Follow up to the last post

Just to expound a little on the "What are America's quirks?" thing...

"American flags everywhere."

AND IT'S NOT RACIST! Or even a sign that someone's politically on the right! That's taken a long time to get used to.

Yep. We are a patriotic lot.

I was startled to find out that "God Save the Queen" has alternate lyrics.

LOL And I was startled as a small child to learn that "My Country Tis of Thee" was originally "God Save the Queen."

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

Yes. It is perfectly legal to make a right on a red in Florida, although this varies by state/municipality. I've actualy had friends from "up north" freak out on me because they thought I ran a red light.

Also, in general, the scale of things is boggling to Europeans for a while and continues to be boggling in small ways for a long time. Fridges are HUGE compared to upright or under-the-counter European fridges. The default size for milk is the gallon, not the pint. Endless agonizing choices in the supermarket -- which of these 30 types of canned beans do I want now? Roads that feel twice as wide as they should be. Bank lobbies the size of railway stations.

Hey, we got a big country here. Everything is just to scale. :P

The ignorance of Americans about the rest of the world

I guess I'm one of the exceptions. I am the Great Xul, and The Great Xul knows about most everything! ;P

Everyone eats with one hand and keeps the other hand on their lap all through the meal. Also, sometimes they go through an elaborate switch-fork-to-left-hand-pick-up-knife-in-right-cut-up-food-then-switch-fork-back-to-right-hand dance.

This sort of thing really disgusts me. I was raised with manners and etiquette so it displeases me that there are so many cretins in this country. I know it's not everyone, just WAY too many.

Dutch guy who's been to SF and NY. And knows US americans through mefi:
1. cities where streets follow a grid. And almost all streets allow cars. As a European I'm accustomed to look for the city center; a place where there are no cars, where streets are meandering, where there are terraces to sit outside and have a coffee. A place that's amenable to walking, to hanging out and enjoying the atmosphere. I did not find such a space in the american cities I've been to. And it prevented me from enjoying the place.
2. people in shops say things that in Europe would be privvy to personal conversation. To a dutchman like me that felt inappropriate and a little creepy.
3. you don't need to drive far from a major city like SF to reach endless expanse of nature. Amazing.
4. riding a bike is dangerous and an enterprise, not a mindless means of transport.
5. people are not that tall
6. working people are afraid of medical bills.
7. social customs seem to involve more euphemisms and things you're not supposed to talk about.
and yes
8. socialism is a dirty word, no working class that assert their interests, the nationalism
posted by joost de vries at 11:09 PM on November 5, 2011

LOL This guy pretty much sums it up. (I hope he's not Petrichor's old friend, Joost!) The country is soooo big that it had to be divided up by latitude and longitude.

That you can post your stuff in your own mail box. That's pretty nifty.

It is nifty, isn't it?

a very good chance of seeing guns in cars or purses or wherever -- I was blown away by it, the casual attitude toward it.

My next-door neighbor had a friend from the Netherlands visiting, for a fun field trip we took her to a gun show, here in Austin. We walked in the door, she immediately stalked out -- she was absolutely furious. Outraged. She couldn't believe it. We calmed her some, we went back in, ended up she had a lot of fun, handled tons of guns, asked zillions of questions of everyone. Of course everyone there loved her, wanted to show her guns and about gun culture. You may not know this but you can buy a single-shot .22 rifle, cut real short, for your grandkids or whatever, and you can get it in a regular wood-colored wood stock or with a pink stock, if it's a girl you're buying for...

LOL We certainly like our guns. I have Canadian friends who were shocked that you can buy guns in Walmart.

Everyone complains bitterly about the suckitude of government and is suspicious of it but they all follow the rules anyway even if nobody is watching.

How supermarkets not just let you wander off with carts into the wild blue yonder but will set up displays of firewood, plants, pumpkins, etc., out front with nobody watching and trust you'll bring it indoors to pay for it. (see also rule-following above)

LOL We have what you would cal a "high trust" society in many areas.

That Americans are generally a lot more comfortable with talking to strangers
Absolutely. And very friendly as well. I'd be fumbling with my map of SF on a corner and get startled that somebody would address me with friendly advice on directions.

Guilty as charged!

there is police everywhere in the US and they are not friendly or helpful, yet they display slogans like "protect and serve" without a hint of irony on their cars. also: they drive like complete idiots.

Correct. They are complete dicks and should never be called...only as a last resort.

Striking up conversation with strangers, smiling at strangers, sharing stories and knowing/ empathizing looks with strangers. This also throws me for a loop, especially all the smiles and random hellos. Cheerfulness is an indefeasible social onus. On the other hand, people in the U.S. are in my experience very polite when it comes to staring (i.e. not doing it).

This is something I remember being taught as a small child: to be friendly with others and staring is rude.

I went to the grocery store and remembered a story told to me by a Dutch man. He was amazed about how the grocery cart system worked. At least in Houston, you pick up a cart at the store entrance, and leave it in a designated area of the parking lot or just anywhere in the lot (assuming the sacker didn't take your groceries out to your car for you -- another difference he mentioned), and store employees collect all the carts from the lot and move them back to the store front. He felt it was wasteful to pay employees to do this for customers, and that left the store open to the possibility of cart theft.

In the Netherlands, they insert a coin into a machine that releases a cart. If you return the cart to the machine, it returns your coin. Apparently you could sometimes cheat the machine by using a coin of a similar shape but from a country where it is worth much less, and then receive the correct amount back when you returned (thus making a few cents). I think he and I both learned something about each other's culture and customs that day as we both blinked at each other in amazement.

We used to have a grocery store called Extra when I was a teenager that used to have little contraptions on the carts that you had to put 50 cents into to get the carts separated. At first, all the customers were outraged that a store would make customers "pay" for a cart. Well, if you returned the cart to it's corral and hooked it back up to the cart in front, you would get your 50 cents back. It was a totally ingenious way to keep the carts from being taken and to get lazy ass customers to return the carts to their corral and not just leave them all over the parking lot. I guess I thought this to be completely sensible because I am 1/4 Dutch. LOL

Selling guns in Walmart (not sure if this is done everywhere, but it's common here in the South). My German friends took pictures and emailed them back home.

LOL See above.

COLD beverages. Americans seriously have a love affair with ice.

Guilty again! Ice machines were a Southern invention. It gets HOT and HUMID here!

Don't forget "fanny". I'll never forget the time when a sales assistant and I were reduced to a heap of helpless, tears-running-down-our-faces-and-unable-to-speak mirth in a women's clothes shop in Guildford when my American friend said she didn't know what UK size she took, but she knew she had an enormous fanny.

That makes me think of Petrichor.

Eye contact! Americans make it.

That's because eye contact as seen as being confident. Someone who does not make eye contact is viewed as being deceitful.

peanut butter and jelly: uniquely American. Slight understatement there. The rest of the world finds it repulsive enough to function as America's answer to Vegemite.

PB&J is DEICIOUS! What's wrong with you people?

I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned already, but the way retail stores have their a/c set to sub-Arctic temperatures was baffling to me. I was visiting a Southern state in the summer and spent a fair amount of time in a B&N cafe, and the temperature would drop from the high 90s to what felt like 15C (60F) or colder when I entered. I don't know how the people working there could stand it; I was freezing, and I'm Scandinavian

Hello Winn Dixie! We are looking at YOU!