I'm a South African and our American neighbour has all sorts of signs about American politics on their lawn. I always think it strange to advertise your political beliefs to people who can't even vote in American politics
When we had just started dating, I took my Japanese wife to a new italian restaurant near my place. She ordered pasta with a red wine sauce. What she got was a plate of spaghetti with pink cream sauce all over it. When we asked why it was pink, the waiter admitted they don’t use wine. Just food coloring. Gross.
When I was in the US the house had a garbage disposal and of course it got clogged (bunch of foreigners living together with no idea how to use/maintain one) and needed cleaning. Landlord wouldn’t do any maintenance and I had no tools and I’ve never cleaned one before.
The house I live in now has a garbage disposal. And we're not on a sewer system. We never use it but I cringe thinking about the shit the previous owners have sent to the septic tank.
I remember my first trip to Edinburgh. My dad, brother, and I were there for the first time. We were staying around the botanical garden and had dinner at this little pub.
Root beer and ranch dressing. I brought some to Germany and had my friends try it and they said the root beer tasted like medicine. They politely tasted the dressing with aa celery and said "hmmm, interesting" but the look on their faces was that it was terrible ha.
Had a sibling marry a Swede and his parents came to visit. We wanted to show them a bit of our cultural foods so we served them root beer floats. They said it tasted like toothpaste. We were kind of shocked, back then there wasn’t really international communication like there is now.
Germans are great like that. My German friend met me in New York one evening. I bought us some bubble teas. He sipped his politely, then we stopped by his hotel for a moment and his bubble tea disappeared. A few minutes later he said, "I have to confess... I did not like the bubbles."
I lived in Australia for a while and asked for ranch dressing at a restaurant. Everyone looked at me like I had asked for toenail clippings. Had my mom send me some, similar reactions. They begged me to get Twinkies because they saw them on TV so she sent me those too, and they were equally unimpressed.
Yea I tried root beer from one of those American sections in a shop once and it tastes like my mouthwash, probably cause of an overlapping ingrediënt that's used in European mouthwash and American rootbeer that isn't used in American mouthwash. It's interesting how your brain makes that association and thus you don't like the taste,whereas if the medicine taste association isn't there for you it tastes yummy.
Icelander/Norwegian here. Root beer and ranch dressing are both gifts from the gods and this is a hill I'm willing to die on. Same with chocolate and peanut butter together. I don't care what my countrymen say. Maybe I was American in a past life. If that means I get to enjoy root beer, ranch, and Reeese cups in this life, I'm more than cool with that.
My sister is visiting the US from Europe and sent me a picture of a small coke and asked "why is it so big?" I could see old glory flapping in the wind, boys.
This is a weird thing I noticed too. I don't go to fast food places much, but the last time I did I ordered a large drink and get this enormous cup. I asked what the small looked like and that was literally the cup which was considered a large back in the 1980's. I'm not sure when it changed, but it was a dramatic difference.
Spent a month in Brazil and I don't think I encountered fountain soda anywhere. No giant glasses of soda on every table at a restaurant. Individual cans were commonly available, though, and they charged for each.
24 hour stores. I was in Chicago working with a colleague from Switzerland who suddenly realized around midnight that he needed a network cable to configure a mobile router for a job the next morning.
It's interesting how after the pandemic the 24 hour model for convenience and hospitality industries has been diminishing and people are extremely inconvenienced by this. I deal with mostly tourists and a great deal are bewildered by the fact that they can't get something like, say a phone charger or toothpast, at 2 am because the local Walgreens and CVS are simply closed at that hour now. And this is coming from a 24 hour kind of town.
It's a different pipeline isn't it? US college teams contain players that will go professional, don't they? Whereas if you're good enough to go pro at football, you'll already be playing pro at 18.
Chicken and waffles is absolutely amazing, and the story of how it came to be is rather interesting! If you haven’t tried it, you definitely should. It really is a unique but delicious combination.
As a non-American, I saw this on the menu at a local restaurant a few months ago, so I ordered it because I'd never had it before. It was awesome, can't wait to go back and get it again.
What's even more confusing is some regulated manufacturing industries in the US use DD-MM-YYYY and I had a job with one for awhile. If both nums are below 12 I'm lost.
Yeah, as someone who moved to Poland reading and writing dates has made me dyslexic. I never know if a date refers to the 3rd of May or the 5th of March. Don't get me started on "," vs "." for decimal symbols vs. hundreds separator.
I still quote the joke from Archer years ago where Lana mentions that only the U.S., Burma, and Liberia use the imperial units and Archer says back "which is weird, because you never think of the other two as having their shit together.."
I was just watching GBBO and one of the contestants was making something with peanut butter and strawberries. Paul Hollywood was shocked and said something like "Interesting, peanut butter and fruit don't really go together, do they?"
xJust finished my masters in handicap discrimination and holy shit for once the US completely flat out beats Scandinavia on a human rights issue. We are so far behind the US and our legislation is pretty much trying to be what the US did decades ago
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (commonly known as ADA) was pretty revolutionary in how it drastically increased accessibility. It’s really something the USA does very well at. Many developed countries are not accessible at all if you have any degree of mobile impairment for instance.
Depends what you count as "not so much", I watched my local team in England regularly for years, and we have a national championships (albeit low crowds) and have watched a few NFL games in London too and quite a few friends watch the superbowl and some mid season games.
I think the confusion with ice outside the US is you are fine having it, you generally just have to ask. It can be seen as a bit of a rip-off if you ordered a soda and got a glass full of ice with little drink in it so it isn't necessarily an automatic.
Bankruptcy laws. It's a major reason why America has historically had some of the highest rates of small business growth and entrepreneurship. America is one of the most forgiving countries when it comes to personal and corporate bankruptcy (student loans notwithstanding).
A lot of people don't remember it and assume this is because of the disability act or something, but in the 1970's there was actually a grassroots political movement to ban pay toilets were becoming really common in the U.S. The group called itself aptly CEPTIA, and they were probably one of the most successful grassroots movements ever in this country. It's an interesting thing to read up on if you're bored sometime.
God damn delis. At least out of all the places I’ve traveled to the US by far has the best delis. I don’t know if I can live somewhere without a great Jewish or Italian deli.
Delis became a thing in Ireland in the 90s and would definitely differentiate the average corner shop/bodega-type store here from a similar one in the UK. We like our sandwiches made fresh, so every little shop had one.
American Texan here who has worked in an authentic vietnamese restraunt and Asian meat market. I LOVE authentic Asian food. So obviously I'm gonna look down on Panda Express and not try it at ALL....
I’m Irish and on St. Patrick’s Day this year at the Dublin parade (Dublin, Ireland - not Dublin, Ohio), a marching band from the University of Dayton, Ohio had traveled here to participate in our big parade and they absolutely stole the show. They utterly slayed it and everyone was talking about them for days.
Yeah, I always think about this when I am coming in one of the nice sous-terrain or straight basement pubs with a narrow flight of steep stairs. If I couldn't walk, my friends would have to carry me inside.
Yeah when my family went to England to visit my sister while she was studying abroad, my 83-year-old paternal grandmother quickly found out that the entire country is apparently the land of stairs. We managed, but very, very slowly.
Big religious families. In the UK, if you have > 3 kids, a lot of people will judge you. If you are > 3 kids AND you are religious, people will assume you are a part of a weird cult.
I live in Utah and I went to school with a kid who had 12 siblings. He had a nephew in our same age group because his brother was 30 years older than him.
I had a weird moment when I was on a work abroad program in the US - I was 18, a lot of my US coworkers were the same age or a bit younger, and a lot of them were planning missionary trips after high school. It was a very standard “straight to college or taking a missionary trip first?” discussion happening around me. I don’t know if I was just living/working in an area with a high density of missionary-based practice but I’d just never encountered it before. They were equally bewildered that I literally did not know a single person in my whole life who’d done this and it was not a consideration for people my age in my country, but a gap year for backpacking was.
My mother [British] thought casseroles were weird and disgusting. Once her British friend came to visit, and asked that we not go to a restaurant "where all the food is mixed together in an awful jumble."
The way we manage our wildlife as a resource and take the funds used for hunting to help support fish and game. In America our fish and game is managed by several agencies and is owned by the American people. Anyone can hunt a deer or catch a fish and due to the way it's managed we ensure we have a healthy population. All of this is funded by hunting and fishing licences and is the reason multiple species have been brought back from the brink of extinction and reintroduced into its natural range.
This. Also, it’s a really good way for poorer families to get food for a very long time. A deer goes a LONG way. And a deer hasn’t been kept in a pen it’s whole life!
According to Brazilians at the Rio Olympics they can tell who's American because: We had beach towels, drank a whole bunch, and kept our areas trash free.
I'd like to say optimism, even if it's blind sometimes. The CAN DO attitude is extremely strong. I would also put belligerence up there for better or worse. That "Get the fuck out of my face, I'm not paying for / doing that" attitude. Whether you actually can or not, the American culture makes you feel like you can really do anything. Again, it's a double edged sword but you'll seldom find an American who's just going to lay down and take someone's shit or heed someone who says (to your aspirations) "You can't".
I resonate so much with this comment, as an American that has lived in Europe for over a decade. My idiotic optimism, once derided, was in fact my superpower as I maneouvered through the world. Having become so bogged down by the "das ist nicht möglich/ce n'pas pas possible/that's not possible" on repeat, I allowed that to erode away (Corona times and doing a PhD did not help). It now takes enormous energy to try, and the expectation is that it will not work out/I will fail, whereas before I had relentless energy and such a thought would never have entered my mind.
Having lived in the US for about a little while from Europe, I've said it like this: the best and worst thing about America is self reliance. If something breaks, Americans will try to fix it even if they have zero idea how it works. This leads to people generally being pretty handy, but also they often make things worse. My European reaction is not to fuck with it because I don't know what I'm doing, and call somebody who does.
This one is a hard one for me. I’m a child of Ukrainian immigrants. We grew up pessimistic. My fathers favorite saying was “only an idiot smiles all the time” Oh boy did I have a hard time fitting in with my American classmates.
A German exchange student in High School told me she thought Hershey chocolate tasted like vomit. Not figuratively, literally. Years later I found out why, but it's weird to me that my fellow Americans and I have grown used to eating something that tastes like puke. I'll eat Hershey chocolate, but it's very far from a favorite of mine or most other Americans under the age of 60.
As a big dead fan I’ve thought about how they were a uniquely American phenomenon. I think a lot of it has to do w the traveling circus that followed them from city to city. It’d be hard to load all the freaks on a plane, VW buses, LSD and take the experience to a whole different continent. And a lot of the American cities could prepare and be ready for the huge event weeks before they arrived. Imagine a small city in France or Spain being overwhelmed with 80,000 people traveling to your town and setting up a drug fueled orgy for a few days. I’m sure it could be overwhelming
Last time I was in America I noticed they had parking spaces for "smaller" cars. The smaller cars, in those spaces were still bigger than the family car I drive in the UK....which I consider to be pretty big. It is far and away the biggest car I've ever owned. But I live in London, so my goal has always been to have the smallest possible car that I can get away with. Makes parking easy.
we went to america on holiday once and all the car spaces were GINORMOUS. yet for some reason the first car we'd rented (we had to exchange it when it popped a tyre) was bigger than my mother's car, yet barely fit five people in it. it was purportedly a seven-seater, but i was squished in the back with zero leg space. my mothers car is quite a bit smaller, but is an incredibly comfortable 7 seater that you could shove tons of luggage into and still have enough room to stretch your legs.
Have a geographically placed country that is far from competing nation states and which would be hard to hold for an invading force making military conquest almost impossible.
The diversity in the United States is amazing. You want no snow at all and constant warm weather? Go to California. You love snow and want the air to hurt your face? Go to Alaska, or shit sometimes even Minnesota or Wisconsin. I heard it gets really cold in northern Montana too. North Dakota has nothing but cold weather and snow, depending on where you live of course. And then you have the Midwest/south. It’s the complete opposite. The land, the wether, the “culture” if you will, is even different. And then an armed population that is ready to fight.
Opinion signs outside their houses. Like "in this house we support...". I find it weird and unusual.
Many Americans (like me) also find those signs to be odd and off-putting.
I'm american and I agree
I'm a South African and our American neighbour has all sorts of signs about American politics on their lawn. I always think it strange to advertise your political beliefs to people who can't even vote in American politics
This house is a
Bumper stickers
Sometimes I get the impression people put their entire political philosophy in the space of a bumper sticker.
Back in the 90s, radio station bumper stickers were everywhere.
My sticker says "honk if you're a clumsy lover"
There’s 3 types of bumper-sticker Americans
Bumper stickers were how you forced your opinions on people prior to social media.
This used to be much more prevalent in the US but food coloring. When I moved from Japan to the US, I was surprised at how colorful their foods were.
When we had just started dating, I took my Japanese wife to a new italian restaurant near my place. She ordered pasta with a red wine sauce. What she got was a plate of spaghetti with pink cream sauce all over it. When we asked why it was pink, the waiter admitted they don’t use wine. Just food coloring. Gross.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_raspberry_flavor
Not natural but man the Blue Razzberry Blow Pops sold quick in middle school. Bought for $9 a box, sold 48 * $0.50.
Blue raspberries are real! They grow west of the Rockies in North America from Yukon, CA to Chihuahua, MX
Garbage Disposals
When I was in the US the house had a garbage disposal and of course it got clogged (bunch of foreigners living together with no idea how to use/maintain one) and needed cleaning. Landlord wouldn’t do any maintenance and I had no tools and I’ve never cleaned one before.
The house I live in now has a garbage disposal. And we're not on a sewer system. We never use it but I cringe thinking about the shit the previous owners have sent to the septic tank.
Fun fact: in Canada, they call them garburators.
Ranch dressing
When I was in Germany they had sour cream Doritos when to me tasted exactly like cool ranch. Which was just strange
I remember my first trip to Edinburgh. My dad, brother, and I were there for the first time. We were staying around the botanical garden and had dinner at this little pub.
Canadian here. Ranch is the best.
Root beer and ranch dressing. I brought some to Germany and had my friends try it and they said the root beer tasted like medicine. They politely tasted the dressing with aa celery and said "hmmm, interesting" but the look on their faces was that it was terrible ha.
Root beer and ranch dressing but, you know, not together.
Had a sibling marry a Swede and his parents came to visit. We wanted to show them a bit of our cultural foods so we served them root beer floats. They said it tasted like toothpaste. We were kind of shocked, back then there wasn’t really international communication like there is now.
Germans are great like that. My German friend met me in New York one evening. I bought us some bubble teas. He sipped his politely, then we stopped by his hotel for a moment and his bubble tea disappeared. A few minutes later he said, "I have to confess... I did not like the bubbles."
Dude Jagermeister tastes like medicine!!
I lived in Australia for a while and asked for ranch dressing at a restaurant. Everyone looked at me like I had asked for toenail clippings. Had my mom send me some, similar reactions. They begged me to get Twinkies because they saw them on TV so she sent me those too, and they were equally unimpressed.
Yea I tried root beer from one of those American sections in a shop once and it tastes like my mouthwash, probably cause of an overlapping ingrediënt that's used in European mouthwash and American rootbeer that isn't used in American mouthwash. It's interesting how your brain makes that association and thus you don't like the taste,whereas if the medicine taste association isn't there for you it tastes yummy.
Icelander/Norwegian here. Root beer and ranch dressing are both gifts from the gods and this is a hill I'm willing to die on. Same with chocolate and peanut butter together. I don't care what my countrymen say. Maybe I was American in a past life. If that means I get to enjoy root beer, ranch, and Reeese cups in this life, I'm more than cool with that.
Cheerleaders
Cheerleading is also popular in Japan- albeit due to American influence.
Argentina took the concept of cheerleaders and devolved them into straight up half-time show strippers.
ICE. Filled till the brim before you pour any drink.
Thought you were talking about the border patrol guys
I was surprised to find out in recent years that people outside the USA don't love super cold beverages in lots of ice.
My sister is visiting the US from Europe and sent me a picture of a small coke and asked "why is it so big?" I could see old glory flapping in the wind, boys.
This is a weird thing I noticed too. I don't go to fast food places much, but the last time I did I ordered a large drink and get this enormous cup. I asked what the small looked like and that was literally the cup which was considered a large back in the 1980's. I'm not sure when it changed, but it was a dramatic difference.
It’s part of American culture to err on providing excess vs running out.
Spent a month in Brazil and I don't think I encountered fountain soda anywhere. No giant glasses of soda on every table at a restaurant. Individual cans were commonly available, though, and they charged for each.
24 hour stores. I was in Chicago working with a colleague from Switzerland who suddenly realized around midnight that he needed a network cable to configure a mobile router for a job the next morning.
It's interesting how after the pandemic the 24 hour model for convenience and hospitality industries has been diminishing and people are extremely inconvenienced by this. I deal with mostly tourists and a great deal are bewildered by the fact that they can't get something like, say a phone charger or toothpast, at 2 am because the local Walgreens and CVS are simply closed at that hour now. And this is coming from a 24 hour kind of town.
Shops that are open 24/7 aren't unique to America at all though, just evidently not a thing in Switzerland
Root beer
I'm irish and have never lived in the US, but I've been there a few times on holiday and for business.
Honestly didn’t know this one was a thing until a coworker visited from the uk and said he had to “try root beer”.
I've heard it tastes like medicine to non-Americans, I can see that, but I enjoy a good craft root beer.
Fun fact, root beer will hide more booze than a British boarding school.
You can take root beer out of my cold dead Canadian hands you bastard. Best pop hands down
Just wait until all these Europeans discover the Root Beer Float.
Canadian here, I love Root Beer! But Canada Dry Ginger Ale all the way.
It's insidious
Big trucks
Canadians love these too. Especially in Alberta
College sports. Particularly football and basketball.
When I was taking Japanese, my teacher always told us how Japan is crazy on high school sports... So maybe US isn't alone on that one!
Yeah but they'll watch club soccer down to like the 4th tier
It's a different pipeline isn't it? US college teams contain players that will go professional, don't they? Whereas if you're good enough to go pro at football, you'll already be playing pro at 18.
Pff, I think you misspelled “high school” there, in Texas HS football is an obsession.
Biscuits and gravy
In the UK, both biscuits and gravy are popular, just not on the same plate.
Mmmmmm, yum. Gotta be sausage gravy or it ain't right.
Waffles with chicken
Super weird to not see it as chicken and waffles. And to be fair, chicken and waffles is semi regional to the American south.
Chicken and waffles is absolutely amazing, and the story of how it came to be is rather interesting! If you haven’t tried it, you definitely should. It really is a unique but delicious combination.
As a non-American, I saw this on the menu at a local restaurant a few months ago, so I ordered it because I'd never had it before. It was awesome, can't wait to go back and get it again.
MM-DD-YYYY Date format 😅
What's even more confusing is some regulated manufacturing industries in the US use DD-MM-YYYY and I had a job with one for awhile. If both nums are below 12 I'm lost.
American IT worker here. I prefer YYYY-MM-DD format for files and logs so you can sort them by name and they end up chronological.
Yeah, as someone who moved to Poland reading and writing dates has made me dyslexic. I never know if a date refers to the 3rd of May or the 5th of March. Don't get me started on "," vs "." for decimal symbols vs. hundreds separator.
Corn dogs?
very popular in korea actually. often covered in cinnamon sugar, mochi, cheese, etc
imperial units
They don’t like storm troopers in the UK?
I still quote the joke from Archer years ago where Lana mentions that only the U.S., Burma, and Liberia use the imperial units and Archer says back "which is weird, because you never think of the other two as having their shit together.."
Pseudo imperial units
“Metric?! Who uses metric?!”
Peanut butter and jelly
It doesn't help that outside the US "jelly" often means gelatin dessert like Jello. Some folks who hear "pb & jelly" are therefore duly horrified
I eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches several times a week and have for many years. I guess it's a link to my youth and I won't give it up.
I was just watching GBBO and one of the contestants was making something with peanut butter and strawberries. Paul Hollywood was shocked and said something like "Interesting, peanut butter and fruit don't really go together, do they?"
xJust finished my masters in handicap discrimination and holy shit for once the US completely flat out beats Scandinavia on a human rights issue. We are so far behind the US and our legislation is pretty much trying to be what the US did decades ago
What an interesting field in which to have a Master’s Degree
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (commonly known as ADA) was pretty revolutionary in how it drastically increased accessibility. It’s really something the USA does very well at. Many developed countries are not accessible at all if you have any degree of mobile impairment for instance.
It's because of George HW Bush. Say what you want about the guy (and rightfully) but the Americans with Disabilities Act was a great success
The ADA is the best thing to ever come out of Washington
American football
I guess midwestern emo didn’t take in Europe
Depends what you count as "not so much", I watched my local team in England regularly for years, and we have a national championships (albeit low crowds) and have watched a few NFL games in London too and quite a few friends watch the superbowl and some mid season games.
Flags. So many American flags everywhere.
Also clothes made from flags.
*Denmark entered the chat.
You’ve clearly never been to Turkey
Live in Canada - it’s honestly wild how many Canadian flags are used here these days.
Ice water
I think the confusion with ice outside the US is you are fine having it, you generally just have to ask. It can be seen as a bit of a rip-off if you ordered a soda and got a glass full of ice with little drink in it so it isn't necessarily an automatic.
Bankruptcy laws. It's a major reason why America has historically had some of the highest rates of small business growth and entrepreneurship. America is one of the most forgiving countries when it comes to personal and corporate bankruptcy (student loans notwithstanding).
A couple of genuine questions from a guy who is not very savvy in economics:
That explains a lot. So you can essentially start a business over there and if you go bankrupt over it the state will look after you so to speak?
Driving everywhere. Anywhere you go, you go in a car.
I grew up in rural Wyoming. We drove 2 hours to go to Costco and Target 2-3 times a month. Also zero public transportation in my hometown
Rural America, you are not walking anywhere. Not even to the mailbox…
This is a factor of mainly 2 things things imo.
Depends on where you live. I live in Chicago and I take public transport or I walk. A twenty-thirty minute walk is not bad to me.
Free soda refills at dine-in places
See also: free public restrooms
I just don't understand why it isn't pretty much universal. It's like $0.15~0.55c a glass! If that sometimes.
Bro who in Europe dislikes free soda lmao
Free refills is an awesome norm. Sad with my little 100 ml glass bottle of coke for 3 euro
Free public restrooms. I know they're gross but they are nice to have.
A lot of people don't remember it and assume this is because of the disability act or something, but in the 1970's there was actually a grassroots political movement to ban pay toilets were becoming really common in the U.S. The group called itself aptly CEPTIA, and they were probably one of the most successful grassroots movements ever in this country. It's an interesting thing to read up on if you're bored sometime.
Non-Americans that visit Texas really need to go out of their way to visit a Buc-ees. The bathrooms will change your life.
This is hardly something that only exists in the US.
God damn delis. At least out of all the places I’ve traveled to the US by far has the best delis. I don’t know if I can live somewhere without a great Jewish or Italian deli.
Delis became a thing in Ireland in the 90s and would definitely differentiate the average corner shop/bodega-type store here from a similar one in the UK. We like our sandwiches made fresh, so every little shop had one.
Finally a good answer. Delis are amazing.
Amen. Hey Europe, thanks for scaring your jews away. North America has benefitted immensely.
Americanized Chinese food. No one has us beat in that category.,
I'm Chinese and I crave orange chicken.
American Texan here who has worked in an authentic vietnamese restraunt and Asian meat market. I LOVE authentic Asian food. So obviously I'm gonna look down on Panda Express and not try it at ALL....
I believe it comes from Chinese migrant workers who had to make the most of the available ingredients to replicate their home cuisine, right?
Marching bands. If you’d played the flute in a marching band at my school you would have gotten pelters but in the US you can become a state hero.
I went to football games to watch the marching band's half time show lol. They won more titles than the football team. Love a good marching band.
Just watch the movie Drumline. It has a cheesy plot but there are a lot of accurate notions for Southern pride in band.
I’m Irish and on St. Patrick’s Day this year at the Dublin parade (Dublin, Ireland - not Dublin, Ohio), a marching band from the University of Dayton, Ohio had traveled here to participate in our big parade and they absolutely stole the show. They utterly slayed it and everyone was talking about them for days.
Handicap accessiblity. Old buildings/towns in Europe are nice, if both your legs work.
Yeah, I always think about this when I am coming in one of the nice sous-terrain or straight basement pubs with a narrow flight of steep stairs. If I couldn't walk, my friends would have to carry me inside.
Just had a customer come into my pub (uk) in a wheelchair, we were talking about travelling and he said America was the best place accessibility.
I visited South Korea and Japan a few years ago. Really stood out to me how much it would suck to be handicapped in those places.
the ADA is under-appreciated; great law
Largely due to the age of the buildings I’d think, no?
I'd say the UK is pretty good with this, I mean, by law they have to provide disabled access to most places.
Yeah when my family went to England to visit my sister while she was studying abroad, my 83-year-old paternal grandmother quickly found out that the entire country is apparently the land of stairs. We managed, but very, very slowly.
Big religious families. In the UK, if you have > 3 kids, a lot of people will judge you. If you are > 3 kids AND you are religious, people will assume you are a part of a weird cult.
I live in Utah and I went to school with a kid who had 12 siblings. He had a nephew in our same age group because his brother was 30 years older than him.
This is specific to a few particular religious groups; most notably some Mormons, some Catholics, and an Evangelical Protestant group called
I had a weird moment when I was on a work abroad program in the US - I was 18, a lot of my US coworkers were the same age or a bit younger, and a lot of them were planning missionary trips after high school. It was a very standard “straight to college or taking a missionary trip first?” discussion happening around me. I don’t know if I was just living/working in an area with a high density of missionary-based practice but I’d just never encountered it before. They were equally bewildered that I literally did not know a single person in my whole life who’d done this and it was not a consideration for people my age in my country, but a gap year for backpacking was.
There are a lot of really nice answers in here that make me feel good. Happy thanksgiving, fellow Americans!
My mother [British] thought casseroles were weird and disgusting. Once her British friend came to visit, and asked that we not go to a restaurant "where all the food is mixed together in an awful jumble."
I don't think Ive ever seen a restaurant that serves casseroles
I'm British, and I grew on chicken and sausage casseroles.
That's such an odd take considering we have a culture of stews and hot-pots over here and they aren't a million miles away from casseroles!
That's just your mother... Casseroles are widely eaten here in the UK.
Weird as casseroles and stews are a mainstay of British home cooking.
Shepherds Pie is… ?
The way we manage our wildlife as a resource and take the funds used for hunting to help support fish and game. In America our fish and game is managed by several agencies and is owned by the American people. Anyone can hunt a deer or catch a fish and due to the way it's managed we ensure we have a healthy population. All of this is funded by hunting and fishing licences and is the reason multiple species have been brought back from the brink of extinction and reintroduced into its natural range.
This. Also, it’s a really good way for poorer families to get food for a very long time. A deer goes a LONG way. And a deer hasn’t been kept in a pen it’s whole life!
According to Brazilians at the Rio Olympics they can tell who's American because: We had beach towels, drank a whole bunch, and kept our areas trash free.
A towel is about the most massively useful thing traveler can have!
It’s probably due to the socioeconomic class of Americans traveling abroad.
RANCH DIP..
Because Ranch is effectively unknown in Europe, Doritos packages "cooler ranch" as "cool American flavor"
Corn syrup
There’s actually a reason for this. We don’t like it but it’s valid. Sort of.
Commercials about pharmaceutical pills. "Ask your doctor about taking xyz... side affects can include (everything). Wild!
I remember watching an ad for an anti-depressant and one of the side effects was depression
The question was what do Americans like. Nobody likes these commercials.
Lawns...what a waste
Preferably made up of grass that is actively trying to die in the environment it is in.
I'd like to say optimism, even if it's blind sometimes. The CAN DO attitude is extremely strong. I would also put belligerence up there for better or worse. That "Get the fuck out of my face, I'm not paying for / doing that" attitude. Whether you actually can or not, the American culture makes you feel like you can really do anything. Again, it's a double edged sword but you'll seldom find an American who's just going to lay down and take someone's shit or heed someone who says (to your aspirations) "You can't".
I resonate so much with this comment, as an American that has lived in Europe for over a decade. My idiotic optimism, once derided, was in fact my superpower as I maneouvered through the world. Having become so bogged down by the "das ist nicht möglich/ce n'pas pas possible/that's not possible" on repeat, I allowed that to erode away (Corona times and doing a PhD did not help). It now takes enormous energy to try, and the expectation is that it will not work out/I will fail, whereas before I had relentless energy and such a thought would never have entered my mind.
Having lived in the US for about a little while from Europe, I've said it like this: the best and worst thing about America is self reliance. If something breaks, Americans will try to fix it even if they have zero idea how it works. This leads to people generally being pretty handy, but also they often make things worse. My European reaction is not to fuck with it because I don't know what I'm doing, and call somebody who does.
This one is a hard one for me. I’m a child of Ukrainian immigrants. We grew up pessimistic. My fathers favorite saying was “only an idiot smiles all the time” Oh boy did I have a hard time fitting in with my American classmates.
Guns, USA has 120 guns per 100 people. We got more guns than humans.
Most gun owners own atleast 2 maybe 3 guns so this really isn’t surprising at all
The switch for the bathroom is INSIDE the bathroom.
Having the light switch on the outside of the bathroom you're using just sounds like an open invite for fuckery
Is... That not normal? That's how every single bathroom I've been to in the Netherlands as well.
Quark : I want you to try something for me. Take a sip of this.
I'm so glad other people also think of this any time root beer is mentioned
Seeing a lot of hate towards root beer. I'm just here to defend it. Root beer is nectar of the gods! I'll die on this hill motherfuckers!
Right? Its delicious and i think the smell is absolutely divine.
I'm Mexican and I love root beer. Take my upvote.
We like to live in single family detached homes.
Automatic transmissions.
Guns, processed foods, big cars/trucks
I own a Volvo XC90, which many of my relatives in Sweden see as a gigantic vehicle.
Hershey’s
A German exchange student in High School told me she thought Hershey chocolate tasted like vomit. Not figuratively, literally. Years later I found out why, but it's weird to me that my fellow Americans and I have grown used to eating something that tastes like puke. I'll eat Hershey chocolate, but it's very far from a favorite of mine or most other Americans under the age of 60.
[удалено]
There are a few lonely Deadheads in the UK. I should know, I'm one.
As a big dead fan I’ve thought about how they were a uniquely American phenomenon. I think a lot of it has to do w the traveling circus that followed them from city to city. It’d be hard to load all the freaks on a plane, VW buses, LSD and take the experience to a whole different continent. And a lot of the American cities could prepare and be ready for the huge event weeks before they arrived. Imagine a small city in France or Spain being overwhelmed with 80,000 people traveling to your town and setting up a drug fueled orgy for a few days. I’m sure it could be overwhelming
Orange cheese; you can get it in some European countries but it's definitely a very minority interest these days
Crossovers and big SUVs. It would be so nice if we could get some of the smaller economical cars that other markets around the world get.
Last time I was in America I noticed they had parking spaces for "smaller" cars. The smaller cars, in those spaces were still bigger than the family car I drive in the UK....which I consider to be pretty big. It is far and away the biggest car I've ever owned. But I live in London, so my goal has always been to have the smallest possible car that I can get away with. Makes parking easy.
we went to america on holiday once and all the car spaces were GINORMOUS. yet for some reason the first car we'd rented (we had to exchange it when it popped a tyre) was bigger than my mother's car, yet barely fit five people in it. it was purportedly a seven-seater, but i was squished in the back with zero leg space. my mothers car is quite a bit smaller, but is an incredibly comfortable 7 seater that you could shove tons of luggage into and still have enough room to stretch your legs.
Have a geographically placed country that is far from competing nation states and which would be hard to hold for an invading force making military conquest almost impossible.
The diversity in the United States is amazing. You want no snow at all and constant warm weather? Go to California. You love snow and want the air to hurt your face? Go to Alaska, or shit sometimes even Minnesota or Wisconsin. I heard it gets really cold in northern Montana too. North Dakota has nothing but cold weather and snow, depending on where you live of course. And then you have the Midwest/south. It’s the complete opposite. The land, the wether, the “culture” if you will, is even different. And then an armed population that is ready to fight.
With a population that is also armed. Making the taking of any city a dicey operation.
Lite beer.
Tipping culture.
I have mostly met waiters who defend it…
Ice. I can’t understand the global hatred of ice in drinks. It’s delightful.