All definitely true … though I think the cultural differences between, say, Seattle and South Carolina are non-trivial. You are spot on about the language though.
t-h
Ha! Spoken by someone who has obviously never visited more than one US city.
I’d put traveling about to difference states within the US on par with traveling about to different states within the EU. The scale and variety of geography is about the same. You aren’t as likely to encounter a language barrier in the US as the EU… but that’s about it.
Europe has a lot of deep history that the US simply does not. BUT, Europeans on holiday in Europe ignore the scale of history in the EU in much the same way Americans on holiday in America ignore the scale of geography. If the only depth you’re reaching on vacation is the commoditized culture of multi-national consumerism… you might as well be in your own neighborhood.
The passport requirement for US citizens was tightened up recently, at least for travel to the Caribbean.
Yes, the ferries across the Strait from Algeciras or Tarifa to Tangier or Ceuta take less than a couple of hours.
More like 4 hours (it was about 4hr30min from London last time I flew to Tel Aviv).
Heh, not true, I’ve visited many US cities. Sure, there are fairly big differences, but not so big that I couldn’t read the signs, ask someone something, or made any massive mistakes in etiquette.
So there! 
I get where you are coming from though.
Let’s say that you are living in the Boston area and a rich relative offers to buy you a trip. The choices are to go to Northern California or Western Europe. Both are about a six hour flight away. In a flight of fancy, you pick a trip to Paris, London and Venice. The next day, reality sets in and you are terrified. There are only 3 months to take numerous language classes, endless books to read, and reservations that would be beyond all but the most brilliant people. This simply isn’t going to work and you know it. Panic attacks set in a few days later because you know the situation is hopeless.
Actual reality: All you have to do is read the guidebooks in the way that you would read them for a U…S. based trip. You pack your bags and you go. Almost everyone speaks English wherever you go and you don’t have to do much of anything that is different. A driving trip through Mexico would be much harder (and the people would be much poorer).
To be fair, my family never travelled to Europe when I was growing up nor did anyone else I knew did either. My wife has traveled to Europe 50+ times and the first few times that I went to Europe, I travelled by myself to meet her their on business trips. Customer service isn’t as good as it is in the U.S. but someone always helped me (in English) to get where I was going. I don’t speak French yet I have walked around Paris by myself for days upon days by myself. No one was ever rude to me.
I think most Americans are scared of Europe and they imagine it to be much more exotic than it is in the most basic ways. I could hop on a plane to any western European country by myself tonight without much concern at all. Most Americans don’t understand that.
Just for the record, Turkey’s in the top 10 destinations for British summer tourism, and I was there last week.
Anyway, arguing about passports, or millions of square miles, means nothing. If the accusation is that fewer Americans travel beyond locations with which they are culturally familiar, I suspect it’s (a) true, and (b) really hard to prove. On the other hand, it’s probably true that many northern European adventures to ‘exotic’ locations involve nothing more than monolingual package tours, and even somewhere as once-adventurous as Thailand is now mundane.
When a big chunk of one cliche collides with the other, in the enticement of Europeans to Florida and Disneyland, I don’t know who walks away with least pride.
I disagree. I think most Americans know perfectly well that one can easily manage in any western European country with little trouble. It’s a big deal to go to Europe because it’s expensive and most people don’t get to travel so far very often.
I don’t hop on a plane for a weekend in Paris because it’s too much money for the time spent–if I’m going to another country I want to spend a good chunk of time there. (My cousin actually does do this, but she has a fairly unusual lifestyle IMO.) And I want to prepare well to get the best out of the time I’ve got.
Careful. This topic is in a constant state of fluctuation; stringent rules are proposed and pushed back, but check with the State Department before travel.
There are areas where you’ll find the people don’t speak English, and the stores don’t have English on the signs.
I find that many Australians think we’re much, much more important in terms of global power and influence than we actually are. Also, they’re very, very keen to be noticed by the rest of the world. OMG - They’re looking at us!!! They like us!!!
I’ve visited at least something like 20 different countries of varying prosperity throughout the world, and while a lot of countries may use modern construction materials to create multistoried buildings and whatever, I’d still have to say that outside of Europe, the US, Australia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, and maybe a few other places, most countries in the world are impoverished and subsistence for the large majority of the population. I might even include Hong Kong in that, given the number and conditions of workers fresh over from the mainland.
Certainly, there aren’t a lot of places where you’ll find people living in caves, but a lot of countries aren’t much changed in terms of how life is lived from how they were 200 years ago beyond that they have concrete to build with and guys with AK47s on the streets, unless you’re part of an affluent minority living in one of the major cities.
You might check the electricity consumption per capita map. Saudi Arabia looks to be the only country outside of those listed which has decent electricity for most to use.
I’m not sure about your first point, I think Australians have a high opinion of their importance in terms of local power, and they have a point. Australia is an important power in the oceanic region. I think your second point actually refutes your first. Australia suffers from culural cringe and small country syndrome (despite being a very big country physically.) Its people want to be noticed, as you said, and are very proud of its citizens who “make it big,” like Hugh Jackman for instance. On the other hand they can’t stand it when less glamorous people make it big, people like Dame Edna, Yahoo Serious, Paul Hogan, or Rolph Harris. Another side of it is when someone makes it big but is seen to sell out in some way. I always laugh when my wife has a go at Kylie Minogue and her “fake accent.” That’s not a fake accent dear, she just spends a lot of time out of Australia and has ended up with an accent influenced by various other countries.
I’m from New Zealand. New Zealanders have similar pre-conceptions about Americans as Europeans, i.e., they’re insular and don’t travel out of their country, they’re fat, lazy, and stupid, etc. Of course, the ones you meet are alright, but then they’re the ones who travel, the rest are insular, fat, lazy and stupid.
New Zealand also suffers, to a far greater extent than Australia, from small country syndrome. Famous or successful New Zealanders are idolised to a point that can become unfomfortable to watch. The moral of much of the nation can ride on the success or failure of their national rugby team.
That can only be part of it. Australians travel yet their country is as big as the continental USA. You say you can travel 11 hours and be in the same state, I have to drive 9 hours to get to another TOWN. The state I live in is almost ten times the size of Texas, I can travel for FOUR DAYS and be in the same state. This doesn’t stop us from going overseas though.
When I was moving to Miami for graduate school, the three most frequent reactions were:
“Oh, to Miami Playa?” Uh, no, that’s a freaking beach development, no universities there. To Miami-Miami.
“To America!??!!! But they shoot people there!” A reference to drive-by shootings which is particularly cute when you can just look the idiot in the eye, say “you mean like ETA?” and watch them go overripe-tomato-red. I’m from “terrorist territory,” who cares whether the sonabitch who shot you was trying to hit some other gangsta or a politician, you’re still dead.
“To Julio Iglesias’ Miami?” No, to the poor-students Miami. I wouldn’t be allowed into Julito’s Miami unless it was to scrub the bathrooms, see.
Between the 70s and 90s, Spaniards assumed that everybody in Latin America hated us, as we’d enslaved them for 500 years (ehm, excuse me, they started getting independent almost 200 years ago, learn to count) and destroyed their wonderful cultures where everybody lived in peace and harmony with nature and with each other (I’m not touching that one with a 100-foot pole). What with tourism over there and immigration to over here, this impression has now mostly disappeared, but you still run into the occasional vocational martyr. Said martyrs tend to shut up quite rapidly when I ask whether they’ve talked with any Latin American immigrant and asked their opinion on the subject; they never have.
Several years ago, I was part of an international project involving several European factories and one from South Africa. The South African team explained to us that most of their “peons” were completely illiterate; signing up for the “read and write courses” offered by the factory was the fast track to positions of responsibility. When a line manager needed a certain reagent, he’d give to the peon a photocopy of the label and a description of the item he had to look for (is it small bags, large sacks, plastic bottles). My European coworkers, specially the Swedish and British ones, refused to believe this; they were even getting angry when the South Africans insisted. Until I said “ok, guys, listen here. When you hear ‘South Africa,’ you think big cities, beaches, modern country. But what do you think when you hear ‘Africa,’ without the south? Hunger. Black kids with swollen bellies and flies on their eyes. The kind of images we get from people asking for money. You don’t even think of Morocco or Egypt, when you hear ‘Africa.’ Now, in South Africa they have several languages, that would already be a problem as I imagine most of the peons don’t speak English as their first language, if at all” (the South African confirmed) “and they aren’t in a big city, so why do you expect them to be able to read English?”
I am American and visited Iran on my own for nearly a month - it was absolutely wonderful. I crossed overland from Turkmenistan, travelled down the east side of the country to Zahadan, then west and north through Bam, Kerman, Shiraz, Esfahan, Yazd, Qom, Tehran, Tabriz and out through Turkey.
Sure there were “Down with USA” signs and such, but I have never been to a more friendly country. It IS a bit difficult to arrange a visa and these days Americans will need a guide, but can travel in a “group” of one.
BTW: I got the same crazy stares from Americans when I mentioned I was going/had been to Iran.
Alright, alright.
You can see what I was getting at though.
The difference between Alaska and Mississippi is far less than the difference between Portugal and Bulgaria (both in the EU)… not even the alphabet is the same.
The biggest one about my country, Cuba, is that Cubans have free health care and free education. Without getting into the quality or availability of either, it is wrong to say that they are free. All Cubans work for the government, they are all paid by same government, and their salaries average $15 a month. In other words, every Cuban subsidizes health care and education through their low salaries.
When people say “Free health care” I think it’s understood that they pay for it through their taxes; it’s just that there’s no marginal cost for the use of the service. I would mention that basic medical services here in Canada are “Free,” but that’s not a wrong assumption on my part. I know I pay for it with tax money. It’s just that when I say “Free,” I mean “isn’t paid for on the basis of use.”
To use another example, I would make a similar distinction between a toll highway and a “Free” highway. I realize I’m paying tax money to subsidize the “Free” highway, but it’s still “Free” in the sense that I don’t pay money for a discrete use of it, as opposed to Highway 407, where there’s a direct cost to me every time I use it.
For Canada, by far the most common misconceptions are:
1. Canada is the world leader in the provision of UN peacekeeping forces. This isn’t true and hasn’t been true for a very, very long time. But I hear it all the time.
2. Canada has the world’s best standard of living, the UN says so! Canada ranked #1 on some arbitrary definition of “Quality of live” for a few years back in the 80’s or 90’s, and ever since then I’ve heard this parroted by God only knows how many people. It’s simply false; it was one measurement of highly questionable validity, we’re not #1 on it anymore, and by a thousand other measurements other countries rank higher. In any event there’s no appreciable quality of life difference between Canada and, say, Germany or Denmark.
3. Canada is the biggest country in the world. I’ve been hearing this one more and more; I think people are under the misapprehension that the Soviet Union breaking up pushed us from #2 to #1. Of course, Russia by itself is still much bigger than Canada.
When I first moved to Korea at the age of 13, my classmates eagerly asked me if American students really did all carry guns to school and have sex in supply closets.
I dunno, maybe I was the only one missing out.