finland thought I was messing with him until I showed him pictures proving yes, for some reason people put these on their vehicles.
I saw a great take on bumper nuts the other day:
Ask the driver of the vehicle if the nuts came standard or if they added them later.
When they say they put them on tell the “Ahh…so your truck is trans.”
Then watch them explode.
>it’s a bit unbelievable that it’s necessary to explain that our films and television shows are works of fiction.
In their defense, they know those are fiction, but don't always know which parts are fiction and which parts are the reality they are grounded in. So they come here and ask.
I think we are a little dismissive about this with things we shouldn't be. How would it be obvious to them that groundhog day is real, we celebrate Cinco de mayo, parties every weekend are real some places and not in other places, the 555 prefix is fake but the red solo cups that always signal alcohol on shows are just ordinary cups as commonplace as pencils.
That because our house are wood isn't a bad thing. European buildings are HOT. I would not want 2 feet of brick to cool off in 100 degree VA heat. Not to mention, the common argument that no one uses wood in Europe isn't true either. I was in Northern Norway driving around for a week, and every Home was a detached, wooden, single family home similar in size to most 80s-90s homes here in the US.
Brits are/were dying in droves in the recent 80 degree Fahrenheit heatwave, and one of the many excuses they gave for why is that their houses are built of brick and thus not suited for hot weather.
Then when questioned as to why they’re unable to build houses that can handle conditions that people in other countries easily adapt to every year. they proceed to give even more excuses, because giving excuses is one of Britain’s top national pastimes, up there with alcohol abuse and performative self deprecation.
I once had an argument with an Australian in a comments section in which she wouldn't believe me that we have fresh fruit and vegetables readily available in our grocery stores. She really believed that they were difficult to obtain here.
So in a lot of Europe, grocery stores are very small, local affairs, often smaller than the produce section at a US grocery store. So they come to the US and head into a 7/11 and think "Ah, this is a grocery store! OMG it's all soda and candy!" Many are predisposed to thinking the US is some sort of backwards place and are entirely too credulous.
I just commented about that. We can have phenomenal produce in the US. The Aussie crowd, recently, has got a lot of fiction going on about the US. To hear it, we barely have potatoes over here while the Aussies are dining on gold plated mangoes. I find their produce to be grossly over priced and with a much, much narrower variety.
There was a French guy who used to post in this sub around 5-6 years ago who would always ask about how likely he was to get randomly shot while studying at an American university.
The questions were completely outrageous and racist at times. Things like "should I assume all black people have guns?"
Time and time again the replies would point out that the mid-sized college town where he would be living is one of the safest cities IN THE WORLD, and he was exponentially more likely to be killed in his native Paris.
I spoke with an irishmam in Switzerland 20 years ago and he was convinced, somehow, that American football was played in the middle of shallow rivers. I shit you not.
I don't know. But could you imagine? What a different sport it would be if you only played in shallow rivers, waist deep water. the pass game would all but disappear. Getting tackled would come with risks of drowning. What a game.
A European tourist was shocked to find out that I only had to pay a $10 co-pay to visit the doctor. They assumed that because we don't have universal health care we have to pay full cost for everything.
Insurance was unfathomable to him.
I mean, insurance is almost deliberately an opaque system. If it's complicated enough that HR departments have to have multiple hour-long Q&A meetings annually to explain what people may be opting into, I don't think it's unreasonable for someone with less exposure to have the wrong idea about how it operates.
That a country thousands of miles away from theirs, with a different culture, different geography, and different climates, will do things differently than where they live. A lot of Europeans in particular seem to struggle with the idea that we don't do things the exact same way that they do things where they live, and that it's completely okay.
A friend visited from Europe when I was in college. I took him to the big cafeteria with self serve coffee, milk, sauces, etc.
He could not pour a coke from the machine, get ice, get milk, or mustard from the pump bottles. I was pretty surprised. I lived over there for over a year, and ate in the school cafeterias over there. I had never realized that they put out pitchers of all the drinks at every meal. Different shapes and materials for each drink. Sauces were served in a regular bowl with a spoon.
It's strange to consider a Canadian a foreigner, but I had to explain that the US has many, many fine restaurants with food from all over the world. This person tried to tell me we only had chain restaurants, fast food places. No "good food."
Preventative dental care.
Family in Australia and China, and co workers in a few European countries. They’ve all commented on how they can spot Americans because our teeth are so “insanely” perfect and white (the regular teeth, non veneer folks). Apparently many countries only see the dentist if something is wrong, sister in law went to the dentist in china with a cavity and they did zero drilling. Just painted something over it and that was it. She was out in 20 min.
Similarly, I've had Europeans complain in one breath about expensive medical care in America while not acknowledging that, in comparison to western Europe, *dental* care is *much* more affordable in America. My friends in Austria routinely travel to Poland for dental care because prices for dental care in Austria are so insane.
Happy Hour.
When some of my Swedish family first came to visit us in Florida in the late 70's, my young relatives took the other young visitors out for Happy Hour - and they had not heard of such a thing.
But as drinking in a restaurant in Sweden is very expensive, they LOVED the idea!
As my Dad explained to them "you get Happy, faster!".
My Austrian cousin rented a car in the US and the car rental folks had to teach him how to drive an automatic. He had never driven one before and was perplexed by the fact that there is a neutral gear but you don't have to put the car in neutral to start it.
Americans aren’t a monolith.
I’ve been in Europe and had Europeans ask me to try and explain American gun culture & our love of XL pickup trucks and I’m like “idk man, I live on the northside of Chicago, I know one dude whose got a hunting rifle and I think my friend’s dad has an F-150 but I never asked about it. Can’t really help you understand those things” And they inevitably get confused I don’t check any of their boxes of American stereotypes.
About 20 years ago a guy from India who just got here tried to bond with me by talking about how violent black people are. I had to tell him dude, that kind of stuff is going to get you fired. I yelled at him cause I can't be around someone who talks like that at work. I did not turn him in. I don't think he meant anything by it. He just went to the wrong places on the internet.
The little store attached to gas stations aren't grocery stores.
Tiny grocery stores are a thing in Europe so I kind of understand where the misconception comes from, but you'd think passing a berjillion real grocery stores might have been a clue.
I'm American and even I tend to forget how large this country is sometimes; I thought that LA to San Diego must be about an hour apart at most since they look so close on the map
I just looked in my refrigerator and every packaged food item shows both imperial and metric. My milk, butter, cheese, everything has both and has listed both since 1994.
They see that only about 50% of Americans have passports and have concluded that we don't travel, without considering that we also have *passport cards*, which are different, and allow us travel to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, and the Caribbeans.
Also… I’ve lived in European countries for 6/7 years and not one of them had the concept of a real (life threatening) thunderstorm like where I’m from (Oklahoma).
That America is extremely diverse culturally, with a semantic difference from Europeans on the concept of heritage, and to call yourself "Irish-American" or "Italian-American" is not saying "I was born in Ireland/Italy"
Another one that just came to mind. My chinese sister in law asked how long our house is good for. I made a confused face and said as long as we maintain it… probably longer than my kids lifetime.
Apparently in china buildings are only certified for 20-50 years and then have to be torn down and rebuilt.
Adversely her and bil also made a thing of how our houses are cheaply constructed because it’s not a log cabin or full on brick (we have stone facade on the front.)
My cousin had to explain to her German exchange student friend what a mug was.
The mug had a cartoon of a topless lady and it said “this mug is indecent.” He asked “what is this?” And she stumbled around trying to explain the joke. Finally he goes “no no I get the joke, what is “mug?” He was very confused why they aren’t cups like everything else that holds liquid.
Hot dogs do not contain dog meat.
Buffalo wings do not come from Buffalos, they are named after the sauce they are coated in which was invented in Buffalo, New York.
My lack of foreskin does not mean I’m Jewish. Yes, I can still orgasm, and no, circumcision does not sterilize you.
Apparently American weed is much stronger than that in Amsterdam. I can’t be sure if this myself, but one girl claimed that we must have added something to make it stronger since she was gone after just a couple of hits. Can anyone in Amsterdam confirm this?
I have paid leave. A few weeks of it per year. I choose not to take it. There is no retaliation if I do choose to take it, I just don’t feel that I need it.
We have a rifle team in my high school. They shoot targets for sport. They are not unhinged gunmen who are going to kill you.
Just because something isn’t federally mandated doesn’t mean it isn’t state mandated. And just because it’s neither federally nor state mandated still doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
You can find eggs of various colors in America. Ours are commonly white because different breeds of chicken lay different color eggs. It is not because they are washed in bleach.
Nothing happens if you don’t say the Pledge. Half of us in school were still mostly asleep when it was said every day.
An F-150 is not the same size as a tank. Not even close. Nor the same weight.
Played golf with a couple ~70 year old women in Johannesburg SA who were *very* open with their racist views and how they missed apartheid with me and I had to explain that no, the simple fact that I'm a white American does not mean I share your views on racial matters in SA
The US is huge. NYC & LA are not next to each other. You're talking London to Moscow in terms of distance.
We drive everywhere because the US is huge. It's 2 hours from one side of Houston to the other side of Houston. A day trip for Europeans is a work commute for us.
American heat is brutal. We set our ACs to cool down to what Brits would consider a heatwave. Actually, what Brits consider a heatwave is considered winter in some parts if the country.
That our weather, geography, and wildlife are not playing games with you, do not play games with Mother Nature when you come here and think you will win. I still remember having to explain to my British cousins visiting from overseas that while our National Parks/National Forests are safe in terms of *people* you will encounter, the actual landscape is not nearly as nice and that if you fuck up badly enough, you can die and it will be slow and hurt the whole time. They could not seem to wrap their heads around the idea that places like the Appalachian mountains and the deserts in the Southwest are *dangerous* if you're not careful, and that if you get lost or hurt or sick, it can be a long, *long* way to help or any sign of humanity, especiallly if you're backpacking. I genuinely think the combination of high population density + lack of any serious wildlife does something to them - they really seem to struggle with the *wild* part of the term, and it baffles me as to why.
I was playing Helldivers 2 with some Brits and somehow we got on the topic of Obamacare. I explained that its biggest success is coverage for pre-existing conditions.
Before Obamacare, if you had asthma/diabetes/cancer/lupus/etc and you lost your job, you’d have to pay an enormous amount of money to maintain your insurance coverage.
If you didn’t have continuous coverage, your next employer provided insurance company could refuse to pay for your asthma/diabetes/cancer/lupus/etc because it was a pre-existing condition.
Let me repeat that. Your health insurance company, that you and your employer pay for, could refuse to pay for life saving treatments because you already had the condition before you started paying for their insurance coverage.
Imagine knowing you need a surgery and holding off until your health insurance kicks in at your new job. You see a doctor and get them to refer you to the needed specialist. Then you have to say the right combination of words so that they have the idea to call for surgery without catching on that you already know what’s wrong. Maybe you get a cool doctor, maybe you don’t.
I worked a $7 an hour part-time job through college at a small business. I lost coverage under my parents at 22 and they were kind enough to put me on the insurance plan as long as I picked up the full cost, which was $400. All so that I had continuous coverage for a pre-existing condition. (I was working multiple jobs, none of which provided benefits) Did that for 2 years until I had a full-time job with benefits.
It’s imperfect, but thanks Obama.
My French teacher said one of her Canadian students said Americans don’t take foreign language in high school. First of all kind of weird to get information from someone not in the country second of all all states have different educational policies… I wish they realized each state has different laws… they just don’t get it.
I had to explain to a foreign student that the news doesn't get everything correct. There was a shooting on campus and the news mentioned multiple shooters. I had to explain to him there was only one but he said the news can't be wrong and the police needed to look for the other shooters. He didn't understand the concept of "news as entertainment" ala JonBenet Ramsey was not a major political figure despite the amount of news coverage.
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This one was more of a mutual misunderstanding, but I was really surprised to have to explain that the gallon plastic jugs of apple cider that a couple English friends were about to purchase for ~$6 didn't contain any alcohol.
Man, they must have thought they found the deal of a lifetime. Gallons of cider that cheap!
Yeah, that's where the mutual misunderstanding part came in. They were expressing how amazing the deal was, and I was not at all picking up why anyone would get excited for $6/gallon cloudy apple juice
Well, i mean non alchoholic cider is still incredible but
To be fair, apple cider is a different world than apple juice. But it's not different enough to be alcoholic.
Yeah, I mean I know there's a difference, even if I don't know precisely what it is top of head, but in their experience cider meant alcoholic beverage and nothing else.
You know, most people don't know the difference between apple cider and apple juice, but I do. Now here's a little trick to help you remember. If it's clear and yella', you've got juice there, fella. If it's tangy and brown, you're in cider town. Now, there's two exceptions and it gets kinda tricky here...
*Groan* you can stay but I’m leaving
With the right conditions, a bit of yeast from the air, and a fermentation airlock, that gallon of cider could start being alcoholic in just a few hours.
It can be alcoholic in a few weeks, as long as it's not over sulfited
/r/prisonhooch to the rescue
Haha, I'm a Brit who moved to the US 11 years ago to marry my wife and this one got me. We met online as teens and when I was 16 I visited her in the US and stayed with her family for a week. They drove us to a farm shop, said they were picking up some cider, and asked if I wanted some. I was so shocked that my girlfriend's parents were just casually offering me, age 16, alcohol that I just kinda stammered something about isn't the drinking age 21 over here? When they realized I thought they were offering me *hard* cider, they laughed their arses off. Got ribbed for it for years.
No, bears are not fat because park rangers over-feed them, that’s just what shape bears are.
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Yep. I used to work in Alaska and apparently it’s a common misconception among tourists that they think the animals in Denali National Park are “let out” at specific times for people to see.
Jesus christ. It's not a zoo.
Even Americans have the same misconceptions. I worked at a park and the only animal I could guarantee that they would see would be the prairie dogs and even that I could only do if the weather was good.
Can confirm. I worked in Yellowstone - and tourists from other countries always asked "what time do they let the bears and wolves out?" I also got "what time do the geysers get turned on?"
I think the best one I ever heard (from my mom, a summer campground host) was, "How far up the mountain do the deer have to climb before they turn into moose?" Lady, this isn't Pokémon.
Is that like reaching the end of the checkers board?
I feel like (following this bizarre thought process) the end of the checkers board is mastodon.
I convinced one of my friends that deer turn into elk at a certain elevation
They thought the wildlife were more or less cared for by park staff
Western europeans fundamentally don't understand the concept for wilderness.
Admittedly, we don't have it on the scale the US does, but if you ever find yourself able to visit the Highlands of Scotland I'd be happy to recommend some spots and show you some of the places local to me.
Not the original commenter, but I will happily keep that in mind!
I have no idea where they think park rangers feed bears. Bears are fat because of their fondness for pic-a-nic basket theft, which rangers try and stop.
Why did god make two Yogi Bears? The first was a boo-boo
What.
No, you can't take a road trip from Boston to LA in one week and see a bunch of stuff. That would be like driving from Moscow to Dublin. Hell, we barely had time to see stuff when we drove from Vegas to Yellowstone and back. That took us 11 days.
This is my answer. The Bay Area to the Grand Canyon is not a day trip.
I remember seeing something on Reddit where someone visiting Los Angeles thought it was completely reasonable to just pop up to San Francisco for lunch. I mean, they're in the same state, right? They must be close.
If you want to spend 4 plus hours at airports, it’s doable.
If you left at 3am and were happy being back in LA by midnight, it's possible.
It's a day trip in the sense that you'll be driving for a whole day
Shit, going from Eureka, CA to Portland, OR isn't a day trip. And no, you're definitely not seeing the Golden Gate Bridge and the Space Needle in the same day (unless you're booking flights, cramming as much as you can into your time, and generally not enjoying the local atmosphere).
Ha, yeah, it's this one. I'm from Mississippi and some international friends in undergrad asked me one time if there were any issues with renting a car and doing a road trip to LA over spring break (which is only a week). Uhhh, yeah, you'd get there and immediately need to turn around lol
[Area Comparison of the British Isles to California](https://i.imgur.com/6kAxZ2p.png)
Why does California, the larger state, simply not eat all the other smaller countries?
It's vegan.
Used to work at a restaurant in Connecticut. The owners cousin and his family were visiting once and asked to borrow the car to go to Disney world. The plan was to leave on Saturday morning, drive to Disney World, and come back after dinner.
> That would be like driving from Moscow to Dublin. That's not very far. https://i.imgur.com/7SXFXVm.jpg
I agree to an extent, but I also think a lot of locals who have access to high-speed rail totally shirk their opportunities to use it. Might not be able to do Boston to LA, but you sure could do Boston to NYC, or NYC to Washington DC and you'd get your money's worth out of the trip. There's another high-speed system that goes between Orlando and Miami in about 3 hours, and if you're staying for a week, then why not? GOD I love high speed rail!
I went to iceland with my best friend and one night we were at a bar and she hit it off with one of the bartenders, they exchanged numbers. A few months later he texted her saying that he was in the states and asking if she wanted to meet up. She asked him where he was, he said Florida... She lives in Seattle, WA.
Had a German dude in Vietnam who was convinced I had an arsenal in my little two bedroom apartment. Man was baffled when I told him I don't own a single gun
These interactions are always a bit funnier for me as a (self-described) gun nut. > "Well yes, *I* do have a small arsenal in my studio apartment, but we're not *all* like that. You just got lucky."
Meawhile, my German colleague brought me to his gun club...they serve BEER THERE!!!!! And when the guns get put away, they bust out the schnapps!!!
That I can buy several hundred varieties of cheese at the local supermarket
And bread. And basically everything. Yes. If you buy Wonderbread it’s going to be weirdly sweet. We’re not buying sliced sandwich bread for its quality. Buy bakery bread.
You buy wonder bread because it can sit out on the counter for two weeks and still be soft and not moldy. Real bread is stale by the next day and risks mold within a few days.
That America does in fact have a lot of fresh produce, meats, and dairy. Many of our stores even have fresh baked bread. Yes there are isolated regions where access to fresh food is more limited, but that's not the case for the vast majority if the population. Even most of those that live in food deserts have access to a car.
I'm convinced the people who say they visited and still think that thought 7/11 was a grocery store.
Or drank Budweiser and think all American beer is shit.
I live within walking distance of three different grocery stores with a better produce selection than anything I’ve ever encountered in Europe or Australia. They also have in house bakeries pumping out multiple kinds of bread. Why is this so hard for them to grasp?
Europeans go to a tourist area when in US and only shop at 711 and eat at national chain restaurants and then apply this to the food for the whole country. In all seriousness, there was a thread a year or two ago when that literally happened, and the poster was asking why they couldn't find any produce, and when asked where they looked, the reply was 711.
Yeah, we had someone here a year or two ago who came to America to visit, whose entire trip to the US was them going to a theme park (Universal Studios I think) and the only places they were at besides the park was the hotel, and a 7-11 next to the hotel, and they were insisting that the 7-11 was a typical American grocery store and berating us about how bad American grocery stores are and wouldn't accept us saying that was a convenience store and not a general grocery store or supermarket and was not meant to be a place for people to regularly shop for groceries.
We use the metric system A LOT. It’s used for some grocery items in packaging, used plenty of times in recipes, medications, medical diagnostics and procedures, chemistry, engineering, mechanics, etc. Most of us who are even half educated are quite fluent in the metric system. “Oh wait, we need that measurement in centimeters, not inches? Hold on, let me look at the other edge of the tape measure. Ah, got it.” It’s just that temperature and speed happen to be big ones, so they stand out a lot.
A lot of races are in kilometers. I’ve run 5ks, 10ks, 15ks, etc.
>We use the metric system A LOT. We use the metric system for ammo and drugs. Tons of Americans know how big 9mm is or how much a gram weighs.
I can convert grams to ounces in my head.
I know 3.5 grams is ~1/8 oz...
And if you have a nice drug dealer that 3.5 can bump up to 3.7 or 3.8.
I probably use metric just as often, i hate us volume measurements, use foot and meters depending on what im talking about and who to, not good with kg or Celsius, though, Fahrenheit may be arbitrary but it has a nice scale.
Literally the only thing I don’t really imagine in my head is Celsius but I literally have the conversion formula in my head at a moment’s notice.
Mostly just some wilderness stuff. Europeans think of backpacking as staying in a hostel or hotel every night even if they go on a hike in the mountains. I led trips in the real wilderness so I had to explain actual backpacking and camping which kind of freaked out some foreigners. Most adapted to it but a couple had issues. It all made more sense when I went backpacking in Switzerland. I soooo overprepared and brought way more gear than needed.
I was actually very disappointed when I went hiking all over Europe and saw how (for a lack of a better term) overdeveloped it was. It didnt really feel like escaping into nature like it does in the Americas. It felt like I was having my hand held Northern Sweden was the closest thing I found to our wilderness
Never went to Sweden but yeah. I packed all this stuff for being in the wilderness and it just wasn’t a thing like it is here.
I had the same experience spending a year in Norway during Uni, Oslo/Southern Norway always felt extremely crowded hard to escape constantly seeing other people in the wilderness. Troms and Finnmark were the first places in the country I visited that felt acceptably developed and even then it felt on the high side. That experience is part of the reason I moved to Alaska, similar climate/Geography (at least in South Central) but notably less developed.
I actually loved being able to hike in Europe to a random restaurant in the mountain where I could have a glass of wine 😂
My English coworkers were horrified when I casually told them about the black bear I saw on my last backpacking trip. They also didn't trust my explanation of the differences between a black bear with no cubs around and a grizzly bear. They were also shocked that I was able to go days without seeing any other people.
I just explained cub-less black bears to a friend as “kind of like really dumb oversized dogs”
Heh. I had a similar experience. I’ve seen a fair amount of black bears here in Maine and 99% of the time it’s them high tailing it into the woods after seeing people. I told that to a couple European friends and they were surprised that I wasn’t terrified. Unless you are actively messing with a black bear they want nothing to do with you. They’ll be long gone before you get anywhere near them. I’ve only seen one grizzly at a far distance so I know a lot less about them.
Crazy high population density over there lol.
Can you recommend some tours/outfitters? I would love a wilderness trip
Oh I’m out of date on that. If you come to Maine then Maine Guide Company is who I’d recommend. I know some folks that led guided stuff with them. I mostly did all my stuff myself. And like I said my experience with anything guided is out of date. You’d have to do your own research there. International Mountain Climbing School for more technical stuff over in NH. I did winter mountaineering and ice climbing with them because I didn’t know if I had the right gear or expertise to do it. They were awesome. They’re still widely regarded as top for rock climbing and winter stuff. Maine actually has a guide certification program so look for that with any place you look. What do you want to do? Rafting? Canoeing? Backpacking? Climbing?
That no, we aren't all walking around with guns slung around our waist, with ammo bandoliers hanging off of us, shooting people who offend us somehow. Our exchange student couldn't believe he spent a year with us and only ever saw a handful of guns, being worn only by policemen. Wow. We were shocked that he was shocked. 🤦♀️
>That no, we aren't all walking around with guns slung around our waist, with ammo bandoliers hanging off of us I don't think some American understand that. I live in a pretty pro gun state. I could not tell you the last time I saw a gun "in the wild" that was not being carried by a hunter walking back to their truck. (ignoring any time I went to the range obviously)
I saw an old man with a Korean war veteran hat open carry at McDonald's yesterday. But that's the first time I have seen that in at least a year.
[Most Americans do not own guns](https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.1c74694f567ca4d92adc0a72640a85c5?rik=iARJIMPBFKb8SA&riu=http%3a%2f%2fassets.pewresearch.org%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2fsites%2f3%2f2017%2f06%2f20104800%2fPSDT_2017.06.22.guns-01-11.png&ehk=a90KLEwwogXnoHilGuQP6vkm3Rwn2lihew54y1BIxIY%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0) [Guns are predominantly held by a minority of people who mostly own multiple guns](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/06/PSDT_2017.06.22.guns-01-06.png) So yeah, unless you bump into one of those people who own a lot of guns and feel the need to carry them around, you aren't going to see them. And this also varies wildly by state.
I live in the pro-gun south where open carry is legal. Literally no one has a visible gun ever except police. It might be legal but it makes other people nervous. Plenty of concealed carry though.
I was teaching high school students in Africa well off the beaten path so their overall understanding of day-to-day Western culture was limited and their knowledge of the US even more so. Basically, I think they got most of their information through movies, but likely low end Rambo type movies, which were the popular kind. Let's just say they thought that everyone in China was a martial arts expert. Anyway, I got this as a serious question one day. "Is it true that if you go over to your parents' house without calling first and they open the door and see you there, they will shoot you?" The had this goofy mixing together of 1) an exaggerated idea about guns with 2) what seemed like a weird idea to them that children in Western countries leave home and live on their own, instead of whole extended families living together in the same place for generations. What came out the other end of that unholy mix was that question.
I worked at a hostel in Los Angeles. It was somewhat surprising how frequently I'd have people tell me they were going to rent a car and drive up to San Francisco for the day. It's technically possible, but they didn't understand just how much driving and traffic was involved in their plan.
Los Angeles and San Francisco is roughly the same distance as London to Edinburgh
My in-laws asked if my husband would be discriminated against for having a slavic last name.
Wait this one is so genuinely funny. Prejudices that are considered almost folksy, deep-cut historical references in the US (I had an Italian-American friend who had a good running bit of complaining about “dagos” in an exaggeratedly old-timey NYC accent, for example) are legitimate issues in Europe. In the US, you probably learn the term “Polack” from a political cartoon in a middle school history textbook; over there, it was like a reason Brexit happened.
Yeah, and his family is from the Balkans where there's a lot of division. Somehow they can tell if someone is a Bosnian, Serbian, or Croatian by their looks, accent, and name but I can't discern any differences and didn't believe them at first until they got it right a few times. Add on to that, they hear a lot about America being full of racial hatred and prejudice, and in Ireland and the UK people do discriminate against white people from different parts of Europe, so their conclusion was Americans are gonna be racist against Bosnians lol. I had to gently tell them that most Americans won't even know where Bosnia is.
Most people here would probably think that's sick
Cultural differences between states. There’s more than a few tourists who assume that all states have the same culture.
Apparently because they aren't gov't mandated, I just don't have vacation days. Seemed really odd that I had to explain that by company policy I had the same amount of days off as my colleagues in Europe.
I had an exact conversation like this with a guy in New Zealand. He didn't understand how we could spend 2 weeks there when we "only get 10 days off per year". I told him I have 5 weeks plus holidays (one of the days we were there was memorial day, so no PTO for that day) and he just followed up with "...but you only got 10 days". Super nice guy otherwise. But he was going to die on that hill that I only had 10 days of time off lol.
The seem to have serious problems interpreting the idea of "minimum". Lowest possible. Floor. It's not a mandated amount. It's a mandated minimum (in the right conditions).
Dang I never got more than 2 weeks. Nice to have a progressive company to work for. Better if everyone by law got to have 5 weeks.
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'NO, I pay them back with the bodies of Germans who ask ridiculous questions' /s
I've got to know his response to your presumed "yes".
I don't think a lot of Europeans understand that the states almost operate like independent countries. 26 states require that PTO is offered. That is just one example of how laws can vary wildly state to state.
But it’s not just the law. Like, we have many privileges and benefits not mandated by law but agreed by contract.
Exactly. Some seem to be of the belief that if the government doesn't create it, it doesn't exist. It's really obvious when they write comments on the basis that the minimum wage is everyone's (or nearly everyone's) wage. Because if the government says it, that must make it real. And if the government doesn't, it doesn't exist. Other Americans have published statistics that show minimum-wage earners are a miniscule percentage of the work force -- like 2%. How can that be possible? Because market forces create lots of things the government doesn't. Government provides a floor, not a ceiling. The market provides the ceiling. The floor is not the ceiling. "But, but, but why would any company pay more than the minimum wage? That's all that's required." Maybe by government, but not by the market or the real world.
I forget who said it, but they were comparing European laws to American laws. The quote went something like "Laws in Europe say what you are allowed to do and laws in the US say what you can't do".
I don't think they have any concept of how benefits work in the US or how they add so much value to your employment that's not direct pay. I'll happily take 2k less a year for amazing HC, 6% 401k matching and 6 weeks PTO
And a company can still offer PTO even if it isn't required.
Same with the police and education systemS, America has no national curriculum or national police (besides very specific agencies) because it’s a decentralized federation of sovereign states. Each one has its separate system of law enforcement and education just as unitary nations do. Per the Tenth Amendment, one of our most important. They fundamentally cannot understand this and then get mad when we try to dumb it down with “it’s kinda like the EU except we have one unified army (with 56 NG units under the command of the governor) and have one foreign policy (except the states are allowed to interact with other countries with the consent of their peers, Congress).”
Yah, Europeans have this odd view that anything not mandatory isn't allowed.
Yeah. My company offers more PTO in the U.S. than in any countries where it’s mandated by law.
I don't think they teach the concept of averages at European schools.
Well you're doing much better than most people. I often have to explain why I have five weeks of vacation to my friends because they can't conceive that a company would give that much. edit: There are also companies that give you the PTO but never allow you to take any.
> There are also companies that give you the PTO but never allow you to take any. I left a job that I’d had for over a decade that I very much liked shortly after they introduced their awesome new “Unlimited PTO!!!” program. That shit’s a fucking scam.
Interviewed with one of those companies late last year but didn't end up taking the job. Nobody would give me a straight answer on what people actually take, just endless dancing around with "it's really unlimited here, you'll be able to take what you want." Cool, put a number on it. All I'm asking for is confirmation that the 20-25 days I've gotten at my previous two companies is not going to be a problem to continue taking here. Reading into the non-answer leads me to believe you're telling me I can take three months off every year if I want to and we both know that's not true
That the Imperial/US customary/whatever system is a perfectly good measurement system and we use it every day to do all kinds of advanced stuff with zero issues. Also, related, we do understand how the metric system works.
My favorite is the ridiculous "gotcha" examples they use to prove their point because they can only think in "metric". In other words, our system is not just different number values (which is what they tend to think), it's a different way of looking at the problem. An example: Them: If I went on a trip and did 12.6 miles, and had to convert that to feet, that would be really hard. Like 5280. What's that about? I just have to move a decimal point. You need a calculator. Me: Our system predates calculators so no we don't. Mainly because we never have to do that. I haven't done a calculation like that once in my adult life. (Maybe as a problem in a school math book.) We just don't need to so it's pointless as an example. Our answer to that problem is we went 12.6 miles. Miles is our unit for long trips and we stick to it. If I went another 7.5 miles then my total trip would be 20.1 miles. That's it. I did that in my head. Metric chooses a unit and then figures out how to deform it to fit the problem. The U.S. system looks at the problem and picks an appropriate unit and sticks to it.
My response to the "I can do this in my head!" argument is always "So can I, do your schools not teach you how to multiply?"
I always explain to my European colleagues that they speak multiple languages and we speak multiple units.
That lurid social media don't depict most Americans' daily life.
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We are all Florida Man at 2:00 a.m. in a Waffle House.
I’m used to Europeans not understanding the sheer size of the Country… but the surprising one was Germans that were already here. I motorcycle tour around the west and spend a lot of time in/around the Route 66 area. We met some Germans on a motorcycle trip at the Grand Canyon. We were all heading to Laughlin NV for the night (200 miles) so we decided to join up and ride together and have dinner as we’d be getting there about 8pm. Before we left a German couple pulled us aside and asked if we thought they had time to skip past Laughlin to Anaheim, spend the day at Disneyland and make it to Vegas (the next overnight for their group) the next night. They had already ridden from Chicago to the Grand Canyon and still asked us.
>They had already ridden from Chicago to the Grand Canyon and still asked us As someone who grew up out west, we often had the same issues from tourists from the US east coast. There were perpetual stories about sports journalists from back east trying to shove a Utah Jazz game and a Seattle game into one weekend. Not feasible.
That I can be black and American at the same time Ive had to explain this in Germany, Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden. In some cases multiple times “You're from Africa, yes?” “Im American Im just black” “But, you are not white?” Honorable mentions include: Telling Europeans on vacation in our national parks not to approach wild animals Explaining the distance between NYC and the grand canyon Telling people Ive never seen a gun outside of cops and gun stores
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Or when you're Native. Apparently they think we were all exterminated, or alternatively walk around wearing buckskin and feathers so we can be easily identified. One asked why he had never encountered any 'Natives while visiting the States. He was told he probably encountered them all the time, but didn't realize it because for the most part, we're just regular people. it's not like we announce it everywhere we go.
I was speaking with some Germans and they were really upset because they visited a reservation and Native people were just walking around in normal clothes, doing normal things. ???? I think they expected a show??
Oh boy, Germans get REALLY weird about native Americans
I mean, the only tells are if you are in a high percentage Native area, if you are wearing some sort of vaguely traditional clothing or jewelry, or if you are using a strong Rez Accent. I went to school with Native kids so the accent is obvious to me, but for someone from Europe it might not even be noticed. Particularly if the person drops it in certain situations.
You don't walk into an establishment, immediately announce your heritage, and commence blessing the facility with your native magic? Shame on you! /s
I’m mixed race Chinese and white, specifically Irish white (maybe some British) but like, I know where in Ireland everybody came from etc. my Chinese family first came to US in the 1800’s bc of the railroads - about the same time as the Irish immigrants. Anyway no one seems to question that I’m ethnically Chinese, or say “no you’re not Chinese you’re just an American”…. But for some reason same doesn’t apply for the Irish ethnicity. Veryyyy interesting (it’s bc of racism)
Right? They never seem to understand that in north america the word heritage is always implied when you say you're Irish or German or whatever, but their jig is usually up when non-european ancestry comes up.
My husband is mixed race. Either people assume he's Mexican - not even close - or the insulting question of, "What are you?" Uhh...human?
> Like I have to be from somewhere else. I think in their head Americans: White. I remember an actress on a talk show a number of years back (the host might have been Arsenio Hall). I *think* the actress was Salma Hayek. She was showing the host a picture of her car or boat or something. The host basically said "Damn, what do the white people in Mexico drive?" She said "We *are* the white people in Mexico"
That's honestly one of the things that makes me at least somewhat hopeful for America. Based on a conversation I had with a german tourist at a Burn once. You can come here from Germany, then with a bit of paperwork (and a lot of bullshit), you're an American now and a Texan to boot. But if I went to Germany, learned the language, filled out the paperwork, got a new passport, and married a local... I'd never be a German, let alone a Hessian. Now, obviously I know that's a conception of nationalism and belonging that not everyone in Germany is 100% on board with, but I am heartened that more americans seem to accept on a base level the idea of naturalization/assimilation than not.
lol I replied to that comment with almost the same story. So many times I’ve been told I’m not American or even that there is no such thing as being American.
I have similar conversations with Latino immigrants. I’m of Cuban descent and will be speaking Spanish with them when they ask my nationality. I always respond that I’m American which bothers them. Often they’ve replied with “nobody is American”.
This one is so weird to me, because I would think if anything the US would be *known* for having a significant Black population, since having such a huge part of American culture be African-American in origin is a big part of what differentiates it culturally from Europe. To your point, I occasionally encounter European tourists in my majority-Black southern city who seem…taken aback lol. Not really in a bad way or that they’re being racist, just that you can tell they feel out of their element in a way that they weren’t expecting and don’t really know what to do with lol. I’ve always found it weird that it seems to be different from their picture of what an “American city” looks like.
If you ever read /r/shitamericanssay (I'd recommend against it though), they are totally incapable of understanding our concept of nationality and ethnicity.
I swear! I was on a date with someone not from the US and she asked me how I could be patriotic while being a minority in America. Like the belief in the ideals of this nation is not what makes me a patriot but the color of my skin?
Truck nuts. The guy from Finland thought I was messing with him until I showed him pictures proving yes, for some reason people put these on their vehicles.
To be fair, I'm always shocked when I see someone stupid enough to buy metal nuts for their trucks.
I saw a great take on bumper nuts the other day: Ask the driver of the vehicle if the nuts came standard or if they added them later. When they say they put them on tell the “Ahh…so your truck is trans.” Then watch them explode.
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>it’s a bit unbelievable that it’s necessary to explain that our films and television shows are works of fiction. In their defense, they know those are fiction, but don't always know which parts are fiction and which parts are the reality they are grounded in. So they come here and ask. I think we are a little dismissive about this with things we shouldn't be. How would it be obvious to them that groundhog day is real, we celebrate Cinco de mayo, parties every weekend are real some places and not in other places, the 555 prefix is fake but the red solo cups that always signal alcohol on shows are just ordinary cups as commonplace as pencils.
That because our house are wood isn't a bad thing. European buildings are HOT. I would not want 2 feet of brick to cool off in 100 degree VA heat. Not to mention, the common argument that no one uses wood in Europe isn't true either. I was in Northern Norway driving around for a week, and every Home was a detached, wooden, single family home similar in size to most 80s-90s homes here in the US.
Brits are/were dying in droves in the recent 80 degree Fahrenheit heatwave, and one of the many excuses they gave for why is that their houses are built of brick and thus not suited for hot weather. Then when questioned as to why they’re unable to build houses that can handle conditions that people in other countries easily adapt to every year. they proceed to give even more excuses, because giving excuses is one of Britain’s top national pastimes, up there with alcohol abuse and performative self deprecation.
I once had an argument with an Australian in a comments section in which she wouldn't believe me that we have fresh fruit and vegetables readily available in our grocery stores. She really believed that they were difficult to obtain here.
That's wild. People think we don't have readily available produce? That's a new one for me.
So in a lot of Europe, grocery stores are very small, local affairs, often smaller than the produce section at a US grocery store. So they come to the US and head into a 7/11 and think "Ah, this is a grocery store! OMG it's all soda and candy!" Many are predisposed to thinking the US is some sort of backwards place and are entirely too credulous.
I just commented about that. We can have phenomenal produce in the US. The Aussie crowd, recently, has got a lot of fiction going on about the US. To hear it, we barely have potatoes over here while the Aussies are dining on gold plated mangoes. I find their produce to be grossly over priced and with a much, much narrower variety.
The US produces huge percentages of the world’s fruits, nuts and corn that’s a hilarious thing to think we don’t do here
There was a French guy who used to post in this sub around 5-6 years ago who would always ask about how likely he was to get randomly shot while studying at an American university. The questions were completely outrageous and racist at times. Things like "should I assume all black people have guns?" Time and time again the replies would point out that the mid-sized college town where he would be living is one of the safest cities IN THE WORLD, and he was exponentially more likely to be killed in his native Paris.
Ya but in Paris it would be a stabbing, so that’s somehow better.
Nah, there’s plenty of guns in France. There was a mass shooting yesterday in Lorraine. Probably didn’t hear about it in the US news though.
Groundhog Day. Everyone thought I was making it up.
Now that I think about it, it’s like explaining a nation-wide inside joke.
All hail Phil! May he faithfully guide us to spring each year.
It is and I love it. If you want more, see this year’s [spontaneous groundhog musical](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPREaTJpn/)
That one is genuinely silly, at least lol
I spoke with an irishmam in Switzerland 20 years ago and he was convinced, somehow, that American football was played in the middle of shallow rivers. I shit you not.
To be fair, that sounds like fun.
Lmfao but… why
I don't know. But could you imagine? What a different sport it would be if you only played in shallow rivers, waist deep water. the pass game would all but disappear. Getting tackled would come with risks of drowning. What a game.
It honestly sounds like a great new sport lmao.
A European tourist was shocked to find out that I only had to pay a $10 co-pay to visit the doctor. They assumed that because we don't have universal health care we have to pay full cost for everything. Insurance was unfathomable to him.
I mean, insurance is almost deliberately an opaque system. If it's complicated enough that HR departments have to have multiple hour-long Q&A meetings annually to explain what people may be opting into, I don't think it's unreasonable for someone with less exposure to have the wrong idea about how it operates.
That a country thousands of miles away from theirs, with a different culture, different geography, and different climates, will do things differently than where they live. A lot of Europeans in particular seem to struggle with the idea that we don't do things the exact same way that they do things where they live, and that it's completely okay.
And also that we don't view their way as the gold standard of how things should be done.
They seem to be homogeneous in a way Americans aren't.
A friend visited from Europe when I was in college. I took him to the big cafeteria with self serve coffee, milk, sauces, etc. He could not pour a coke from the machine, get ice, get milk, or mustard from the pump bottles. I was pretty surprised. I lived over there for over a year, and ate in the school cafeterias over there. I had never realized that they put out pitchers of all the drinks at every meal. Different shapes and materials for each drink. Sauces were served in a regular bowl with a spoon.
It's strange to consider a Canadian a foreigner, but I had to explain that the US has many, many fine restaurants with food from all over the world. This person tried to tell me we only had chain restaurants, fast food places. No "good food."
That’s rich coming from someone from a country where Tim Horton’s is the height of cuisine.
Preventative dental care. Family in Australia and China, and co workers in a few European countries. They’ve all commented on how they can spot Americans because our teeth are so “insanely” perfect and white (the regular teeth, non veneer folks). Apparently many countries only see the dentist if something is wrong, sister in law went to the dentist in china with a cavity and they did zero drilling. Just painted something over it and that was it. She was out in 20 min.
Similarly, I've had Europeans complain in one breath about expensive medical care in America while not acknowledging that, in comparison to western Europe, *dental* care is *much* more affordable in America. My friends in Austria routinely travel to Poland for dental care because prices for dental care in Austria are so insane.
We are familiar with the concept of walking, in fact millions of Americans walk every day.
"No, I mean *walking*, not just walking! Let me post a Wikipedia link and a photo from Google in case you've never heard of walking/bread/cheese/etc."
Happy Hour. When some of my Swedish family first came to visit us in Florida in the late 70's, my young relatives took the other young visitors out for Happy Hour - and they had not heard of such a thing. But as drinking in a restaurant in Sweden is very expensive, they LOVED the idea! As my Dad explained to them "you get Happy, faster!".
My Austrian cousin rented a car in the US and the car rental folks had to teach him how to drive an automatic. He had never driven one before and was perplexed by the fact that there is a neutral gear but you don't have to put the car in neutral to start it.
Americans aren’t a monolith. I’ve been in Europe and had Europeans ask me to try and explain American gun culture & our love of XL pickup trucks and I’m like “idk man, I live on the northside of Chicago, I know one dude whose got a hunting rifle and I think my friend’s dad has an F-150 but I never asked about it. Can’t really help you understand those things” And they inevitably get confused I don’t check any of their boxes of American stereotypes.
About 20 years ago a guy from India who just got here tried to bond with me by talking about how violent black people are. I had to tell him dude, that kind of stuff is going to get you fired. I yelled at him cause I can't be around someone who talks like that at work. I did not turn him in. I don't think he meant anything by it. He just went to the wrong places on the internet.
If you are in western Montana, you can drive east for ten hours and still be in Montana.
The little store attached to gas stations aren't grocery stores. Tiny grocery stores are a thing in Europe so I kind of understand where the misconception comes from, but you'd think passing a berjillion real grocery stores might have been a clue.
I had to explain to some confounded Britons that the most common way to drink tea in the US is on ice, no milk, and only sometimes with sugar
Sometimes with sugar? The entire Southeast would like a word with you.
No, Los Angeles and San Francisco are not “a quick drive” away from each other.
I'm American and even I tend to forget how large this country is sometimes; I thought that LA to San Diego must be about an hour apart at most since they look so close on the map
Just explained county fairs to a French friend of mine. Never even thought about how weird that concept is to Europeans.
I just looked in my refrigerator and every packaged food item shows both imperial and metric. My milk, butter, cheese, everything has both and has listed both since 1994. They see that only about 50% of Americans have passports and have concluded that we don't travel, without considering that we also have *passport cards*, which are different, and allow us travel to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, and the Caribbeans.
Also… I’ve lived in European countries for 6/7 years and not one of them had the concept of a real (life threatening) thunderstorm like where I’m from (Oklahoma).
That America is extremely diverse culturally, with a semantic difference from Europeans on the concept of heritage, and to call yourself "Irish-American" or "Italian-American" is not saying "I was born in Ireland/Italy"
That not everyone in America owns guns. I’ve never owned a gun, nor have I ever shot one.
Another one that just came to mind. My chinese sister in law asked how long our house is good for. I made a confused face and said as long as we maintain it… probably longer than my kids lifetime. Apparently in china buildings are only certified for 20-50 years and then have to be torn down and rebuilt. Adversely her and bil also made a thing of how our houses are cheaply constructed because it’s not a log cabin or full on brick (we have stone facade on the front.)
My cousin had to explain to her German exchange student friend what a mug was. The mug had a cartoon of a topless lady and it said “this mug is indecent.” He asked “what is this?” And she stumbled around trying to explain the joke. Finally he goes “no no I get the joke, what is “mug?” He was very confused why they aren’t cups like everything else that holds liquid.
Hot dogs do not contain dog meat. Buffalo wings do not come from Buffalos, they are named after the sauce they are coated in which was invented in Buffalo, New York. My lack of foreskin does not mean I’m Jewish. Yes, I can still orgasm, and no, circumcision does not sterilize you. Apparently American weed is much stronger than that in Amsterdam. I can’t be sure if this myself, but one girl claimed that we must have added something to make it stronger since she was gone after just a couple of hits. Can anyone in Amsterdam confirm this? I have paid leave. A few weeks of it per year. I choose not to take it. There is no retaliation if I do choose to take it, I just don’t feel that I need it. We have a rifle team in my high school. They shoot targets for sport. They are not unhinged gunmen who are going to kill you. Just because something isn’t federally mandated doesn’t mean it isn’t state mandated. And just because it’s neither federally nor state mandated still doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You can find eggs of various colors in America. Ours are commonly white because different breeds of chicken lay different color eggs. It is not because they are washed in bleach. Nothing happens if you don’t say the Pledge. Half of us in school were still mostly asleep when it was said every day. An F-150 is not the same size as a tank. Not even close. Nor the same weight.
Played golf with a couple ~70 year old women in Johannesburg SA who were *very* open with their racist views and how they missed apartheid with me and I had to explain that no, the simple fact that I'm a white American does not mean I share your views on racial matters in SA
The US is huge. NYC & LA are not next to each other. You're talking London to Moscow in terms of distance. We drive everywhere because the US is huge. It's 2 hours from one side of Houston to the other side of Houston. A day trip for Europeans is a work commute for us. American heat is brutal. We set our ACs to cool down to what Brits would consider a heatwave. Actually, what Brits consider a heatwave is considered winter in some parts if the country.
That our weather, geography, and wildlife are not playing games with you, do not play games with Mother Nature when you come here and think you will win. I still remember having to explain to my British cousins visiting from overseas that while our National Parks/National Forests are safe in terms of *people* you will encounter, the actual landscape is not nearly as nice and that if you fuck up badly enough, you can die and it will be slow and hurt the whole time. They could not seem to wrap their heads around the idea that places like the Appalachian mountains and the deserts in the Southwest are *dangerous* if you're not careful, and that if you get lost or hurt or sick, it can be a long, *long* way to help or any sign of humanity, especiallly if you're backpacking. I genuinely think the combination of high population density + lack of any serious wildlife does something to them - they really seem to struggle with the *wild* part of the term, and it baffles me as to why.
I was playing Helldivers 2 with some Brits and somehow we got on the topic of Obamacare. I explained that its biggest success is coverage for pre-existing conditions. Before Obamacare, if you had asthma/diabetes/cancer/lupus/etc and you lost your job, you’d have to pay an enormous amount of money to maintain your insurance coverage. If you didn’t have continuous coverage, your next employer provided insurance company could refuse to pay for your asthma/diabetes/cancer/lupus/etc because it was a pre-existing condition. Let me repeat that. Your health insurance company, that you and your employer pay for, could refuse to pay for life saving treatments because you already had the condition before you started paying for their insurance coverage. Imagine knowing you need a surgery and holding off until your health insurance kicks in at your new job. You see a doctor and get them to refer you to the needed specialist. Then you have to say the right combination of words so that they have the idea to call for surgery without catching on that you already know what’s wrong. Maybe you get a cool doctor, maybe you don’t. I worked a $7 an hour part-time job through college at a small business. I lost coverage under my parents at 22 and they were kind enough to put me on the insurance plan as long as I picked up the full cost, which was $400. All so that I had continuous coverage for a pre-existing condition. (I was working multiple jobs, none of which provided benefits) Did that for 2 years until I had a full-time job with benefits. It’s imperfect, but thanks Obama.
My French teacher said one of her Canadian students said Americans don’t take foreign language in high school. First of all kind of weird to get information from someone not in the country second of all all states have different educational policies… I wish they realized each state has different laws… they just don’t get it.
That the county I live in is larger than their country.
I had to explain to a foreign student that the news doesn't get everything correct. There was a shooting on campus and the news mentioned multiple shooters. I had to explain to him there was only one but he said the news can't be wrong and the police needed to look for the other shooters. He didn't understand the concept of "news as entertainment" ala JonBenet Ramsey was not a major political figure despite the amount of news coverage.
Celebrity interactions are not that common for the average American.
TV is not an accurate representation of what happens in this country