No, if you order a soft drink in Europe you generally get a glass of just the drink, no ice.
And this difference goes back a long way. A minor character in Brideshead Revisited at one point says that “Six weeks in America has given me a positive phobia of ice”, and that was in the 1920s
Europe: You can easily drive, rail, or puddle jump to many other countries in short day trips and rather cheaply too. Hell, you can drive from one end of a country to another in less than a day!
**America: ** It’s so vast you can spend years travelling and it has, contained in one single country, all types of environmental conditions. Swamp, desert, arctic, tropical, coastal, etc.
Europe: People who are what they were born to.
America: People who are what they made themselves be.
I can only dream of a perfect place where these two go together.
Europe: Great cars
America: Great import cars.
Europe: Classical music
America: Jazz
Europe: the efficient and beautiful city planning that comes with having cities that have grown from close-knit centers for hundreds of years; the sense of cities as being real communities rather than just many people living closely together (you get this with some *US *cities, but only a few).
US: California.
Europe: Variety.
America: Air Conditioning in homes.
Europe: Everything is so close together. Did you know that London and Paris are closer than St. Louis and Chicago?
America: Everything is so spread out. Did you know that London and Paris are closer than St. Louis and Chicago?
New Orleans to Chicago is further than Paris to Moscow. Europe is very quaint.
Ironic, considering that Europeans are much more interested in jazz than Americans are.
Not all that ironic, when you consider that jazz and swing music–which were considered American symbols of black and Jewish achievement–were banned in Nazi Europe during WWII. Of course, you know all this, but alls I’m saying is, the French are bigger fans of freedom and liberty than we are these days, so it’s only fitting that the music that symbolized liberty in France would find a new home there.
That’s a long time ago; most European jazz fans weren’t even born then. I doubt French jazz fans like it because it symbolizes freedom and liberty.
Europe: Round-a-bouts. (It’s genius really)
America: Wide roads.
Conversation with an american coworker who was going to get more sodas, in the US:
Me: “Mine with half the ice!”
Him: “Uh? Oh, right, I forgot that you Europeans like your drinks warm.”
Me: “Nah, we simply don’t like 'em watered down.”
Ice, at least in Western Europe, is a given - but we don’t use as much.
Europe: diversity.
USA: everybody speaks English! (Except immigrants and the occasional weirdo)
[Cafe Society hijack]To many jazz fans, or at least DJs of jazz programs, jazz does symbolize creative freedom. [CSh]
When did I say anything to the contrary? A lot of American rock fans weren’t even born when Buddy Holly was a star; what does that have to do with anything?
Alot of our roundabouts are getting traffic lights now (as I’ve posted elsewhere before).
Europe: Variety.
America: Convenience.
Yeah, I noticed that when I was in Ireland back in May. Once we got the hang of it, we noticed how much more smoothly traffic runs through them than through the intersections we have in the U.S.
Now maybe you guys can get going on making those roads a little wider, eh? 
In case you didn’t know, we are a dinky little island, we aint got room for thumping great wide roads
Europe: Light banter with folks who constantly apologize for their English, and are flattered when you tell them you understand perfectly. 
Like
America: Contentious do-you-mean-to-tell-me/I-never-said-that pissfests. :mad: Don’t Like