Next time you’re there, don’t drink the beer, ask for beer-batter fish, straight from the lake.
Oh GHOD! How I loved that when I was a boy.
Maybe we don’t much time off for Christmas, but we sure go to overkill on the commercial end of it.
One of the shopping malls here already has started with Xmas decorations. Look at the date. It’s still Summer!
Many retail businesses live or die on their Xmas season sales.
So… Christmas is extremely important here. Just for different reasons.
Being American myself (actually TEXAS born and bred! 
), I have the conception, possibly misconception, that the majority of Americans have no true World Picture™ (except for Dopers, of course).
Climate is on misconception I hear often. I was playing golf in mid-November at a state park in Georgia. The high temperature that day was in the 50’s (F). A British tourist dressed in shorts and a tee shirt asked us about the unusually cold weather and how we were managing. He was shocked to find that the temperature was about average for that time of year. He was further astonished to learn that temperatures below freezing were common in the winter and that we do occasionally have snow. His travel agent had told him that our climate was sub-tropical and to dress accordingly!
Floater said, “I wouldn’t say that USans are mostly obese, but I have never seen such an assemblage of grossly fat people as when I spent a couple of hours at O’Hare airport.”
Okay, now there’s American Fat
and there’s CHICAGO FAT .
Chicago comprises a multitude of European immigrants who knew their way around a kitchen. This city really…and I mean REALLY…likes to eat. We are, indeed, fatter than a lot of other American cities. (That loud belch you just heard was Chicago’s Official Sound.)
Some foreigners, bless their hearts, call all Americans “Yankees” or “Yanks”. I understand that they’re latching onto a playful nickname that seems harmless enough, but greeting rednecks in certain places in Mississippi with “Hello, yanks!” might get you stabbed. Or at the very least disinvited to the tea party.
Mind you, we don’t hate Yankees. We just have a healthy disrespect for them.
OK, this is the one misconception about the US that drives me nuts. Do you have any idea how many different American beers there are (bearing in mind that most of the good ones are produced by small, local breweries, of which Sam Adams is NOT one)? How many of them have you actually tried? Judging all American beer by the “big names” is like judging all British beer by Bass, Newcastle, and Boddington’s.
Next time you’re in the US, stop by a specialty store that allows you to mix and match your own sixpack, and pick up a dozen or so beers you’ve never heard of. You’ll probably be pleasantly surprised.
And da-yam! Do we know how to make a sammich! (That’s sandwich, y’all)
My uncle used to tell a story (probably a lie) about when he was visiting Venezuela on a business (petro/chem) trip in the 60s. As the driver took them to their destination, they passed some grafitti which read: “Yankee Go Home!”
The local businessman apologised for the political statement, saying not all of his countrymen feel that way.
My uncle says, “Don’t bother me none. I’m from Texas.”
When you have to compare yourself to the likes of Baghdad to look good, there may be a problem. LA is much more dangerous in terms of violent crime than most cities in the industrialized world. However, most of the violence is gang and drug-related, so unless you are in a gang or buying drugs, you probably don’t need to worry about it, except for ducking the occasional stray bullet on New Year’s Eve.
I moved to Australia from the US last year. When the Gulf War started, a guy opined that I was lucky to get out of the states in time. You know, before I got drafted. At the age of 35. It’s probably more a case of dealing with a loony than dealing with a common misconception, but there you are.
A woman asked me if it was true that Americans enjoy eating deep-fried candy bars. Since then I saw a travel show where they actually found a place where you can buy them. It was in Scotland. They eat them with ketchup.
Australians also seem to think Americans are excruciatingly polite. I think it stems from how cashiers in America are trained to say things like “have a nice day” and because waiters get tips so they kiss butt a lot more than here. I’ve noticed that Americans actually seem a bit rude sometimes because we say “Give me a pack of Marlboros” or “I’ll have a beer” instead of “Could you give me…” or “I’d like…” when making purchases. Plus we’re less likely to thank waiters.
The size thing again. A friend of mine from Ireland was talking about how cool it would be to drive across country. I had to explain to him that there was a lot of country and most of it was relatively empty (it helped explaining in terms of “Irelands” between various cities).
Americans are politically naive: largely true
Americans care nothing for anyone outside their borders: largely true
Americans are sexually naive and prudish: largely true
Americans are boorish and rude to others: largely untrue
A rather poingnant moment when I was in Spain was when an acquaintance asked if there were poor people in America.
As far as driving everywhere, that is very accurate in some places. As an example of legendary extremism, my college roommate’s mom would drive her Buick Riviera (large grandma-type luxury car) to the end of the driveway to get the mail in South Florida.
Puts it in a nutshell- in America- we think a building a100 years old is OLD.
In Europe- the think 100 miles is FAR.
Well, as a bleedin’ foreign type in the USA, I’d like to announce that USA IPA beers are generally better than those from the UK. So there. Plus, Porpentine’s Chapel Hill does jolly well for microbrews, too. I know this 'cause I’m there. Or here, even.
Mind you, I like Sam Adams, so there y’go. Well, I like his beer. Never met the guy.
I had a freind visiting from Wales and I asked her what she would remember most about her trip to the U.S. and Los Angeles and she replied “How big everything is.” I thought she was talking about how big in terms of size as is being discussed here and she said, 'Well that and like, look at this glass of Coke, it’s huge!" Granted it was an above-average sized Coke, but it wouldn’t really raise eyeborws. She was really impressed when I informed her she would get free refills.
I also had a friend visiting from Wales…
You know, I never thought of New Mexico that way, but you’re right. And I know the Pecos is big, but I never thought of it like that before.
Along those lines, I’ve never had to explain Philmont to a tourist, but it’ll be interesting if I ever have to.
Heck, people living in America have a hard time grasping its size sometimes. I go to school in Pennsylvania, but I live in Albuquerque. I was working in a gas station last summer when I had a family come in, asking how to get to either Phoenix or Tucson (I honestly don’t remember which) because they need to get their son to college. Well, I told them that it’d probably take at least six hours, just based on about the last time I made the trip to one of those cities, and got out the maps we keep behind the counter to help customers out. I showed them what would probably be the best route, got another estimate of travel time based on the actual milage (I was close), and was asked by the mother “It’s so far? It looks so close on the map.” Yeah, that tends to happen in these big empty Western states.
To be fair, though, I still have the same sort of problem out here. I’m used to I-25 and I-40 and US 84/285 and so on, where the speed is high, the traffic fairly light, and the road pretty straight. I’m not used to thinking of it taking nearly 9 hours for some friends of mine who live near Annapolis to go to Columbia and USC and the lower speed limits back East trip me up when I’m used to seeing milage and calculating rough trip times assuming you’ll be doing at least a legal 75. Or for example going from my school to Philly takes nearly four hours, when I can do Albuquerque to the Arizona border in about 2 and a half. Of course, my school is harder to get to, but still, that’s a big difference.
In my experience, this is true almost everywhere in the U.S. except for New York City and select parts of other cities. (NYC really is a stark exception – everyone walks and/or uses public transit.) Moreover, it’s becoming more and more common as pedestrian-friendly downtown areas are being supplanted by big superstores like Walmart, Target, etc. which are surrounded by enormous parking lots and busy multi-lane streets often with no sidewalks.
My dad was amused when some German visitors he took on a trip around the West Texas/Eastern New Mexico area asked to stop the car so they could take a picture.
They were, of course, in the middle of a desert and there was absolutely nothing to take a picture of. Surprised he asked them what they wanted a picture of.
The answer: Nothing! Perfectly flat with absolutely nothing visible in any direction except for the road and dirt; not a rock or anything. Apparently an amazing natural feature for a Western European!
Paraphrasing Eddie Izzard:
In the states, they have a big ceremony and everything:
“We have renovated this building to make it look just like it did FIFTY YEARS AGO!”
"No! No! It can’t be! People weren’t even ALIVE then! "
Ok - I just killed that joke, but I laugh like mad every time I hear it (in his Dressed to Kill show). 