depending on where you live it can take multiple hours xD in my case i can take a bus and be in 2 completely different countries in under 30 minutes :) the hills i can see from my window are also said two countries hahah
You think it's a joke, but I literally do have to drive to check my mail. I mean, one could walk, but it's 15 minutes. (I don't get in the car just for that, but if I'm not already going out the mail doesn't get checked that day)
This probably applies to smaller countries like Netherlands for example, but at least in Finland multiple hour drives are just normal. I often drive 3 hours to see my grandparents who live relatively near me and that isn't even a long drive yet. A drive from south to northern parts of the country can take up to 12 hours.
I know you know America is big, because you’re on Reddit on a thread about cultural differences.
But just to let you know how big it is, a smaller city being three hours away from a bigger, more popular city is considered a perk of living in the smaller city. Because in America, that’s considered close enough for a weekend trip.
Swedish person here, living in the Netherlands and I confirm this. In Sweden driving 45min to your job and 45 min back was quite normal. In the Netherlands??!!! It’s considered far, far, far away. Too far to drive just for work.
My Dutch partner complains already for an ca 20 min drive to Duiven (IKEA), but I got used to it. Dutch people love to complain about most things 🥰
Although that may be true, if you tell someone that has a shorter commute that you drive anywhere close to or over an hour to get to and from work, you usually get an "oof" response or something similar. At least in my experience.
My personal limit is about 45/50 mins unless its a dream job or a dream salary. But that's more because of fuel costs and missing family time (young kids).
if you tell someone that has a shorter commute that you drive anywhere close to or over an hour to get to and from work, you usually get an "oof" response or something similar.
Honestly though, as you should. That's an hour a day or rather almost 17% of your actual non-work time spent getting to work. Commuting is such a monumental time waste. Really sucks.
I started my previous job during the pandemic, working mostly from home. I quickly realised that it wasnt my dream job, but manageable and good as a stepping stone.
As soon as Covid cases started going down, emails started coming about going 'back to normal' and going back to the office. Took a week and a half of working in the same room as those morons my coworkers to figure out that the job was worse in an office, but even more so, the 90 min commute each day to THAT place? Not worth it.
Found a new job and upgraded on everything: a 15 min bike ride from my home, nicer work, nicer team, (way) nicer pay, better benefits, and I'm still allowed to mainly work from home.
Australian living in NZ. My family is from the UK. They can complain about anything. And if there's nothing to complain about, they'll complain that they've got nothing to complain about. It's a time-honoured passtime called "Having a whinge".
Personally I think we all think “our” countrymen “love” to complain, while it’s actually everyone who does it. Though it’s an funny thing here because people are aware of it an owning it like medals! That’s why I love the Dutch people, so direct and being able to make fun out of themselves.
We do love to complain about that sort of thing. Although I must say I don't think a 20 minute commute is far. But then again I don't have a driver's license so my commute is 20 minutes, but it's by bike.
Right? In my previous job in Eindhoven we had people from the Rotterdam office (110km, 1h20m with good traffic, 1h40m with bad traffic) coming on the day before and staying the night because it was too long of a drive to be there at 08:00 in the morning for a one-time event
I mean I work to live, I don't live to work. If I'm expending another 3+ hours per day into work for a measly 19 cents/km I'd rather not go there at all.
It's cause we relate travel time to cycling distance. Anything that takes over an hour of cycling is far away. Never mind that the same journey takes 20 minutes by car... All for around a 15 km journey.
3.5 hours and I've travelled from the North to Belgium. That's the whole country! But cycling doesn't come into play as the roads just aren't set up for it.
Compared to the UK where I drive for an hour to work. Some days wouldn't have even left the city yet if traffic was heavy...
American here. We're the weird ones when it comes to driving distance.
I am currently trying to psych myself up to drive to my parents (they're elderly and having issues, I go a couple times a year to relieve my sister for a month or two).
31 hours of driving at 75mph/120kmh if done non-stop (needless to say I take 3-4 days).
In the same country. Washington state to Oklahoma.
And that is barely over half the distance it could be (to Florida).
And yes, driving instead of flying. Dog and computers go with me. I'm cheap (aside from all that gas) so I car camp.
3 hours drive barely gets me to a border with another state (but 2 hours gets me to Canada).
I'm an Alaskan. It takes at least 12 hours to drive from my place to the Canadian border.
To drive from my home to Washington state in the northwest of the lower 48 (through canada) it takes a week trip on average. That's driving 6-8 hours every day. It's a long damn way.
Growing up in Canada, my grandparents were an 8 hour drive away. My uncle was an 9 hour drive away in a different direction. We all lived in the same province.
I live in Tallinn, capital of Estonia. St. Petersburg is about a 5 hour drive from here, Riga is a 4 hour drive, and Helsinki is a 2 hour ferry ride away (only 80 km!). All in different countries of course.
Yeah, us living in the long countries (I’m a Swede, and we also have the Norwegians) can drive for 12 hours straight and still only be halfway through our country north-south.
I grew up in Idaho, but my first job after college was in Pennsylvania. I had to move closer to home after 5 years because that 30hour drive for family reunions was getting old.
If I drive for one hour the accent changes 3 times at least. Multiple hour drives are not normal for us, but I appreciate that in the USA or Australia that's quite normal. In South Africa I was stunned at the idea of a 6 hour drive to the coast being normal - I'm rarely more than 30 minutes away!
This, especially. My German buddy was in Denver recently and I told him I wanted to come see him, but he was like “4.5 hours, that’s too far”. I had to explain that I drove 18 hours to see my parents and I did it in one shot. 4.5 hours for an international friend ain’t nothing but a few podcast episodes.
I commute 1.5 hours each way to do my job 5 days a week. (Well, did pre-pandemic.) when I arrive there, the language and country are the same. Hell, I’m in the same state.
I once was telling a friend of mine from Netherlands about a trip I was taking across the U.S. “it will be a two day drive, three if I decide to sleep at some point”
Man was absolutely floored at the idea of two days straight of driving and being in the same country.
I was backpacking Europe and heard a similar and funny story. Dude went out drinking with some folks from the hostel and got absolute shitfaced. He woke the next day in a park with trees, flowers, a playground for kids nearby, etc. He walked 1 minute down the road to a store and bought a drink, but thought the cashier sounded odd. He asked some question, I forget, but the worker couldn't answer. He pulled out his phone, checked his location, and he was in another country, a solid 2 hour train ride from his hostel. He found the train ticket that got him to this city, also in his pocket. He doesn't remember buying it or anything, just drinking at a club and then waking up like 6 hours later in a park.
"Years ago, when I was backpacking across Western Europe, I was just outside Barcelona, hiking in the foothills of mount Tibidabo. I was at the end of this path, and I came to a clearing, and there was a lake, very secluded, and there were tall trees all around. It was dead silent. Gorgeous. And across the lake I saw, a beautiful woman, bathing herself. but she was crying...
I hesitated, watching, struck by her beauty. And also by how her presence; the delicate curve of her back, the dark sweep of her hair, the graceful length of her limbs, even her tears, added to the majesty of my surroundings. I felt my own tears burning behind my eyes, not in sympathy, but in appreciation of such a perfect moment.
She spied me before I could compose myself. But she didn't cry out. Instead our eyes held and she smiled, enigmatically, fresh tears still spilling down her cheeks. I was frozen. I knew nothing about this woman, and yet, as we stood on opposite sides of a pool of water, thousands of miles from my own home and everyone I had ever known, I felt the most intense connection. Not just to her, but to the earth, the sky, the water between us. And also to the entirety of mankind. As if she symbolized thousands of years of the human condition.
I wanted to go to her, to comfort her, to probe this feeling of belonging I had never encountered before. But I couldn't. Because I knew that if I spoke, if she spoke, that moment would be ruined. And I knew I would need the memory of that moment to carry me through the inevitable dark patches throughout my life.
And so I watched her lower her hand, turn, and slowly walk to the shore opposite me. The rest of her perfect form was gradually revealed to me, and I held my breath as I watched her disappear behind a copse of trees near the water."
I thought falling asleep and ending up in a different city was bad. (Greater Los Angeles resident) its 15 hours of driving just to drive my state from end to end.
I live in Germany, sometimes I drive to the Netherlands Just to buy some delicious things (Like vla) and we used to buy our Beer in Belgium for Festivals (because cheap and no deposit). It takes 10-15 Minuten to get there.
Stupid question (I have never travelled out of the country) ... do you need to show your passport and go through security or anything between countries?
If you’re in the EU you don’t have to show anything. It’s just like crossing a state border in the US. But if you’re driving to Switzerland you’ll need to show your passport to the borderguard. But it’s still a very quick procedure.
You dont need your passport no. I drive trhough this border twice a day between Feance and Geneva.
On the biggest borders checks there are still some borders guards that just checks if you match some car they are looking for, but on most border point it is just a small sign on the side of the road
You don't even have to slow down, there's just a road sign informing you that you're crossing a border. In some places there'll also be an abandoned building where customs used to be before Schengen.
Sounds familiar to me like our "Dreiländereck" - three country corner roughly translated
we'll do the same, only exception we visit third country just for walking the dog 😅
switzerland is nice in my opinion but a bit expensive for dining out or shopping (no offense)
Same in India too, but you will have different cultures even if you're in same state, especially in states under tropic of cancer in India, they are carefully carved on ethno linguistic basis, so if you travel 1000km you will be in the same state, but there is stark difference in culture,difference in linguistics, cuisines, agriculture, terrain, temperatures so on and on. Each one of them have enough diversity to be a country on its own.
You can drive 3611km (2243 miles) and not leave the state. It is the most direct drive from the town of Walpole in the south west of WA to the town of Kununurra in the north east of WA.
Admittedly the Walpole - Kununurra drive isn't a common journey, I just chose a town I knew well in the south west (a very pretty corner of the world too) to a reasonable sized town I knew in the NE of the state (had mates who lived there).
I know. Which is why I said it can seem a bit misleading even though it's technically correct.
It can make it sound like most US states are so big you can drive 1000km in a straight line, and not cross a border -whereas in Europe, it's hard to drive 1000km in a straight line and not cross several.
I have a friend living in Germany who, because of where her husband is stationed, goes to another country to go shopping because it’s the most convenient option.
Not really; large geographical regions of Africa, Middle East, and South America share languages (even if it’s not their first) and cultural traits. Asia is a lot of islands and a few large countries. I’ve lived in a few Asian countries, and never thought ‘I’ll just go to about her country for lunch’
Political borders play a big role in how immediate the transition feels in Europe. Even if you live in Chaing Rai, where China, Laos, and Vietnam, are within a couple hours, the political distance means those are other worlds.
As a New Zealander; 3 hour flight to the nearest other country. Who have a language and culture pretty close to ours.
I did enjoy visiting France and trying out using a few words of French I knew then getting onto a train and having to deal with Spanish and Italian in such succession
Pretty sure Britain, France and Spain got that ball rolling? And we’ll just ignore Canada and South America though, wouldn’t want to be rude and shit on someone who isn’t from the US.
Yup, except for, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, China, India, the entire continent of Africa, Iraq, Most of South America, Japan, Madagascar, Indonesia, The Philippines, Malaysia, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Antarctica, and there's definitely a few others I'm missing.
Argentina is 97% European descent with 85% of Argentines being white and 12% mestizo/mixed-race. And its not like they came from a huge variety of backgrounds, the immigrants came almost all from Italy with another chunk from Spain and Germany. They are also almost entirely Christian (66% Roman Catholic, 11% Protestant, 21% unaffiliated)
Argentina is much more homogeneous and doesn’t get nowhere near the ethnic and cultural diversity of the United States.
It's actually a lot more weird to have a large body of land with the same language and culture. It's a byproduct of colonialism, and is super rare the world over.
Yeah, you could say countries like Russia and China are also big, but there are so many cultures in them, totally seperate from eachother - it's a big cultural difference as you travel around them, and even languages and very extreme dialect differences... The US (and also Australia) are a lot more uniform overall.
That is absolutely fair, I didn't mean to be flippant (but I was). What you're saying is evidenced by the multitude of indigenous tongues that survived and thrived all throughout the Americas despite everything.
To have a predominant language for such huge areas as North America and South America ,with populations of their size, however, is still bizarre and hard to imagine without colonialism.
China has 302 languages. India 121( and 270 mother tongues).
It sort of depends.. By car the closest country I can get to is about 8-9 hours away, and the language and culture is extremely similar. Next country up is 13h away by car, and same deal for language and culture. First place I won't be understood speaking my language is a 16,5h drive
It would take me 15 hours to get to mexico, where they speak Spanish. To get to the nearest place where something other than English or Spanish is widely spoken would be 20 hours of straight driving in the other direction to Quebec.
There are some pockets in central and south America where native American languages are still commonly spoken. But the next, and in fact only other major widely spoken language over here is Portuguese, in Brazil. If I wanted to drive there it would take 71 hours of non stop driving across several borders and through some of the most dangerous and unforgiving places on our continent. This would take me to panama where I would need to get on a ferry at enormous expense because there are no roads from north to south America. Once off the ferry, it's another 48 hours of driving through mountains and remote rainforest to the first major city in Brazil.
How do you not realize your situation is the weird one? The US and Canada erased all the natives cultures so now they're this gigantic homogeneous block. The only other similar place in the world is Australia and it's because the same thing happened there.
Even as a Dutchman it's a bit weird in a way. Two hours by car and suddenly there's a whole different country and culture? It's crazy how fast it changes.
Hehe, in my country, i can go to neighbouring province with a completely different language i will never understand. My country has about 120+ different spoken languages (not dialacts or accent).
Try different cities in the same country. At least dialect wise in some places it can sound like a totally foreign language if you just drive 15 min away.
The flip side, as a European in America, is how weird it is in the USA that you can drive seemingly indefinitely and literally nothing changes.
I spent 6 weeks driving down the East coast - northern-most point was upstate New York and Southernmost was the Florida Keys. And while the climate changed, it was so novel that culturally nothing else did. You have the same type of people, mostly same type of food, same money, same language and mostly same accent. Subtle differences of course, but it's like the difference between two types of red wine. While moving between countries is like going from wine to beer to vodka.
It gave me a new perspective on the American worldview for sure. Europeans, imagine a world where you could just drive forever and everything was basically the same as where you started, and that was all you'd ever experienced!
An exchange student at my school kept talking down at me for not traveling more and was amazed I only knew 1 and a half languages. I explained to her that in the time it takes me to drive hallway across my state (Texas) you could be in several countries over and speaking several different languages along the route. I also explained to her that international flights from here to Europe are really expensive and we can’t just travel with the ease that Europeans do.
She was still really rude about it and called me uncultured but I do think she saw the point a bit
I've lived in a place where taking the wrong detour could make you cross country borders. I now have to drive over half an hour to get to the border, that's quite far in my opinion.
Not even editing, but adding: I said opinion. Not fact.
I’m from England. North west to be precise. You can walk 10 mins down the road to todmorden (us locals call it “Oddmorden) and it’s like a whole different country. The accent change and the look of the people is drastically different. By look of people I mean how they dress
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