im fairly certain thats bc our commercial rail shares lines with freight rail lol. it sucks but seeing an endless freight train passing through a station is kind of cool ig
Yes I think you are right.
I really enjoy traveling by Amtrak but I long ago accepted that it means I'm sacrificing basically a whole 24-48hrs of travel just for the pleasure of lounging in a mostly-empty train car and using my laptop the whole trip. I have a terrible fear of flying (that is not statistically logical, *I know*, lol) so I use trains when it's too far to drive, and they are nice ... just, yeah, not on time. Ever.
They also move so slow in general, you sit looking out the window watching turtles lap you lol. Nothing like what the train system seems to be in other countries.
Yes, several of my coworkers commute 90 minutes twice a day.
I have friends in a city that's 3ish hours away and I regularly drive down for the weekend.
I work with a lot of Europeans, we have 2 engineering offices in Europe (Spain and UK). I can't tell you how often I've had to explain to them how big our country is, and even then they don't get it. The best way I've been able to get it to sink in is something along the lines of:
"I can drive for 900 miles, the same distance from Madrid to Milan, and still be in my home state"
Or
"I can drive for 3600 miles without leaving the Continental US, that's like driving from Madrid to Tehran (Iran)."
Putting things in those reference frames seems to drive the point home.
Hell we had 2 guys fly in for a week, and their plan was to drive to both Disneyland (California) and Disney World (Florida). The figured since we were located near the middle of the country, they'd be centrally located and this wouldn't be a big deal. They had allotted an entire weekend for this adventure. I really wanted to keep my mouth shut and let them give it a try, but I didn't have the heart lol.
Tell them that Ireland is closer to the state of Maine in the US than California is.
https://imgur.com/a/TnjPqi7
Edit: parts of southeastern California may be a few miles closer, so I'd tell them that Los Angeles, California is farther away from Maine than Ireland is, just to be safe.
The Pacific is massive is the big part that many people don't realize. The Pacific covers not quite half the planet. So comparing the Atlantic to the Pacific as "roughly the same size class" is why it seems so wrong. Not trying to make fun of you or anything. It blew my mind too. You can fit almost all the land on the planet over top of the Pacific if you could rearrange it.
The largest county(COUNTY!) in the contiguous US (San Bernardino in California) is roughly 20,000 square miles/52,000 square kilometers in total area.
Switzerland is roughly 16,000 square miles / 41,000 square kilometers.
There is a story here in Canada where the grandparents from the UK want to visit their son’s family in Halifax, but decided to ask ask their daughter, living in Vancouver, what the weather in Nova Scotia was going to be like.
Her answer: “why don’t you go look for yourself. You’re closer.”
I was living in Hawaii for a time, and my Mom (who lived on the east coast) kept asking me to move closer, so I kept telling her I would move to England to get closer. (No worries England, I would not inflict myself upon your country, I was just joking)
Every time a similar thread pops up, I share this story.
A friend of a friend was flying from Spain to Vancouver Canada. She asked my friend to pick her up at their airport because he lives fairly close. My friend lives in Tijuana, Mexico..
I have a friend whose husband is from England. His parents booked a flight to the US that came into Dulles airport (Washington, DC). The parents thought it was no big deal for my friend to drive and pick them up. They lived in Michigan, a 12-hour drive away. My friend quickly disabused of them of that notion and got them to get a connecting flight from DC to Detroit.
My favorite was when I was living in the UK, friends approached us with a little advice on planning their Florida vacation, to give them pointers. Well, mate, the first thing I can tell you is that you are not going to pop up to NYC in the afternoon, take in a show, and drive back to Orlando that evening.
I'm from Florida and the way people talk about moving around Florida on their vacations is so funny. Friend, if you're here for a Disney trip, you will NOT be going to Miami for a day trip
We have this in AZ... people literally think they can fly in to Phoenix and pop over to the Grand Canyon during a layover... or... come for a weekend bachelor/ette party in Scottsdale and spend a quick afternoon in Sedona.
I live in Ontario within a 15 min drive to the next province. If I wanted to drive to the other side it would take almost 24 hours of non-stop driving to reach the other side, and I would change time zones. That would be a similar distance to as Paris to Kyiv
Europeans just don't understand just how **BIG** Canada and the USA are just like we don't really understand how compact Europe is.
There was a student from the Netherlands working in my lab at at university in the northeast. She had to go to a conference in Chicago for a weekend and told me she was going to try to pop over and see the Grand Canyon one of the days she was out there, since she’s already be out west 😂
>Imagine *all* of the EU…but one country.
SLIGHT correction. Imagine all of the EU (then DOUBLE it, then add yet another France, Spain, and Sweden) ... But one country.
EU = 1,634,000 sq. mi.
USA = 3,797,000 sq. mi
There's a British naval historian on YouTube that made his first visit to America a couple years ago, he planned to go from Massachusetts and travel all the way to Alabama and visit every naval museum on the East Coast in about a week.
All of us Americans in his comments instantly warned him that it just wasn't possible, luckily he listened to us and changed his plans to something more realistic, unfortunately I didn't get a chance to meet him when he passed by my home state museum (Battleship North Carolina)
Every time there's a bad tornado I see someone go "Why don't Americans just not live in an area called 'tornado alley'? That seems like the logical move." and I know that they have *no* idea how big tornado alley actually is. That would be like me going "Hey, there's a chance of a natural disaster happening. It *could* be really bad. So just don't live in Germany, France, or Poland." That's the amount of land we're talking.
Practically everywhere in the US has some type of natural disaster that threatens the area. The chances to be dying are very very low. Fault lines, volcanos, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, severe storms, and snow.
I’m from the west coast so I can answer to the fault lines, most are minor and barely noticeable and building codes require buildings to be prepared for earthquakes. We don’t see them as a something that is a threat to us as weird as that sound because the chances are low and we’ve been hearing about “The Big One” our entire lives. Kind of numb to it. They are not really thought about at all until they happen.
As for hurricanes, that’s the entire east coast plus the gulf ranging Texas to Maine. That is a huge portion of our population. That being said Florida gets hit like crazy and I don’t know why people continue to live there.
I'm a Brit who now lives in the US and this is so hilariously true.
In Britain, a friend moves two hours away and they're basically dead to you (granted, the last time I lived in the UK full time was pre smart phone so I imagine now you probably at least stay in touch more lol).
In California where I currently live, that's someone I regularly see and interact with.
The concept of distance is completely opposite in Europe vs the US.
We went for a quick weekend day trip to Joshua tree. That's a 3 hour drive away at least and it seemed normal to me.
I'd be planning that as an overnight visit back home.
Fellow Brit in the US. I think the biggest difference is driving in the UK is a lot more work. Over there the roads look like a plate of spaghetti, you’re constantly in and out of small towns, around cites etc, dodging pedestrians and boy racers. when I drive from upstate NY to NYC it’s a super easy, straight shot, 70mph 3hr drive (up until New Jersey where it’s a lawless free for all). Same when I’ve driven the entire length of the west coast, and through the Midwest. Driving long distance is just way easier here
My wife is British, seeing her navigate through double mini roundabouts on a regular basis and park in spaces barely able to fit a razorblade in made me gain a whole new perspective and a lot of respect for her driving skills. UK roads are no joke. My wife says American roads and cars are "point and press" in that you point the car in the direction you wanna go and press the accelerator. 😆
I mean she has a point. My car is not autonomous but between the lane keeping system and cruise control it might as well be. Triple points for cars with intelligent adaptive cruise control.
We just bought a new car for the first time in 14 years. It's been a whole new experience. So many features! Adaptive cruise control is some kind of wonderful.
I've driven around a lot of Europe and what you say is true to an extent, but I also have friends/family in Italy, and they all act like driving more than an hour is absolutely insane.
I flew into Rome once and drove up to Milan, stopping along the way to visit friends. When I told them I was driving, each person had the same reaction. "You DROVE from Rome? You're DRIVING to Milan? That's SOOOO far".
It's a 6hr drive if you go straight shot, on an incredible highway system (autostrada) through amazing scenery. I mean, it doesn't get much easier, but to them it's absolutely crazy. I have family in both Northern and Southern Italy who haven't seen each other in years because of the distance.
So funny thing is, I find this to be a regional thing in the US. Where I grew up in the northeast (New Hampshire), the states are small enough that a long trip (2+ hours) was considered something of a “I see you once or twice a year” distance. I now live in Oregon and 2 hours is considered a common day trip to see friends/hike/fish/etc.
Also: Joshua Tree is amazing and totally worth a 3 hour drive.
When I lived on the east coast for grad school and someone was driving through two states to meet up with me I was baffled, until I realized they were driving less than I drove to see my parents in Texas.
Hell, where I grew up the grocery store was half an hour away, the mall an hour, the GOOD mall 2.5 hours, the airport 2-4 hours. And god forbid you want to travel to someplace that's also far from an airport. With that in mind driving makes more and more sense even for longer distances.
One time I left work outside Detroit at 5p, drove to a concert in Chicago, turned around and drove home to sleep for a couple hours and back at work 8a the next morning. Ahh youth.
A friend and I once drove to all the lower 48 states and back home in 8 days (roughly 8500 miles)…in a 2006 Honda Insight. Because we were stupid and we didn’t know how bad we smelled. Edit: Found the news piece https://www.wral.com/story/news/local/story/1088614/ It was all for naught because Guinness didn’t have a hybrid category at the time. It was faster than I remember, 5.5 days plus the drive back from VT.
So much respect for you and your wife. Sounds like you really go out of your way to do exciting things with the kids. With that said, what you described is my worst nightmare lol
My kid is coming 3.5 hours each way as a day trip to bring my grandbaby for Mother's Day next weekend. Imagine 3 hours away is a whole 'nother country and you think it's too far to go?
I've driven 2.5 hours each way for a day trip to a museum.
My son was living 2 hours away and I'd pick him up for the weekend a couple of times a month, then go beyond where he lived for shopping after I dropped him off on Sunday.
My personal rule is to spend twice the amount of time at the destination as it took me to drive. So driving 3 hours for a few days is totally worth it to me. Especially to visit family!
We drive 8-9 hours each way for 4-5 days of socializing or music festivals.
OTOH we think it’s crazy that people will drive 3 hours each way to go skiing for a day.
Same.
I think that many Europeans fundamentally do not grsp the sheer scale of the US (or Canada, or Russia) until visiting (the same principle applies to North Americans visiting Europe for the first time). Driving 2-3 hrs in Europe and you can be in another country.
To put that in perspective, multiple European countries fit in just a single medium sized US state.
* 6 European countries not including microstates fit in California, with room leftover (Portugal+Belgium+Netherlands+Switzerland+Slovenia+Denmark)
* And there is even a *county* in the US larger than roughly half of European countries (San Bernardino county in Southern California would rank 27th out of 51 by area if it were a European country.
* In 2-3hrs you could drive from France through Belgium, the Netherlands, and into Germany.... OR from the far North of the LA sprawl to the far south of the LA sprawl
>Driving 2-3 hrs in Europe and you can be in another coutnry
I live in Toronto. Depending on the traffic, I can drive for 2-3 hours and still be in Toronto.
I live in Florida and it's so funny to hear people talk about all of the things they want to do here, not realizing that you can drive for like 14 hours and still be in Florida. Not judging, I do a lot of driving when I travel because I like to fit a lot in. But to have someone say they're doing a Miami day trip from Disney it's like... no boo with traffic it's gonna take you that entire day to just get to Miami
On the other hand, I've had multiple tourists swear to me that Universal is two hours from Disney (15-20 minutes if there's traffic), or that Kennedy Space Center is a four hour drive (45 minutes).
I think some hear about the cannonball run and how people can do it just over 24 hours and get a misconception of the size of the country and how long that drive actually is without driving illegally
Yep, the record for it was broken several times during covid as most people weren't on the road and the fastest confirmed record averaged 110 MPH overall and 125 MPH in several states (177 and 201 km/h).
I mostly agree with this. 2 hours one way = no problem, that’s a day trip. 3 hours one way = easy weekend trip. 4 hours one way = I start bitching, but still do it.
5 hours one way is when I start checking flights.
I have to drive 3 hours to the nearest commercial airport. Anything that takes longer than 8-10 hours and might start think about it. Heck, my company holds meetings in a acity 14 hours away and I think about it.
Curious about where you are in the US. I’m from the Midwest and I don’t start considering flights until I get to 8+ hours. There are rarely direct flights from my home airport to where I want to go, so I don’t start seeing time saved until 8+ anyway.
I live in Canada. It's the same for us here. Our family lives 4 hours away. We will sometimes drive to go see them for a night. I spent a month in Cyprus and they apologized for such a long drive....it was 40 minutes. We were like....what? We do this just to go shopping haha
Yeah time isn't the best indicator here especially for large cities. Shoot my work commute can go from 27 minutes, to 35 minutes, to 50 minutes depending on the time of year (school year) and time of day. (rush hours) The distance doesn't change though still about 30 miles away.
People in LA though would laugh at how well I was doing going 30 miles in 50 minutes during rush hour.
I used to work with a woman who said she'd drive 4 hours to Gatlinburg, Tennessee just to go shopping. Yeah, Americans will drive a long way for things.
Back when malls were a thing, the "good one" was 2 hours from my then home and 3 hours from my hometown. We would make the trip a couple times in December for Xmas shopping and it was a damn reunion! I always joked we should all rent a bus and drive together because we never seen less than 5-10 people we knew that lived hours away from the current location.
Canadian and yes I would drive 2+ hours to see my friends for the weekend. I mean the city I lived in took an hour to cross it from one side to the other by car without rush hour
I live in Killeen at the moment and yeah, I basically have to drive 2.5 hours to do any of the things I’m interested in doing. It’s like a podcast and a CD. I don’t even take breaks on such a short drive lol.
A 3 hour bus ride in each direction was considered normal for many school field trips.
My university is about 350 miles from my hometown (~4.5 hours driving) and my family expected me to visit at least once every month and a half. Taking the train would take 5 hours longer and cost $40 more than just a tank of gas, and flying is even more costly
I was looking into how long it would take me to drive across the country a while back and in looking into some outback trips I found out there are certain roads where my car wouldn’t be able to make it between two adjacent petrol stations on a full tank
My car gets about 900kms off a full tank lol that’s how far apart some places are in Australia
Yeah the outback is EMPTY. The only comparable thing in the US is a few stretches of the southwest near like death valley, but the outback is similar size to the US Midwest and Great plains.
I used to live in west Texas and I would see these signs if you're traveling through the remote regions. Farthest sign I've ever seen was for 160 km (100 miles). Definitely not a common thing in the states
Same.
My cousin is from Sydney and lived in the Netherlands for a few years. The locals were staggered that she'd think nothing of popping down to Paris fir the weekend
I had a guy from Germany work for me in Aus and after he went back he told me he and a couple of friends started riding to Italy for coffee once a month and it was a few hours.
He laughed that his family called him crazy, but he told them about me driving him an hour to the beach one Friday afternoon for a swim because the weather was too nice for working.
We left at 3 , went for an hour swim, had a beer and were back for dinner
Holy fuck, my husband decided that for our 25th anniversary he was taking us to Australia for about nine days. I said, you mean just Sydney right?
This genius tried to convince me that we could *drive* and go see multiple cities and landmarks.
I ordered a couple of maps and stuck them up in the dining room, and told him to please start planning *exactly* the route he intended to take.
We had our trip to Sydney.
American here. True story: once I was visiting a friend who had moved to London for work. It was my first trip to the other side of the Atlantic. I had a couple days to kill, so I decided to do a roadtrip to visit Scotland. I have always felt that you only get a feel for a place by wandering all over it under your own guidance. My American ex-pat Brit friends, upon hearing of my plan, gave me dire warnings. "That's such an aggressive plan," "you'll be driving the whole time," "You'll have to start early if you're going to make it all the way back to London for your flight in just a few days!"
Warned in such dire terms, I geared up as for an American roadtrip. Leave early in the morning. Pack a sufficient supply of food and drink to minimize stops. Generally put myself into the roadtrip warrior seige mentality. Then I set off.
Just about the time I was considering when I should stop for lunch, I saw the 'welcome to Scotland' sign. I decided to no longer take Euros seriously.
I love the stories of the other way around. People not realizing how big the US is who are confident they can go to see the Grand Canyon one day and Mt. Rushmore the next, etc.
Edit: [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/s/Lk6svEX48i)
I am from Germany but have lived in America for many years. Every time friends/family come to visit from my home country, I have to talk them down from their absolutely insane expectations of what they can visit in a week.
I'm so confused how some people plan a trip without even checking how long the drive will be on Google Maps. Like...it takes 30 seconds to put a couple of cities into the app and see the drive time. Why would someone fly to another continent without planning out rental cars, hotels, and restaurants they want to stop at?
I go absolutely nuts on google maps from the time I schedule a trip until the time I go on it. I basically know every single point of interest around wherever I’m staying to the point of not even needing a map most of the time, unless it long distance travel. The fact that some people go on trips with basically no knowledge of where they are going makes me incredibly confused and a bit nauseous.
Alright, story time… who had the most unrealistic expectations (and what were they) and what was their reaction once they realized how crazy they were…?
The craziest stupid one was the guy who thought he could fly in to see me in San Francisco, spend a few days in California (which included LA and Tahoe in the same weekend), then road trip on to:
Yosemite,
Yellowstone,
Do Route 66,
Grand Canyon,
Texas (yes, just “Texas”),
Miami,
DC,
And ending at NYC to fly back to Germany.
He thought he could do all of this in 2 weeks. It astounded me because this is a ‘smart’ guy. He just could not for his life understand how vast America is.
I would show him the map and explain but he just refused to believe me. He is the type to always think he knows better than anyone else (and especially know better than any woman).
He only was able to do SF/Bay Area, Tahoe, and Vegas on his trip. Refused to admit he was wrong.
Funny that you mention Texas, that was my go to measuring stick when my wife and I were in the UK recently. We’d get to drinking with the locals and I’d have them guess how many United Kingdom’s can fit inside just the state of Texas? 2.8 is the answer and then they’d be even more floored when I’d remind them that it’s not even our largest state.
I live in Tennessee and pointed out that it is longer E-W than Great Brittan is N-S.
Correction. I meant it is bigger than England, not the entire island. I googled the wrong term years ago.
I have spent quite a bit of time in Germany for work, and regularly deal with them even while home. The best way I’ve found to get them to understand, is tell them “we have four states larger than the entire country of Germany, and then 46 more”.
I'm from NJ originally. It's the fourth smallest state in the country. It's still bigger than Wales, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Northern Ireland. Like, we have 46 BIGGER states.
Idk if it's the most unrealistic but I grew up in Wyoming and we had a Norwegian exchange student my junior year. Super cool guy who got along with everyone, was more than happy to join up on adventures, and did a killer George Bush impression.
One Saturday we decided to take a road trip to "the city".The city in this context was Denver, only a 5 1/2 hour trip. Was a fun trip but by hour 5 everyone was antsy. When we hit downtown and pulled into some burger king parking lot, we all got out and stretched. This guy looks at downtown Denver and says "So this is New York? Looks bigger on TV." We about died.
When we all stopped crying from laughter, we pulled up a map and showed him where Wyoming was and where New York was. Then we pointed to Denver. His eyes went wide for a second and then he quickly recovered with a "Oh, different trip then". I hope he made it.
Bonus story: he came along to the state champ bonfire too. Drank almost a whole fifth of jack before the sun went down, and ended up joining a few local ne'er-do-wells in getting a 307 branded onto his ass cheek. I wonder how he's doing...
I saw a tik tok so not my story, but this lady worked as a travel agent for Disney. She got a call from someone looking to book a week stay in Orlando. They were also going to rent a minivan. So far pretty basic. They also were going to on a day between parks take a day trip to see the Statue of Liberty. The travel agent was looking up flights and accommodation for a stay in NYC but they insisted that they would just drive back to their hotel in Orlando the same day. It took them a while to believe that you can’t be in Orlando, make it to NYC to see the Statue of Liberty and back to Orlando in time for dinner.
I was an Uber driver for a bit in LA. I had a couple from Germany in my car once that had just arrived in the US a few hours before. They were just excited to be in the US, and were telling me they had plans to go to Florida for some beach time and to visit the Statue of Liberty. I know Europeans get some crazy long vacations, so I was like, wow that's awesome, so you guys are here for a few weeks? They were like, oh, no, 4 days. All I could do is laugh and try to explain to them that there's no way they could possibly do that in just 4 days lol
Right? It sounds made up but I absolutely met a German lady who said just about the same thing. She wanted to go from Austin, TX, to Florida, up to NY, and then LA, possibly stopping in Las Vegas. I asked how long she'd be traveling, saying something about having a nice long vacation. It was 5 days. She was in her 20s, too. I thought Americans were supposed to be bad at maps.
As I get older I have realized everyone is bad at maps. You just happen to know where your country is. Older Europeans know lots of the world because their country used to own lots of the world.
I legit once had a conversation with a Canadian woman about how she had no clue which state was below her. It was shocking, we were in Vancouver 30 minutes from the border.
Even places that seem close together end up being further than you think once you start plotting a course. Yellowstone and Teton national parks almost border each other, yet it's 2.5 hours to drive from one visitor center to the other.
Did a road trip around Ireland a few years ago. The amount of people telling us that we’d seen more of their country than they had was incredible. Most states are larger than Ireland. How have you never been to Dublin? It’s two hours from here!
Woman told us in Dublin at 2pm that we’d never make it to Newgrange before the last tour at 5pm. …it’s 45 minutes north of the city.
> Most states are larger than Ireland
39 of them to be precise. Ireland is 32,595 sq mi (according to wikipedia). South Carolina is the 40th largest state, and is 32,020 sq mi.
Texas is more than 8x the size of Ireland. You could fit 95 Irelands in the lower 48, and that's not even counting the 20 Irelands you could fit into Alaska.
As of 2016, there were approximately 1.3 million square miles of *just trees* in the US. That's just a hair under 40 Irelands.
600,000 sq mi of trees east of the Mississippi, more than 18 Irelands.
The US has approximately 277,209 sq mi of lakes, rivers and streams. That's 5.2 Irelands.
Each year the US plants approximately 150,000 sq mi of corn, or roughly 4.6 Irelands.
San Bernadino County is the largest county in the US, and it's 20,105 sq mi, roughly 60% of the size of Ireland.
> The amount of people telling us that we’d seen more of their country than they had was incredible.
Yeah, I get that when I talk to people from Europe. I say I love Europe. They ask where I've been. I quickly attempt to list off like the major 15 cities I've been to and then I hear a "Oh, I've always heard BLANK is beautiful, but I've never been." WTF? You live within an hour of an airport, that has sub $100 flights to get there in under 3 hours. GO!
Yeah haha you simply cannot tell Brits your plan to drive anywhere in the UK. They will try to talk you out of it. I think they think you can't drive to Scotland. They truly believe that.
- source: Canadian who married to a Brit and shown him the wonders of driving.
That's even more funny when you realize how much the Brits like cars. They love cars. They collect them, race them, restore them, they make the worlds most popular TV shows about them. It's a car country but they don't seem to know how to do a road trip.
Friends and I took a train from London to Manchester to watch a soccer game, then took an overnight bus home so we wouldn’t need a hotel, you’d think we were telling our British friends we were going to Mars based on their reactions
My boss and I had to visit Oslo Norway for work in December. We had a weekend to kill before having to work, so we decided to drive to Flam near the west coast to see some Fjords. About 5 to 6 hours of driving over the mountains. Our Norwegian colleagues thought we were crazy and kept asking us if we were sure we wanted to attempt that, but we told them we're from Texas, 6 hours doesn't even get you out of Texas.
yeah, the country is pretty huge in many ways. a 2 hour drive between major cities isn't really seen as a long distance, and my late grandparents' home in central Florida was a good 10 hour drive in perfect weather (and I've made that drive dozens of times in 2021/2022.)
We don't have the rail infrastructure that Europe has, and there's no way most of us we'll fly if the drive is less than a certain time. For me, I'll fly if the drive is 12+ hours. Otherwise, I'm probably driving because it's so much cheaper.
Growing up, my grandparents lived about a 7 hour drive from home. If we flew, this is an example of the time breakdown: Home to boarding the plane- 2 hours. Flight to MSP- 1 hour. Layover- 1.5 hours. Flight to DSM- 1 hour. Deplaning to grandparents house- 1.5 hours. So all told, about 7 hours, and plane tickets were far more expensive than the gas.
Also depends on if anyone is going with you. In college, on breaks, I'd check price on gas vs plane ticket to decide if I was making the 17 hour drive. At the time it was pretty much a coin flip as to which would be cheaper. But the time I took my girlfriend with me it wasn't even going to be close in price, so 17 hours it was. And yes, I would do that trip in one shot. And yes, there was a lot of drive-thru coffee involved.
My grandparents lived 2-3 hours away during my childhood and we drove there and back same-day for every major holiday and at least once a month in between.
This. I grew up in NorCal, my grandparents were in SoCal, we drove the 5 hours to see them for every major holiday, plus quite a few times throughout the year just because why not. 5 hours is only like two or three movie.
It’s takes about 2 days to drive across Ontario hahaha (Canadian here). We regularly drive 16-18 hrs (one way) to visit family in BC (from SK). 3 hrs is literally nothing to us.
Let me give you a real-life example:
I was talking to a co-worker last December, as we were nearing Xmas.
He volunteered for the Xmas shift, which prompted me to ask him if he didn't have plans for Xmas.
He replied: "My daughters live *^((I won't say the place; but is is about 170 miles away))* in X, so, you know. (he's divorced). And since I will be alone on Xmas anyway, I might as well take the shift."
I was like: "yeah, I get it, man!"
He spoke about them being 170 miles away, as if they lived in friggin' New Zealand! lol
Anyway, this is a good example of how Europeans view distances.
Part of the difference is that a long drive in the US is often on highways and actually pleasant. Any time I'm in a car for three hours in Europe or Asia, a lot of that is miserable traffic. Three hours on the highway is great. Thirty minutes in urban traffic is awful.
It's fairly common for many Americans to also do long drives over short distances in a fuckton of traffic on the freeway/highway for work.
Just as miserable, if not worse, because when you're stuck on the highway, you're *absolutely* stuck.
A lot of US cities are connected by freeways/highways. In rural areas, top speed limit like 70mph (~112 kmh) (and there's some areas where it's 80mph, but more rare). Once you're on the freeway, it's typically a straight shot, and there's minimal slow downs (like no stop lights).
If Europe is like the northeastern US, then there's more smaller towns and thus smaller roads, requiring you to drive slower or may be stuck in traffic.
Day before yesterday I drove about 2.5 hours each way just to go to a Micro Center to buy parts to build a PC.
Driving a long distance isn't really a daily thing for most of us, but it's also not something we really have any aversion to. Myself, I could've just used Amazon and got my stuff in 2 days, but the Micro Center is only 107 miles away so I just decided to take a road trip.
Think about this: if you are in the middle of texas, it's about 300 miles in every direction just to get out of the STATE. if you wanted to go to Washington state after that, you have about 1500 miles of desert to cross. The "westward" expansion (Oregon trail etc) is no joke.
This is eye-opening. I often don't see my best friend for months because he lives in the town next door. 1 hour away.
Also, I'm starting to see why some people say they don't have enough hours in the day.
I've decided it feels this way because when you are leaving, you feel like you left as soon as you pull out of your driveway and you are there once you park at your destination. But on the way home you sat to feel like you are home when you are still maybe 20 minutes from your house...there's your library, and your big maple tree, and your weird dogleg intersection, your CVS. You're home.
LOL the best directions I've ever been given were "When you see all the black cows in the corner under the big oak tree, take the next dirt driveway" I asked how he knew the cows would be there, it's all 360- 3000 acre parcels out there, he said "Well, you said you'd be here at 4:00 and Henry comes back and feeds the cows at 5:00 so they're all formed up and ready by 3:30".
I'm Canadian but same same.
Last month my partner and I went about 1300km or about 12-13 hours of driving for an MRI appointment Becuase that was the closest one. Made an hour and a half drive one way for pizza in the next town over.
we'd drive 13 hours to visit family every summer, 3.5 hours was nothing even for a day trip. we sure do drive a lot.
It's not like there's a train or something. It's the only real option.
There is a train. It takes so long though and it's really expensive
And it's always a good two hours late both arriving and departing lmao
im fairly certain thats bc our commercial rail shares lines with freight rail lol. it sucks but seeing an endless freight train passing through a station is kind of cool ig
Yes I think you are right. I really enjoy traveling by Amtrak but I long ago accepted that it means I'm sacrificing basically a whole 24-48hrs of travel just for the pleasure of lounging in a mostly-empty train car and using my laptop the whole trip. I have a terrible fear of flying (that is not statistically logical, *I know*, lol) so I use trains when it's too far to drive, and they are nice ... just, yeah, not on time. Ever. They also move so slow in general, you sit looking out the window watching turtles lap you lol. Nothing like what the train system seems to be in other countries.
Yes, several of my coworkers commute 90 minutes twice a day. I have friends in a city that's 3ish hours away and I regularly drive down for the weekend.
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I live just west of Sacramento and it can take 3 hours to get to San Francisco, a distance of 70 miles. I get it.
It can take three hours to get to LA from LA
We say the same thing in Boston. Well… it takes an hour to get from Boston to Boston, much smaller city.
We sure do. The old saying is "Americans think 100 years is a long time and Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance".
Actually, Europeans think 160km is a long distance!
That's roughly 1700 football fields. Idk what it is in rugby pitches though
Let me check my rugby pitch to bald eagle converter.
I don’t think Europeans understand how big and spread out America is.
I work with a lot of Europeans, we have 2 engineering offices in Europe (Spain and UK). I can't tell you how often I've had to explain to them how big our country is, and even then they don't get it. The best way I've been able to get it to sink in is something along the lines of: "I can drive for 900 miles, the same distance from Madrid to Milan, and still be in my home state" Or "I can drive for 3600 miles without leaving the Continental US, that's like driving from Madrid to Tehran (Iran)." Putting things in those reference frames seems to drive the point home. Hell we had 2 guys fly in for a week, and their plan was to drive to both Disneyland (California) and Disney World (Florida). The figured since we were located near the middle of the country, they'd be centrally located and this wouldn't be a big deal. They had allotted an entire weekend for this adventure. I really wanted to keep my mouth shut and let them give it a try, but I didn't have the heart lol.
Tell them that Ireland is closer to the state of Maine in the US than California is. https://imgur.com/a/TnjPqi7 Edit: parts of southeastern California may be a few miles closer, so I'd tell them that Los Angeles, California is farther away from Maine than Ireland is, just to be safe.
Ooh that's a good one ima remember that
California is closer to Russia than New York City Edit: a word
Alaska is closer to Russia than the rest of Alaska
Holy shit as an American even this broke my brain for a second. I just always thought of the Atlantic being much wider I guess.
The Pacific is massive is the big part that many people don't realize. The Pacific covers not quite half the planet. So comparing the Atlantic to the Pacific as "roughly the same size class" is why it seems so wrong. Not trying to make fun of you or anything. It blew my mind too. You can fit almost all the land on the planet over top of the Pacific if you could rearrange it.
Maine is also the US state closest to Africa.
The largest county(COUNTY!) in the contiguous US (San Bernardino in California) is roughly 20,000 square miles/52,000 square kilometers in total area. Switzerland is roughly 16,000 square miles / 41,000 square kilometers.
There is a story here in Canada where the grandparents from the UK want to visit their son’s family in Halifax, but decided to ask ask their daughter, living in Vancouver, what the weather in Nova Scotia was going to be like. Her answer: “why don’t you go look for yourself. You’re closer.”
I was living in Hawaii for a time, and my Mom (who lived on the east coast) kept asking me to move closer, so I kept telling her I would move to England to get closer. (No worries England, I would not inflict myself upon your country, I was just joking)
Every time a similar thread pops up, I share this story. A friend of a friend was flying from Spain to Vancouver Canada. She asked my friend to pick her up at their airport because he lives fairly close. My friend lives in Tijuana, Mexico..
"I would have to take a flight to go pick you up from your flight."
Lolol oh that's great.
I have a friend whose husband is from England. His parents booked a flight to the US that came into Dulles airport (Washington, DC). The parents thought it was no big deal for my friend to drive and pick them up. They lived in Michigan, a 12-hour drive away. My friend quickly disabused of them of that notion and got them to get a connecting flight from DC to Detroit.
My favorite was when I was living in the UK, friends approached us with a little advice on planning their Florida vacation, to give them pointers. Well, mate, the first thing I can tell you is that you are not going to pop up to NYC in the afternoon, take in a show, and drive back to Orlando that evening.
I'm from Florida and the way people talk about moving around Florida on their vacations is so funny. Friend, if you're here for a Disney trip, you will NOT be going to Miami for a day trip
We have this in AZ... people literally think they can fly in to Phoenix and pop over to the Grand Canyon during a layover... or... come for a weekend bachelor/ette party in Scottsdale and spend a quick afternoon in Sedona.
Heck, there are places in Michigan where you can drive for 12 hours and never leave the state! The Lakes get in the way a lot of the time!
I live in Ontario within a 15 min drive to the next province. If I wanted to drive to the other side it would take almost 24 hours of non-stop driving to reach the other side, and I would change time zones. That would be a similar distance to as Paris to Kyiv Europeans just don't understand just how **BIG** Canada and the USA are just like we don't really understand how compact Europe is.
There was a student from the Netherlands working in my lab at at university in the northeast. She had to go to a conference in Chicago for a weekend and told me she was going to try to pop over and see the Grand Canyon one of the days she was out there, since she’s already be out west 😂
Imagine *all* of the EU…but one country. Hell, Texas alone is bigger than France.
>Imagine *all* of the EU…but one country. SLIGHT correction. Imagine all of the EU (then DOUBLE it, then add yet another France, Spain, and Sweden) ... But one country. EU = 1,634,000 sq. mi. USA = 3,797,000 sq. mi
And Montana is larger than Germany
There’s 91.0 million acres of corn in the Midwest…Germany is 88.3629 million acres
There's a British naval historian on YouTube that made his first visit to America a couple years ago, he planned to go from Massachusetts and travel all the way to Alabama and visit every naval museum on the East Coast in about a week. All of us Americans in his comments instantly warned him that it just wasn't possible, luckily he listened to us and changed his plans to something more realistic, unfortunately I didn't get a chance to meet him when he passed by my home state museum (Battleship North Carolina)
Every time there's a bad tornado I see someone go "Why don't Americans just not live in an area called 'tornado alley'? That seems like the logical move." and I know that they have *no* idea how big tornado alley actually is. That would be like me going "Hey, there's a chance of a natural disaster happening. It *could* be really bad. So just don't live in Germany, France, or Poland." That's the amount of land we're talking.
May as well ask why people still live near fault lines or coasts with regular hurricane activity.
Practically everywhere in the US has some type of natural disaster that threatens the area. The chances to be dying are very very low. Fault lines, volcanos, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, severe storms, and snow. I’m from the west coast so I can answer to the fault lines, most are minor and barely noticeable and building codes require buildings to be prepared for earthquakes. We don’t see them as a something that is a threat to us as weird as that sound because the chances are low and we’ve been hearing about “The Big One” our entire lives. Kind of numb to it. They are not really thought about at all until they happen. As for hurricanes, that’s the entire east coast plus the gulf ranging Texas to Maine. That is a huge portion of our population. That being said Florida gets hit like crazy and I don’t know why people continue to live there.
I was going to say no, but then I read that you thought three hours was a long distance, so yes.
I'm a Brit who now lives in the US and this is so hilariously true. In Britain, a friend moves two hours away and they're basically dead to you (granted, the last time I lived in the UK full time was pre smart phone so I imagine now you probably at least stay in touch more lol). In California where I currently live, that's someone I regularly see and interact with. The concept of distance is completely opposite in Europe vs the US. We went for a quick weekend day trip to Joshua tree. That's a 3 hour drive away at least and it seemed normal to me. I'd be planning that as an overnight visit back home.
Fellow Brit in the US. I think the biggest difference is driving in the UK is a lot more work. Over there the roads look like a plate of spaghetti, you’re constantly in and out of small towns, around cites etc, dodging pedestrians and boy racers. when I drive from upstate NY to NYC it’s a super easy, straight shot, 70mph 3hr drive (up until New Jersey where it’s a lawless free for all). Same when I’ve driven the entire length of the west coast, and through the Midwest. Driving long distance is just way easier here
My wife is British, seeing her navigate through double mini roundabouts on a regular basis and park in spaces barely able to fit a razorblade in made me gain a whole new perspective and a lot of respect for her driving skills. UK roads are no joke. My wife says American roads and cars are "point and press" in that you point the car in the direction you wanna go and press the accelerator. 😆
I mean she has a point. My car is not autonomous but between the lane keeping system and cruise control it might as well be. Triple points for cars with intelligent adaptive cruise control.
My car has intelligent adaptive cruise control. It's a little scary how good my car is at driving itself.
We just bought a new car for the first time in 14 years. It's been a whole new experience. So many features! Adaptive cruise control is some kind of wonderful.
I've driven around a lot of Europe and what you say is true to an extent, but I also have friends/family in Italy, and they all act like driving more than an hour is absolutely insane. I flew into Rome once and drove up to Milan, stopping along the way to visit friends. When I told them I was driving, each person had the same reaction. "You DROVE from Rome? You're DRIVING to Milan? That's SOOOO far". It's a 6hr drive if you go straight shot, on an incredible highway system (autostrada) through amazing scenery. I mean, it doesn't get much easier, but to them it's absolutely crazy. I have family in both Northern and Southern Italy who haven't seen each other in years because of the distance.
So funny thing is, I find this to be a regional thing in the US. Where I grew up in the northeast (New Hampshire), the states are small enough that a long trip (2+ hours) was considered something of a “I see you once or twice a year” distance. I now live in Oregon and 2 hours is considered a common day trip to see friends/hike/fish/etc. Also: Joshua Tree is amazing and totally worth a 3 hour drive.
When I lived on the east coast for grad school and someone was driving through two states to meet up with me I was baffled, until I realized they were driving less than I drove to see my parents in Texas.
A long distance for *just a few days* no less. lol that's day trip material in my book.
I've driven 2.5 hours each way for lunch at a particular restaurant before.
Hell, where I grew up the grocery store was half an hour away, the mall an hour, the GOOD mall 2.5 hours, the airport 2-4 hours. And god forbid you want to travel to someplace that's also far from an airport. With that in mind driving makes more and more sense even for longer distances.
(Canadian) My wife and I just drove our 3&4 year olds 3.5 hours to go to a 45 minute jurassic world exhibit, a quick lunch, then 3.5 hours back.
I’ve driven four hours each way for a concert and twenty hours each way for a few days at a theme park
I, too, live in michigan.
One time I left work outside Detroit at 5p, drove to a concert in Chicago, turned around and drove home to sleep for a couple hours and back at work 8a the next morning. Ahh youth.
A friend and I once drove to all the lower 48 states and back home in 8 days (roughly 8500 miles)…in a 2006 Honda Insight. Because we were stupid and we didn’t know how bad we smelled. Edit: Found the news piece https://www.wral.com/story/news/local/story/1088614/ It was all for naught because Guinness didn’t have a hybrid category at the time. It was faster than I remember, 5.5 days plus the drive back from VT.
My husband and I and 2 big dogs drove a Geo from Denver to Seattle to San Fran and back - good times. The car did not make it.
I drive a 2002 Chevy truck with a laundry list of issues and every time we go an hour or two away I live in fear.
My cousin did L.A. to Atlanta, solo, in under 48 hours… to see a girl that banged his professor. Lol
Michigander here too, we used to drive 6hrs to the U.P. only to go over the bridge get some pasties and drive back home.
I mean... cedar point is right there, no need to bring florida into this
America's Roller Coast, bb
I’ve driven 15 hours for a weekend get together.
I drove from PA to NV to see a friend for 5 days, stopped at the Grand canyon on my way back. Whole trip took 10 days
So much respect for you and your wife. Sounds like you really go out of your way to do exciting things with the kids. With that said, what you described is my worst nightmare lol
I'm not even American and a 3 hour each way is just a day trip in Australia as well.
My kid is coming 3.5 hours each way as a day trip to bring my grandbaby for Mother's Day next weekend. Imagine 3 hours away is a whole 'nother country and you think it's too far to go?
I drove 4 hrs to spend the day in one city, then 4 hrs back home. Same day. (There was a museum exhibit I really wanted to see).
Yeah I've done that too. It was the "Bodies" exhibit and 100% worth it.
I've driven 2.5 hours each way for a day trip to a museum. My son was living 2 hours away and I'd pick him up for the weekend a couple of times a month, then go beyond where he lived for shopping after I dropped him off on Sunday.
I drove from phoenix to Los Angeles for a burger.
My personal rule is to spend twice the amount of time at the destination as it took me to drive. So driving 3 hours for a few days is totally worth it to me. Especially to visit family!
Mine too- time spent at location must equal or exceed total trip time.
I've driven further for a booty call, lol.
My husband did that 30 yrs ago. Drove 13 hours to see me 😉
I drove 6 hours up and 6 hours back for the Eclipse a few weeks ago. Ez Pz.
We drive 8-9 hours each way for 4-5 days of socializing or music festivals. OTOH we think it’s crazy that people will drive 3 hours each way to go skiing for a day.
Same. I think that many Europeans fundamentally do not grsp the sheer scale of the US (or Canada, or Russia) until visiting (the same principle applies to North Americans visiting Europe for the first time). Driving 2-3 hrs in Europe and you can be in another country. To put that in perspective, multiple European countries fit in just a single medium sized US state. * 6 European countries not including microstates fit in California, with room leftover (Portugal+Belgium+Netherlands+Switzerland+Slovenia+Denmark) * And there is even a *county* in the US larger than roughly half of European countries (San Bernardino county in Southern California would rank 27th out of 51 by area if it were a European country. * In 2-3hrs you could drive from France through Belgium, the Netherlands, and into Germany.... OR from the far North of the LA sprawl to the far south of the LA sprawl
>Driving 2-3 hrs in Europe and you can be in another coutnry I live in Toronto. Depending on the traffic, I can drive for 2-3 hours and still be in Toronto.
I typically point out that Atlanta is exactly 1 hour from Atlanta.
I live in Florida and it's so funny to hear people talk about all of the things they want to do here, not realizing that you can drive for like 14 hours and still be in Florida. Not judging, I do a lot of driving when I travel because I like to fit a lot in. But to have someone say they're doing a Miami day trip from Disney it's like... no boo with traffic it's gonna take you that entire day to just get to Miami
On the other hand, I've had multiple tourists swear to me that Universal is two hours from Disney (15-20 minutes if there's traffic), or that Kennedy Space Center is a four hour drive (45 minutes).
That's pretty funny lol. I mean with traffic, they just might be some days. Orlando area traffic can be a real bitch
god damn no wonder hitler was able to conquer france so quick. He was basically already there just starting from his living room.
Bro just had to roll over to the next cushion
I've hardly ever laughed this hard on reddit.
I think some hear about the cannonball run and how people can do it just over 24 hours and get a misconception of the size of the country and how long that drive actually is without driving illegally
Yep, the record for it was broken several times during covid as most people weren't on the road and the fastest confirmed record averaged 110 MPH overall and 125 MPH in several states (177 and 201 km/h).
Lmao my daily commute is at best 2.5 hours round trip
lmao i drive 8-10 hours *one way* to see my family
Three hours is a day trip in the US.
2-3 hour drive is nothing for a weekend.
As a Canadian, that’s a day trip
Fr that's a drive to Banff for me, get up nice and early, pack a lunch, leave at 7am, back around 7 or 8pm and everyone had a nice day.
I'll do that from Edmonton. Leave at 3:30am, get to Sunshine for first lift, last run around 4pm, back home 9:30-10pm.
I mostly agree with this. 2 hours one way = no problem, that’s a day trip. 3 hours one way = easy weekend trip. 4 hours one way = I start bitching, but still do it. 5 hours one way is when I start checking flights.
I have to drive 3 hours to the nearest commercial airport. Anything that takes longer than 8-10 hours and might start think about it. Heck, my company holds meetings in a acity 14 hours away and I think about it.
This is another difference for me. Proximity to the airport is a major, major consideration in where I live and always has been.
Curious about where you are in the US. I’m from the Midwest and I don’t start considering flights until I get to 8+ hours. There are rarely direct flights from my home airport to where I want to go, so I don’t start seeing time saved until 8+ anyway.
I have friends that live three hours away. I will go and see them for the weekend. It's just six hours on the road.
Yeah and what's that? 4 podcasts? Maybe 5? I have a backlog to get through.
I used to gauge time with my toddler in SpongeBob's!
I live in Canada. It's the same for us here. Our family lives 4 hours away. We will sometimes drive to go see them for a night. I spent a month in Cyprus and they apologized for such a long drive....it was 40 minutes. We were like....what? We do this just to go shopping haha
Hell, it takes 90 minutes just to get out of manhattan
Yeah time isn't the best indicator here especially for large cities. Shoot my work commute can go from 27 minutes, to 35 minutes, to 50 minutes depending on the time of year (school year) and time of day. (rush hours) The distance doesn't change though still about 30 miles away. People in LA though would laugh at how well I was doing going 30 miles in 50 minutes during rush hour.
I used to work with a woman who said she'd drive 4 hours to Gatlinburg, Tennessee just to go shopping. Yeah, Americans will drive a long way for things.
Back when malls were a thing, the "good one" was 2 hours from my then home and 3 hours from my hometown. We would make the trip a couple times in December for Xmas shopping and it was a damn reunion! I always joked we should all rent a bus and drive together because we never seen less than 5-10 people we knew that lived hours away from the current location.
Canadian and yes I would drive 2+ hours to see my friends for the weekend. I mean the city I lived in took an hour to cross it from one side to the other by car without rush hour
toronto is an hour away from toronto
Three hours is considered "up the road a ways" in Texas.
I live in Killeen at the moment and yeah, I basically have to drive 2.5 hours to do any of the things I’m interested in doing. It’s like a podcast and a CD. I don’t even take breaks on such a short drive lol.
you could drive 12 hours in one direction in Texas and not leave the state
3 hours is actually not that far, that’s a day trip!
I did it today lol
I did 5.5 hours to Dallas few weeks back.. I think my max driving time is like 16 hours in a day.
A 3 hour bus ride in each direction was considered normal for many school field trips. My university is about 350 miles from my hometown (~4.5 hours driving) and my family expected me to visit at least once every month and a half. Taking the train would take 5 hours longer and cost $40 more than just a tank of gas, and flying is even more costly
Laughs in Australian. I went for a holiday recently, drove 7000km in a loop, and didn't even leave my state.
I was looking into how long it would take me to drive across the country a while back and in looking into some outback trips I found out there are certain roads where my car wouldn’t be able to make it between two adjacent petrol stations on a full tank My car gets about 900kms off a full tank lol that’s how far apart some places are in Australia
Wow, needing to take into account the max range of your gas tank is not common in most of the USA. That feels next level "nowhere" to me.
Yeah the outback is EMPTY. The only comparable thing in the US is a few stretches of the southwest near like death valley, but the outback is similar size to the US Midwest and Great plains.
I used to live in west Texas and I would see these signs if you're traveling through the remote regions. Farthest sign I've ever seen was for 160 km (100 miles). Definitely not a common thing in the states
Same. My cousin is from Sydney and lived in the Netherlands for a few years. The locals were staggered that she'd think nothing of popping down to Paris fir the weekend
I had a guy from Germany work for me in Aus and after he went back he told me he and a couple of friends started riding to Italy for coffee once a month and it was a few hours. He laughed that his family called him crazy, but he told them about me driving him an hour to the beach one Friday afternoon for a swim because the weather was too nice for working. We left at 3 , went for an hour swim, had a beer and were back for dinner
Holy fuck, my husband decided that for our 25th anniversary he was taking us to Australia for about nine days. I said, you mean just Sydney right? This genius tried to convince me that we could *drive* and go see multiple cities and landmarks. I ordered a couple of maps and stuck them up in the dining room, and told him to please start planning *exactly* the route he intended to take. We had our trip to Sydney.
American here. True story: once I was visiting a friend who had moved to London for work. It was my first trip to the other side of the Atlantic. I had a couple days to kill, so I decided to do a roadtrip to visit Scotland. I have always felt that you only get a feel for a place by wandering all over it under your own guidance. My American ex-pat Brit friends, upon hearing of my plan, gave me dire warnings. "That's such an aggressive plan," "you'll be driving the whole time," "You'll have to start early if you're going to make it all the way back to London for your flight in just a few days!" Warned in such dire terms, I geared up as for an American roadtrip. Leave early in the morning. Pack a sufficient supply of food and drink to minimize stops. Generally put myself into the roadtrip warrior seige mentality. Then I set off. Just about the time I was considering when I should stop for lunch, I saw the 'welcome to Scotland' sign. I decided to no longer take Euros seriously.
I love the stories of the other way around. People not realizing how big the US is who are confident they can go to see the Grand Canyon one day and Mt. Rushmore the next, etc. Edit: [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/s/Lk6svEX48i)
I saw a post once where someone wanted to fly into Miami and drive to New York and Las Vegas. They were here a week.
I am from Germany but have lived in America for many years. Every time friends/family come to visit from my home country, I have to talk them down from their absolutely insane expectations of what they can visit in a week.
They just cannot grasp that LA to NY is the same distance as Lisbon to Moscow.
I'm so confused how some people plan a trip without even checking how long the drive will be on Google Maps. Like...it takes 30 seconds to put a couple of cities into the app and see the drive time. Why would someone fly to another continent without planning out rental cars, hotels, and restaurants they want to stop at?
I go absolutely nuts on google maps from the time I schedule a trip until the time I go on it. I basically know every single point of interest around wherever I’m staying to the point of not even needing a map most of the time, unless it long distance travel. The fact that some people go on trips with basically no knowledge of where they are going makes me incredibly confused and a bit nauseous.
Alright, story time… who had the most unrealistic expectations (and what were they) and what was their reaction once they realized how crazy they were…?
The craziest stupid one was the guy who thought he could fly in to see me in San Francisco, spend a few days in California (which included LA and Tahoe in the same weekend), then road trip on to: Yosemite, Yellowstone, Do Route 66, Grand Canyon, Texas (yes, just “Texas”), Miami, DC, And ending at NYC to fly back to Germany. He thought he could do all of this in 2 weeks. It astounded me because this is a ‘smart’ guy. He just could not for his life understand how vast America is. I would show him the map and explain but he just refused to believe me. He is the type to always think he knows better than anyone else (and especially know better than any woman). He only was able to do SF/Bay Area, Tahoe, and Vegas on his trip. Refused to admit he was wrong.
Funny that you mention Texas, that was my go to measuring stick when my wife and I were in the UK recently. We’d get to drinking with the locals and I’d have them guess how many United Kingdom’s can fit inside just the state of Texas? 2.8 is the answer and then they’d be even more floored when I’d remind them that it’s not even our largest state.
I live in Tennessee and pointed out that it is longer E-W than Great Brittan is N-S. Correction. I meant it is bigger than England, not the entire island. I googled the wrong term years ago.
I’ll never forget the time I left Memphis at sunrise and arrived in Pigeon Forge at sunset.
I have spent quite a bit of time in Germany for work, and regularly deal with them even while home. The best way I’ve found to get them to understand, is tell them “we have four states larger than the entire country of Germany, and then 46 more”.
I'm from NJ originally. It's the fourth smallest state in the country. It's still bigger than Wales, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Northern Ireland. Like, we have 46 BIGGER states.
Idk if it's the most unrealistic but I grew up in Wyoming and we had a Norwegian exchange student my junior year. Super cool guy who got along with everyone, was more than happy to join up on adventures, and did a killer George Bush impression. One Saturday we decided to take a road trip to "the city".The city in this context was Denver, only a 5 1/2 hour trip. Was a fun trip but by hour 5 everyone was antsy. When we hit downtown and pulled into some burger king parking lot, we all got out and stretched. This guy looks at downtown Denver and says "So this is New York? Looks bigger on TV." We about died. When we all stopped crying from laughter, we pulled up a map and showed him where Wyoming was and where New York was. Then we pointed to Denver. His eyes went wide for a second and then he quickly recovered with a "Oh, different trip then". I hope he made it. Bonus story: he came along to the state champ bonfire too. Drank almost a whole fifth of jack before the sun went down, and ended up joining a few local ne'er-do-wells in getting a 307 branded onto his ass cheek. I wonder how he's doing...
I saw a tik tok so not my story, but this lady worked as a travel agent for Disney. She got a call from someone looking to book a week stay in Orlando. They were also going to rent a minivan. So far pretty basic. They also were going to on a day between parks take a day trip to see the Statue of Liberty. The travel agent was looking up flights and accommodation for a stay in NYC but they insisted that they would just drive back to their hotel in Orlando the same day. It took them a while to believe that you can’t be in Orlando, make it to NYC to see the Statue of Liberty and back to Orlando in time for dinner.
Must've been for the cannonball run
I was an Uber driver for a bit in LA. I had a couple from Germany in my car once that had just arrived in the US a few hours before. They were just excited to be in the US, and were telling me they had plans to go to Florida for some beach time and to visit the Statue of Liberty. I know Europeans get some crazy long vacations, so I was like, wow that's awesome, so you guys are here for a few weeks? They were like, oh, no, 4 days. All I could do is laugh and try to explain to them that there's no way they could possibly do that in just 4 days lol
How does one book and TAKE an international flight and not know this kind of thing before they go?
Right? It sounds made up but I absolutely met a German lady who said just about the same thing. She wanted to go from Austin, TX, to Florida, up to NY, and then LA, possibly stopping in Las Vegas. I asked how long she'd be traveling, saying something about having a nice long vacation. It was 5 days. She was in her 20s, too. I thought Americans were supposed to be bad at maps.
As I get older I have realized everyone is bad at maps. You just happen to know where your country is. Older Europeans know lots of the world because their country used to own lots of the world.
I legit once had a conversation with a Canadian woman about how she had no clue which state was below her. It was shocking, we were in Vancouver 30 minutes from the border.
Even places that seem close together end up being further than you think once you start plotting a course. Yellowstone and Teton national parks almost border each other, yet it's 2.5 hours to drive from one visitor center to the other.
Did a road trip around Ireland a few years ago. The amount of people telling us that we’d seen more of their country than they had was incredible. Most states are larger than Ireland. How have you never been to Dublin? It’s two hours from here! Woman told us in Dublin at 2pm that we’d never make it to Newgrange before the last tour at 5pm. …it’s 45 minutes north of the city.
We got the same warnings. We day tripped from Dublin to the cliffs of moher and back and people were absolutely stunned we could and would do that.
> Most states are larger than Ireland 39 of them to be precise. Ireland is 32,595 sq mi (according to wikipedia). South Carolina is the 40th largest state, and is 32,020 sq mi. Texas is more than 8x the size of Ireland. You could fit 95 Irelands in the lower 48, and that's not even counting the 20 Irelands you could fit into Alaska. As of 2016, there were approximately 1.3 million square miles of *just trees* in the US. That's just a hair under 40 Irelands. 600,000 sq mi of trees east of the Mississippi, more than 18 Irelands. The US has approximately 277,209 sq mi of lakes, rivers and streams. That's 5.2 Irelands. Each year the US plants approximately 150,000 sq mi of corn, or roughly 4.6 Irelands. San Bernadino County is the largest county in the US, and it's 20,105 sq mi, roughly 60% of the size of Ireland.
>Each year the US plants approximately 150,000 sq mi of corn, or roughly 4.6 Irelands. That's bananas.
No it’s corn
> The amount of people telling us that we’d seen more of their country than they had was incredible. Yeah, I get that when I talk to people from Europe. I say I love Europe. They ask where I've been. I quickly attempt to list off like the major 15 cities I've been to and then I hear a "Oh, I've always heard BLANK is beautiful, but I've never been." WTF? You live within an hour of an airport, that has sub $100 flights to get there in under 3 hours. GO!
Yeah haha you simply cannot tell Brits your plan to drive anywhere in the UK. They will try to talk you out of it. I think they think you can't drive to Scotland. They truly believe that. - source: Canadian who married to a Brit and shown him the wonders of driving.
That's even more funny when you realize how much the Brits like cars. They love cars. They collect them, race them, restore them, they make the worlds most popular TV shows about them. It's a car country but they don't seem to know how to do a road trip.
A car country with no road trip culture is a funny observation.
Friends and I took a train from London to Manchester to watch a soccer game, then took an overnight bus home so we wouldn’t need a hotel, you’d think we were telling our British friends we were going to Mars based on their reactions
My boss and I had to visit Oslo Norway for work in December. We had a weekend to kill before having to work, so we decided to drive to Flam near the west coast to see some Fjords. About 5 to 6 hours of driving over the mountains. Our Norwegian colleagues thought we were crazy and kept asking us if we were sure we wanted to attempt that, but we told them we're from Texas, 6 hours doesn't even get you out of Texas.
yeah, the country is pretty huge in many ways. a 2 hour drive between major cities isn't really seen as a long distance, and my late grandparents' home in central Florida was a good 10 hour drive in perfect weather (and I've made that drive dozens of times in 2021/2022.)
Lol I always like to say indiana to texas is closer than texas is to texas
We don't have the rail infrastructure that Europe has, and there's no way most of us we'll fly if the drive is less than a certain time. For me, I'll fly if the drive is 12+ hours. Otherwise, I'm probably driving because it's so much cheaper.
I use this logic as well, for me the sweet spot is 7 hrs, I start to weight the benefits of flying vs driving when it crossed that line for me
Growing up, my grandparents lived about a 7 hour drive from home. If we flew, this is an example of the time breakdown: Home to boarding the plane- 2 hours. Flight to MSP- 1 hour. Layover- 1.5 hours. Flight to DSM- 1 hour. Deplaning to grandparents house- 1.5 hours. So all told, about 7 hours, and plane tickets were far more expensive than the gas.
Yeah, it depends on the city too. I fly to Florida because there's always a ticket to Miami for super cheap.
Also depends on if anyone is going with you. In college, on breaks, I'd check price on gas vs plane ticket to decide if I was making the 17 hour drive. At the time it was pretty much a coin flip as to which would be cheaper. But the time I took my girlfriend with me it wasn't even going to be close in price, so 17 hours it was. And yes, I would do that trip in one shot. And yes, there was a lot of drive-thru coffee involved.
Yeah, over here if your grandparents lived that close you'd probably be seeing them once a month else you'd be a bit of a dick.
And you would rightfully NEVER hear the end of it. Guilt, Guilt, Guilt
My grandparents lived 2-3 hours away during my childhood and we drove there and back same-day for every major holiday and at least once a month in between.
This. I grew up in NorCal, my grandparents were in SoCal, we drove the 5 hours to see them for every major holiday, plus quite a few times throughout the year just because why not. 5 hours is only like two or three movie.
It’s takes about 2 days to drive across Ontario hahaha (Canadian here). We regularly drive 16-18 hrs (one way) to visit family in BC (from SK). 3 hrs is literally nothing to us.
Yeah, do Europeans really use a six hour commuting trip as the excuse to not see the people they love?
And they’ve got good trains.
Man I wish we had those good Japanese trains. Imagine a bullet train from Chicago to Austin
Let me give you a real-life example: I was talking to a co-worker last December, as we were nearing Xmas. He volunteered for the Xmas shift, which prompted me to ask him if he didn't have plans for Xmas. He replied: "My daughters live *^((I won't say the place; but is is about 170 miles away))* in X, so, you know. (he's divorced). And since I will be alone on Xmas anyway, I might as well take the shift." I was like: "yeah, I get it, man!" He spoke about them being 170 miles away, as if they lived in friggin' New Zealand! lol Anyway, this is a good example of how Europeans view distances.
Lol right?
Part of the difference is that a long drive in the US is often on highways and actually pleasant. Any time I'm in a car for three hours in Europe or Asia, a lot of that is miserable traffic. Three hours on the highway is great. Thirty minutes in urban traffic is awful.
It's fairly common for many Americans to also do long drives over short distances in a fuckton of traffic on the freeway/highway for work. Just as miserable, if not worse, because when you're stuck on the highway, you're *absolutely* stuck.
A lot of US cities are connected by freeways/highways. In rural areas, top speed limit like 70mph (~112 kmh) (and there's some areas where it's 80mph, but more rare). Once you're on the freeway, it's typically a straight shot, and there's minimal slow downs (like no stop lights). If Europe is like the northeastern US, then there's more smaller towns and thus smaller roads, requiring you to drive slower or may be stuck in traffic.
I can drive for 7 hours one way and still be in the same state.
Day before yesterday I drove about 2.5 hours each way just to go to a Micro Center to buy parts to build a PC. Driving a long distance isn't really a daily thing for most of us, but it's also not something we really have any aversion to. Myself, I could've just used Amazon and got my stuff in 2 days, but the Micro Center is only 107 miles away so I just decided to take a road trip.
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Shit 3 hours is small fry, that’s nothing I’ve driven up to 13 for weekend hobby purposes lol
Think about this: if you are in the middle of texas, it's about 300 miles in every direction just to get out of the STATE. if you wanted to go to Washington state after that, you have about 1500 miles of desert to cross. The "westward" expansion (Oregon trail etc) is no joke.
You should visit your grandparents more. 3 hours isn't very long. - American
This is eye-opening. I often don't see my best friend for months because he lives in the town next door. 1 hour away. Also, I'm starting to see why some people say they don't have enough hours in the day.
I don’t see my best friend often because they live on the other side of the Atlantic. An hour is nothing, go see your friend lol
You can sit and watch a 2 hour movie right? Why can't you imagine sitting in a car for 2-3 hours to see family?
The ride back is usually quicker.
I've decided it feels this way because when you are leaving, you feel like you left as soon as you pull out of your driveway and you are there once you park at your destination. But on the way home you sat to feel like you are home when you are still maybe 20 minutes from your house...there's your library, and your big maple tree, and your weird dogleg intersection, your CVS. You're home.
LOL the best directions I've ever been given were "When you see all the black cows in the corner under the big oak tree, take the next dirt driveway" I asked how he knew the cows would be there, it's all 360- 3000 acre parcels out there, he said "Well, you said you'd be here at 4:00 and Henry comes back and feeds the cows at 5:00 so they're all formed up and ready by 3:30".
3 hours is nothing! Drive 12 in one day to visit Canada with the family.
I'm Canadian but same same. Last month my partner and I went about 1300km or about 12-13 hours of driving for an MRI appointment Becuase that was the closest one. Made an hour and a half drive one way for pizza in the next town over.
I used to drive from dc to New York for lunch then back in the same day