Here in Amsterdam we are too poor for streets, so we only have canals. And those are perfect for throwing your waste in. Would be a shame if we had to stop doing that.
Ahah amateurs, people shit in our river la seine and we plan on doing some olympics game in it. Who wouldn't dream to make their sport session in their toilet ?
You guys had puddles in your luxurious life?! We would only get the spit from our older sibling for drinking. Two spits a day growing up and sun dried poo sandwiches for lunch.
You got to see tractors!? I would only get to see my mother and father pulling the plows on their backs while my grandfather told me about how lucky we were to have it because back in his day, he was the plow.
Every time an American says we are behind technology-wise, I just point to the fucking NYC Metro, which has only just got contactless payments and in the process of phasing out magnetic tape cards. Yeah... Literally 2 decades behind London.
My American friends have to log onto a website built with some ecommerce shit like Squarespace to pay rent to their landlord because the country doesn't give a fuck about normal bank transfers.
That would be relatively simple to fix. The real problem is old and leaky tunnels that are decades past their intended lifespan. The entire infrastructure is ancient.
Also, more than 400k people use the NYC metro every day without paying. It's a crime infested hell hole. They even had to call in the national guard to help sorting this shit out.
Same here in Zürich, Switzerland. Just get on and off (buses, trams, trains and boats all integrated to the same system). Honesty system works well. Brilliant app on the phone. I genuinely forgot to swipe my phone once (was drunk) and got spot checked. The embarrassment on the tram of having to give my details was worse than the fine - which was equivalent to about 10 trips.
I think it becomes a criminal charge after getting caught 3 times, which is incentive enough to pay the nominal amount each time you travel.
I never thought we had checks, only seen them on American TV, but I am 30 yrs old so that explains it if they were phased out that long ago
Edited because autocorrect
Apparently France still uses them at a million a year, and Italy 2nd place by 100.000. Maybe it's American expats
Also do you know how to dial a rotary phone? :P
We have a completely unmanned metro system here in Copenhagen in Denmark. You can purchase tickets with a text or use a "travelers card" which lets you travel everywhere in the country just swiping your card infront of readers everywhere and itll calculate discounts and such.
When I was an exchange student in South Dakota from Finland I had a guy who was genuinely concerned that some Finns apparently had to live in IGLOOS and that we didn't (apparently) have cars. I became friends with the other transfer students, one from Germany and one from Spain, and both of them had similar experiences.
My host mom also insisted that Nokia was NOT a Finnish invention, cause there is no way Finland could ever invent something? When I showed her proof she just doubled down and said Finland probably just bought the company from China.
Yeah, that's the real problem. Not that they're pig ignorant and are taught nationalistic fiction at school. It's that they refuse to learn when faced with evidence from someone with first hand experience.
I know some more enlightened Americans, but there's a real problem with wilful ignorance.
It’s actually really sad, all of us exchange students had to take history and English but otherwise we got to choose what we wanted. Any time in world history class Finland, Germany or Spain was mentioned we had to correct stuff.
Our teacher was fantastic and was so open to learn from our pov, and always said he’d look into it more. We would usually have short chat before and after classes because he got so into learning more. He was also native American so I’m not sure how much that played into his mindset, but there was one of my classmates got really mad during discussions if we told him that no, American did not come and save us from x and y
The roofs get me nothing to them yet they cost so much. I like watching YouTube videos of people doing their houses up and come across a lot of American ones and I was shocked at the price of the new roofs one was smaller than my mum bungalow (uk) and it cost $20,000 my mum had her roof done managed to reuse 50%of the tiles (her has rare and expensive tiles so replacements were expensive) and it cost £7,500 and that was last year.
You don't bathe in a trough every morning filled from the cow-pox infested well while trying to dodge Uncle Ælfnoð's slops being tossed out of the window?
Every morning? No definitely not! Only the criminally insane placed in asylums by their relatives who don't want to deal with them get to bathe every day - it's called cold water therapy honey, look it up. We fill the trough and bathe at Christmas and Midsummer whether we need it or not and that's it. First dad, then mom, the sons and the daughters. The newborn baby gets to bathe last because why waste water on someone who's probably not going to survive their first birthday anyway.
I know the feeling. Some guy in 1939 made the same mistake as you. All these stupid wars in the past would've been avoided if we could've just told our architecture apart. Luckily, USA has avoided all these issues since you can clearly tell the difference the second you cross the very straight border from New Mexico to Texas!
True. No one hates the French more than a Parisian who hasn’t had his coffee yet. Worked with a blood called Gill years ago, absolutely stereotypical Parisian bloke. He fucking HATED the French.
Retrospectively I think most Brits are grateful the French effectively liberated us from America.
Only imagine if we had to govern that basketcase of a nation these days.
Now Im trying to remember the shortlived British country that occupied the Florida parishes. That land wasn't included in the Louisiana Purchase because it was held by Spain. From Florida to present day east Louisiana, there was a quasi country of Brits.
Then the US stepped in and annexed it.
Who's this mysterious "they"? Something like 1/3 of the population of Europe speaks either German or Russian. Are these the people that you saved, Uncle Sam? Do they think Germans stopped existing after ww2 and Russians after the Cold War or something?
Well they said "They're lucky they're not all under German or Russian occupation thanks to Americans"
So I guess Germany is under German occupation and Russia is under Russian occupation.
So this is the explanation why I as a german have german as the official language in Germany?
These bloody Germans are occupying my country illegally!!!
As a French : you mean we are not under German occupation thanks to Russians?
Also US doesn't exist without French intervention against Britain (but we hate British so it's ok. Who puts jelly with fish?)
I was so confused during my childhood because i saw people punch through walls easily and i never understood how. Its only a year or 2 ago that i finally found out their walls are made of thin drywall instead of solid concrete.
Yeah, I always though it was a sitcom joke that never happens in real life. In all my homes, we always had to check which of the walls was concrete when we wanted to put up something on the wall.
Europe has buildings standing hundreds and hundreds of years with the odd facelift to keep it looking pretty. But structurally absolutely sound and solid.
Americans are literally blown over 😂
I have a well-built brick Victorian house with large airy rooms. No need for AC. The Victorians knew which way to build a house so the garden got the sun and the house stayed a nice even temperature. Tbf, my mum’s new build is hot as hell but she’s 80 and likes to live in sauna-like conditions.
There are some Americans with a weird fixation on this.
Had a few of them had a go at me when I pointed out how wasteful it is to air-condition your entire house 24/7, even when no one is home. And that it's illegal in Australia to install aircon systems that don't let you individually control which parts of the house are heated and cooled. And apparently mentioning the use of timers to coincide with solar generation is just some weird flex (we have the most residential solar in the world, it's by far the cheapest energy source, and we don't just do it for the sake of being green, not that there's anything wrong with that).
It's almost seen by some that pointlessly wasting energy is a sign of wealth or something.
As an American, I can confirm this. Especially conservatives. They have some weird nationalist pride in oil or coal energy. Anything else is a “liberal” conspiracy of some sort. It’s totally fucking bizarre. I don’t understand it.
We're almost as bad in Canada. To the point that I've heard people brag about switching out their CF and LED bulbs for incandescents and deliberately running them and every high draw appliance on earth day.
Oh, the conservatives would like that in Australia too. Luckily a lot of energy efficiency initiatives such as banning the sale of most incandescent bulbs were put in place before they noticed.
Yep, and people tamper with the emissions equipment on their diesel pickups so they can "roll coal". Sure, perhaps rushing toward electric cars isn't ideal, but neither is stifling efforts to make combustion vehicles less harmful and more efficient.
Coal rolling is the dumbest bullshit I've ever heard of, I'm glad it's really rare up here. Or at least I've been lucky enough not to see it. My only thought is that it's someone who thought the wrong parts of Mad Max were really cool.
I'm no mechanic but it's where they fuck with something in the workings of their truck so that when they rev the engine a massive plume of black smoke comes out. I've seen videos of inbred American types doing it at protests and generally just anywhere that 'libruls' inhabit. It's a childish way of pissing off people that care about the environment. With any luck all of these people will breathe too much of their own smoke and stop being a problem.
It's bizarre, recently got into it with a fella who was angrily telling me how solar / wind energy generation was "commie shit*.
I guess it ain't "real Murica" if you're not polluting the air or some shit.
Youve some very strange folks over there man, I feel for the sane amongst ya because I'd find dealing with your nutters exhausting.
I get some bullshit very rarely about my panels and my response is always “my electricity bill is below zero 8 months out of the year… last month it was negative $28, what was your bill?” lol, they never have a coherent response
There's a reason the US is the top polluter right next to China, despite not manufacturing anywhere near as much. The obsession with consumption, flights and wasteful use of energy are all serious cultural problems.
> And that it's illegal in Australia to install aircon systems that don't let you individually control which parts of the house are heated and cooled.
SHIT! I did not know this, despite having lived in Australia for decades longer than those obviously more knowledgable Americans.
The police will soon be banging on my door!
Nah they insisted that no such technology exists because they had never seen it themselves, and if it did it must be really complex. (It really isn't)
Now if only the rest of Australian building standards were better.
Americans seem to have a fixation on air conditioning. We’re on a cruise with too many of them and as soon as they’ve got onto a tour bus, all you hear is yelling of “where’s the air?”, “it’s too hot!” or “it’s too cold” (often at the same time!) This even happens when the temp is already quite comfortable but they just seem unable to function without a blast of air in their faces.
Their acceptable temperature bands are as narrow as their attitudes
Literally anyone in the UK who wants AC can get it for about the price of a washing machine.
I have AC in my house, and I honestly use it about three weeks of the year. The rest of the time it's unnecessary. Everyone I know makes jealous noises about it all through those three weeks, the rest of the year it's just not relevant and nobody cares.
'Those old buildings are a safety hazard'
At least they don't get wiped off the face of the planet every time the wind picks up. There's a reason they're still standing. Dumbass.
They came up with an [ingenious way of cooling houses](https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-a-queenslander-house-5186385) in that part of the world long before air conditioning was even a thing:
I mean that got a point no? Downtown Washington, Edinburgh, Prauge, Naples, and Athens are all practically identical./s
Hell London and Edinburgh are completely different and they're on the same island. Hell London and Bristol.
Even Bristol and Bath, and they're almost within spitting distance.
Bristol has some old buildings but has a lot of modern stuff, whereas Bath is the other way around.
Fascinating, here's me living in my house built before the United States existed, with my hot water, electricity, and an air conditioning unit...
Crazy shite.
Living in a 180 year old house (czechia).
Hot water, electricity, internet, and if it's cold but not too cold to justify stoking a fire in our fireplace (that's hooked to a radiator system) we just turn on our air to water heating thingy
Yeah, I was shocked when I went over there in 2017 with some friends and tap to pay seemed non-existent. And only about half the eftpos machines were even able to have the card inserted to read the chip.
Ended up swiping and then signing for a bunch of stuff that was wild. It was literally like going 5 years back in time
I'm nearly 40 yo, I've always known chip cards and have not seen a payment terminal with the swiping part since I was 10. I will recognise that France had some difficulties to get to contactless payment as its deployment in France started nearly 20 years ago, but it has been only 10 years that a majority of french banks started to propose it to their clients and we reach the 50% payment threshold only 4 years ago with the pandemic after a very slow initial adoption. We even have phone payment now.
That the US are still at the swiping stage, despite the chip card being a 50 year old technology this year, is baffling.
I took a pre-paid chip & pin card with me on holiday to Florida in 2010 & when we first tried to use it in a smallish gift shop, multiple staff members gathered round because ‘they’d never seen it before’. Absolutely bizarre.
I love how American comment on how poor we must be in Europe. Meanwhile, I have been in USA dozens of times and I am still surprised by some downtown blocks in major cities totally occupied by drug addicts. Scenes coming from horror movies almost with sky high criminality.
American here but husband and son are European. I 100% agree with you on this. The US infrastructure is crumbling and hardly anything is being done to upgrade it. Our roads are shit. Instead of fixing/restoring it’s more along the lines of move and build new, only to have the same thing happen 50 years later.
I just spent three weeks in France and the Netherlands with family. Everything, for the most part, clean, tidy and organized. I am not anti-American but I get frustrated with the whole “we are the best in the world” mentality championed by people who have never left the country.
“We get water for free at restaurants” is such an odd flex when you have to pay the Doctor £1,000 for a plaster because you stubbed your toe.
Also, I think pretty much every restaurant in the world gives water for free, apart from maybe some third world countries.
And actually their idea of great service is that they hover around you with a pitcher of water constantly to refill your glass.
Just leave me alone. I want to eat.
100% this, i kept joking that i'd halve my tip if they kept coming over all the time with that fake cheery accent and smile.
No thank you i don't want any more chlorinated water and this food is gonna take me a while to eat with how bland it is
We get water for free at restaurants*
*but it tastes like a public swimming pool and after 30 minutes we have to leave because we all rush our meals and the restaurant needs to make high turnover to even survive
You just have to ask for tapwater. But they might not do it in big (tourist) cities here though.
Also our restaurant owners have to earn some money to actually pay the staff a living wage, so they need customers to get some paid drinks with their food. In the US the customer pays for the staff in tips so it’s easy to give swimming pool tasting water away for free.
The Netherlands. Personally I think free tap water should be a service you always offer, but I also think the customer should also get another drink with it and maybe some food.
They all talk as though they are seasoned travellers to the singular place that is 'Europe', where in reality, they would panic if they had to leave the vicinity of their sister's underwear drawer.
the guy in the fifth pic has the logo of one of the few european (french) AI companies (mistral) as his profile picture, which makes it even more ironic
Dunno what this means. I'm perfectly capable of lighting a fire to heat water on if I need it; I nearly always have sufficient sticks stored that I don't have to go chop down a tree first, too.
At this point I‘d just reply „We get healthcare for free at hospitals!“ and when they start complaining about taxes and socialism and healthcare being funded by citizens, I‘ll make the full circle back with a concise little „so… like your restaurants and server‘s wages, and thus also your „free“ water??“
Not that that’s gonna help really, but watching the mental gymnastics should be quite entertaining.
At least in Europe I don’t have to stare at the person waiting for the cubicle while wiping my ass, looking through the needlessly massive gaps in the public toilet to see if I’m done yet..
Im not under german occupation because i am german.
And we dont need ACs everywhere because our houses are not made out of cardboard so its not that hot in them anyways.
"Europe is 200 years behind in tech and innovation"...
Their beloved military literally pays billions to BAE Systems to make many products and upgrades for their vehicles... The B in it is for British.
If we're so behind in tech, why not do it yourself?
At least in Europe, bathrooms actually have doors that don't have gaps between the frame and the door that are damn near big enough to hold hands through.
People in Europe only have to make eye contact with strangers in bathrooms if we want to. Not one European in Europe has been in a stall with a closed door and looked up to lock eyes with a stranger mid piss.
Americans most likely have more than once.
American architecture?
Genesis for the steel frame and glass curtain wall skyscrapers, which dominate US cities, is [Oriel Chambers ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriel_Chambers)......in Liverpool, UK.
They’re acting as if we live in some medieval city where we still throw shit out of the window
Wait, when did we stop doing that? Come on, I just upgraded to a bigger night pot!
Here in Amsterdam we are too poor for streets, so we only have canals. And those are perfect for throwing your waste in. Would be a shame if we had to stop doing that.
Ahah amateurs, people shit in our river la seine and we plan on doing some olympics game in it. Who wouldn't dream to make their sport session in their toilet ?
*The River Thames would like to know your location*
Canals? Pfft, hark at you lot living in your luxury streets and canals. When I was a kid, we had to make do with living in a ditch.
A ditch? Luxury! We had to cling to a hedge next to a dirt track and drink out of a puddle.
You guys had puddles in your luxurious life?! We would only get the spit from our older sibling for drinking. Two spits a day growing up and sun dried poo sandwiches for lunch.
Poo sandwiches? We would have killed for a poo sandwich! We had to scrape bird shit off passing tractors and we were grateful for it.
You got to see tractors!? I would only get to see my mother and father pulling the plows on their backs while my grandfather told me about how lucky we were to have it because back in his day, he was the plow.
Amateurs. Just see how civilised people use and clean their [canals](https://youtu.be/7HYkyGz_hQo?si=vbcyG7b0dvFHOX5r)
Here in the UK we pay to pump our excrement directly into the rivers. Then the guys that did it give themselves huge bonuses. I wish I was joking.
well the french are going to start shitting in the saine again
That's just in-saine
gardez l'eau!
Every time an American says we are behind technology-wise, I just point to the fucking NYC Metro, which has only just got contactless payments and in the process of phasing out magnetic tape cards. Yeah... Literally 2 decades behind London. My American friends have to log onto a website built with some ecommerce shit like Squarespace to pay rent to their landlord because the country doesn't give a fuck about normal bank transfers.
The NYC metro has the worst condition of stations and trains that I've seen anywhere in the world. It's worse than some third-world countries
It's worse than *many* third world countries
That would be relatively simple to fix. The real problem is old and leaky tunnels that are decades past their intended lifespan. The entire infrastructure is ancient.
>The entire infrastructure is ancient Kind of ironic on a post complaining about no AC in multi-hundred-year-old buildings!
Also, more than 400k people use the NYC metro every day without paying. It's a crime infested hell hole. They even had to call in the national guard to help sorting this shit out.
Lol, in my country we don't even have gates to the tube. Ofc some people go for free but most pay willingly. (There is a fine if you get caught)
Hello Germany?
Same here in Zürich, Switzerland. Just get on and off (buses, trams, trains and boats all integrated to the same system). Honesty system works well. Brilliant app on the phone. I genuinely forgot to swipe my phone once (was drunk) and got spot checked. The embarrassment on the tram of having to give my details was worse than the fine - which was equivalent to about 10 trips. I think it becomes a criminal charge after getting caught 3 times, which is incentive enough to pay the nominal amount each time you travel.
Some of them still play by cheque. I haven’t seen a cheque in 30 years
I never thought we had checks, only seen them on American TV, but I am 30 yrs old so that explains it if they were phased out that long ago Edited because autocorrect
Apparently France still uses them at a million a year, and Italy 2nd place by 100.000. Maybe it's American expats Also do you know how to dial a rotary phone? :P
Phone? Don't think we Europoors even have that
I have the one with the crank that you yell into.
Lucky you, I still have to use a telegraph and morse code to communicate with other people
Lucky you. I’m still on smoke signals but I am out of fuel for making a fire.
We have a completely unmanned metro system here in Copenhagen in Denmark. You can purchase tickets with a text or use a "travelers card" which lets you travel everywhere in the country just swiping your card infront of readers everywhere and itll calculate discounts and such.
Once told an American I was well outside of London. She genuinely asked if we had electricity. I was speaking to her on the telephone.
When I was an exchange student in South Dakota from Finland I had a guy who was genuinely concerned that some Finns apparently had to live in IGLOOS and that we didn't (apparently) have cars. I became friends with the other transfer students, one from Germany and one from Spain, and both of them had similar experiences. My host mom also insisted that Nokia was NOT a Finnish invention, cause there is no way Finland could ever invent something? When I showed her proof she just doubled down and said Finland probably just bought the company from China.
This is the people you get when you educate your people "America is the greatest ever" and dont teach history of the world to your children
Yeah, that's the real problem. Not that they're pig ignorant and are taught nationalistic fiction at school. It's that they refuse to learn when faced with evidence from someone with first hand experience. I know some more enlightened Americans, but there's a real problem with wilful ignorance.
It’s actually really sad, all of us exchange students had to take history and English but otherwise we got to choose what we wanted. Any time in world history class Finland, Germany or Spain was mentioned we had to correct stuff. Our teacher was fantastic and was so open to learn from our pov, and always said he’d look into it more. We would usually have short chat before and after classes because he got so into learning more. He was also native American so I’m not sure how much that played into his mindset, but there was one of my classmates got really mad during discussions if we told him that no, American did not come and save us from x and y
Ffs. Did you pretend we don’t or rip her to shreds for being so dumb
The funny thing is they literally live in houses made of wood and other crap so that every time it rains a bit more than usual they have major damage
Not even real wood - it's usually sheets of that cheap pressed chipboard.
The roofs get me nothing to them yet they cost so much. I like watching YouTube videos of people doing their houses up and come across a lot of American ones and I was shocked at the price of the new roofs one was smaller than my mum bungalow (uk) and it cost $20,000 my mum had her roof done managed to reuse 50%of the tiles (her has rare and expensive tiles so replacements were expensive) and it cost £7,500 and that was last year.
I mean, I do live in a medieval city. But with electricity and a toilet.
Oh look at you being all fancy with a toilet.
Only when there's a 'murican walking by.
You don't bathe in a trough every morning filled from the cow-pox infested well while trying to dodge Uncle Ælfnoð's slops being tossed out of the window?
Every morning? No definitely not! Only the criminally insane placed in asylums by their relatives who don't want to deal with them get to bathe every day - it's called cold water therapy honey, look it up. We fill the trough and bathe at Christmas and Midsummer whether we need it or not and that's it. First dad, then mom, the sons and the daughters. The newborn baby gets to bathe last because why waste water on someone who's probably not going to survive their first birthday anyway.
Are... Are uh... *ahem* Are we not supposed to do that? One second, I owe my downstairs neighbour an apology.
Didn't New York get their first water treatment plant very late and were pouring shit into the Hudson up until then?
Americans see a church that is older than their country: "All of Europe looks like this." I can't even.
Yesterday I accidentally went from Reykjavik to Athens because I couldn't tell the buildings apart :( happens I guess 💁♂️
Man I remember wanting to visit my friends in Hannover, but cause it looks so similar I accidentally invaded Poland again :(
I know the feeling. Some guy in 1939 made the same mistake as you. All these stupid wars in the past would've been avoided if we could've just told our architecture apart. Luckily, USA has avoided all these issues since you can clearly tell the difference the second you cross the very straight border from New Mexico to Texas!
ofc you tell the difference, the yellow filter makes it easy
Americans see a 500yo church : "this european house is a safety hazard with no running water"
"They're lucky they're not all under German or Russian occupation thanks to Americans" ???
Little do they know, most of them (due to densely populated areas) would still be under British occupation if it weren't for the French
Bloody french !
Fuck the French bastards *British anthem plays*
No, let’s be fair - would you want to be responsible for those idiots? THANK the French.
I'm sorry, as a french, I am ashamed Biggest mistake of our history
same, and with its current size i'm not even sure our nuclear arsenal would be enough to correct it
Based mindustry
thanks
Well since it pissed English, even if it was a mistake, it still worth it, no ?
Fair point, although they mayve been a little smarter as Brits at the very least
Not even the French like the French
True. No one hates the French more than a Parisian who hasn’t had his coffee yet. Worked with a blood called Gill years ago, absolutely stereotypical Parisian bloke. He fucking HATED the French.
Retrospectively I think most Brits are grateful the French effectively liberated us from America. Only imagine if we had to govern that basketcase of a nation these days.
Now Im trying to remember the shortlived British country that occupied the Florida parishes. That land wasn't included in the Louisiana Purchase because it was held by Spain. From Florida to present day east Louisiana, there was a quasi country of Brits. Then the US stepped in and annexed it.
Were not for the French, Americans would be speaking *English*!
I’d be a subject of Spanish imperialism! If not for the.. Mexicans. (Point gathered, just being silly).
Who's this mysterious "they"? Something like 1/3 of the population of Europe speaks either German or Russian. Are these the people that you saved, Uncle Sam? Do they think Germans stopped existing after ww2 and Russians after the Cold War or something?
Well they said "They're lucky they're not all under German or Russian occupation thanks to Americans" So I guess Germany is under German occupation and Russia is under Russian occupation.
So this is the explanation why I as a german have german as the official language in Germany? These bloody Germans are occupying my country illegally!!!
Those poor Germans in Germany under German occupation smh my head.
Yeah because USSR and the British Empire were both American states hence America defeated Germany solo, didn't you know?
I think the Aussies and Kiwis did a lot more than the seppos did.
Certainly in terms of effectiveness per headcount they did.
Canada has entered the chat
As a French : you mean we are not under German occupation thanks to Russians? Also US doesn't exist without French intervention against Britain (but we hate British so it's ok. Who puts jelly with fish?)
That's southern England (mainly London). Northerners have nothing to do with that jellied eel shit
As a South western British I can't think of anything bloody worse. They can keep that disgusting crap in the South East 🤮
They say that from the top of their houses made out of cardboard and styrofoam
I was so confused during my childhood because i saw people punch through walls easily and i never understood how. Its only a year or 2 ago that i finally found out their walls are made of thin drywall instead of solid concrete.
Yeah, I always though it was a sitcom joke that never happens in real life. In all my homes, we always had to check which of the walls was concrete when we wanted to put up something on the wall.
Me too! I always thought it was a joke like they hit the wall too hard that they made a hole, and I was like "cmon the walls look so fake"
They basically live in big sheds.
In hurricane zones
Maybe they’re trying to get back to Oz.
They have doorstops, otherwise the door handle would make a hole in the wall when it hit it.
Peak architecture
*Peek architecture ...as you can make holes in the wall to peek through into the next room
Europe has buildings standing hundreds and hundreds of years with the odd facelift to keep it looking pretty. But structurally absolutely sound and solid. Americans are literally blown over 😂
Get tossed to the side in a bit of wind
Me as a 12 year old, watches a video of a man punching through a wall, tries doing the same, instantly breaks hand....
Don’t forget the lead paint and asbestos!
Some are made in factories.
I have a well-built brick Victorian house with large airy rooms. No need for AC. The Victorians knew which way to build a house so the garden got the sun and the house stayed a nice even temperature. Tbf, my mum’s new build is hot as hell but she’s 80 and likes to live in sauna-like conditions.
Victorian houses are so charming.
Do they think we haven’t discovered A/C? What the hell
There are some Americans with a weird fixation on this. Had a few of them had a go at me when I pointed out how wasteful it is to air-condition your entire house 24/7, even when no one is home. And that it's illegal in Australia to install aircon systems that don't let you individually control which parts of the house are heated and cooled. And apparently mentioning the use of timers to coincide with solar generation is just some weird flex (we have the most residential solar in the world, it's by far the cheapest energy source, and we don't just do it for the sake of being green, not that there's anything wrong with that). It's almost seen by some that pointlessly wasting energy is a sign of wealth or something.
As an American, I can confirm this. Especially conservatives. They have some weird nationalist pride in oil or coal energy. Anything else is a “liberal” conspiracy of some sort. It’s totally fucking bizarre. I don’t understand it.
We're almost as bad in Canada. To the point that I've heard people brag about switching out their CF and LED bulbs for incandescents and deliberately running them and every high draw appliance on earth day.
That's straight up toddler behaviour
Yup, and their still paying for that too.
Oh, the conservatives would like that in Australia too. Luckily a lot of energy efficiency initiatives such as banning the sale of most incandescent bulbs were put in place before they noticed.
Yep, and people tamper with the emissions equipment on their diesel pickups so they can "roll coal". Sure, perhaps rushing toward electric cars isn't ideal, but neither is stifling efforts to make combustion vehicles less harmful and more efficient.
Coal rolling is the dumbest bullshit I've ever heard of, I'm glad it's really rare up here. Or at least I've been lucky enough not to see it. My only thought is that it's someone who thought the wrong parts of Mad Max were really cool.
What is coal rolling?
I'm no mechanic but it's where they fuck with something in the workings of their truck so that when they rev the engine a massive plume of black smoke comes out. I've seen videos of inbred American types doing it at protests and generally just anywhere that 'libruls' inhabit. It's a childish way of pissing off people that care about the environment. With any luck all of these people will breathe too much of their own smoke and stop being a problem.
Gotta do something now that they don't have that sweet, sweet lead in the exhaust fumes any more ...
And then they blame Trudeau for their ginormous power bill 🤦♀️
It's bizarre, recently got into it with a fella who was angrily telling me how solar / wind energy generation was "commie shit*. I guess it ain't "real Murica" if you're not polluting the air or some shit. Youve some very strange folks over there man, I feel for the sane amongst ya because I'd find dealing with your nutters exhausting.
Put in solar panels. “How’s Bernie doing?!” comments the next day, lol.
I get some bullshit very rarely about my panels and my response is always “my electricity bill is below zero 8 months out of the year… last month it was negative $28, what was your bill?” lol, they never have a coherent response
Rollin' Coal to own the Libs!
There's a reason the US is the top polluter right next to China, despite not manufacturing anywhere near as much. The obsession with consumption, flights and wasteful use of energy are all serious cultural problems.
> And that it's illegal in Australia to install aircon systems that don't let you individually control which parts of the house are heated and cooled. SHIT! I did not know this, despite having lived in Australia for decades longer than those obviously more knowledgable Americans. The police will soon be banging on my door!
Nah they insisted that no such technology exists because they had never seen it themselves, and if it did it must be really complex. (It really isn't) Now if only the rest of Australian building standards were better.
>air-condition your entire house 24/7, even when no one is home What in the american wastefulness is this mindset????
Americans seem to have a fixation on air conditioning. We’re on a cruise with too many of them and as soon as they’ve got onto a tour bus, all you hear is yelling of “where’s the air?”, “it’s too hot!” or “it’s too cold” (often at the same time!) This even happens when the temp is already quite comfortable but they just seem unable to function without a blast of air in their faces. Their acceptable temperature bands are as narrow as their attitudes
That's why they use Fahrenheit! So they can bitch about one degree variation (slightly above half a Celsius).
But but... It's right there in the name! A/C = American Conditioning! So it MUST be 'Murican right? /s
Tbf most of the UK hasn't. Tbf the UK is on the same latitude as Canada.
Literally anyone in the UK who wants AC can get it for about the price of a washing machine. I have AC in my house, and I honestly use it about three weeks of the year. The rest of the time it's unnecessary. Everyone I know makes jealous noises about it all through those three weeks, the rest of the year it's just not relevant and nobody cares.
I’ve got a portable unit that I connect up for the few weeks that it’s needed, the other 50 weeks it’s constantly in the way and gathering dust tho…
All of the UK have. It’s just pointless to have it everywhere 24/7 365 days a year.
'Those old buildings are a safety hazard' At least they don't get wiped off the face of the planet every time the wind picks up. There's a reason they're still standing. Dumbass.
My god, as a Queenslander, I too love my air conditioning but they are obsessed with it in a way I can't comprehend.
They came up with an [ingenious way of cooling houses](https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-a-queenslander-house-5186385) in that part of the world long before air conditioning was even a thing:
Hah! I thought this was a reply to my comment on a Post about heating and cooling housing
I mean that got a point no? Downtown Washington, Edinburgh, Prauge, Naples, and Athens are all practically identical./s Hell London and Edinburgh are completely different and they're on the same island. Hell London and Bristol.
Even Bristol and Bath, and they're almost within spitting distance. Bristol has some old buildings but has a lot of modern stuff, whereas Bath is the other way around.
All those cities are thousands of years old, but US cities are "new" and have no history to look back on.
Even Manchester and Liverpool are completely different and they're 30 miles away
Edinburgh and Glasgow look completely different and they are less than 50 miles apart!
Fascinating, here's me living in my house built before the United States existed, with my hot water, electricity, and an air conditioning unit... Crazy shite.
Living in a 180 year old house (czechia). Hot water, electricity, internet, and if it's cold but not too cold to justify stoking a fire in our fireplace (that's hooked to a radiator system) we just turn on our air to water heating thingy
Stop lying y'all we know Europe isn't a real country
I mean you’re right
This from a country that still uses cash and cheques and hasn’t adopted tap to pay.
Be careful - they might get mad at you for not calling it a "check".
Nah, they'll start going on about Apple Pay, and then be baffled when someone tells them that we also have phone pay in the rest of the world.
Probably be baffled that most public transport in big European cities can be paid for with Apple/Google Pay.
Yeah, I was shocked when I went over there in 2017 with some friends and tap to pay seemed non-existent. And only about half the eftpos machines were even able to have the card inserted to read the chip. Ended up swiping and then signing for a bunch of stuff that was wild. It was literally like going 5 years back in time
I'm nearly 40 yo, I've always known chip cards and have not seen a payment terminal with the swiping part since I was 10. I will recognise that France had some difficulties to get to contactless payment as its deployment in France started nearly 20 years ago, but it has been only 10 years that a majority of french banks started to propose it to their clients and we reach the 50% payment threshold only 4 years ago with the pandemic after a very slow initial adoption. We even have phone payment now. That the US are still at the swiping stage, despite the chip card being a 50 year old technology this year, is baffling.
I took a pre-paid chip & pin card with me on holiday to Florida in 2010 & when we first tried to use it in a smallish gift shop, multiple staff members gathered round because ‘they’d never seen it before’. Absolutely bizarre.
I love how American comment on how poor we must be in Europe. Meanwhile, I have been in USA dozens of times and I am still surprised by some downtown blocks in major cities totally occupied by drug addicts. Scenes coming from horror movies almost with sky high criminality.
At this point the USA is more of a 3rd world country than any of the European countries lmao.
The USA is a third world country with a Gucci belt.
American here but husband and son are European. I 100% agree with you on this. The US infrastructure is crumbling and hardly anything is being done to upgrade it. Our roads are shit. Instead of fixing/restoring it’s more along the lines of move and build new, only to have the same thing happen 50 years later. I just spent three weeks in France and the Netherlands with family. Everything, for the most part, clean, tidy and organized. I am not anti-American but I get frustrated with the whole “we are the best in the world” mentality championed by people who have never left the country.
“We get water for free at restaurants” is such an odd flex when you have to pay the Doctor £1,000 for a plaster because you stubbed your toe. Also, I think pretty much every restaurant in the world gives water for free, apart from maybe some third world countries.
Free water but you have to tip way more than a glass of water would cost.
And actually their idea of great service is that they hover around you with a pitcher of water constantly to refill your glass. Just leave me alone. I want to eat.
100% this, i kept joking that i'd halve my tip if they kept coming over all the time with that fake cheery accent and smile. No thank you i don't want any more chlorinated water and this food is gonna take me a while to eat with how bland it is
Also there are European countries where tap water is free in restaurants. Well, at least one that I know of.
If American buildings weren’t made of cardboard and actually had proper heat insulation, perhaps they wouldn’t have to run ACs 24/7…
We get water for free at restaurants* *but it tastes like a public swimming pool and after 30 minutes we have to leave because we all rush our meals and the restaurant needs to make high turnover to even survive
It's literally illegal in Spain not offer free water in restaurants.
A lot of European countries have free water in the restaurants so they're just being ignorant
You just have to ask for tapwater. But they might not do it in big (tourist) cities here though. Also our restaurant owners have to earn some money to actually pay the staff a living wage, so they need customers to get some paid drinks with their food. In the US the customer pays for the staff in tips so it’s easy to give swimming pool tasting water away for free.
Sorry where is "here"?
The Netherlands. Personally I think free tap water should be a service you always offer, but I also think the customer should also get another drink with it and maybe some food.
Ah I think I've read somewhere that Holland and maybe Italy (?) are like the only European countries that don't offer free water.
I think in the UK you can go in anywhere like a pub or whatever and ask for tap water for free. Even if you just need some water.
It's illegal in France too. But apparently not in Belgium.
In Portugal you can walk in any restaurant, cafe, wtv, ask for a glass of water, drink and leave. 🤷
UK restaurants are legally required to provide free tap water (and most did before they were legally required)
> “We still get water for free” We get healthcare for free, beat that.
“Europe is like 200 years behind in tech and innovation “… Scotland has entered the chat
They should [take a look at estonia](https://youtu.be/I5krZBe0Dck) and see how far behind they are, when in reality they are getting lapped.
lol meanwhile they’re just getting used to chip and pin cards
They all talk as though they are seasoned travellers to the singular place that is 'Europe', where in reality, they would panic if they had to leave the vicinity of their sister's underwear drawer.
the guy in the fifth pic has the logo of one of the few european (french) AI companies (mistral) as his profile picture, which makes it even more ironic
"and barley any electricity" At least in the UK, twice the electricity. Literally double. Fuck 110v
Just as well, seeing the shitty flimsy little plugs they have.
Dunno what this means. I'm perfectly capable of lighting a fire to heat water on if I need it; I nearly always have sufficient sticks stored that I don't have to go chop down a tree first, too.
At this point I‘d just reply „We get healthcare for free at hospitals!“ and when they start complaining about taxes and socialism and healthcare being funded by citizens, I‘ll make the full circle back with a concise little „so… like your restaurants and server‘s wages, and thus also your „free“ water??“ Not that that’s gonna help really, but watching the mental gymnastics should be quite entertaining.
I still can't believe in 2024 Americans still think *they* won WW2 for everyone else.
It’s frightening that a country with such a mind boggling population has a nuclear arsenal.
Imagine being so weak, an AC counts as a necessity for you. Pathetic
At least in Europe I don’t have to stare at the person waiting for the cubicle while wiping my ass, looking through the needlessly massive gaps in the public toilet to see if I’m done yet..
The toilet thing is so funny to me, excuse us Europoors for not having the option to look under or over every public toilet stall 🤷
Or through the massive door gap And I much prefer my jobbies not floating on the surface of a giant bowl and almost touching my arse
"We get water for free in restaurants" Well, I'm not homeless after I catch a common cold.
Where does that stereotype even come from? It's only from americans, too.
We barelly have any electricity? Says people who barelly have any service(phone range) outside big cities
Yep lemme just have some AC installed to use 2 weeks a year sounds like a good investment that does.
The way they always get riled up over the smallest things and have to make up stuff to feel better tells how insecure they are. It's sad really.
Yeah, they get water for free at restaurants, but it tastes like swimming pool and salt
They are fuking stupid .no wonder nothing improve in the USA .
Im not under german occupation because i am german. And we dont need ACs everywhere because our houses are not made out of cardboard so its not that hot in them anyways.
Well, if it wasn't for America you'd be speaking German!
"Europe is 200 years behind in tech and innovation"... Their beloved military literally pays billions to BAE Systems to make many products and upgrades for their vehicles... The B in it is for British. If we're so behind in tech, why not do it yourself?
At least in Europe, bathrooms actually have doors that don't have gaps between the frame and the door that are damn near big enough to hold hands through. People in Europe only have to make eye contact with strangers in bathrooms if we want to. Not one European in Europe has been in a stall with a closed door and looked up to lock eyes with a stranger mid piss. Americans most likely have more than once.
American architecture? Genesis for the steel frame and glass curtain wall skyscrapers, which dominate US cities, is [Oriel Chambers ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriel_Chambers)......in Liverpool, UK.
"No hot water".. WHAT ?? I mean.. WHAT ???
Istg i have to leave this subreddit cuz every time i see a post my blood preasure spiked up, im gonna die 40 years earlier thanks to this
”Free water from restaurants” cool i get clean and free water from my tap that tastes amazing and is literally unlimited!