Americans must find the following things really weird: 1. Paid holidays. Heard people in the US don’t really get that. 2. Not having to worry about guns. 3. Pay the price of things on the label not adding tax at the point of sale. 4. Get treatment for almost anything in a hospital without having to pay for it at the point of service. 5. Paid maternity leave
joey020 you forgot to mention not having to worry if your food is pumped full of growth hormones, antibiotics, or any one of dozens of chemicals permitted in the US but banned in Europe.
Car insurance is expensive in the US. Watch a YT clip where a US guy quoted his tax on an Aston Martin, $2000/year, i put my details in local UK and i could get the same insurance for $400/year.
@@spencerwilton5831 Not really I work in retail at rainbow foods and you would be surprised at the number of (NON GMO) Food labels that exist in a store, Milk, eggs, Bread, Caned Foods, butter and the like do not have the "chemicals " that you bug you, at lest a full one third of all of caned and most fresh food do not have them. The labels have if giant text NO GMOs, Hormones and etc..all over the labels it seems that at lest in the south these modified foods are not doing all that well.
Very true, however, I feel that we are all building, in a slow but sure manner, a sort of worldwide culture, don't you think? I feel that due to today's telecommunications possibilities, everybody is influencing everybody else.
@@alexverdigris9939 The cultural differences between Minnesota and Florida are the same as between Rome, my city, and Viterbo, the next city nearby 30 minutes away
Actually we have many common customs between one another. Like for exemple compared to the US we have better wine :) And we actually know how stars look like in the night sky, but in the US they start calling the police about ufo's on the nightsky whenever the lights are off in a big city
Things that are usual in europe: Coming back from school alive. Coming back from the hospital with the same amount of money that you had before. Coming back from university (after degree) debt free
Well, I agree, but seriously, America should do something about it. Like, I can't imagine going to school thinking "oh, hopefully I won't get shot today!".
Roma English I am in the EU....it costs less than 2000€ where I am to go to University....any University! Even in other European countries.....so, no....no debt here after University.....or after being hospitalized.....better life, for sure! And I am an American....26 years in Europe!
@@37Raffaella I've lived my whole life here and I go to university now. But what costs is living, getting the books, small tuition fees etc etc. It's not nearly as bad as the US, but I'm just saying that I don't know any people that come out with a masters and no debts
And yet the US has the biggest porn industry in the world. In a Jim Jeffries routine, he says that it makes no sense that you can pay a woman for sex, but it's only illegal if you don't film it and show it to people.
@@SarthorS Who says the law has to make sense? The UK has a complete hodge podge of laws which go back to common law a few aspects of which pre-date 1066. The result? Anything before about 1900 that is still enacted is a bit odd as some of it is for situations never likely to happen again (such as the legal requirement to paractice longbow as the Butts) but it is illegal to follow some of those laws also (such as shooting a welshman with a bow inb York on a saturday.
@@gordonlawrence1448 Except you are missing half of it. The actual laws are not the full story. It's also how they are and are not applied. Precedence is a big part of the legal system which is why there are still some anachronistic laws on the books which no judge pays atention to.
I’ve always found it a bit weird when people compare a single country (like the USA) to an entire continent (like Europe). Italy and Russia have very little in common.
Funny when they say "comparing the US with Europe" and by that they mean strictly the west side of Europe.....mostly the UK the only other english speaking country in Europe🤣
@@toad2117 But the cultural diversity between the diffrent parts of the US is much, much smaller than, for example between Portugal, Russia and Iceland.
I once knew an American lady who spent a fortune on gym memberships and fancy yoga retreats, but was blown away that I would walk the couple of km to and from work. I often clock up 20000+ steps a day, walking is the fastest and cheapest way to get around most European cities!
years ago I drove through the Netherlands to Germany the customs posts were still there but no people so I stopped looked around realised, and drove on
Ian Prince Most were disbanded, some were reestablished to check trucks for migrants (which doesn’t work because the migrants will say they’re under age and no one will even bother proving anything because if they actually try and do that the non profits will then “take them in for caring” and just let them go)
@@mojojim6458 exactly that's what i'm saying. It's several countries here in Europe, meaning you have to pass borders, which makes it more significsnt that you can pass them without being asked for your passport, unlike in the US where you're "only" passing state borders when driving across the continent😊
I think you've missed something -- the 24 hour clock. I'm always surprised and puzzled by American visitors who can't understand the 24hr clock; I don't see why it should be so difficult
I don't get it either. I live in the US and I use the 24-hour clock, the metric system and I can drive a manual transmission (and prefer it). It makes me feel more different than just my name alone.
It's not difficult, but it requires conversion. It's like paying in another currency and having to calculate how much it is in a currency you're familiar with.
The conversion mainly happens the other way. Europeans generally convert back to imperial. As with aircraft. When airbus launched, so that they were able to sell it in the states the airbus is built on the imperial system and still is to this day b
Believe me, even move with decimal point can be tricky and you can easily fail in that in math lessons in school, I saw it many times. For example when you are converting cubic or square units then 1m3 is not 100cm3 as uneducated people think. :-D And also we have liters and not everyone knows liter = dm3 so when they have something in m3 and they need it in liters, they are lost without google. :-D Also you have °C, but some things in science are in kelvins and in schools they are using kelvins very often to confuse you. :-D And in metric system it's very important to keep small and big letters correctly because you can make completely different unit from that by such small mistake, that's why I am always upset when I see someone writing MM instead of mm, even if I admit that western europeans are writing meter like M, then it's wrong because M is mega and not mili. And you can see that even or tools which is really ridiculous for me, you could not pass even elementary school in Czechia with writing MM and such shits.
@@philltaylor2288 lol it's all in metric in the data. Every single part is defined in metric because the cad (catia) is metric. The onboard computer is metric from censor to computer, and only at the end convert to imperial for the crew.
@@rtsharlotte We have an organization called the NRA (National Rifle association) here that is one of the largest lobbying groups and contributors to political campaigns in the country. The NRA holds the tenets of the 2nd amendment, the right to bare arms very stringently and has always balked at massive restrictions on he right to bare arms. There'll never really be total gun restrictions in the US , so from the outside looking in , it seems like we're somewhat ruled by the gun, but we do try tp strike a balance. I grew up with my dad having guns in the house and I knew where they were but I was also told never to touch them and I didn't. After he passed away, my mom gave his shotguns to my brothers and kept the pistol which she never used and ended up giving that to one of my brothers years after my dad passed.
@@hydrolito It's not an actual kiss though, you just lean your cheek into the other person's cheek and make a kissing sound. A hug involves a lot more time and contact between people
I don't know where Europeans get their information from but it's often inaccurate. We have chip and pin cards that we can also just tap the machine and enter your pin. We can also use just our smart phones.
marilyn fernandez yes but the swipe works, with European cards the swipe works only with terminals that don’t have the chip reader. So at restaurants in Europe it’s impossible to do the swipe and sign (except if your card doesn’t have a chip) while in America with American cards it’s possible.
Most of our (US) chipped cards are chip and signature, not chip and PIN. And everywhere else (Canada, Europe) when you pay in a restaurant with a card, they bring a portable terminal to your table and you put in your card and pin and tip amount. They NEVER take your card away. And if they anywhere needs to do a swipe process (usually for a visiting american), it usually involves a manager and having to pull out equipment that they've forgotten how to use.
We do not trust other peoples with our credit card, as there have been many cases of cards being copied, in shops, restaurants and garages..we are always told by the banks and credit card agencies to NEVER let your card out of sight.
when they bring the machine to your table to pay. The machine will also display the price that has been put in for payment. IMHO very important, because it wouldn't be the first time a mistake has been made. ;)
@@dutchgamer842 It's also about how closed the doors are, not only if the door is all the way down to the floor. In US public restrooms there's huge slits/gaps between the door and the wall as well as the door not being very tall in general, so it can happen that someone walks by and can see you over the top of the door, or through the gap between door and the wall of the stall. As an European I found that really uncomfortable.
When my grandparents were in San Francisco they walked up a hill and an American man just yelled at them “you English” and my grandad was like ye how did you know and he just said “no one else walks round here”😂
Carlos Magalhães not at all. Everyone walk in San Francisco. I live an hour away from there. They must have been in a totally different place. Parking is horrible so people will usually park wherever they can and walk around or if they live there, they walk everywhere or use transportation for longer distances.
If you have an automatic car in the UK you can't drive a manual car unless you've passed a manual driving test but you can drive an automatic car if you have already passed a manual test.
Manuals are dying out, now every European car over 2.9litrs is Automatic and in UK including the cheapest cars, in 2019 43% of all new cars sold were Automatic.
@@bouse23 Both my husband and I learned to drive manual cars but, because of hubby's disability (became paraplegic at 34 due to multiple sclerosis), we have no option now but to drive automatics with extra hand controls. (The pedals remain intact, so I can drive and the hand controls simply hook around the pedals so that you pull to accelerate and push to brake. It's more complicated than that but would take too long to explain). I wouldn't say that driving an automatic makes you an inferior driver at all, because I think a lot depends on WHERE you learned to drive and what sort of traffic you are used to. Hubby and I both learned in a big city and are used to the tactics, acceleration burst etc that is often needed. We don't live in a big city any more and if we go back to visit relatives, it is a bit of a shock for about half a day but then we get back in the old routine. I should point out that our last 3 cars have been DSG boxes, which are incredibly responsive (a VW Touran, a Ford C-Max and currently another VW Touran) - we often leave people with manual cars still dithering at traffic lights when they change because they aren't fast enough at getting into to gear and away. In addition, the cars have the option of being in semi-automatic mode, meaning you can electronically change gear "manually" and get really good performance. I am the only one who can do that in our car, as my husband needs one hand on the steering wheel and one on the push/pull hand controls but I can get a really fast change going. You really ought to try one of them sometime - they have developed beyond recognition over the past 30 -35 years and are nothing like as slow and unresponsive as you might think.
@@robertcroft8241 what like the Porsche 911GT3 (4L stick shift option)? Or do you mean the 2019 Lotus Evora Sport 410 (3.5L stick shift option) some of the BMW models like the M3 and M4? or are you just a twat that cant fact check?
That Megan joke cracked me up. Strikes. Europeans expect more from their government. Yes the government wields more power and control but the people can and do hold them to account for it. As a result good health care, public transport, employee rights, less crime and violence, fewer guns, less corruption, more political parties and more political discourse in general. Also more languages and differences in culture and cuisine within a smaller area and so far more variation to be explored in easy travelling distance.
I agree. The government needs to be there for the people, not the other way around. While there are many protests in the USA, they never go that step further -> strike. In my country f.e. (and it's not even France), we get some major national strikes every 4/5 years. Hell, We've had a strike for a couple of days at the place I work last year!
I now understand why these videos of yours contain so many sweeping over-generalisations. Start watching a bit more TV, guys. :-) It's really quite informative about other cultures. At least here in the UK. Lumping Europe together as one culture is a bit odd when, even within the UK, there are many, many regional differences.
Actually it is quite comparable since usa and Canada are like 65 countries. To us in North America Europe has a distinct culture, most factors are the same across most European countries.
@@adelehammond1621 true, there are a lot of differences between different European countries of course but all of them are still drastically different from North America. Like day and night.
Moved to UK went metric and have to translate back into imperial measurements when talking to my relatives here in the UK who are the same age is me. I found it necessary to make the switch; I don't know how they've managed not switching all these years when the culture has switched around them.
All US electronics, all cars, all planes are metric, NASA is metric. Metric units are on ALMOST all packaged food. US military is all metric. US hold outs are cooking, sports, housing, construction. Full Conversion would have happened in 1980s but old fogies like US President Reagan couldn't get their heads around new units. BTW ships use knots, airline altitude is in feet, and EU railroads run on 4ft 8 in rails so some things still aren't metric.
Little Bob - I’m happy for them to leave airlines in feet. The last thing I’d want is some pilot being confused about how high he was supposed to be flying after a switch...
Okay so a few things A) nudity in Europe is much more chill and accepted in media and censorship is just not something we understand B) bidet’s are generally pretty common but where I’m from, not really (France and Bulgaria) unless you live in a really old place but yeah, otherwise they are super common like in Italy I remember people asking me how the hell do i live without a bidet so that was funny C) la bise is the one thing with the least amount of rules, general rule is you go for each cheek once but afterwards it’s all free, you can do it to anyone, with anyone, you can hold or not hold, most don’t hold unless you are family or close friends but that can vary too. Also for the hugging part, some people go for combo and hug then bise, so yeah. D) In restaurants you can order two kinds of water, if you say just water people give you bottle water, but you can actually specify and ask for tap water and then you don’t pay for the water. So technically yes but no because you aren’t asking for the right water for it to be free.
D) that's basically the opposite of USA and Canada. Here, if you ask for water they will just bring you tap water, which is free. If you want bottled water you will have to ask specifically for bottle water, which you will have to pay for.
@@ser132 I think in Europe the bottled water is a thing. Like different brands are famous for their specific kind of water like evian or Gerolsteiner or Spa or st Pellegrino. They are sparkling mineral waters and come from a specific place (or so they say). They also have fancy bottle design, so you can recognise them from far away (if it's a glass bottle). And they do taste different, some restaurants have different choices of water brands as well.
Yeah, in France we just ask for a « carafe » of water when we when tap water. But I feel like, if you ask for water, they will just bring you tap water anyway 🤷🏽♀️
@@TaraGruette hmmm I don't know, from my experience it greatly varies and you usually have to be precise about it but I suppose that depends on where in France, but yeah if you ask for a carafe it works out
A) What kinda censorship are you talking about? POLITICAL VIEWS ARE CENSORED ALL THE TIME IN JUST ABOUT EVERY COUNTRY NOW! B) I've seen a bidet twice in my life. In Holland and in Hungary. I've been to the following countries in Europe: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Germany, Holland, France, England, Scotland, Czhecia, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria and Romania. I didn't find them super common at all. They're rare. C) Nothing to add. D) Depends on the country.
There's a second way to pay at a restaurant in Europe. After you're done with your meal, you go to the front desk and pay for your table. So you can pay whenever you're done and just leave. Very convenient.
I've definitely confused a couple of Walmart employee's before, by packing my own bags or even bringing my own bag to put things in. When I explained this was normal for me, they were shocked, and their minds were forever blown when I told them about UK/Euro cashiers sitting down.
@@WanderingRavens protection of workers' health is important in europe. why should they be forced(!) to stand all day if they can work at least as efficiently while sitting or leaning back (or whatever type of chair is available to eg support the back)? only because customers in the US might think that "sitting = lazy" while having smalltalk ?
Pick-pocketing is almost non-existent in the U.S.. So there. BTW, my car has never been broken into and I live in a major city. Car break-ins large depend on where you live.
Yeah, that was because of the parking lot I had to park my car in when I went to work. It was the parking lot of a Casino and Walmart, so not the best place to put a car haha
We had a car that was set on fire in an off-road car park with about 6 other cars. This is in UK. The police took our car away but didn't bother to inform us of what had happened. The next day my mum goes to go to the car and can't find it, when I asked my colleagues for ideas one produced an online news article with a huge picture of our burnt-out car. We later learned that the police had seen the arsonist at the scene of the crime but couldn't prove that he was there because his car was parked somewhere else!
@@WanderingRavens He/She means the electronic duplication of the card, easily done with a pocket sized machine. Maybe the Third world, 1980s money systems in the US provide an unintended protection from electronic cloning?
Yes, on holiday last year my Dad had his card cloned. He is nearly 90 years old and handed his card over in a pub that was kept for a little while. Roll on a couple of weeks and car tyres and pizzas and pub meals had been charged to his card. Luckily the bank reimbursed him
The “kissy thing”: Usually, if you’re meeting someone for the first time or if your being formal you do a handshake I kiss my family and friends when we haven’t seen each other in a while or if it’s a holiday/birthday With super close friends we just hug
In Italy we also do the bise or whatever you call it only with relatives or very close friends, but with people we barely know we just shake our hands, we never hug, it's considered very very weird to hug someone
try greetings in Belgium, you can find: - giving hands - giving one kiss - giving 3 kisses - giving a hug all depents on who starts the action, what culture they come form, what culture the other comes from, who invited you, speciall occasions like birthdays ect,... (with culture I mean frensh speaking and flemish speaking people, we have a bit of a different culture if you look at those things)
@@evzenvarga9707 Depends on what you think of /define as a language, Flemish is a group of dialects, and can be used to define a group of people speaking a specific language. Especially in this case as the whole country speaks Flemish or Walloon (French dialect with some Flemish/Dutch words into it, and different numbering than standard French). But if you really want to go the 'official' route, yes it isn't a fully different language from Dutch, but that's maybe more because of how the now known Default Dutch language was defined. (Standaard Nederlands) Fun fact: First harry potter was dubbed in both Flemish and Dutch, as are more kids movies.
That's not even a Wallonia-Flanders thing. I live in Flanders and have absolutely no idea what sort of greeting people want over here. Everyone has different ideas on what to do. Never thought I'd say this, but thank fuck for coronavirus in this instance. Finally a unified way of greeting someone: do nothing.
Don't blame the British for your imperial system, we gave you the independence before the metric system was invented. You still use the imperial system because of Ben Franklin
@@kevinshort3943 I never call it the American Revolution, But instead, The British Civil War. I get called many names until you explain history to them.
@@kevinshort3943 I find it sad that "Americans" don't actually have their own nationality. It's the USA because they're on the continent of America. A Brazilian, Mexican, Canadian etc are just as much Americans.
Well that only started recently (like 2 years ago?) and you still bring the wireless card reader to the table, even if the customer pays contactless. Also, there's a huge difference in countries in Europe when it comes to paying. I'm German and we still do a lot of paying in cash, more so than other European countries. 3 years ago there was a big study in which 3/4 of transactions were done in cash. I worked part time in a city centre supermarket during uni and I can attest to that. Only in the last 1 1/2 - 2 years contactless card readers started getting used more often (they've been around for a bit longer, but a lot of people didn't switch cards until they naturally got a new one which happens every couple of years in Germany) and people started using apps on their phones more often as well. Yet still a whole lot of people pay cash. But because of the pandemic a lot of places now ask you to not pay using cash (because in the beginning it wasn't clear if smear infections could happen) and it's about 53% card pay now I've read. In comparison other countries in Europe are more extreme, there's some Scandinavian countries were you even pay with card in a farmers market. Same thing I experienced in Rotterdam two summers ago. It was so weird to me that this little stall that sold tomatoes only accepted card. They said it was for security reasons and that they get very mixed responses from tourists depending from which country they're from. Card transactions are really expensive for shops in Germany, more so when it's credit instead of debit card, which is why discount supermarkets like Aldi only started accepting credit cards a few years ago. Bigger supermarkets like Walmart did it and some clothing or electronic stores, but not a lot of places you frequent often. I'm not sure why, it just might be because the German mentality is that cash is better, so banks just make money off of card transactions?
@@CarinaCoffee Sehr Gute! I wish more countries would still pay in cash so the government cocksuckers that are ruled by the banking cartels would have less control of us! Hopefully this is the very reason Germans do this... STICKING IT TO THE MAN!
I work in a store in Norway. Half the time I don't really need to count the register before closing, cause we didn't have any cash payment that day. Also: most are tap, especially if the sum is less than 400nok (no pin needed). A lot of people don't even use cards anymore. Just casually pulls out their phone or smartwatch.
Fuqu Pal The problem with cash is that it's expensive for businesses to handle it, store it and transport it. It needs to be banked regularly. Storing cash on the premises drives up insurance costs. Less scrupulous businesses use cash transactions to avoid paying their proper taxes, so the rest of us end up subsidising them. Criminals deal almost exclusively in cash. I carry £20 for emergencies but the same note has been in my wallet for years- I can't remember the last time I spent any actual cash. It's a massive hassle relying on cash when you can just use your phone and card.
I got news for you. A server is also a computer in the USA. Ask any online gamer, IT specialist, or really just anyone in the tech world. One of the last things they want to hear is "The server is down." The word itself has a double meaning like many others in the English language.
@@manenkoff , it doesn't have a double meaning. 'Server' means _one that serves something,_ whether that's a person who takes food orders and serves the ordered food or a system which receives HTTPS requests and serves the requested documents or a system that takes SQL queries and serves the queried data, they're all called 'servers' because they serve something. It's the same meaning.
server as an IT term evolved from american term for waiter/waitress because server is the computer that is serving data to the client. same goes for many IT terms like gateway, adress, memory, etc. Those all words had their own respective meanings outside IT and were repurposed as computer science terminology
French here... Yeah, hugging is weird. Very much a reverse feeling : hugging feels so much more intimate. Wrapping somebody in my arms is something I'd do with a loved one, maybe (maybe) with a close friend who needs comfort. Not somebody I just met.. And HOW LONG IS IT SOPPOSED TO LAST ? I go with it if I'm in the US but it makes me very uncomfortable. I know it makes little sense, as yeah, I see how "la bise" can be weird when you're not used to it (and I see the reaction when I go for it with a foreigner without thinking). I just try to shake hands with foreigners as a middle ground to make sure everybody's ok.
Portuguese here ... for me kissing someone's cheek is easier than giving a hug. In any case, kisses on the cheek are not given to all people. To strangers who are presented to us at the moment, usually a handshake but it depends on the context. In a social/personal situation, kisses work well, in professional terms, handshake. I will only eventually hug someone with whom I am very intimate (but it is a tight and really felt hug)
There's difference between northern vs. southern europe when it comes to greetings. I'm swedish and we usually greet close friends and family with hugs. The first time you meet someone you usually shake hands but after the first time we usually just say hello and maybe kind of wave. We like our personal space a lot so i always kind of get uncomfortable when you travel and suddenly people are standing much closer to you when you talk or when you're in a queue. So kissing a person you're meeting for the first time on the cheek is a big no-no in my world =)
Also depends on your age. Yes Walmart own Asda but that’s not always been the case, and if you’re older than 21, you’ll remember the first time supermarkets opened 24 hours in the U.K., you know, when Harry Potter books were only just being released.
In America I didn't meet any eccentric friendly old codgers with a comb-over and a wooly jumper, who live in a dusty house of books and antiques, who drink brandy in the pub everynight, beat everyone at chess, and occasionally have to be carried home when they've had one too many, usually while they orate a sad unfortunate tale. Plenty of them in Europe.
I sometimes forget when I go back there, then I kick myself for wasting 5 euros for nothing! :D But yeah, "une carafe d'eau" is perfectly fine and free.
The credit card thing - it's not so much losing the physical card as having it run thru a scanner which captures its information for later use. Identity theft and all that.
I made a friend from Switzerland some time ago and she did the hug and kiss thing. Which luckely made it less awkward because I also hug people and she couldn't see my surprise. (I'm German) :D Hi neighbour :)
The only time that I ever had a card cloned was at a fuel pump and I was the only one that touched the card. Someone had installed a capture device on the pump. The credit card company covered the charge and sent me a new card.
We work less in Europe giving us more time for holidays and family time. Me here in the UK have 28 days holiday, 8 bank holidays and 5 what you might call duvet days. I have every weekend off and work 35 hours a week. Happy Days
The reason for the credit card issue is that in Europe they have adopted the "chip and PIN" system, which means the purchaser needs enter their PIN. In the US, we have sadly only adopted the "chip" system.
@@ingridal3060 That's right, the US banking system didn't fully adopt chip and pin like in Europe. There is a pin for ATM use but most transactions don't require a pin
@@treetopjones737 Yes, in some places. The point is, it's not universal. For example where I live, all the supermarkets and shops do not require the pin when making a purchase. Just insert the card with the chip and that's it.
Nooo! Let us have our scapegoat! In all seriousness though, many Americans would love to switch to metric, but until the gov forces the country to do it, it won't happen :(
Neil Buckley I found that truly curious when I was in the UK. It always raised the question, if distances are in miles but fuel is liters how do you measure fuel economy? The US is obvious with miles per gallon MPG and totally metric countries have kilometers per liter KPL. Does the UK have miles per liter or still use KPL which would seem to be very confusing.
It seems like if you just want a quick "eyeball" measurement, you use feet and inches, but if you're measuring something accurately with a measuring device, you use metric. This doesn't apply to road distances and speeds, and the volume of beer (but not milk anymore) which still officially use imperial units.
A lot of imperial measurements are based on the size of body parts,so you carry carry a tape measure around with you. An inch is approx the width of your thumb at the knuckle,a foot is the length of a size 10 shoe etc
@@desanipt Yes, the Vikings were well aware of them having found a new continent. They were great sailors, navigators and map makers, and they named the new land Vínland, meaning Wine land, because there were so many berries in the location where they landed. They did explore the region they settled.They might not have "explored" as much as you would have liked. But that does not change the fact that the vikings were well aware of having found a new land
When my family emigrated in 1953, we sailed from England to New York on the Queen Elizabeth then took the train from New York to Los Angeles - the entire journey took 8 days. 20 years later when we returned from LA to the UK, we actually arrived the same day we left, thanks to the time difference.
Commenting on the "la bise" vs hug thing. I'm French, and the very first time I went to the US to stay in a host family, the mom gave me a big and warm hug at the airport and that first one was very unexpected to me and I had the feeling of having my personal space more violated than when I kiss people, but I got used to it very quickly.
@@WanderingRavens Are Americans not aware that cards can be cloned? That is why we do not like cards to be taken out of our sight. However, chip and pin stopped this problem to a large extent. Cloning can still be a problem when using ATMS.
Europe: waving your kids off to school in the morning and welcoming them back home in the afternoon. US:waving your kids off to school in the morning and wondering if they'll come back home in the afternoon. UK: two school massacres in 150 years. Last one thirty something years ago.
alan g k : You could revise your gun laws as we did via various pieces of legislation. But there again, we British have never had a gun culture. Our old lags, prior to going on a blagging, searched the young bucks to make sure that they weren't armed. One episode of hotheadedness could see them all dancing the "gallows jig".
@Herman Greenfield comparing population is not a valid argument, US has more deaths from guns per 100 people. So looking at the stats when the population is scaled down to equal, you still have more
@Herman Greenfield But you do have a speed limit, safety belts, airbags, mandatory training before being licensed to drive a car and so on. Also I've heard rumours that cars have some other use other than killing people.
I'm from Romania and here we kiss, we hug, and we shake hands with everybody no matter of sex or age but only in private encounters (no business related meetings).
Not unnecessary. The foreskin should be very loose for hygiene reasons so that it can be pulled back and that part of the penis kept clean. If the foreskin is tight so this cannot be done then circumcision is needed. I had this done at age 10 under general anithestic . I was off school for several weeks. I can only guess how painful, once I'd reached puberty, an erection would have been with a tight foreskin
@@glen1555 Yes, there are reasons why a foreskin needs to be removed for medical reasons but it DOES NOT need to be removed as a matter of course as a vast percentage of Americans believe. The usual argument is that a foreskin is unhygienic is totally false and has been proven to be false but Americans believe what they want to believe, if they don't like it then it's just dismissed as fake news. Angie Vara is totally correct doing it to a child for no good reason is child abuse.
@@aliceemily5799 It only became widespread in the US in the late 1880s due to puritanical/victorian views about masturbation. Circumcision was undertaken and promoted as a way to prevent masturbation. It had nothing to do with hygiene then even if in very limited circumstances it might be recommended for medical reasons now.
Stuart McKitrick Balderdash, you’ve just imagined that. Tap water is served as a courtesy there is no law surrounding it. And many don’t serve tap water unless specifically asked for it
@@personalcheeses8073 May I draw your attention to The Licencing Act 2003 which states "The responsible person must ensure that free potable water is provided on request to customers where it is reasonably available." See below: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2014/9780111116906
@@Merciful_Angel Yes, they do tend to exploit Britons' reluctance to demand quality or, in this case, what we are entitled to. We would rather put up with poor service or food than "cause a scene", unlike many other nationalities, particularly Americans, and then we moan about it later.
@@Merciful_Angel Ask for tap water or a glass of water, not just water. They sell water, but if you ask for the free stuff they will always give it to you (with a possible exception if you aren't buying anything )
As I have stated elsewhere, we do not use the imperial system of weights and measurements. We use the customary system which is far older than the imperial system. Circumcision was done not because of Mr. Kellogg, but because it was thought to prevent certain venereal diseases. With some fifty-five venereal diseases in the world, this made sense in the time before antibiotics. No doctor was ever going to do a procedure because a cornflake magnate told them to do it. If you think of it for a moment, this is one of those ideas that has gone around that is pretty dumb, but we pass on to one another because it has a flare to it that makes the tale more interedting.
US customary system: 1832. Imperial system (redefined and renamed to the imperial system): 1824. Imperial system origin:~1225. Say again how your US system is far older? What do you think, Imperial was developed from USCS? It was the other way around. If you want further proof that the UK's system is older, they use pounds. As weight AND currency. Currency because 1 pound weight of silver in coin form was worth 1 pound (£). The US didn't copy the currency, making up the dollar instead, because they weren't old enough to have ever gone through the age of silver coins whose worth was determined by weight.
@@RazvanMaioru By this I meant that the customary system preceded the Imperial system in the UK. The problem with it was that the definition of some of the measurements, especially in volume and weight. While it is true that the adoption of the US system was in 1832, the power of the US government in the 1820s and '30s was not anywhere as powerful as it is today. The original standards were set by merchantmen, with the idea that if all American measurements were the same, then customers could rely on what they got and would send more business their way. In the early 1820s, as American trade to Europe increased, some sectors of the British business abroad began to suffer and there was a demand that Parliament do something about having standard measurements throughout the empire. Meanwhile, in its signature way, Congress dithered. but its influence on commerce was far more limited in that time.
Mags That’s not uncommon. For younger adults they don’t tend to be TV minded their entertainment is via mobile /apps etc Historically also its pretty rare for those in upper income groups to watch much if any TV. I grew up in a fairly well to do area reading activities etc very common but TV was fairly rare for many of my peers. The only people I know that routinely ( ie multiple hrs perhaps in a day) watch TV are all low income.
@@lijohnyoutube101 Maybe it has to do with the TV culture in the US. The news achors seems to be very bias. Whereas in europe national tv is more common (which means "better" news and informative talking shows). Swiss TV offers formats which are specifically for that group of people you mentioned (upper class). There are monthly book reviews, professiors get interviewed every sunday about a study they released. It's not just mindless trash. I'm not upper class, nor did I go to university but I like to watch these formats.
@@lijohnyoutube101 - but there weren't any apps and tablets when these guys were young, say 20 years ago. In fact, not many people had computers in the home and in Britain, the fifth TV channel was still quite new.
For the cheek kiss thing, I am French and when I was in high school, I made a school trip to London. My (female) penfriend introduced me to her (male) friend and with no warning, he walked in my direction and hugged me and I was literally shocked because for me, it was really too intimate (sometimes, you can "feel curves" from the other) to "touch my body" in this way. It was a real hug, a close one not a one with a 1-meter distance between each other. The only two people who can hug me are : my mother and my boyfriend. So, yes, as I am French, if someone tries to hug me and I am in the U.S.A., I will scream internally for sure. I Think hugging is common in all the English-speaking countries. In France, you just shake hands in a professional context, to make it easy. Sometimes, male friends shake hands between each other but it is not that common and they can kiss each other on cheeks also (no big issue for that). There is also no big issue if you are a man and you kiss on cheeks a colleague/friend's girlfriend because you are not French-kissing her lol By the way, when I kiss someone on cheeks, I do not touch this person at all so, no stomach touch lol (Generally, you arms are behind you and you do not plan to put them around the person in someway). The only good way to know what is the good or the bad side to start the cheek kiss is either presenting your cheek side, first (I am used to starting by left side and after right side) or waiting for the other to present his cheek first lol I know, by experience, that apparently, Italian people and Spanish people do not start with the same way so, it can lead to a"stolen" kiss/peck with no intention to do so, at the beginning. Last point : for the how many cheek kisses do you have to do ? In France, it is generally 2 but around Montpellier area is 3 and in North of France (above Paris), it could be 4 and in Belgium (French part, at least), it is just 1.
Wearing shoes in the apartment I've heard is normal in America. As a European, I can't understand it. When it rains or snows, and you come home, you spread mud or salt water and feel fine afterwards? Disgusting
I'm a middle-aged Hungarian woman. No hugging for me, it feels like being in an American soap opera. Kissing elderly relatives is customary is my family, but the younger family members don't like it.
@@adriennigarashineszabo946 it may be because of our age difference:) i’m 19 years old, and we always hug eachother, but my parents don’t hug their friends
I know it’s an old video, but yeah: I’m french and when I first arrived in UK I was almost repulsed but hugging which is considered waaaayyyy more intimate action than « la bise » in France. Think of it as « la bise is just cheek/cheek » with some body distance. But hugging, is literally you holdi be in your arms someone you potentially don’t know. It took me a whiiiiiillllleeee to get comfortable with it.
Here in the UK I can have an argument in the street without getting a bullet in my guts. I can get medical care for my family without needing a bottomless credit card. I can have 5 weeks holiday each year and my boss has to pay me in full.
For the water thing, it depends from country to country. I can tell for the Balkans here, the waiters will usually ask you if you want tap water or bottled water. Tap water of course is free. This is true for almost all the Balkan countries except for the most part in Greece, where tap water is not drinkable and used for washing, bathing/showering and cleaning.
France is the one country which is mostly known for the kissing greetings. In my country Croatia you do the cheeky kisses with people you know and most of the time when you didn't see them in a while, sometimes a handshake is involved with it too. Also cheeky kisses are exchanged when you congratulate someone on something like wedding, birthday, graduating high school or university. I lived in Germany as a child...well till I was 16, and I dont remember that any german person, at least I knew did that. A hug is ok when you know the person, they are more formal for example.
Hi, I'm french and hugging is something you would do with a close friend if you are going to be seperated for a long time or if it's really emotional, or if you're super happy to see someone. But it's not an everyday thing, it has a completely different signification. To help you out, in an informal environement females do "la bise" to everyone and males shake hands with other males and do "la bise" with females. And depending on the region, you do one, two or three kisses, don't worry about this part, even french people only know the number for their own region ! Oh, and we learn how to drive on a manual car, so I was shocked to learn, (in a movie) most americans don't know how to drive these cars.
Don't bloody blame the UK for your continued use of the Imperial system. We switched to metric decades and decades ago. You have the opportunity to set your own system and have done since 1783.
*Hugging* is the MOST INTIMATE type of greeting here in Italy, also its the most geared one from awkward introverts who visit their relatives... It's a nightmare but it would come out of *very rude* if you know someone very well or if they're family.
Yes, Saying Servers in USA don't steal because you never witnessed it first hand is just ignorant, if that was the case, fraud would be so much less prevalent, especially pre-internet.
Not sure about this but I think it's now actually illegal in the UK to take someone's credit card out of their sight. In a customer service sense I mean. Of course we all use chip and pin machines or contactless anyway these days. But still...
Well, it doesn't matter what the reason is. If your culture disapproves of masturbation and therefore cuts off a tip/clitoris, that shouldn't be a legit reason, should it?
Credit card cloning is known in USA especially in the big cities like New York, San Francisco. But the police are very slow in checking it and people are slow in checking bank statements, so it goes unreported.
:-) I know you arfe joking, but it was nearly true in the 70:s. These days you can get decent coffee in the UK. Norway, though - their coffee is see-through. Very similar to the way I remember American coffee from the 90:s... It was something with the roasting of the coffee beans, it didn't help to add more. We always brought Swedish coffee with us when I worked in Norway.
The person at 6:05 gives an impression that they don't really know what it's like to live in a place with deep historical roots... or doesn't appreciate it.
7:41 this is true af, whenever we have family gatherings it's a mix of all 3 but everyone seems to change which one they're going for so it's a confusing time
For the stores thing, yeah, most stores close at night, more so in some European countries than others, but if memory serves I believe the ASDA chain of supermarkets is a subsidiary of Walmart, so while it may not be called Walmart, Walmart are basically in the UK.
can open on Sundays but only for 6 consecutive hours between 10am and 6pm must close on Easter Sunday must close on Christmas Day Most likely they were using it was a hyperbole, which are very common for USians. Edit: big Tescos usually close at 12am on week days, whereas many US stores can stay open for 24 hours per day. Comparatively speaking it is early for them.
Here in Italy, it is very common entering a bar, going to desk, asking for a coffee, being served in seconds, drinking it while standing, paying and getting out in minutes.
I live in Sweden, and most supermarkets and convenience stores open at between 7 and 9 in the morning and close at between 21 and 23 in the evening, even in small towns (I know your concept of a small town is what would be a medium size city here, but think 1500-2000 ppl and up). In larger cities, 7-22 or 7-23 is typical for supermarkets and some convenience stores are open past midnight. And they're usually open like that every day of the week. In smaller cities and towns, opening hours are more restricted on Saturdays and Sundays, as well as public holidays, so maybe 10-20 or 9-21. But they're always open those days. You just have to cross the border to Norway or Denmark to find much worse opening hours, and I think it's even against the law to have your store open on a Sunday, unless it's a smaller convenience store. Horrible! It's even worse in some places, where stores close really early, as in late afternoon! That's insane, and is only possible in those backward countries that still, more or less, force women to stop working and stay at home when the first child is born, since they obviously aren't limited to shopping outside of normal working hours. Germany is one example. They're stuck in the past.
Thomas Lowdon The biggest issue with bottled water is the transportation of it. Lorries are travelling vast distances hauling heavy bottled water hundreds of miles to supermarket distribution centres, where it is loaded onto more lorries and driven more miles to stores, where it is purchased and driven home. Hauling water uses fuel which is entirely unnecessary when the water that comes out of your tap is statistically safer and certainly much more strictly regulated. The UK has some of the highest quality drinking water on the planet, there is rarely a need for bottled water yet hundreds of millions of bottles are sold each month, meaning thousands of lorry journeys and hundreds of tons of emissions, all entirely avoidable. Then there is the issue of plastic waste...
@@spencerwilton5831 well theres long been an issue with British people and local water and bottled.but the advertising media push it so hard on tv that bottled water is so pure.people buy into the idea that now its kinda fashionable....studies have shown theres no difference at all...and samples offered at random offered to the public showed they could not distinguish one from the other . As you stated uk water is perfect and wholesome....all this bottle stuff is just a fad..
So here in Romania, we don't cheek kiss every new person we meet or stuff like that, because that would be too weird tbh. Other than that, we do cheek kiss our close family members, after seeing them for awhile, especially at important family events. With friends etc, we just go for a hug or a handshake.
I’m from the Netherlands and we have our 3 kisses. We can do that, or hug or handshake. Man don’t kiss other man, or at least the man I know don’t. As a woman we kiss male and female. But hugging is becoming more a thing than it was.
Americans must find the following things really weird:
1. Paid holidays. Heard people in the US don’t really get that.
2. Not having to worry about guns.
3. Pay the price of things on the label not adding tax at the point of sale.
4. Get treatment for almost anything in a hospital without having to pay for it at the point of service.
5. Paid maternity leave
joey020 you forgot to mention not having to worry if your food is pumped full of growth hormones, antibiotics, or any one of dozens of chemicals permitted in the US but banned in Europe.
Spencer Wilton very important. I see American chefs on tv talking about good produce and I think yea right. Your food is full of crap 💩
Car insurance is expensive in the US. Watch a YT clip where a US guy quoted his tax on an Aston Martin, $2000/year, i put my details in local UK and i could get the same insurance for $400/year.
@@spencerwilton5831 Turkeys fed on cow renderings, that is banned in the EU.
@@spencerwilton5831 Not really I work in retail at rainbow foods and you would be surprised at the number of (NON GMO) Food labels that exist in a store, Milk, eggs, Bread, Caned Foods, butter and the like do not have the "chemicals " that you bug you, at lest a full one third of all of caned and most fresh food do not have them. The labels have if giant text NO GMOs, Hormones and etc..all over the labels it seems that at lest in the south these modified foods are not doing all that well.
It´s a bit funny to talk about europeans as one group culturally when there is big differences between the countries.
Well we have many things in common, a lot of it due to the EU actually.
The states of A. also have differences. Ok, not as great differences as with the European states, but they're by no means all the same.
Very true, however, I feel that we are all building, in a slow but sure manner, a sort of worldwide culture, don't you think? I feel that due to today's telecommunications possibilities, everybody is influencing everybody else.
@@alexverdigris9939 The cultural differences between Minnesota and Florida are the same as between Rome, my city, and Viterbo, the next city nearby 30 minutes away
Actually we have many common customs between one another. Like for exemple compared to the US we have better wine :)
And we actually know how stars look like in the night sky, but in the US they start calling the police about ufo's on the nightsky whenever the lights are off in a big city
Things that are usual in europe:
Coming back from school alive.
Coming back from the hospital with the same amount of money that you had before.
Coming back from university (after degree) debt free
Well, I agree, but seriously, America should do something about it. Like, I can't imagine going to school thinking "oh, hopefully I won't get shot today!".
Yes!!!
Nah, not the last one. We aren't as much debt for sure! But I don't know anyone who isn't debt free after University
Roma English I am in the EU....it costs less than 2000€ where I am to go to University....any University! Even in other European countries.....so, no....no debt here after University.....or after being hospitalized.....better life, for sure! And I am an American....26 years in Europe!
@@37Raffaella I've lived my whole life here and I go to university now. But what costs is living, getting the books, small tuition fees etc etc. It's not nearly as bad as the US, but I'm just saying that I don't know any people that come out with a masters and no debts
In US more concerned about nudity and less about violence. In Europe it’s the other way around.
Not only is the US more concerned about nudity it also has the "Topfreedom" movement and produces more porn than the rest of the world combined.
@@gordonlawrence1448 That's probably WHY they produce so much porn!
And yet the US has the biggest porn industry in the world. In a Jim Jeffries routine, he says that it makes no sense that you can pay a woman for sex, but it's only illegal if you don't film it and show it to people.
@@SarthorS Who says the law has to make sense? The UK has a complete hodge podge of laws which go back to common law a few aspects of which pre-date 1066. The result? Anything before about 1900 that is still enacted is a bit odd as some of it is for situations never likely to happen again (such as the legal requirement to paractice longbow as the Butts) but it is illegal to follow some of those laws also (such as shooting a welshman with a bow inb York on a saturday.
@@gordonlawrence1448 Except you are missing half of it. The actual laws are not the full story. It's also how they are and are not applied. Precedence is a big part of the legal system which is why there are still some anachronistic laws on the books which no judge pays atention to.
I’ve always found it a bit weird when people compare a single country (like the USA) to an entire continent (like Europe). Italy and Russia have very little in common.
This comment should get higher notice
For what it's worth, the United States is also very diverse in comparison to a single country in Europe.
Funny when they say "comparing the US with Europe" and by that they mean strictly the west side of Europe.....mostly the UK the only other english speaking country in Europe🤣
The U.S. is practically an entire continent
@@toad2117 But the cultural diversity between the diffrent parts of the US is much, much smaller than, for example between Portugal, Russia and Iceland.
I'm confused why some americans were shocked when they hear a lot of us walk a few kilometres to get somewhere
I was shocked to find some USA streets do not even have side walks. It is not uncommon to call a Taxi to cross a busy junction.
@@lazyoldmanathome7699 wauw
Paul Jinks holy shit are you serious??
This is the great thing about going to the city center in europe just wandering around for hours talking to your friends
I once knew an American lady who spent a fortune on gym memberships and fancy yoga retreats, but was blown away that I would walk the couple of km to and from work. I often clock up 20000+ steps a day, walking is the fastest and cheapest way to get around most European cities!
The Schengen area, I can drive through 12 countries without being asked for my passport, from South Portugal to North Norway.
You can actually drive through all of the Schengen countries in one tour!😆
years ago I drove through the Netherlands to Germany the customs posts were still there but no people so I stopped looked around realised, and drove on
Ian Prince Most were disbanded, some were reestablished to check trucks for migrants (which doesn’t work because the migrants will say they’re under age and no one will even bother proving anything because if they actually try and do that the non profits will then “take them in for caring” and just let them go)
@@mojojim6458 but it's not different countries like in Europe
@@mojojim6458 exactly that's what i'm saying. It's several countries here in Europe, meaning you have to pass borders, which makes it more significsnt that you can pass them without being asked for your passport, unlike in the US where you're "only" passing state borders when driving across the continent😊
I think you've missed something -- the 24 hour clock.
I'm always surprised and puzzled by American visitors who can't understand the 24hr clock; I don't see why it should be so difficult
I don't get it either. I live in the US and I use the 24-hour clock, the metric system and I can drive a manual transmission (and prefer it). It makes me feel more different than just my name alone.
@@laurentecrivain6944 Same here!
@@laurentecrivain6944 well most people in the UK don’t use metric. America uses imperial as does the UK for some things officially.
It's not difficult, but it requires conversion. It's like paying in another currency and having to calculate how much it is in a currency you're familiar with.
@@seanmatthewking So I guess it is like not having sales tax included and calculating how much you pay :)
I feel sorry for all those American kids having to keep converting from one unit to another while all we do in Europe is move the decimal point.
Also those American kids have to learn to convert from proper money into yankee dollars.
The conversion mainly happens the other way. Europeans generally convert back to imperial. As with aircraft. When airbus launched, so that they were able to sell it in the states the airbus is built on the imperial system and still is to this day b
Believe me, even move with decimal point can be tricky and you can easily fail in that in math lessons in school, I saw it many times. For example when you are converting cubic or square units then 1m3 is not 100cm3 as uneducated people think. :-D And also we have liters and not everyone knows liter = dm3 so when they have something in m3 and they need it in liters, they are lost without google. :-D Also you have °C, but some things in science are in kelvins and in schools they are using kelvins very often to confuse you. :-D And in metric system it's very important to keep small and big letters correctly because you can make completely different unit from that by such small mistake, that's why I am always upset when I see someone writing MM instead of mm, even if I admit that western europeans are writing meter like M, then it's wrong because M is mega and not mili. And you can see that even or tools which is really ridiculous for me, you could not pass even elementary school in Czechia with writing MM and such shits.
@@philltaylor2288 lol it's all in metric in the data.
Every single part is defined in metric because the cad (catia) is metric.
The onboard computer is metric from censor to computer, and only at the end convert to imperial for the crew.
And still they are bad in maths.
If you still blame the UK for everything it's like saying the UK has moved on and the US hasn't.
Such as gun laws?
@@rtsharlotte ?
@@bn56would laws two hundred years ago were suited for that time period. Gun laws are the perfect example. It's not the wild west anymore
@@rtsharlotte ?
@@rtsharlotte We have an organization called the NRA (National Rifle association) here that is one of the largest lobbying groups and contributors to political campaigns in the country. The NRA holds the tenets of the 2nd amendment, the right to bare arms very stringently and has always balked at massive restrictions on he right to bare arms. There'll never really be total gun restrictions in the US , so from the outside looking in , it seems like we're somewhat ruled by the gun, but we do try tp strike a balance. I grew up with my dad having guns in the house and I knew where they were but I was also told never to touch them and I didn't. After he passed away, my mom gave his shotguns to my brothers and kept the pistol which she never used and ended up giving that to one of my brothers years after my dad passed.
In Portugal:
girl-girl:kiss
guy-girl:kiss
guy-guy:shake hands
Hugging is a more intimate thing
USA kissing is more intimate than hugging.
@@hydrolito It's not an actual kiss though, you just lean your cheek into the other person's cheek and make a kissing sound. A hug involves a lot more time and contact between people
João Pedro true!
Same in France
Same here in Hungary, we only hug close friends, or it only became a thing for younger generations with our friends
If I pay cash, I would not give the waiter my wallet to take it away and take the money out somewhere else. so why should I hand over my creditcard?
😅🤣🤣🤣
Shouldn't they take you to the swipe machine or take the swipe machine to you? 🤔🤔🤔
@@aiko9393 almost all card payments in Europe are contactless or with a portable terminal
Because the US is backwards and the swipe machines don't always move.
Trust? And it's only one card, not a full wallet?
Fun fact - kissing people you meet was invented in Europe to discourage American tourists from talking to us in public.
lol
I thought that’s what the body odor and cigarette smell was for
@@fatherson5907 is that the tobacco discovered in America? And it still smells better than the blood of children that drips off their hands.
@@Magyww anytime my friend. One thing Americans do more than anyone is stroke their own self importance and exceptionalism.
@@YourBeingParanoid You're literally on a video made by two Americans that is about Americans. You don't wanna deal with us, gtfo.
4:23 In Europe, most credit card are chip & pin, instead of swipe & sign, so the payer's presence is required to process a transaction.
Yes, In the past before chips it was like in the States.
I don't know where Europeans get their information from but it's often inaccurate. We have chip and pin cards that we can also just tap the machine and enter your pin. We can also use just our smart phones.
marilyn fernandez yes but the swipe works, with European cards the swipe works only with terminals that don’t have the chip reader. So at restaurants in Europe it’s impossible to do the swipe and sign (except if your card doesn’t have a chip) while in America with American cards it’s possible.
@@dufonrafal yes, you just have more options in the US.
Most of our (US) chipped cards are chip and signature, not chip and PIN. And everywhere else (Canada, Europe) when you pay in a restaurant with a card, they bring a portable terminal to your table and you put in your card and pin and tip amount. They NEVER take your card away. And if they anywhere needs to do a swipe process (usually for a visiting american), it usually involves a manager and having to pull out equipment that they've forgotten how to use.
I find it WILD that someone taking your bank card, and charging you without you even being there would be seen as a perfectly normal thing :P
Me too,you dont know if the waiter is gonna take you extra money
@@alphagamer9505 or steal your card informations and use it online
@@coke-cinelle also that
The receipt is printed out showing what was charged, and you sign for approval.
@@treetopjones737 still doesn't prevent from stealing information
We do not trust other peoples with our credit card, as there have been many cases of cards being copied, in shops, restaurants and garages..we are always told by the banks and credit card agencies to NEVER let your card out of sight.
when they bring the machine to your table to pay. The machine will also display the price that has been put in for payment. IMHO very important, because it wouldn't be the first time a mistake has been made. ;)
In the EU, points of sale are actually legally required to let the customer operate the card reader.
Is there portable wireless atm machines?
@@gu3sswh075 no, why?
@@Robbedem lol, you get a recipe brought to you that you have to sign... you'll know the amount that was entered.
In Europe we tend to go for fully enclosed toilet stalls.
And we thank you for it!
@Viscount Lordington Is that a display of dominance or an effort to make human connection?
Dutch stalls aren't always closed. There is like at least 2dm between floor and door in some and you can climb over it
In Eastern Europe, hole in ground is enough 😂
@@dutchgamer842 It's also about how closed the doors are, not only if the door is all the way down to the floor. In US public restrooms there's huge slits/gaps between the door and the wall as well as the door not being very tall in general, so it can happen that someone walks by and can see you over the top of the door, or through the gap between door and the wall of the stall. As an European I found that really uncomfortable.
When my grandparents were in San Francisco they walked up a hill and an American man just yelled at them “you English” and my grandad was like ye how did you know and he just said “no one else walks round here”😂
Lmao
Carlos Magalhães not at all. Everyone walk in San Francisco. I live an hour away from there. They must have been in a totally different place. Parking is horrible so people will usually park wherever they can and walk around or if they live there, they walk everywhere or use transportation for longer distances.
Yeah, rough neighborhood....
If you have an automatic car in the UK you can't drive a manual car unless you've passed a manual driving test but you can drive an automatic car if you have already passed a manual test.
youre offically an inferior driver
Manuals are dying out, now every European car over 2.9litrs is Automatic and in UK including the cheapest cars, in 2019 43% of all new cars sold were Automatic.
@@bouse23 Both my husband and I learned to drive manual cars but, because of hubby's disability (became paraplegic at 34 due to multiple sclerosis), we have no option now but to drive automatics with extra hand controls. (The pedals remain intact, so I can drive and the hand controls simply hook around the pedals so that you pull to accelerate and push to brake. It's more complicated than that but would take too long to explain).
I wouldn't say that driving an automatic makes you an inferior driver at all, because I think a lot depends on WHERE you learned to drive and what sort of traffic you are used to. Hubby and I both learned in a big city and are used to the tactics, acceleration burst etc that is often needed. We don't live in a big city any more and if we go back to visit relatives, it is a bit of a shock for about half a day but then we get back in the old routine. I should point out that our last 3 cars have been DSG boxes, which are incredibly responsive (a VW Touran, a Ford C-Max and currently another VW Touran) - we often leave people with manual cars still dithering at traffic lights when they change because they aren't fast enough at getting into to gear and away. In addition, the cars have the option of being in semi-automatic mode, meaning you can electronically change gear "manually" and get really good performance. I am the only one who can do that in our car, as my husband needs one hand on the steering wheel and one on the push/pull hand controls but I can get a really fast change going. You really ought to try one of them sometime - they have developed beyond recognition over the past 30 -35 years and are nothing like as slow and unresponsive as you might think.
@@robertcroft8241 www.thezebra.com/insurance-news/2805/manual-vs-automatic/
In Europe and Japan 80% of cars sold are manuals .
@@robertcroft8241 what like the Porsche 911GT3 (4L stick shift option)? Or do you mean the 2019 Lotus Evora Sport 410 (3.5L stick shift option) some of the BMW models like the M3 and M4? or are you just a twat that cant fact check?
That Megan joke cracked me up.
Strikes. Europeans expect more from their government. Yes the government wields more power and control but the people can and do hold them to account for it.
As a result good health care, public transport, employee rights, less crime and violence, fewer guns, less corruption, more political parties and more political discourse in general.
Also more languages and differences in culture and cuisine within a smaller area and so far more variation to be explored in easy travelling distance.
😂😂
I agree. The government needs to be there for the people, not the other way around. While there are many protests in the USA, they never go that step further -> strike. In my country f.e. (and it's not even France), we get some major national strikes every 4/5 years. Hell, We've had a strike for a couple of days at the place I work last year!
Robbedem not just the gov’t. We will strike if a company or sector underpays or otherwise mistreats its workers.
I now understand why these videos of yours contain so many sweeping over-generalisations. Start watching a bit more TV, guys. :-)
It's really quite informative about other cultures. At least here in the UK. Lumping Europe together as one culture is a bit odd when, even within the UK, there are many, many regional differences.
Yes, but Europeans tend to do the same to Americans, assuming our country is one unified thing, the reality is each state is like a small country.
Actually it is quite comparable since usa and Canada are like 65 countries. To us in North America Europe has a distinct culture, most factors are the same across most European countries.
@@candice2875 they really are not certain things are similar but many are not
@@adelehammond1621 true, there are a lot of differences between different European countries of course but all of them are still drastically different from North America. Like day and night.
If you can change the spelling of your words, you can go metric.
We'd like to!
I think there is a U.S. law that makes "metricating" optional.
Moved to UK went metric and have to translate back into imperial measurements when talking to my relatives here in the UK who are the same age is me. I found it necessary to make the switch; I don't know how they've managed not switching all these years when the culture has switched around them.
All US electronics, all cars, all planes are metric, NASA is metric. Metric units are on ALMOST all packaged food. US military is all metric. US hold outs are cooking, sports, housing, construction. Full Conversion would have happened in 1980s but old fogies like US President Reagan couldn't get their heads around new units. BTW ships use knots, airline altitude is in feet, and EU railroads run on 4ft 8 in rails so some things still aren't metric.
Little Bob - I’m happy for them to leave airlines in feet. The last thing I’d want is some pilot being confused about how high he was supposed to be flying after a switch...
Okay so a few things
A) nudity in Europe is much more chill and accepted in media and censorship is just not something we understand
B) bidet’s are generally pretty common but where I’m from, not really (France and Bulgaria) unless you live in a really old place but yeah, otherwise they are super common like in Italy I remember people asking me how the hell do i live without a bidet so that was funny
C) la bise is the one thing with the least amount of rules, general rule is you go for each cheek once but afterwards it’s all free, you can do it to anyone, with anyone, you can hold or not hold, most don’t hold unless you are family or close friends but that can vary too. Also for the hugging part, some people go for combo and hug then bise, so yeah.
D) In restaurants you can order two kinds of water, if you say just water people give you bottle water, but you can actually specify and ask for tap water and then you don’t pay for the water. So technically yes but no because you aren’t asking for the right water for it to be free.
D) that's basically the opposite of USA and Canada. Here, if you ask for water they will just bring you tap water, which is free. If you want bottled water you will have to ask specifically for bottle water, which you will have to pay for.
@@ser132 I think in Europe the bottled water is a thing. Like different brands are famous for their specific kind of water like evian or Gerolsteiner or Spa or st Pellegrino. They are sparkling mineral waters and come from a specific place (or so they say). They also have fancy bottle design, so you can recognise them from far away (if it's a glass bottle). And they do taste different, some restaurants have different choices of water brands as well.
Yeah, in France we just ask for a « carafe » of water when we when tap water. But I feel like, if you ask for water, they will just bring you tap water anyway 🤷🏽♀️
@@TaraGruette hmmm I don't know, from my experience it greatly varies and you usually have to be precise about it but I suppose that depends on where in France, but yeah if you ask for a carafe it works out
A) What kinda censorship are you talking about?
POLITICAL VIEWS ARE CENSORED ALL THE TIME IN JUST ABOUT EVERY COUNTRY NOW!
B) I've seen a bidet twice in my life. In Holland and in Hungary.
I've been to the following countries in Europe: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Germany, Holland, France, England, Scotland, Czhecia, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria and Romania. I didn't find them super common at all. They're rare.
C) Nothing to add.
D) Depends on the country.
There's a second way to pay at a restaurant in Europe. After you're done with your meal, you go to the front desk and pay for your table. So you can pay whenever you're done and just leave. Very convenient.
Uh you can do that in the US too.. Some restaurants have that as the norm even.
I've definitely confused a couple of Walmart employee's before, by packing my own bags or even bringing my own bag to put things in. When I explained this was normal for me, they were shocked, and their minds were forever blown when I told them about UK/Euro cashiers sitting down.
Woah! You're right! Never noticed that difference - the sitting one that is.
Depending on the store they often have a fairly high stool or low backed chair so they are about the same height as if they were standing
@@WanderingRavens Then again, it used to take me 20 mins to get through Walmart check outs because...accent....
@@WanderingRavens protection of workers' health is important in europe. why should they be forced(!) to stand all day if they can work at least as efficiently while sitting or leaning back (or whatever type of chair is available to eg support the back)? only because customers in the US might think that "sitting = lazy" while having smalltalk ?
The food is for your consume not them 😎😎 also you went to the store because you needed to shop. The shop didnt go to you 😎😎😎
When you lived in America your car was broken in to three times?! Ok, found another thing for your list...
Pick-pocketing is almost non-existent in the U.S.. So there. BTW, my car has never been broken into and I live in a major city. Car break-ins large depend on where you live.
Yeah, that was because of the parking lot I had to park my car in when I went to work. It was the parking lot of a Casino and Walmart, so not the best place to put a car haha
Before I moved to a house with a drive my car was broken into several time. I live in the UK
We had a car that was set on fire in an off-road car park with about 6 other cars. This is in UK. The police took our car away but didn't bother to inform us of what had happened. The next day my mum goes to go to the car and can't find it, when I asked my colleagues for ideas one produced an online news article with a huge picture of our burnt-out car. We later learned that the police had seen the arsonist at the scene of the crime but couldn't prove that he was there because his car was parked somewhere else!
To be fair, that's also a big problem in cities like Paris and Brussels.
"I've never had a TV" is the "I'm a vegan" of "Digital nomads".
Really weird aren’t they
It's not so much a problem of the server "stealing the card" but cloning the card when it's out of your view.
That's what we meant. Not physical theft, but copying down the numbers and such.
@@WanderingRavens
He/She means the electronic duplication of the card, easily done with a pocket sized machine.
Maybe the Third world, 1980s money systems in the US provide an unintended protection from electronic cloning?
Plus contactless
Yes, on holiday last year my Dad had his card cloned. He is nearly 90 years old and handed his card over in a pub that was kept for a little while. Roll on a couple of weeks and car tyres and pizzas and pub meals had been charged to his card. Luckily the bank reimbursed him
Also hard to to card+pin if the waiter walks off with the card...
The “kissy thing”:
Usually, if you’re meeting someone for the first time or if your being formal you do a handshake
I kiss my family and friends when we haven’t seen each other in a while or if it’s a holiday/birthday
With super close friends we just hug
In Italy we also do the bise or whatever you call it only with relatives or very close friends, but with people we barely know we just shake our hands, we never hug, it's considered very very weird to hug someone
try greetings in Belgium, you can find:
- giving hands
- giving one kiss
- giving 3 kisses
- giving a hug
all depents on who starts the action, what culture they come form, what culture the other comes from, who invited you, speciall occasions like birthdays ect,... (with culture I mean frensh speaking and flemish speaking people, we have a bit of a different culture if you look at those things)
At least currently it's easy; you just say:"Hallo", or "Goeiedag"
Its dutch, flemish isnt a language.
@@evzenvarga9707 Depends on what you think of /define as a language, Flemish is a group of dialects, and can be used to define a group of people speaking a specific language. Especially in this case as the whole country speaks Flemish or Walloon (French dialect with some Flemish/Dutch words into it, and different numbering than standard French). But if you really want to go the 'official' route, yes it isn't a fully different language from Dutch, but that's maybe more because of how the now known Default Dutch language was defined. (Standaard Nederlands)
Fun fact: First harry potter was dubbed in both Flemish and Dutch, as are more kids movies.
That's not even a Wallonia-Flanders thing. I live in Flanders and have absolutely no idea what sort of greeting people want over here. Everyone has different ideas on what to do. Never thought I'd say this, but thank fuck for coronavirus in this instance. Finally a unified way of greeting someone: do nothing.
Don't blame the British for your imperial system, we gave you the independence before the metric system was invented. You still use the imperial system because of Ben Franklin
And technically they were us anyway, so we couldn't have given "them" anything.
ie: It was a civil war, Britons vs Britons.
Actually the metric system was invented by an Englishman in the 1660s, Well over a hundred years before those pesky rebel upstarts got going.
@@kevinshort3943 I never call it the American Revolution, But instead, The British Civil War. I get called many names until you explain history to them.
@@kevinshort3943 True!
@@kevinshort3943 I find it sad that "Americans" don't actually have their own nationality. It's the USA because they're on the continent of America. A Brazilian, Mexican, Canadian etc are just as much Americans.
_I remember when I was a server_
Me: So how many sites did you host?
I'm dead 😂
Is this an old post. Most transactions in Europe are ´contactless´.
Well that only started recently (like 2 years ago?) and you still bring the wireless card reader to the table, even if the customer pays contactless.
Also, there's a huge difference in countries in Europe when it comes to paying. I'm German and we still do a lot of paying in cash, more so than other European countries. 3 years ago there was a big study in which 3/4 of transactions were done in cash. I worked part time in a city centre supermarket during uni and I can attest to that. Only in the last 1 1/2 - 2 years contactless card readers started getting used more often (they've been around for a bit longer, but a lot of people didn't switch cards until they naturally got a new one which happens every couple of years in Germany) and people started using apps on their phones more often as well. Yet still a whole lot of people pay cash. But because of the pandemic a lot of places now ask you to not pay using cash (because in the beginning it wasn't clear if smear infections could happen) and it's about 53% card pay now I've read.
In comparison other countries in Europe are more extreme, there's some Scandinavian countries were you even pay with card in a farmers market. Same thing I experienced in Rotterdam two summers ago. It was so weird to me that this little stall that sold tomatoes only accepted card. They said it was for security reasons and that they get very mixed responses from tourists depending from which country they're from.
Card transactions are really expensive for shops in Germany, more so when it's credit instead of debit card, which is why discount supermarkets like Aldi only started accepting credit cards a few years ago. Bigger supermarkets like Walmart did it and some clothing or electronic stores, but not a lot of places you frequent often. I'm not sure why, it just might be because the German mentality is that cash is better, so banks just make money off of card transactions?
@@CarinaCoffee Sehr Gute!
I wish more countries would still pay in cash so the government cocksuckers that are ruled by the banking cartels would have less control of us!
Hopefully this is the very reason Germans do this... STICKING IT TO THE MAN!
I work in a store in Norway. Half the time I don't really need to count the register before closing, cause we didn't have any cash payment that day. Also: most are tap, especially if the sum is less than 400nok (no pin needed). A lot of people don't even use cards anymore. Just casually pulls out their phone or smartwatch.
Fuqu Pal The problem with cash is that it's expensive for businesses to handle it, store it and transport it. It needs to be banked regularly. Storing cash on the premises drives up insurance costs. Less scrupulous businesses use cash transactions to avoid paying their proper taxes, so the rest of us end up subsidising them. Criminals deal almost exclusively in cash. I carry £20 for emergencies but the same note has been in my wallet for years- I can't remember the last time I spent any actual cash. It's a massive hassle relying on cash when you can just use your phone and card.
I'm British and 58 years old and I use both metric and imperial,I think Bidet is pronounced bee day as it's a French word.
Oh! We didn't know it was French! :D
53 & I do the same.
I'm 68 and use both with ease. By the way it's maths not math.
@@julesburton4649 Same here. Some things are more sensible in imperial.
it is Bee Day!
Outside of America, a 'server' is a computer!
I got news for you. A server is also a computer in the USA. Ask any online gamer, IT specialist, or really just anyone in the tech world. One of the last things they want to hear is "The server is down." The word itself has a double meaning like many others in the English language.
@@manenkoff , it doesn't have a double meaning. 'Server' means _one that serves something,_ whether that's a person who takes food orders and serves the ordered food or a system which receives HTTPS requests and serves the requested documents or a system that takes SQL queries and serves the queried data, they're all called 'servers' because they serve something. It's the same meaning.
server as an IT term evolved from american term for waiter/waitress because server is the computer that is serving data to the client. same goes for many IT terms like gateway, adress, memory, etc. Those all words had their own respective meanings outside IT and were repurposed as computer science terminology
French here... Yeah, hugging is weird. Very much a reverse feeling : hugging feels so much more intimate. Wrapping somebody in my arms is something I'd do with a loved one, maybe (maybe) with a close friend who needs comfort. Not somebody I just met.. And HOW LONG IS IT SOPPOSED TO LAST ? I go with it if I'm in the US but it makes me very uncomfortable.
I know it makes little sense, as yeah, I see how "la bise" can be weird when you're not used to it (and I see the reaction when I go for it with a foreigner without thinking). I just try to shake hands with foreigners as a middle ground to make sure everybody's ok.
Portuguese here ... for me kissing someone's cheek is easier than giving a hug. In any case, kisses on the cheek are not given to all people. To strangers who are presented to us at the moment, usually a handshake but it depends on the context. In a social/personal situation, kisses work well, in professional terms, handshake. I will only eventually hug someone with whom I am very intimate (but it is a tight and really felt hug)
There's difference between northern vs. southern europe when it comes to greetings. I'm swedish and we usually greet close friends and family with hugs. The first time you meet someone you usually shake hands but after the first time we usually just say hello and maybe kind of wave. We like our personal space a lot so i always kind of get uncomfortable when you travel and suddenly people are standing much closer to you when you talk or when you're in a queue. So kissing a person you're meeting for the first time on the cheek is a big no-no in my world =)
@@CanoraZon sounds about the same in the US. You don't hug strangers and you definitely don't kiss them. Shaking hands is common
Walking and bicycling ftw.
Also, never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever give your card to anyone, ever.
I think to 2 km as pedestrian is NORMAL and to approximately 5 km is absolutely okay and to like 10km possible. Your thoughts?
We do have 24 hour supermarkets in the UK, and our supermarket ASDA is owned by Walmart :)
This is good to know!
Yes , I think their friend from the UK must have come from St Kilda or Unst.
Pretty sure you can't actually buy stuff 24h. I think 11pm to 8am is browsing only?
@@kevinshort3943 I used to work in a 24hr supermarket, you can buy stuff 24 hrs a day.
@@THEKILTEDWANDERER my condolences
Old circumcision joke: “The pay’s lousy but you get to keep the tips.”
😁😀😂🤣
HAHAHAHA!! 😂😂😂😂😂
in the uk we do have 24 hours supermarket tesco/asda - also walmart and asda are the same company... your friend must live under a rock
Lucas Christian I guess It depends where you live, all tesco’s near me are only open till 11pm latest..
Also depends on your age. Yes Walmart own Asda but that’s not always been the case, and if you’re older than 21, you’ll remember the first time supermarkets opened 24 hours in the U.K., you know, when Harry Potter books were only just being released.
DappsJames I’m nearly 25 and haven’t ever seen a 24 hour supermarket in the uk 😂 I guess there’s just none near me
@@juliaw151 I think they're more common in cities but there is one quite near me in a town of just 10,000 people.
@@DappsJames Older people can still read. Most ASDA signs say that they are a Walmart company.
In America I didn't meet any eccentric friendly old codgers with a comb-over and a wooly jumper, who live in a dusty house of books and antiques, who drink brandy in the pub everynight, beat everyone at chess, and occasionally have to be carried home when they've had one too many, usually while they orate a sad unfortunate tale. Plenty of them in Europe.
Eh?
They're all stuck in the suburbs.
Sounds about Irish lol
Then you should go to New England.
Write a book about it, dude
To get tap water in France you need to order "une carafe d'eau"
+
In Spain,= agua del grifo
I sometimes forget when I go back there, then I kick myself for wasting 5 euros for nothing! :D But yeah, "une carafe d'eau" is perfectly fine and free.
Le pichet !!
The credit card thing - it's not so much losing the physical card as having it run thru a scanner which captures its information for later use. Identity theft and all that.
2 words... Naked Attraction
1 word... vomits
No words... I'm speechless.
Goodness. I forgot about that. How many countries has it reached by now? UK, Germany are there more?🤣
Denmark
That came on the telly a good few years ago when I was in a hotel room with my younger sisters and I was quite confused I must say
Switzerland: young people usually give a hug and one kiss while older people give 3kisses. But usually with close friends or relatives ☺️🇨🇭
I made a friend from Switzerland some time ago and she did the hug and kiss thing. Which luckely made it less awkward because I also hug people and she couldn't see my surprise. (I'm German) :D Hi neighbour :)
If someone takes your credit card away they can easily clone it and you won’t know for a while. It happened a lot in restaurants a while ago.
The only time that I ever had a card cloned was at a fuel pump and I was the only one that touched the card. Someone had installed a capture device on the pump. The credit card company covered the charge and sent me a new card.
We work less in Europe giving us more time for holidays and family time. Me here in the UK have 28 days holiday, 8 bank holidays and 5 what you might call duvet days. I have every weekend off and work 35 hours a week.
Happy Days
What the hell is a duvet day?
@@niknak8005
A Duvet day, is a day where I can call in at no notice saying I am not coming to work. I may then go back to bed...hence Duvet day
@@michaelzzzzzzzzzzzz I live and very much work in the UK, we do not have this in my job. I want a duvet day damn it
@@niknak8005
I am lucky in having 5 a year
And here I am celebrating that I don't have to work Christmas Eve...
The reason for the credit card issue is that in Europe they have adopted the "chip and PIN" system, which means the purchaser needs enter their PIN. In the US, we have sadly only adopted the "chip" system.
Lee Lauer wait, so even if it is a debit card you don’t have to enter a PIN??
@@ingridal3060 That's right, the US banking system didn't fully adopt chip and pin like in Europe. There is a pin for ATM use but most transactions don't require a pin
Lee Lauer seems quite insecure
@@leelauer517 Most grocery stores require pin for using the card.
@@treetopjones737 Yes, in some places. The point is, it's not universal. For example where I live, all the supermarkets and shops do not require the pin when making a purchase. Just insert the card with the chip and that's it.
The UK adopted metric in the 70's so used imperial up to then. You just didn't keep up so don't blame us.
Except all the road signs are in miles not kilometres and you get pints of beer in the Pub. We are not as wholeheartedly metric as the rest of europe.
Nooo! Let us have our scapegoat! In all seriousness though, many Americans would love to switch to metric, but until the gov forces the country to do it, it won't happen :(
Neil Buckley I found that truly curious when I was in the UK. It always raised the question, if distances are in miles but fuel is liters how do you measure fuel economy? The US is obvious with miles per gallon MPG and totally metric countries have kilometers per liter KPL. Does the UK have miles per liter or still use KPL which would seem to be very confusing.
@@EaterOfBaconSandwiches Also our gallon is different, so UK mpg and US mpg aren't even the same.
If you are changing buildings built sometime over the last 1000 years you can't just "go metric".
We still use the imperial system in the UK, we mix metric and imperial. Most British people understand both
I am 59 and prefer imperial but can usend metric obviously.
It seems like if you just want a quick "eyeball" measurement, you use feet and inches, but if you're measuring something accurately with a measuring device, you use metric.
This doesn't apply to road distances and speeds, and the volume of beer (but not milk anymore) which still officially use imperial units.
Yeah this. I use both, depending what I'm measuring
A lot of imperial measurements are based on the size of body parts,so you carry carry a tape measure around with you. An inch is approx the width of your thumb at the knuckle,a foot is the length of a size 10 shoe etc
@@tibsie Milk, not so much. My milk is labelled as 1.136 ltrs. Which happens to be 2 pints.
Turning the knob solo 😂🤣😂 that is priceless, after an army career , I thought I'd heard all the euphemisms, but that's a new one for me.
😂😂
I was once in Germany omg nudity they really don't care, it was great lol
Columbus didn't discover America the Vikings did, we just forgot lol😁
Lief Erikson?
America was first discovered roughly 10,000 BC by ancestors of current native americans.
@@desanipt Yes, the Vikings were well aware of them having found a new continent. They were great sailors, navigators and map makers, and they named the new land Vínland, meaning Wine land, because there were so many berries in the location where they landed. They did explore the region they settled.They might not have "explored" as much as you would have liked. But that does not change the fact that the vikings were well aware of having found a new land
And the Polynesians before the Vikings. How do you think people got to Hawaii?
Of course it was Columbus. Vikings coming to America had no bearing either to us, or to Indians. Bah, nobody in Europe new about this discovery.
When my family emigrated in 1953, we sailed from England to New York on the Queen Elizabeth then took the train from New York to Los Angeles - the entire journey took 8 days. 20 years later when we returned from LA to the UK, we actually arrived the same day we left, thanks to the time difference.
That’s impossible. Uk is ahead of LA. It would have been the next day.
Commenting on the "la bise" vs hug thing. I'm French, and the very first time I went to the US to stay in a host family, the mom gave me a big and warm hug at the airport and that first one was very unexpected to me and I had the feeling of having my personal space more violated than when I kiss people, but I got used to it very quickly.
we usually use debit cards in stead of credit cards, and for debit cards you need a code. so they need you to push the code.
True! Pin numbers. In the states, you don't need to enter a pin number at restaurants.
@@WanderingRavens Are Americans not aware that cards can be cloned? That is why we do not like cards to be taken out of our sight. However, chip and pin stopped this problem to a large extent. Cloning can still be a problem when using ATMS.
Yeah I was thinking they wouldn't achieve much if they walked off with my credit or debit card as they would require a PIN for either of them.
@@EaterOfBaconSandwiches And out of date already (1 April)
It's gone up to £45 now because of Covid-19.
Europe: waving your kids off to school in the morning and welcoming them back home in the afternoon.
US:waving your kids off to school in the morning and wondering if they'll come back home in the afternoon.
UK: two school massacres in 150 years. Last one thirty something years ago.
Simple answer make armed teachers mandatory.
alan g k : You could revise your gun laws as we did via various pieces of legislation. But there again, we British have never had a gun culture. Our old lags, prior to going on a blagging, searched the young bucks to make sure that they weren't armed. One episode of hotheadedness could see them all dancing the "gallows jig".
@Herman Greenfield comparing population is not a valid argument, US has more deaths from guns per 100 people. So looking at the stats when the population is scaled down to equal, you still have more
@Herman Greenfield but obviously not to the scale and phenomenon that people are dying from guns in the US which is why it needs to be talked about
@Herman Greenfield But you do have a speed limit, safety belts, airbags, mandatory training before being licensed to drive a car and so on. Also I've heard rumours that cars have some other use other than killing people.
I'm from Romania and here we kiss, we hug, and we shake hands with everybody no matter of sex or age but only in private encounters (no business related meetings).
Lots of Brits still prefer the imperial measurements. Circumcision is child abuse and unnecessary.
Not unnecessary. The foreskin should be very loose for hygiene reasons so that it can be pulled back and that part of the penis kept clean. If the foreskin is tight so this cannot be done then circumcision is needed. I had this done at age 10 under general anithestic . I was off school for several weeks. I can only guess how painful, once I'd reached puberty, an erection would have been with a tight foreskin
@@glen1555 Yes, there are reasons why a foreskin needs to be removed for medical reasons but it DOES NOT need to be removed as a matter of course as a vast percentage of Americans believe. The usual argument is that a foreskin is unhygienic is totally false and has been proven to be false but Americans believe what they want to believe, if they don't like it then it's just dismissed as fake news. Angie Vara is totally correct doing it to a child for no good reason is child abuse.
@@glen1555 You dont know how penis works.
@@aliceemily5799 It only became widespread in the US in the late 1880s due to puritanical/victorian views about masturbation. Circumcision was undertaken and promoted as a way to prevent masturbation. It had nothing to do with hygiene then even if in very limited circumstances it might be recommended for medical reasons now.
Angie Vara I use both systems but imperial is my preference. I so agree with your opinion on circumcision it’s mutilation of a tiny child
In the UK, less Northern Ireland, all restaurants and cafes that serve alcohol are legally obliged to provide free tap water.
Stuart McKitrick Balderdash, you’ve just imagined that. Tap water is served as a courtesy there is no law surrounding it. And many don’t serve tap water unless specifically asked for it
@@personalcheeses8073 May I draw your attention to The Licencing Act 2003 which states "The responsible person must ensure that free potable water is provided on request to customers where it is reasonably available." See below:
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2014/9780111116906
You do have to ask for it specially; they'll drop an open bottle on your table and add it to the bill nine times out of ten.
@@Merciful_Angel Yes, they do tend to exploit Britons' reluctance to demand quality or, in this case, what we are entitled to. We would rather put up with poor service or food than "cause a scene", unlike many other nationalities, particularly Americans, and then we moan about it later.
@@Merciful_Angel Ask for tap water or a glass of water, not just water. They sell water, but if you ask for the free stuff they will always give it to you (with a possible exception if you aren't buying anything )
As I have stated elsewhere, we do not use the imperial system of weights and measurements. We use the customary system which is far older than the imperial system. Circumcision was done not because of Mr. Kellogg, but because it was thought to prevent certain venereal diseases. With some fifty-five venereal diseases in the world, this made sense in the time before antibiotics. No doctor was ever going to do a procedure because a cornflake magnate told them to do it. If you think of it for a moment, this is one of those ideas that has gone around that is pretty dumb, but we pass on to one another because it has a flare to it that makes the tale more interedting.
US customary system: 1832. Imperial system (redefined and renamed to the imperial system): 1824. Imperial system origin:~1225. Say again how your US system is far older? What do you think, Imperial was developed from USCS? It was the other way around. If you want further proof that the UK's system is older, they use pounds. As weight AND currency. Currency because 1 pound weight of silver in coin form was worth 1 pound (£). The US didn't copy the currency, making up the dollar instead, because they weren't old enough to have ever gone through the age of silver coins whose worth was determined by weight.
@@RazvanMaioru By this I meant that the customary system preceded the Imperial system in the UK. The problem with it was that the definition of some of the measurements, especially in volume and weight. While it is true that the adoption of the US system was in 1832, the power of the US government in the 1820s and '30s was not anywhere as powerful as it is today. The original standards were set by merchantmen, with the idea that if all American measurements were the same, then customers could rely on what they got and would send more business their way. In the early 1820s, as American trade to Europe increased, some sectors of the British business abroad began to suffer and there was a demand that Parliament do something about having standard measurements throughout the empire. Meanwhile, in its signature way, Congress dithered. but its influence on commerce was far more limited in that time.
You’ve never lived in a house with a tv?!
Mags That’s not uncommon. For younger adults they don’t tend to be TV minded their entertainment is via mobile /apps etc Historically also its pretty rare for those in upper income groups to watch much if any TV. I grew up in a fairly well to do area reading activities etc very common but TV was fairly rare for many of my peers. The only people I know that routinely ( ie multiple hrs perhaps in a day) watch TV are all low income.
@@lijohnyoutube101 Maybe it has to do with the TV culture in the US. The news achors seems to be very bias. Whereas in europe national tv is more common (which means "better" news and informative talking shows).
Swiss TV offers formats which are specifically for that group of people you mentioned (upper class). There are monthly book reviews, professiors get interviewed every sunday about a study they released. It's not just mindless trash. I'm not upper class, nor did I go to university but I like to watch these formats.
Leenapanther ofc Swiss tv isn’t biased
@@lijohnyoutube101 - but there weren't any apps and tablets when these guys were young, say 20 years ago. In fact, not many people had computers in the home and in Britain, the fifth TV channel was still quite new.
I haven't got a television.........
For the cheek kiss thing, I am French and when I was in high school, I made a school trip to London. My (female) penfriend introduced me to her (male) friend and with no warning, he walked in my direction and hugged me and I was literally shocked because for me, it was really too intimate (sometimes, you can "feel curves" from the other) to "touch my body" in this way. It was a real hug, a close one not a one with a 1-meter distance between each other. The only two people who can hug me are : my mother and my boyfriend. So, yes, as I am French, if someone tries to hug me and I am in the U.S.A., I will scream internally for sure. I Think hugging is common in all the English-speaking countries. In France, you just shake hands in a professional context, to make it easy. Sometimes, male friends shake hands between each other but it is not that common and they can kiss each other on cheeks also (no big issue for that). There is also no big issue if you are a man and you kiss on cheeks a colleague/friend's girlfriend because you are not French-kissing her lol By the way, when I kiss someone on cheeks, I do not touch this person at all so, no stomach touch lol (Generally, you arms are behind you and you do not plan to put them around the person in someway). The only good way to know what is the good or the bad side to start the cheek kiss is either presenting your cheek side, first (I am used to starting by left side and after right side) or waiting for the other to present his cheek first lol I know, by experience, that apparently, Italian people and Spanish people do not start with the same way so, it can lead to a"stolen" kiss/peck with no intention to do so, at the beginning. Last point : for the how many cheek kisses do you have to do ? In France, it is generally 2 but around Montpellier area is 3 and in North of France (above Paris), it could be 4 and in Belgium (French part, at least), it is just 1.
Wearing shoes in the apartment I've heard is normal in America. As a European, I can't understand it. When it rains or snows, and you come home, you spread mud or salt water and feel fine afterwards? Disgusting
To make it more confusing to you in nordic countries (my family's from Sweden) we never kiss but always hug.
For the kissy-thing:
I live in Hungary, and here, friends hug each other, family kisses or hugs, and if it's formal, then handshake
I'm a middle-aged Hungarian woman. No hugging for me, it feels like being in an American soap opera. Kissing elderly relatives is customary is my family, but the younger family members don't like it.
@@adriennigarashineszabo946 it may be because of our age difference:) i’m 19 years old, and we always hug eachother, but my parents don’t hug their friends
I know it’s an old video, but yeah: I’m french and when I first arrived in UK I was almost repulsed but hugging which is considered waaaayyyy more intimate action than « la bise » in France. Think of it as « la bise is just cheek/cheek » with some body distance. But hugging, is literally you holdi be in your arms someone you potentially don’t know.
It took me a whiiiiiillllleeee to get comfortable with it.
I'm Italian, I kiss distant relatives or acquitances and hug friends
Remember, we don't have door knobs. We have handles. only for wardrobes or presses where we use them.
Here in the UK I can have an argument in the street without getting a bullet in my guts.
I can get medical care for my family without needing a bottomless credit card.
I can have 5 weeks holiday each year and my boss has to pay me in full.
For the water thing, it depends from country to country. I can tell for the Balkans here, the waiters will usually ask you if you want tap water or bottled water. Tap water of course is free.
This is true for almost all the Balkan countries except for the most part in Greece, where tap water is not drinkable and used for washing, bathing/showering and cleaning.
Tap water is drinkable in Greece. Only some of the islands have a problem. Mostly in the Aegean.
Credit cards can easily be cloned when out of your sight,
France is the one country which is mostly known for the kissing greetings.
In my country Croatia you do the cheeky kisses with people you know and most of the time when you didn't see them in a while, sometimes a handshake is involved with it too. Also cheeky kisses are exchanged when you congratulate someone on something like wedding, birthday, graduating high school or university.
I lived in Germany as a child...well till I was 16, and I dont remember that any german person, at least I knew did that. A hug is ok when you know the person, they are more formal for example.
Hi, I'm french and hugging is something you would do with a close friend if you are going to be seperated for a long time or if it's really emotional, or if you're super happy to see someone. But it's not an everyday thing, it has a completely different signification.
To help you out, in an informal environement females do "la bise" to everyone and males shake hands with other males and do "la bise" with females.
And depending on the region, you do one, two or three kisses, don't worry about this part, even french people only know the number for their own region !
Oh, and we learn how to drive on a manual car, so I was shocked to learn, (in a movie) most americans don't know how to drive these cars.
You're quite right, there wasn't a sidewalk.
There was a pavement. :P
-Mostly manual cars.
-Celsius degrees
11:50 this is weird because the UK has Tesco and Asda (which is owned by Walmart) and they're open 24 hours, well many of them are.
Before cuntrona yeah
Don't bloody blame the UK for your continued use of the Imperial system. We switched to metric decades and decades ago. You have the opportunity to set your own system and have done since 1783.
And the metric system wasn't really a thing at that time, besides France, nobody used it
Stay mad.
@@Hipetyhop12 How clever and original. Problem is, I wasn't mad...
*Hugging* is the MOST INTIMATE type of greeting here in Italy, also its the most geared one from awkward introverts who visit their relatives... It's a nightmare but it would come out of *very rude* if you know someone very well or if they're family.
Never heard of card cloning machines?
Yes, Saying Servers in USA don't steal because you never witnessed it first hand is just ignorant, if that was the case, fraud would be so much less prevalent, especially pre-internet.
They were a lot in Europe. They just swipe the card and it copy’s or clones the details, never let your card out of your sight.
Not sure about this but I think it's now actually illegal in the UK to take someone's credit card out of their sight. In a customer service sense I mean. Of course we all use chip and pin machines or contactless anyway these days. But still...
@@xJavelin1 Its also Illegal to accept a card that does't have a signature which is something that Americans never seem to do.
You can steal chip credit card info even remotely these days. All you need is a proximity. That's why metal covered card holders are recommended.
I found it odd that when speaking of the prevalence of circumcisions there was no mention of certain religious and cultural norms.
Well, it doesn't matter what the reason is. If your culture disapproves of masturbation and therefore cuts off a tip/clitoris, that shouldn't be a legit reason, should it?
Credit card cloning is known in USA especially in the big cities like New York, San Francisco. But the police are very slow in checking it and people are slow in checking bank statements, so it goes unreported.
If you want tap water in Britain, just ask for coffee.
:-)
I know you arfe joking, but it was nearly true in the 70:s. These days you can get decent coffee in the UK. Norway, though - their coffee is see-through. Very similar to the way I remember American coffee from the 90:s... It was something with the roasting of the coffee beans, it didn't help to add more. We always brought Swedish coffee with us when I worked in Norway.
Most coffee you buy now,is from an American company ( Starbucks, McDonald's)
haha
🤣🤣🤣 brilliant
Badum-tss!!🤣🤣🤣
The person at 6:05 gives an impression that they don't really know what it's like to live in a place with deep historical roots... or doesn't appreciate it.
7:41 this is true af, whenever we have family gatherings it's a mix of all 3 but everyone seems to change which one they're going for so it's a confusing time
As a waiter I lost a persons cc. It was in between the cashier and me under a tiny space. A living hell for me for about 20 minutes
In europe we have real freedom! Freedom to change our gears in any way we want!
For the stores thing, yeah, most stores close at night, more so in some European countries than others, but if memory serves I believe the ASDA chain of supermarkets is a subsidiary of Walmart, so while it may not be called Walmart, Walmart are basically in the UK.
“Stores are never open that late in the UK”
Great research. 🙄
That wasn't their research. It was one of their British friends that told them that misinformation.
can open on Sundays but only for 6 consecutive hours between 10am and 6pm
must close on Easter Sunday
must close on Christmas Day
Most likely they were using it was a hyperbole, which are very common for USians.
Edit: big Tescos usually close at 12am on week days, whereas many US stores can stay open for 24 hours per day. Comparatively speaking it is early for them.
@@asparadog my local asda used to be 24 hours probably trying to copy the American model but they stopped it because it wasn't profitable
@@kretisme no they’ve stopped because of covid. Havent you heard ?
@@handsoffmycactus2958 my local asda stopped the 24 hours service about 2 years before covid
Supermarkets do have 24hour shopping expect sunday's. Small shops and ones in residential area's tend to stay open until about 10pm.
Not getting circumcised is disgusting
Europeans generally speak more languages....
A proper health care system is another thing you can't find in the States....ahaha
@Amberleigh Bush
Give it another week....
Here in Italy, it is very common entering a bar, going to desk, asking for a coffee, being served in seconds, drinking it while standing, paying and getting out in minutes.
I live in Sweden, and most supermarkets and convenience stores open at between 7 and 9 in the morning and close at between 21 and 23 in the evening, even in small towns (I know your concept of a small town is what would be a medium size city here, but think 1500-2000 ppl and up). In larger cities, 7-22 or 7-23 is typical for supermarkets and some convenience stores are open past midnight. And they're usually open like that every day of the week. In smaller cities and towns, opening hours are more restricted on Saturdays and Sundays, as well as public holidays, so maybe 10-20 or 9-21. But they're always open those days.
You just have to cross the border to Norway or Denmark to find much worse opening hours, and I think it's even against the law to have your store open on a Sunday, unless it's a smaller convenience store. Horrible!
It's even worse in some places, where stores close really early, as in late afternoon! That's insane, and is only possible in those backward countries that still, more or less, force women to stop working and stay at home when the first child is born, since they obviously aren't limited to shopping outside of normal working hours. Germany is one example. They're stuck in the past.
In the Netherlands mostly only elder ladies drive cars with automatic transmission
En het begon met de daf🤣
In that case you must only drive very cheap little cars. Here in England the AA figures for used cars for sale this year 2020, 63% are automatic.
@@robertcroft8241 about a third of all new cars sold in the Netherlands have automatic transmission, mainly due to the rising sales of hybrid cars
Asda and tesco have plenty supermarkets open 24 hrs in UK 😕
Nowhere was metric until after the French Revolution which was after the American Revolution.
i think that each area had its own weights and measures it needed yo be standardised.
We try not to drink bottled water to help preserve the environment.
We do too!
So where does the bottled water come from ? In relation to saving enviroments please unless you meaning the bottles .
Thomas Lowdon The biggest issue with bottled water is the transportation of it. Lorries are travelling vast distances hauling heavy bottled water hundreds of miles to supermarket distribution centres, where it is loaded onto more lorries and driven more miles to stores, where it is purchased and driven home. Hauling water uses fuel which is entirely unnecessary when the water that comes out of your tap is statistically safer and certainly much more strictly regulated. The UK has some of the highest quality drinking water on the planet, there is rarely a need for bottled water yet hundreds of millions of bottles are sold each month, meaning thousands of lorry journeys and hundreds of tons of emissions, all entirely avoidable. Then there is the issue of plastic waste...
@@spencerwilton5831 well theres long been an issue with British people and local water and bottled.but the advertising media push it so hard on tv that bottled water is so pure.people buy into the idea that now its kinda fashionable....studies have shown theres no difference at all...and samples offered at random offered to the public showed they could not distinguish one from the other . As you stated uk water is perfect and wholesome....all this bottle stuff is just a fad..
So here in Romania, we don't cheek kiss every new person we meet or stuff like that, because that would be too weird tbh. Other than that, we do cheek kiss our close family members, after seeing them for awhile, especially at important family events. With friends etc, we just go for a hug or a handshake.
I’m from the Netherlands and we have our 3 kisses. We can do that, or hug or handshake. Man don’t kiss other man, or at least the man I know don’t. As a woman we kiss male and female. But hugging is becoming more a thing than it was.
Men kiss men when they are family, not when they're strangers (and sometimes friends kiss, usually older males though.)
@@Widdekuu91 My dad doesn't kiss man just a handshake, that's what I meant with the man I know of.
@@animelover-nicole231 Ah, alright.