things I don't understand about America 

Oh dear, I’m British living in Germany and I say “how are you” as a greeting and every day am surprised when I get a sincere answer. It’s just so hard to stop but after seeing this, I will try to just say “hello”. (Also I’m a big fan of your channel)

American here! My home I grew up in, in Tennessee, had no sidewalks, but I walked in the road and got over when cars were coming. My school was a block away, but the principal didn’t want me walking to school, because no sidewalks. The closest grocery store was 5 miles away. Non-existent public transportation, so very car-dependent. I’ve been able to live and travel around a lot, so I know this isn’t a universal American experience, but my goodness, do I see the same thing all over the place. In the middle of a bigger city now and still find myself being car dependent. Huge fan of public transportation. Love trains. Dublin and Amsterdam, and to a lesser extent, Seattle and Chicago really spoiled me on trains and now I just don’t get why we don’t have trains all the time everywhere else too. Loved the video Erika!

The car dependency aspect is sooo true. I’m an American who spent around 2 ish years total in Europe (time in Slovakia and moved to Edinburgh, Scotland for school at 18). The culture shock of even small quaint towns in SK having little city centers and being so walkable was sooo freeing to me coming from the US south. I came back to the states to finish school bc of COVID and going back to an environment where I had to drive to literally anything was beyond depressing. I yearned for the European walkability so bad that I convinced my bf to move to Chicago with me last year. I am 100x happier here! my car in Kentucky was costing me $800 / month between car payments and insurance. Here I pay like $75 per month for an unlimited train + bus pass and my quality of life is sooo much better. Being able to walk to anything I need is something I’ll never sacrifice ever again. I don’t think I could live anywhere in the US other than Chicago or NYC because I refuse to be stuck in car culture again. anywho, I loved your video and how you explore quirky things about my country without being condescending like a lot of Europeans on tiktok tend to be. I’m hosting my European friends in September for 2 weeks and it will be their first time here and I’m so excited to see their real time culture shocks lol

The increase in quality of editing and humor !! Love it !! Great work !

Drinking is more dangerous when everyone has a gun ... .. I guess.

The urban sprawl is a big part of the reason of why I'm leaving the US. I've had too many close calls in vehicles and have sunk tens of thousands of dollars into them just to have a way to get around. I much prefer just walking or taking the train, tram, or bus, but those are only an option in very few places in the US (and they are usually absurdly expensive and might not be the safest places to live).

unless you live in like a dense urban area, or near a city or town center, pretty much nothing is walkable

The "how are you" thing is much more widespread to more cultures than just the US. It seems to be something especially designed to trip up german speakers. It happens with my Turkish friends as well. I always try to answer honestly and ask them back which is when I remember it's just part of the greeting.

America is on one of the top countries in CO2 emission with 14.4 metric ton CO2 per capita per year, the world average is only 4.66. the same goes for wastage and many things

The portion sizes are to emotionally compensate people on the loosing side of the wealth divide. It makes poor people feel like they are getting more for less. Generally you find these giant portion sizes at fast food restaurants that use processed foods to cut corners. Four words, High Glucose corn syrup. It is the byproduct of corn farming, Your body can not actually process it, And it is filler for these large capacity low budget sodas.

i live in a big city in the US, not far from downtown at all, but it’s so unwalkable. our neighborhood does have sidewalks but the only think i could walk to in 20 minutes is the library. you also have to cross some dangerous roads to get there. the grocery store is a 42 minute walk away, or you could take the bus for 25 min (which comes rarely) or drive for 7 minutes.

having had lived in a large town in alabama with no sidewalks before moving to a very walkable city in the UK with great public transit, I can tell you its absolutely miserable having to drive what is physically a 4 min walk but because of road heirarchy is impossible.

"moving out" at 18 is more related to college. not many kids go to college within driving distance. when you go home for the holidays, your childhood home is not quite your home anymore as you expand your view of the world. it feels different. Also, when you move out for college, good chance you'll find employment not near your childhood home. hence you move out. as for onions, point a fan(like those little battery powered ones) to blow over your onion while cutting, and have that pushed air going to the extractor. it'll keep the lachrymatory agents from getting into your eyes. or point the wind toward your partner and laugh like doctor evil.

I live in a small walkable town and things are pretty good. America does have Suburbs but you don't have to live in them if you don't want to. There are so many Cities and towns that are walkable especially in the Northeast and Midwest.

I am living in Denmark at the moment and I don't think I will ever see my home city in the US the same after experiencing a walkable city in a more suburban setting on the island of Zealand. I feel like this is how it's supposed to be and I'll never understand why American developers always have to take cars into account for every little decision.

I vote for you to keep doing what you do, Erika, especially the snarky humor!

They tried dropping the drinking age to 18 in the US but it increased accidents and death so they moved back up to 21. This was many decades ago.

On credit scores: I Germany we have the Schufa-score, which is pretty similar. It's made by this private company that uses secret algorithms to assign you a score based on credit history, amount of bank accounts, how likely you are to change into a wolf at full moon, etc. So all in all very dubious and annoying. Like, why are they exempt from so many privacy laws? Anyways it's used by banks to decide if they give you a loan or credit card and even by some landlords when they decide if they're going to rent out their flat to you.

Stumbled over your video. What a lot of fun to watch. All points are spot on. I am from Germany, but a US citizen, living on both sides of the Atlantic in equal years. To this day, I do not understand why people would want to get out the house, drive to a restaurant, wait in line at a drive through, get the food and either eat it in the car and drive home, or, drive home and eat there....food is cold till then, of course. BTW, there are about 200,000 fast food restaurants in the US. Still way to many;-)

lmao enjoyed the 40min roast! love your videos and intellectual humor/banter keep up the good work 😂❤🙏

I think Americans have these large jugs because of suburban city design, where you have to drive about a hour to get to supermarket. So Americans have to buy food for a week or more, and that's why big packages quite useful for them.

I live in Maine (not the French one) and I have a good friend in Nantes that I went to visit about half a year back. I’m only 18 and was sort of thrust into the American grindset so when I visited France, I’ve began to really consider getting out of what I believe to be a capitalistic nightmare and found your channel while doing research. I’m very happy I did so, your videos are very charming and give what I think to be well rounded information based on your experience. I’ve been very carefully considering where I might want to go and plan to visit many parts of Europe during the end of the summer to get a feel for a few different places and kind of gauging them based on my personal preferences. I plan to get info from other sources as well of course, ideally from people who live in the places I am interested in and I look forward to my eventual new life in Europe, and getting settled in thanks to my mother for allowing me to be eligible for polish citizenship. I appreciate your videos and wish you the best going forward!

Going anywhere without a car in America is extremely difficult. I am a runner and often the only place to walk, bike, or run from one place to the next is literally the road with cars driving 70mph on it. Some people will actually try to run you over aggressively because they are mad if they have to slow down to pass you. But the road is almost always the only option of going anywhere in the country. If you don’t have a car or can’t drive, there is no other option available to you. I really hate it even though I grew up here in the U.S. I wish we had trains like in Europe, or even better, a path to walk/run/bike on because that would be great.

It's funny how much of the stuff you talked about is a direct result of car culture tbh. Like the drinking age, is because it is much more of a necessity for people to own and drive a car here than in Europe, and so drunk driving is a lot more of a public danger. There was some research that younger people especially are likely to get into severe accidents while drunk than older people, so there was a big lobbying push where the federal government basically twisted the states' arms into raising the drinking age to 21, by threatening to withhold federal transportation funds if they didn't. (The federal gov actually can't force states directly to set their drinking age) Similar thing with obesity rate, since cars mean people aren't forced to walk to and from school/work as much, people get less physical activity as part of their daily routine. If you look at the bigger cities like New York and Chicago which have decent public transportation systems, the obesity rate is actually much closer to the rates in most of Europe.

brit living in the usa here - here are my experiences and comparisons and culture shocks after living here for 5 months. please excuse the amount of brain mush and garbled thought trains in this comment, i'm so tired right now lol. i live in a small city on the outskirts/suburbs(?) and the pavement/sidewalk just ends halfway down the road i live on, i dont know why they even bothered putting one because the road my road comes off of doesn't have a pavement/sidewalk either. and then you get to a bigger road/highway from there so it's not safe to cross and there aren't any crossings. the closest walmart to me is an hour walk each way with no sidewalks or crossings and im in florida so in the summer the heat gets dangerous for walking that long, especially with having to carry everything back. it just is not feasible. a car makes life 1000x easier here for literally everything. the most unfortunate part is that not everyone can afford a car and people who don't have access to a car are forced to walk and cross these dangerous roads in insane heat in the summer to get to and from work or to and from walmart/other supermakets/grocery stores. it just sucks, especially because of what i'm used to there being in the uk. in the uk i lived in a similarly populated large town, also on the outkirts but there was a co-op 5 minutes away and a larger supermarket about 15 mins away each way. there aren't any convenience stores that aren't petrol stations near me here, and though there is one closer than walmart, it isn't close enough to actually be convenient, it would shed off maybe 10 mins each way to walk to that instead. something i really miss about the uk is trains and buses actually existing, even with some decreased routes in the case of buses. where i live now only downtown has buses and they are extremely sparse, i've only seen a bus like two or three times?? its crazy. im very thankful that my husband drives and can shoulder that responsibility until i learn to drive and can get my license. there is a huge emphasis on drive-thru establishments, not only fast food, but also banks have drive thrus as well as pharmacies. its kinda funny, i can't get used to that being the norm. its also true that there are fast food places and restaurants everywhere. my british town of around 40k only had a mcdonalds, other than that it was mostly local run takeaways and chippes. i do like the usa, i like it probably as much as i like the uk, but i am feeling homesick right now so that is skewing my view a bit to the negative side. of course the main reason i like the usa is because it has my husband in it, i would not be here otherwise. i think the usa is a lot more fun to visit than to actually live in. i think if you get the chance to visit, there are a lot of cool places you can choose from and you absolutely should. this country is HUGE. i'm no longer surprised about the americans never having left their country statistic because there are so many things you can see just in the states alone. there are some truly beautiful places, and the food is great as well as the people. i think anyone with a foreign accent gets an advantage when interacting with people here, people seem to be friendlier to me by default if i approach them to ask a question or strike up a conversation with them, and i get a lot of questions about where i'm from and compliments on my accent which makes me feel teehee inside. overall, the usa is nice, it's just hindered by capitalism going a bit too far (i.e health insurance/sick leave/at will employment), strange politics/political idolisation (i have thoughts and feelings that i won't go into here) and poor infrastructure, especially outside of the main big cities.

"Sure, we obey" would have only ever been uttered in prehistoric times, and by prehistoric I mean before July 4, 1776. Edit: Also, according to Statista there were 198,000 fast food restaurants in the US as of 2022.

i googled the fast food restaurant number from the us and it seems to be around 204k so yea way less than expected but STILL A LOT

(Former) American living in Basel, Switzerland. I love your videos. They are so Erika. That's good. Sorry about DB. Swiss trains run on time. You forgot to mention guns. Maybe you understand guns in America?

I'm from the US, I've had a few times where things were just terrible for me or someone else and when we simply said "How are you?" The person having a genuinely bad time gave a truthful answer. Same when things were great.

The tie really worked. I enjoy listening to your look on things every time. The city reviews are also great. Keep it up, as long as you enjoy it. Please ❤

American here! Got me cracking up over here 🤣 Also the salads you’ve mentioned is mostly a Minnesota/Wisconsin thing. I’m from the South and I’ve never tried any of those dishes. 😅

I for one do appreciate your videos Erika, and looking at the comments and statistics, I'm not the only one.

Spot on! Couldn't stop smiling and laughing, you are so light and fresh😄

The 🇺🇸 USA uses a janky bassackwards date format of MM/DD/YYYY vs EU's 🇪🇺 DD/MM/YYYY -- Also I love not having to specify AM / PM in EU itineraries. "Meet us at 19:30" vs "Meet me at 7:30" "Wait bro, Is that AM or PM ?"

Hope this goes as well as the Europe one did!!❤️

Actually we used to have the Mars bar, twas my favorite. We have WhatsApp. We’re not monsters.

Yes, many neighborhoods in America have zero sidewalks and typically zero public transit so there are almost no options except drive, even biking is dangerous. I know neighborhoods built in about 1960 in California don't, some newer ones do have sidewalks, luckily. You'd have to look up more. I am an American but am working hard to be in a spot to be able to move to Europe in the near future, so I can have a walkable lifestyle, and be able to walk for real bread. I wish this was more readily available in America... But cars & their manufacturers ran our country for decades.

No one small talks in a McDonalds in America just letting you know

We have Whatsapp, but I don't know anyone who actually uses it. The average American just texts. It doesn't cost us anything because most of us rarely (if ever) leave the country. Personally, I live just outside downtown Minneapolis, so it's relatively walkable for the US, but I've been to Germany and it's not comparable. If you go just a couple minutes down the road from me away from the city, pedestrian space disappears. The closest grocery store is a 10 minute drive, which is like a 90 minute walk because the only foot paths to it go through or around a bunch of places designed exclusively for cars. I think this is probably why our milk jugs etc are so large. We tend to stock up on groceries because in some places it's a 15-30 min drive to the store and a 15-30 min drive back, so it's not the kind of trip you want to make 2-3 times per week.

We are a bit odd. Entertaining and humorous video. Great job. ❤😊

Hello Erika. Your channel is very creative, entertaining to watch, and honestly feels like a breath of fresh air. Genuine, if I'm am to find a right word.

After moving to Germany and meeting Unitedstatians (in Latin America we call them Estadunidenses): "Hi, nice to meet you! Where are you from?" "I am American." "Cool, so am I. But seriously, which country are you from?"

As of the latest data, there are approximately 200,000 fast food restaurants in the United States. The number of grocery stores is around 40,000. Fast Food Restaurants US: Approximately 0.000604 per capita (1 fast food restaurant per 1,655 people) Europe: Approximately 0.000201 per capita (1 fast food restaurant per 4,986 people) Grocery Stores US: Approximately 0.000121 per capita (1 grocery store per 8,275 people) Europe: Approximately 0.000134 per capita (1 grocery store per 7,437 people)

21:17 I think the idea is to go to the supermarket for a week at a time, and arrive there after eating, so you don't waste part of that week's provision on sweets or unhealthy stuff.

Great video, as an "American" I can give every European one tip: don't think of the US as "one country" but a collective of many ethnic and sub-cultures under a larger structure and ethos. Imagine if I said Iceland and Poland were the "same" because they were in "Europe". Even the word for "Europe" is new in history, relatively. The wide vareity of people in the US explains many confounding paradoxes.

The drinking age is steeped in American culture. Note that our driving age starts younger, 16, to enable children to work on the farms. Also, because of some protestant religions believing that alcohol should be banned, it was first at a minimum age of 18 before being increased to 21. As if that wasn't bad enough, there was at one time the 18th Amendment which prohibited all alcohol. In a few years, crime actually increased due to the bootlegging and was eventually repealed by the 21st Amendment.

I live in the Midwest in a suburban neighborhood and it is very walkable, also a shit ton of deer. College towns here are definitely more walkable. This is all so funny as an American. Hope to experience and learn European cultures, I want to do my masters program in the Netherlands.

Supermarkets - when I was in Germany, I totally fell in love with REWE. Brimming over with the kind of wonderful chocolates and delicious cheeses and delicatessen that we would have to pay premium for in the USA, but inexpensive in Germany.

About the wastefulness of disposable cups and plates. There was a study that compared paper cups with mugs, and found the differences were negligible. If you don't wash your mug that often, or not at all, then the mug is better, but even then the production of the mug is very energy costly so you need to use each mug for years before it becomes comparable to paper cups. Plastic cups is obviously a different beast. You also need to dispose of the paper cup properly and not throw it in the general waste. I am sick with cfs/me and at my sickest it became impossible for me to do the dishes, so I was forced to switch to disposable. Luckily the EU enforced rules reducing plastic disposable utensils and cups so I got less of a guilt trip after that, but after learning that as long as I dispose of it in a good way it's comparable to ceramics and steel in terms of environmental impact, I didn't bother switching back. If I ever get a girlfriend I'm gonna have a real problem, but, I'd also have a problem with disgusting week-long dishes in my sink.

I really like your video. I find it insightful and it is presented in an interesting way. I like your English accent, it is clean and easy to listen to. All together I find it delightful to sit through the whole video.

Your content is cool

I'm in California so we're a weird. But parts of the US have paid sick days some do have requirements its just done state to state or even city to city depending of the state like California. Jobs are required to have paid vacation time in California as well.

I really love this content and its vibes

Yes yes, very professional presentation. Thank you, very good.

In Germany we also have a Credit score. It is called "SCHUFA" and no one knows, how they roll their dice to "calculate" your credit score

Love the tie and your content.

Ha! Love your sense of humor! The US Tipping Culture is out of control, and while I had to laugh at the salad portion, I still think the most bizarre 'salad' and alsoone of the most delicious is teh German Wurstsalat!

This is the content I wanna see !

Your videos are such a pleasure to watch and goddammit you're looking so gorgeous

Totally agree. I would never want to work in the US because of the vacation and sick days. Also, no little flags :(

Probably the best way to think about the USA is that basically nobody's life is the same, whatsoever. It's way too diverse and states/cities all have different laws to say anything for certain. I would say many people's lives are similar in many ways, but you have millions of others who are not at all similar. For example, if you get good health insurance in a large metropolitan area, it's likely you're going to be getting the best care from the best providers, possibly in the world. Many people have to pay nothing to get excellent health insurance. Others have to pay hundreds of thousands in medical bills. It's very confusing. Sick time is the same - some jobs will be extremely understanding and let you go for months on end. Many others will treat you as expendable and fire you for taking too much sick time. And different states have different rules. There are absolutely smaller supermarkets, but the ones you see highlighted in videos are the biggest ones. Also, there are many smaller, older cities across the US that are pretty walkable. The newer neighborhoods, by and large, are as you see in the picture. Pretty sad. In European countries, like Nederland, you do essentially have a hidden credit scores when making home purchases - at the end of the day, there is not a tremendous amount of difference between credit scores and the credit system of these countries. But yes, I would say the biggest mistake most Europeans make is to think that American life is similar enough to generalize. But, it very much is mind-numbingly diverse, from region to region, state to state. Tipping and massive gaps in bathroom stalls, however, are truly universal in the US.

Me worries in American: "Wait a gallon of milk is a lot? But I drink a gallon of milk by myself all the time..."

I am an American and I love this.

Erika, I'm 5 minutes in and already sent 3 comments, firstly the how are you question works exactly the same in Britain where everyone greets each other saying "you're right?" and most will answer "you're right?" back, no one cares how you're actuially doing here in Britain either lol (I'm not British btw, I'm a migrant from the Italic peninsula haha) Also Americans don't use Whatsapp because they all have iPhones and use Facetime instead of Whatsapp, Android phones are not very popular there, I guess it's cause iPhones are cheaper in the US) this will be my last comment btw :)

As a Canadian it's annoyingly similar to the US and here's some of the things you talked about that are relatable as a Canadian: We say how are you The bathroom stalls suck We don't actually use metric (at least casually), like we say "I'm 6'0" or something (I'm not tho lmao) We use Celsius when talking about weather but for cooking we use Fahrenheit (which confuses me) OH MY GOSH I HATE THE CAR DEPENDENCY (check out Not Just Bikes for amazing explanations on why that's the case) McDonalds is always sticky so we (at least my family) don't like eating there. The US is huge. Canada is even bigger! You could drive for 16 hours and still be in the same province 💀 Our rail sucks. (Again watch Not Just Bikes)

14:49 I forget which country it was, but in some countries, a public bathroom will actually have ultra violet light so you can't see your veins. Denmark, or parts of? Netherlands? Belgium? Not sure. Can't recall that from last year, but I think I can recall it from 2004.

ものすごく共感しました。貴重な動画ありがとう。

hard to roast the country of Latvia since I myself am Latvian but....there are too many russian and other type of people who have lived here since soviet times but still try to do everything in russian and dont even attempt to use latvian

In America we actually do use an IM app that is hugely popular, and that is iMessage. Since apple integrated their IM client into their SMS app since the beginning, and since Americans always had a proclivity to texting, that means apple especially created a monopoly on the US phone market since you can only use iMessages on an apple devices, and non tech inclined individuals just end up buying iPhones because “the texting on an iPhone is better for some reason”.

nice video - as always

Pretty spot on But she just looking at it on the top surface. America is a whole lot different culture from region to region. But cool video I just found shout out from Atlanta Georgia

a lot of these are jokes but I can tell you why we're called americans: in english we just say the name of the country in the official name, so we don't say "people's republicans" when talking about chinese people or "united statesians" when talking about mexicans, we just pluralize the name of the country so it's just americans :D

For the onion, i heard not taking the top out first prevents the whole crying situations

Us supermarkets are big bc they don't have small ones. They don't have small ones because these are not profitable bc of lower population density and car culture(park lots, highways, etc)

Hello erika i have been watching you for such a long time and i absolutely love your vlogs and your personality keep making these videos ❤

198 million fastfood restaurants 😂😂😂 Dear sweet Erika, maybe you have to remove 3 zeroes???

i'm from America! good points!

Celsius is great if you want to know how close something is to freezing or boiling. But Fahrenheit really is a lot better for weather measurement for the general public at least. 0 degrees is a very cold day. 100 degrees is a very hot day. It makes more sense for that. I don't know what you mean by "more precise" they have the same amount of precision. They are numbers. Fahrenheit has a larger range of numbers for the same temperature scale in terms of whole numbers. But given decimal points it doesn't really matter that much.

Celsius is not more precise than Fahrenheit, it's just more widespread around the world. Fahrenheit is actually a better unit for measuring ambient temperature because it was designed specifically for that. If you look at the F scale, 0F (-15C) corresponds to a very cold day outside, while 100F (+36C) corresponds to a hot day outside. It is much more intuitive than measuring ambient temperature against a freezing and boiling points of water.

Fill your mouth with water when you are cutting onions or just close your eyes but keep the attention on the knife to not cause an accident.

American resident: No walkable cities, none, its true. (Almost hard to imagine) Cause every street is unshaded, no benches, no real sidewalks, and (Texan resident) the sun is awful. So walking, it is not an option… (idek where to begin when it comes to introducing walkable cities to America)

YAYYYY NEW ERIKA VIDEO

5:26 Germans: hold mein Bier.

There are a few reasons for the portion sizes. One being that the US has a huge left over culture. We eat some at the restaurant and then take the rest home for later. Also the portions stay that big because alot of people have been trained to eat that way unfortunately. People continue to eat large amounts so the resturants keep seving the big sizes. Its one of the hardest things to unlearn when trying to get healthy. I hope that helps you understand us in the US a little more. ❤

America is such a beautiful country being ruined by endless greed. As much as I would love to love here when I grow older, I can’t see myself doing it.

The Kit Kat logo I europe is the original english one from rowntrees

When I go out and the bill is anywhere up to around $30, I try to tip close to half. If the bill is around $100 or more, I usually try to tip $20-$40. It means I don't go out to eat as much, but food service workers are some of the hardest workers and deserve every penny.

I'm from the UK living in America, I feel like after moving here these questions just raise more questions than answers. This place confuses me in too many ways

Using paper plates daily is not a normal thing... like I haven't seen many people do this.

Germany does have credit scores - commonly referred to as SCHUFA scores. In the US a high credit score is good, but in Germany the lower the number the better I believe.

Reasons to visit USA - you played GTA. Reasons to live in USA - none 🎉

Well, we are following you since a while and I would say that apart the obvious unearthly Baltic beauty and the less obvious very engaging sympathy, the videos are well made, scientifically sort of. Let's say everything exudes CLEVERNESS. Our sincere appreciation! great job!

Omg I just had biggest most significant revelation of my life about the onions! This makes so much sense!

I'm going there this July. Wish me luck ;))

Witty as ever, Erika! I use WhatsApp here all of the time, and I swear I remember eating Mars bars as a kid. But I completely agree with everything you said. The waste here is horrible, so much plastic that it makes me lose my mind. The healthcare situation is a mess, and the automobile and oil companies rule this country making it nearly impossible not to be car dependent. Tipping in this country has gotten out of control. Workers deserve to make a real wage, and the customers should not be responsible for paying their salaries. I truly believe that, although many Americans love to say that we live in the greatest country in the world, most of us live in a constant state of anxiety and frustration. (many without even realizing it) It's a sad and unhealthy situation. I'm in the process of (hopefully) obtaining dual citizenship with Italy, and I plan to move to the EU soon. For now though, I'll just enjoy your insights and humor! Oh, and like you, if sweets are in my house, they call to me from the cabinets and I have no way of resisting! 😁🍬🍫

Love this😂

14:07 - YES THAT WAS SO CONFUSING for me when I moved to the U.S. , like wtf?

bathroom stall dividers! lol

ty for the fun video

well, the british pound is called a pound because it used to equal a pound (weight) of silver if I remember correctly. Lindybeige has an excellent video about English coinage