"The fact that so much American cheese is coloured orange surprised me."

[bluemagicrose]

So instead of doing some schoolwork due Tuesday I decided to spend my night reading this.

Oh dear lord.

Some of my favorites:

"I cannot imagine why nobody yet mentioned root beer. From a German perspective, that is the single weirdest thing to learn about, tightly followed by the taste of "grape" juice."

"4700 kinds of toothpaste."

"I was startled to

Comments

[sleeper6]

"some places you can turn right on red -- wait what YOU CAN DRIVE THROUGH A RED LIGHT if you're turning WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE"

Ha ha, I like that one!

I've been to Mexico and England. Mexico is all kinds of suprises (and not very good ones--LOL). England--I was surprised by the wall socket/outlet thing; different from ours. We couldn't plug in our appliances (hair curler and stuff). Oh, and that there's an extra light right before green to tell you it's going to be green--I liked that.

[bluemagicrose]

So they have four lights for traffic? What's the third one, the one that tells you it's going to be green?

And I don't get the wall socket thing. Do they not have them? So what do you plug your appliances in?

[sleeper6]

4 lights, yup; it's yellow or yellowish.

They have them but they're different from ours so you can't plug in our cords into their sockets. We had to buy special adapters/connectors and then connected our cords to these connectors and then these connectors into the outlets.

[bluemagicrose]

That's crazy re: plugs, adapters. But now I know what to expect if I ever go to London (oh dear god please let me go to London one day).

[moerlin]

Hee, oh, for some reason this convo is very amusing to me. ;) Really, you'll get used to the adapter thing, it's not a big deal. Although obviously, Type C plugs are the bestest. :P (Don't worry, there is actually such a thing as a worldwide adapter.)

And I totally forgot that American traffic lights go red-green and then green-yellow-red when you have to stop. It's true, ours go red-yellow-green too, but I'm pretty sure that's because we all drive manuals and like to have that extra second or two to shift into first gear.

[moerlin]

And in general, I don't think many things surprised me (I watch too much American tv) so much as I just think they're weird. Off the top of my head with some skimming of your links

[moerlin]

Heh, now I'm reading the whole discussion anyway, look what you've done. ;) And wow, so much stuff I forgot, like shoes in the house, sales tax, unsweetened iced tea, loudness and/or talking to strangers about very private things sometimes, free refills (and free tap water in general), fluorides in your drinking water, volunteering, PB&J sandwiches, unions, ACs set to freezing cold...

- People will often say "we should get together" or "you should come over sometime for dinner" but don't actually mean it, they just say it to be polite.

One of my friends swears that there was an American English phrasebook where "you should come over sometime for dinner" was translated as "goodbye."

:D
Yeah, stuff like that is seriously an experience. ;)

5. Everyone speaks English. More so than in the States!

LOL! Although possibly true if you go to, say, the Netherlands.

And now I'll stop spamming your comments, sorry.

[bluemagicrose]

LOL, I'm an enabler!

I'm so curious now. Like, shoes aren't kept in the house? There aren't free refills? THERE AREN'T PB&Js? I had one of those thing morning for breakfast. And no volunteering?

I love the "you should come over" stuff. Such an easy way to end a conversation. Another one if you ever come to the South. "bless your heart" typically means the person who says it is looking down at you.

I'm loving this topic. So much. :D

[moerlin]

You should be ashamed of yourself! :P

Ah no, we do keep our shoes inside, but we don't wear them inside. I know that's a regional thing in the US too though. Nope, no free refills here, and you can very rarely buy peanut butter. But that's okay because we kinda don't like that and would rather eat Nutella instead. < /overgeneralizing >. Volunteering happens here too, but there's no phony I-need-to-volunteer-to-put-this-on-my-college-application stuff, I guess? And in general, volunteers at homes for the elderly or at museums would take away "real" jobs (and social workers are underpaid anyway), so our politicians are trying to counteract that. I think the one sector where tons of volunteering goes on is sports, i.e. teaching youth teams and such.

LOL, yeah!

:D

[roganrules]

I just spent an insane amount of time reading through that first link. I have come to a few realizations. 1) I can't believe that people in other countries don't like PB&J or just PB in general. I still think my aunt Nancy is awesome because she let us eat tablespoons of peanut butter everytime my sisters and I went to her house, which was about once a day when we were kids since she only lived four houses away. 2) Most non-Americans don't realize how large the US really is and make generalizations that are actually regional things, but get pissed that Americans make generalizations about Europeans. (I just found that interesting). 3) Europeans apparently like unsweet tea. 4) All of those people would go crazy in Aiken, SC, since you turn left at red lights on circles, but only on circles there. 5) I found it interesting that they were shocked that most Americans don't have passports. Considering the size of the US, why do we need passports since it takes years just to have time to see all of our own country. On the flip side

[bluemagicrose]

You can turn left on red in Aiken? That's crazy. But something that I can totally believe happens in SC. Worst drivers in the country.

Considering most Americans don't travel to a foreign country I can totally believe that. Most people haven't traveled out of their own state much, much less to another country. Having a passport in Europe seems like a necessity.

The customer service thing...that's just rude. It's pretty damn great to be able to take something back after you've open and used it.

[roganrules]

The crazy part to me is that you can only turn left on red on circles. I think the accidents would happen when someone doesn't realize that it only applied to circles and he/she tries to turn left on red on a regular street. Aiken is kind of a crazy town to drive in because it has a bunch of one-way streets because of the grid set-up and a lot of streets have weird turn lanes where the lane that you think will still straight will actually become a turn lane. Also, people just ride their horses down the street a lot of times. Just pure craziness

[bluemagicrose]

I think the patriotism stuff is way over done here. I get it, we love America. We don't have to puke American flags every time we go somewhere though. The patriotism stuff is just a cultural thing. I'm with the Europeans on this front, you can love/be proud of your country without having a flag everyone and being all "America, fuck yeah!"

Come to think of it, I've never seen anything about school children in school buses in Europe. How else would kids get to school? Maybe they're not necessary there?

[nelly42033]

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