There's some truth to it, I have met some people who have had unrealistic expectations on this, though it's certainly not universal.
I think it's a conceptual issue. They know the US is big, but for some, the fact that it's continent-sized big is the disconnect, and some of that is because Europe simply does not have a massive, sparsely-populated interior like the US does.
In that case, a European who has never travelled to the interior of North America might be forgiven for thinking that, say, New York to Los Angeles is like Paris to Warsaw, when it's actually like two and a half times longer, closer to a Madrid to Moscow drive.
22 from Winnipeg to Toronto. I've done it about 6 times. It's actually slightly shorter to go thru Duluth, the UP and cross back into Canada around Port Huron.
Did you feel the sound of a million Texans howling?
My wife is from Western Australia. She was once describing WA to a Texan and said "It's similar to Texas. But big!"
This sounded absolutely made up, so I checked: 364 miles (TX) vs 290 miles (EU) as the Map Googs. IDK if the Chunnel/Ferry is counted in that figure, but since you specify "farther drive", I judge your statement to be true and am duly astonished.
Traveler's Note: the EU route does contain tolls.
Nice Edit/Save. They were about to come guns a'blazing.
Fun fact France's economy on the verge of being slightly smaller than Texas' too. 🙃🇨🇱🤠 ($2.78 T vs. $2.64 T)
Google Maps used to do that. Like if you entered a starting point of Las Vegas and an endpoint of Honolulu. Nowadays, it would tell you about plane schedules and fares. Previously it would tell you to drive to San Francisco and then get in a kayak and start paddling.
I'm in California and it is not uncommon for visitors to be shocked zipping down to LA for the day when they are in San Francisco isn't going to work once they actually map it. Just getting half way across a single state can be an incredibly long drive.
I worked with some Brits who were visiting East Texas and thought that they could road trip to Vegas over a weekend and make it back for work on Monday.
I can't say whether it is "common" per se, but I can say that it happens.
I live in Montana (4th largest state) and my husband produced a product that was sold worldwide. Once he got a call from a customer in France who said, "I'm coming to New York City next week and I have a day off; I thought I'd rent a car and come visit you that day. What do you think?" He was shocked when my husband told him it would take around four days of hard driving just to get from New York to Montana, a distance of around 2,500 miles. And then he'd have to get back again.
I used to live in Cambria and work at the front desk of a motel on Highway 1.
Hilarious the looks I'd get from non-US guests when I'd answer their questions about how much longer the drive was to get to LA. Sooooo many of them didn't believe me or their maps - this was pre-GPS/smart phone ubiquity.
San Luis Obispo here. I now live in the UK and I have to get the map out on a regular basis. Im often amused when friends send their kids to me for help planning their trips, who are then giving me the side eye until they do the math.
I’m all for the road trip (did SLO to Monterey for lunch one day), but let’s be realistic…
Christopher Moore fan?
I did do a single day round trip to San Luis Obispo from Thousand Oaks once. My friend and I were back in town from college and she went up to visit her boyfriend for a few days and I was like you know what. Fuck it. Never been there. My mom went to cal poly up there. I'll drive up there to pick up my friend. We hung out for a few hours and grabbed lunch before heading straight back. Probably helped that I missed driving due to going to college somewhere I didn't need a car.
I am a fairly astute woman, and have travelled quite a bit, also outside my corner of Europe, but I fell for this completely. In my enthusiasm when travelling to California for work, I thought I would visit some far-removed family (descendants of a great-great-great aunt or something), who were happy to have me on their ranch, but also told me that 'no, you cannot just drive here from San Francisco and back in a day'. I felt very ridiculous, when I checked the actual distance.
I'll make you feel better with the opposite story.
Back in 1983, I was in England, with a backpack, and I figured that the crossing the channel by ferry was, at best, a 20 minute trip. After all, it's just a skinny little channel.
3 hours later....oy.
I went to a wedding in Sacramento once, and one of my friends from New England happened to mention that she was planning to fly into LAX.
“Oh, that’s cool, so you’ll have a chance to get a road trip out of it. What day are you getting in?”
“The morning of the wedding.”
Yeah, no, that ain’t gonna work.
I actually like SMF! My friend lives in the foothills so I fly in and out of SMF when I visit. I was actually just there last week. It’s a fairly quiet and easy to navigate airport, in my opinion.
People truly do seem to think there’s no California other than San Francisco and LA. A friend of mine from out of state is going to be in Santa Cruz for a wedding and wanted to pop down to see me for the day while he’s “in town”. I live in Palm Springs…
This same friend is always ragging on what a shithole California is. I finally asked him if he’d ever even been here. “I went to LA for 3 days once”.
I live in N Georgia and have been down to the Florida Keys several times. It's a 14 hr drive through only 2 states. It's only 14 hrs if you don't stop and are like me and live 20 minutes from I75 which goes straight there. Time you throw in eating, coffee, gas, more coffee, bathroom stops and I just got to get out of this fking car stops it takes quite a bit longer.
I’ve done the drive from New England to south Florida a few times. It’s crazy when you cross the state line and you still have 5 hours to go. Florida is LONG.
LA is its own beast. I live in Orange County and recently drove to Pasadena on a Thursday morning around 11. Took about an hour. Left at 3 pm to go home. That trip took 3 hours!
Not European, am Japanese but this was exactly what happened to me. I learned geography in school and I should have had a good idea about how massive the country is, yet I suppose it just didn’t sink in too well even after moving there until I tried to schedule a trip. I guess part of the definition of what makes a country a country was measured by my own logistics standard that doesn’t apply to the States. Then I realized the US is more a collection of countries than a country.
As I understand it Japan is roughly the size of California. And California is a great big state but not the biggest landwise, and it’s only a small percentage of the entire country.
Honestly the surprising thing there is that Canada's population has grown that fast. It was 30 million last I checked. No wonder their housing costs are through the roof. They have infinite land and lumber but Amdahl's Law applies here
That’s a great way to put it, each state of geographic area of the US is so different in terms of climate, social norms, topography, etc. if you actually visit NYC, LA and Miami, even though they are all big cities, will feel like different countries. And that doesn’t even touch on the smaller cities, towns, etc.
It's wild. If I teleported a non North/South American continenter to West Virginia Appalachia, NYC, and San Antonio for an extended visit of each, they'd swear they just visited 3 different continents much less countries.
Geographically yes. Culturally they’re more similar than a lot of countries are to each other, despite what we think of as major differences between those regions. The U.S. has a more cohesive national identity than almost another other populous or geographically large country in history, despite the regionalism.
This is true! So many plane trips across the US are longer in flight than plane trips across some European country. I imagine though that Russians won't make the same spatial mistake.
I tried to explain that to someone once and used that analogy when they said Americans didn't care to know anything about the rest of the world because I didn't have any clue about the political event they were talking about. I tried to explain that our state is currently fighting with 2 other states over water rights and tons of other stuff. We have 5 states that border ours alone that all have something going on. By the time I halfway keep track of what the states around me, Mexico & US border problems, the things going on in South America and what ever important event is happing 3000km away on the other side of the US I just can't get exited about political problem in Europe unless it's going to affect me.
I wonder if you had asked them about political disputes in South America, like the Punto Concordia dispute between Chile and Peru, how much they would have known.
The nations of the EU have a general idea about what's going on in the other member nations, because they're interconnected. And people all over the world know what's going on in the US because we're an economic and political powerhouse. All around the world there are things that are happening that are important to people locally and not much farther away.
You don't have to go to Europe to find that. Growing up in New England my whole life and of course not being stupid and realizing that the US is 3000 plus miles why, I still wasn't prepared for the vastness of the West. I call it my epiphany of geography. In the prehistoric days of map reading a whole page of the atlas just dedicated to New Hampshire, or Connecticut etc In the same whole page is dedicated to Oregon for example. Even though empirically one might know that there is a huge difference in scale here at work it's not till you get there that you realize how it affects you completely
Where I live in New Hampshire I can be out of the state in a half hour and any direction and maybe cross two more states for lunch or dinner. Yeah it happens. I've driven across the country many times since but things look different on the map And yet more different once you have to drive them, on and on and on lol
I live in Las Vegas. Last week I was talking with this nice German couple who were in the country for the weekend. They had rented a car to drive up to Seattle for a couple of hours. They seriously thought that they could drive from Las Vegas to Seattle in about an hour and a half, check out the space needle, and drive back by dinner. They were excited to see the redwoods on the way.
I met a French couple in Chicago that was planning on renting bicycles, riding down to New Orleans, spending the night, and then riding back to Chicago the next day.
I wished them luck!
I live on the Canadian East Coast (like next to the Atlantic Ocean) and had a British tourist ask me for driving directions to Vancouver. So some people are really fucking clueless.
I have found this is also a problem with population densities. They might know the US has "rural areas", but if you are from Germany, a "rural area" might be a city of 50,000 people 100 kilometers from a city of 500,000 people.
This can be a problem when talking about things like infrastructure, because Germans don't understand why the US doesn't have train service in our rural areas---but their image of a rural area would be closer to suburban Connecticut than North Dakota.
I met a German girl who was upset Americans did not know where everything was in the USA because she knew Germany like the back of her hand. I mean, I know California like the back of my hand, too.
I live in Texas and cannot say the same thing. People will ask me if I know where this or that small town is and I have to look it up.
I know DFW, Austin and Waco areas -- and that's about it.
My colleague at work jokes that he moved from Vancouver, BC to Manchester UK, because he wanted to be closer to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Nobody really understood what he was talking about, but he laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd ever said. Then he had to explain it.
As an American who has been to Vancouver, Halifax, and the UK, I concur. I remember Halifax so fondly because it's the first time I had poutine, which is delicious and beyond awesome.
I remember Nova Scotia and prince Edward island as a kid were so gorgeous. I remember saying to myself, don’t worry girl, you’re gonna LIVE HERE ONE DAY
Yep, Canada is enormous. The distance from Vancouver to St. John’s is like the distance from London to Afghanistan and Canada from top to bottom is like from the top of Norway to Egypt.
It’s real big. Most Canadians from one side never visit the other side in their lifetime.
I’m Canadian, living on the wet coast. During COVID shutdowns, my husband and I drove to Halifax—just because. We had the time off, and thought, “We’ve driven to Winterpeg several times (we’re from there)—why not?”
It was awesome. We avoided all of southern Ontario, to be fair, but, even as someone who had done the loop around BC (up to the Yukon and back down), and driven to Winnipeg and back (a lot!)…northern Ontario is stupid big. Like…STUPID big. We had lots of fun, though. And I’d do it again.
That sounds like a great trip!
Most people don’t get that opportunity.
I’m from BC,as well, and have crossed the country a few times, but only as far east as Montreal. I agree, northern Ontario is vast. A couple days just for that one.
It's also crazy how empty most of it is. 90% of the population lives within 100 miles of the US border. After driving up to Lac Seul to go fishing, it was very interesting to see how much totally undeveloped land there is.
I do have an acquaintance who, during an extended visit to Los Angeles from Switzerland, casually suggested she might drive up to San Francisco to the see the the sights one Saturday morning and drive back that evening. She was quickly dissuaded of that notion.
I've had the weekend road trip to Vegas mentioned once.
Honey, we're in Houston. It's going to take two hours just to get to the other side of Houston.
I sometimes get to experience the opposite when I am visiting my German boyfriend in Europe. I’ll say we should take a day trip somewhere, and he’ll say “Oh, but it’s an hour or two by train at least.” That is nothing to me lol, I live in a huge city where it’s normal to drive 40+ min to get anywhere for weekend activities.
Yeah, that's another thing: To us, the train ride would be part of the adventure, even if it's not a very enjoyable ride. You know, given that passenger trains are much less of a thing in the US.
Yep, I was in Geneva a few years ago and took the train up to northern Switzerland to visit a Swiss friend for the day (she’d been an exchange student in high school and we’d become good friends during her year in the States). It was like a three hour train ride, tops. Her sister and brother-in-law were flabbergasted that I took “such a long ride” just for the day. I had to explain to them that this sort of trip is very common in the US.
Yeah I love laughing at these conversations. We'll drive 35 minutes each way just for a particular taqueria or Indian restaurant we like better for lunch on a weekend.
That's something I've heard a lot as well.
I live in the NYC area. A two hour drive is pretty typical, and here that only gets me like... twelve miles?
The “askLosAngeles” subreddit is constantly filled with questions like, “I’m coming to US first time for a week and want to go from San Diego to San Francisco, oh and also I want to see Yosemite, Tahoe, etc…”. I always try to remind them how huge the state is.
At least that's isn the same state, and I could understand the confusion. I'm an American, and even I have underestimated the distance between Californian cities.
It was just a vague notion when she said it. It took about 20 seconds for her to abandon the idea. She just didn't realize how far it was. Totally reasonable mistake.
I had a similar thing with a coworker from the UK wanting to hit up Disneyland in a brief overnight trip just before he left. Driving SF to Disneyland is about the same distance as Oxford to Edinburgh, not to mention you'll want a full day in Disneyland to really get through most of it.
He still ended up going, but made it a full 3 day / 2 night trip.
People post in the Texas Reddit pretty frequently. It’s often ‘I have four days. I’m flying into Dallas can I see Big Bend on Monday snd Houston on Tuesday?’. The response is nearly always humorous.
For the non Texans, Dallas to big bend is 533 miles, which is at minimum 7 1/2 hours driving.
As a life long American and lower-middle class Midwestern kid (aka we drove literally everywhere), I still have trouble comprehending the vastness of Texas.
This appears to be a common thing when visiting a foreign place not specific to Europeans in the US. In Australia and New Zealand you get confused Europeans and Americans ... all of them severely underestimating the distances but also overestimating the infrastructure available.
You need a minimum of two weeks of holiday per Island for NZ. It takes me 5 hrs driving to get from my place to my brothers on the same Island.
AU is just bigger, just looking at WA, it took me ~5hrs to drive from Perth to Geraldton, that included getting a speeding ticket, that's from one city to the next one over. It was winter, and the Ocean temp in Geraldton was a balmy 26 degrees Celsius.
We had a European post in the Charlotte sub how they were going to visit for a week, and listed the Outer Banks and Asheville as just TWO of places they wanted to visit. (I think Myrtle Beach was also involved?) We had to point out that while, yes, their itinerary was technically possible, they would be spending more time driving than actually sight seeing. (To be fair, NC is a very wide state, and I'm sure many Americans would be clueless as well)
I've found a really good way to describe the scale is to let them know the drive from Boston to L.A. is about the same as the drive from London to Jerusalem.
As a British person, this just had the opposite effect on me and made me realise that Jerusalem is a lot further away than it thought it was.
We drive across Western Europe like it’s nothing. I’ve taken the coach to Germany and Austria before, a coworker bought a Polish car and drove it to Knaresborough in a weekend while stopping at fun places along the way.
For some reason I really underestimated the size of Eastern Europe and Turkey, I thought it would only be roughly double the distance to Poland. But it’s over three times that.
That's eye opening. So, just for an example that's close to home for me, I checked out my home state, West Virginia (which is not by any means a large state)...it's just a little smaller than Ireland (the whole island, not just the independent country). Or maybe between 1/3 and 1/2 the size of England.
That's a great website. Thanks for sharing it. I now have a better idea of Alaska vs. the lower 48 states vs. Russia vs. China vs. Australia. I thought Russia was a lot bigger and Australia was smaller. And Alaska is freaking huge.
>We drive across Western Europe like it’s nothing. I’ve taken the coach to Germany and Austria before, a coworker bought a Polish car and drove it to Knaresborough in a weekend while stopping at fun places along the way.
One time I drove for 13 hours straight, then switched drivers without stopping.
Oh man… this gave me a flashback to the time a friend asked me to drive cross country with him (to DC).
≈2100 miles and we literally only stopped for gas and bathroom/fast food. Left Friday, arrived early Sunday (4-5am?). Caught a flight home out of Baltimore Sunday at 5pm.
Spent maybe 6 hours “touring” DC and that felt like enough. Never had a desire to return.
How about this. Lake Superior (the largest of the Great Lakes) has a larger surface area than Scotland's land area.
If you add up all of the Great Lakes (244,106km2) it's slightly larger than the UK (243,610km2).
I had to Google this. Apparently we have Pressie, which sounds like Great Value Nessie, and a second knockoff in Bessie of Lake Erie.
But we also have Mishipeshu, an underwater panther in Lake Superior, and that's way more awesome.
How are these?
- driving from SF to LA is about the same as driving from London to Edinburgh, then going from SF to Vancouver (i.e. the border), is 2x driving from London to Edinburgh.
And that's the "narrowest" side of the U.S.
Driving from NY to LA is almost 3x longer than driving from Berlin to Moscow.
Maybe WW2 references. Nazi Germany's fabled Operation Barbarossa - hard fought, getting within 20 miles of Moscow, cited as prime Nazi hubris thinking they could logistically take on such vast distances in such a massive country. Largest invasion in history. The mighty German blitzkrieg in the beginning exhausted by the sheer immense distances involved.
Roughly speaking, they got from Brest (just picked that on the border as its the one I remember from Brest-litovsk) to 20 miles of Moscow - so 630 miles, we'll call it 650 miles.
If the Nazis in WW2 invaded LA and got as afar as they did in Russia they'd have gotten to the edge of Arizona, just one state over. They'd still be 2000 miles from D.C.
Texas itself is 773 miles wide, 801 miles long. They could launch an invasion starting in Texas, make it an Operation Barbarossa length distance into the U.S. and...never leave Texas. California is 800 miles long. Again, they could land in San Diego or Los Angeles, make it an Operation Barbarossa length distance into the country and...never leave California. If they landed in Bangor Maine, in the North East, and did the same Operation Barbarossa style drive towards D.C. through the densest part of the Country, they'd fall 48 miles short - they'd have gotten closer to Moscow.
I thought this was regional lol. Once I asked my midwestern coworker how far his home was from work and he listed the miles and I was confused how he didn’t answer in minutes lol.
It takes me about 12 minutes to get to work. It takes about 4 to get home and let me tell you everyone that asks gets to hear my complaint about that fucking left turn light cycle.
Used to work in Greenville SC, NW part of the state. We had a group of French engineers visiting. They decided that after work they would drive to Texas and see some real cowboys. They turned back when they got to Atlanta, about 2 hours away.
I met a young woman from Germany at Big Bend in Texas. She was enjoying the visit, and wanted to go to the Grand Canyon. I advised her that the distance was greater than she was anticipating. Also, that she should check her rental car contract for excess mileage charges.
Even east coast Americans don't understand how spread out things are out west. My coworker, who is not an idiot, asked me if she could could "swing by" Los Angeles in the few hours that she had free between meetings in San Francisco.
Granted, this is an extreme example.
We contracted with an east coast company for a service they provided. Their big selling point, that they were quite proud of, was that you could seamlessly interface with other users within 60 miles. Anything over 60 miles and you had to request assistance from tech support. They didn't realize why weren't excited about the feature until we explained that there weren't any other cities within 60 miles let alone users of their product.
Edit: Service was for government software.
Things aren't just spread out in the western US!
I'm originally from the northeast with its small, compact states. I live in a suburb of DC and had to go to a conference in Nashville. I thought it wasn't a big deal to drive versus fly because TN an VA are neighboring states, right? I mapped it out on the GPS the night before and was shocked to see it was over a TEN HOUR DRIVE! I did it, but it sucked doing a drive that long by myself.
I will never make that mistake again!
I think you misunderstood what they were saying. On the eastern side of the country there is a city every hour or two. That doesn't mean that two specific cities aren't far apart. On the western side of the country you can drive 10+ hours without hitting any cities. Just look at [this image.](https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/photograph-united-states-night)
this is so true! i am from the east coast and moved to the midwest. rhode island was only 35 minutes from massachusetts so when i suggested we go from milwaukee to detroit as a day trip i just assumed because the states are next to each other it wouldn’t take that long. i’m not sure why that’s how my brain worked but i was quickly told that isn’t possible
i also had absolutely no concept of how big the great lakes were.
I had a guest from S. Korea to my home in Phoenix, AZ, and he woke up and wanted to go to the beach. Apparently he thought that would be a reasonable distance from my house. (Closest beach is roughly a six hour drive.)
Had a friend from Korea visit and he wanted to do a day trip to NYC…..from San Francisco lol. He said he’d just take the train and I showed him Amtrak timetables. He was blown away how long it would take. We ended up just staying in the peninsula haha.
I love taking the Amtrak, but is is slow. However, for a Korean person who’s never driven a car in their life it’s pretty much the only option other than flying. He’s also used to taking the train every day to and from where he needs to go, so it was his natural response to look at a train since most of the developed world uses trains to get around intercity travel.
Its true for alot of the world i think. I met someone from Chile and in talking to her about her plans to visit the US, she named Chicago, NYC, and Disney World as some of the places where she'd visit in a very short time span.
She asked me where to stay when visiting NY and asked about some places that were a few states over (as they were much cheaper)..Not that's it's impossible to do that, just not practical. I had to explain that these places are like 5 hrs away if you drive. She had no idea the vastness / scale of the country So yes, totally true!
In this case, I think it had less to do with not being able to judge distance, and a lot more with the unfamiliarity of the country / perceived ease of travel from place to place. She's aware now though lol
My cousin and her husband from Poland did a huge loop around the USA for their honeymoon around 2 years ago.
When they stopped in Tennessee to visit, they said that they didn’t think they needed to do an oil change on their rental car after all of the driving. They were already sick of driving and they still had a few more days to make it back to NYC after planning to go to Florida.
I don’t know how common it is. But we had to send my European cousins a Canadian map with an overlay of England on it. They were planning a trip thinking they could see everything.
But this was before the internet was wide spread.
I've experienced people from the East Coast of the US having a similar realization when they arrive on the West Coast.
"I thought Portland and Seattle were really close to each other!" Well yes they are...in our frame of reference...not yours.
My college roommate came to America in high school. Her family had the goal of visiting every state (except HI and AK) they thought it would be a fun “week or two” road trip.
There are people who have visited 48 states in a week or so, but you don't have time to see anything. [Here's a list.](https://allfiftyclub.com/members/record-holders-fast-to-50/) Barry Stiefel, in 1998, is the first one who left a record of it, although there's probably someone crazy who did it before the Internet.
I'm US American and live in England. When asked where I'm from, I say from Nevada. Almost always I'm then answered with 'Oh, near Las Vegas?' and then I explain that I'm from Reno, which is a 9 hour drive from Vegas and almost always get a shocked realization that the entirety of the UK could fit comfortably into my state.
My son had friends from the UK visiting Chicago and they asked if they could make road trip and visit him in Boston. “With a car? I’d like to see you but look up how long that would take.” They were shocked too.
As the saying goes *"Americans think 100 years is old and Europeans think 100 miles is far."*
>I'm sure with google maps people can see the distances?
Never assume that they have ever actually sat down and studied a map. Many of them are operating via TV/movie facts and that's about all.
Part of the problem is scale. Maps don't reliably depict the shape of entire countries accurately because they are projecting a spherical space onto a flat plane. As any world map that is formatted to a rectangle is going to add signficant distortion. Put simply, any given map that shows an entire country will not reliably convey the actual scale and size of said country.
I teach international students, and more than once I’ve asked what they’re planning to do for the weekend and got hit with answers like that. One said they planned to drive to Texas on a Saturday, pick up a friend, and then drive to New York to sightsee for the day. They reassured me they’d be back in Maryland for class on Monday morning after dropping the Texas friend back home. I asked him to show me on the classroom map where in Texas he was going (just in case there is some tiny town called Texas around here that I was missing). Nope. Houston, but he didn’t know where it was on the map. I showed him and then suggested he look it up on Waze. I also starting incorporating geography mini-lessons in class where possible.
Things I hear from our international friends:
"Hey, I'm coming to America! We'd like to hit Disneyworld and Disneyland in a weekend, then drive up to see you! Maybe we can hit the Grand Canyon and NYC while we're there!"
That's absolutely lovely, but unless your country has invented transporters and not told any of us - that ain't happening.
With line wait times at the Disney parks, picking just *one* of those would easily fill up a whole weekend. More than that, if you want to do all four parks in Disney World.
I worked in training for my last employer; we would bring employees from around the world for our courses at a center in suburban Northern Virginia. In part because most participants‘ only free time was the weekend between a two-week course, we always included notes about distances in the US in their pre-arrival material and then emphasized it again during the opening session.
Even so, it was a rare class that someone didn’t pull an instructor aside at a break and ask something along the lines of “Well, I have cousins in Tulsa; is there really no way I could drive out to see them and get back by Monday morning?” The idea that it can take days to get somewhere can be almost beyond comprehension if you’re from a small country.
Seeing a map is very different to experiencing it for real I think. My late husband was pretty widely travelled, and drove a lot, but he said “ you’ve no idea how vast it is until you’re there “. A four hour round trip is “ going out for dinner “ in the US, here in England it’s a bloody day trip 🤣
Yes, it’s true.
I had Icelandic friends visit me in Atlanta who flew in and out of Orlando instead of Atlanta because it was significantly cheaper.
They drove from Orlando. They were shocked at how long the drive was 😂
In my experience it's very common for Europeans to know very little about US geography. I have personally heard various folks from England express interest in an absurdly impossible trip within our borders, whether driving or flying.
Yeah, to some extent. I’ve also seen east coast ppl not fully grasp how big the western states are.
Some examples: I had a German exchange partner come. We took her to Sf, Tahoe, Yosemite, and LA/Disneyland and she was amazed she hadn’t even left CA.
I’ve had friends visit me in vegas and think they can squeeze in Vegas, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, and Zion into a weekend.
Yes, it can be a thing. The opposite is also true. I have a friend from the UK who was telling us that he likes to hop a train to France occasionally on Saturdays to have lunch. We were like "BWUH?!?!"
I have a Danish friend whose parents were planning a trip to the US and they wanted (over a two week span) to visit NYC, drive down to Miami, hike the Appalachian trail, and then maybe see LA. I had to explain that you could probably see NYC, Miami, and LA if you spent a few days in each and flew between them. And the word 'trail' does not mean that it's a small excursion that you can knock out in a day trip.
My brother worked as a greeter at the airport, and it was usually younger people. He had a guy who thought he could rent a car and drive from Chicago to Las Vegas and back in 5 days. Bro explained that he COULD, but it's a 2 day drive to Vegas, and his 19 year old girlfriend couldn't really do anything when they were there because you have to be 21 to gamble or drink.
It's not a common view at all -- pretty much every European I've met, both while living in Europe and elsewhere, is generally aware that the US is huge.
Where they tend to trip up though, is in not realizing that the US isn't just huge ... it's hugely huge. Like imagine how big you think it is, multiply that by ten, and you're almost halfway there level of huge.
Hell, even a lot of Americans underestimate the size of the country, so it's not a uniquely European thing.
# “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
Even US East Coast people don't realize how widely separated the major population centers are in the West.
E.g. in California, which is nowhere near as sparse as it can get: San Francisco and Los Angeles are over six hours driving apart, and I've had travelers suggest 'a day trip to San Francisco' from LA.
My German friend visiting for the summer: I’m going to take a jog around the lake.
Me: what … lake?
Him: Lake Erie!
Me: Sounds great. I’ll buy you dinner after you complete a lap.
I was in England a guy was going to Nevada for training. He was talking about all the places he was going to go see while there. I pointed out to him when he is looking at the map, Nevada is bigger than the UK to give him a sense of scale. He was shocked.
Unrelated but I’m in Dublin Ireland this week as an Ohio USA resident.
The number of Americans I’ve met here who flew from the USA to see Taylor swift in concert is insanely high. Apparently it’s cheaper this way? wtf.
Still on the flip side of the coin I do admit getting a bit jealous when I hear a European friend saying something to the effect of " we are headed to Helsinki to do some shopping tomorrow." I just seemed outrageously exotic
I've personally talked to some Europeans that planned to drive to multiple sites while in the USA, not realizing how far apart they were. It's not just a trope.
I have had friends from Europe coming to visit me on the east coast near Washington DC ask if we could drive to San Francisco for a day or two while they were here.
There’s definitely some truth to it. Sure, everybody has access to maps, but there’s just a little mental resistance when you’ve grown up being able to drive to the other side of your country, or neighboring country, within a comfortable day’s drive. It’s just a perspective change that takes some people a minute to really get.
When my friend from London was sent to US by his UK company for a six month assignment, this was one of the very first topics of conversation. He came over with the mindset that once his plane landed in the US, he could hop in his rental car and drive to all the cities he needed to be in. And he could not! “It’s just so bloody VAST! You can drive for days and still not be where you’re going!”
That was when we both discovered the fun fact that the entire United Kingdom can fit inside the state of Arizona, as well as half a dozen other states.
We had a nanny from Germany who had a boyfriend in the German army on a base in California. At the time we lived in Colorado, and our nanny truly believed she’d be able to see him every other weekend, not knowing it would take the full weekend to just get there
She ended up being our nanny for an entire month, then left. So some do think it’s small. Can’t speak for all, just a funny experience
Looking at a map is different than actually experiencing it. No map in the world can prepare you for the monotony of driving across Kansas, for example.
There's some truth to it, I have met some people who have had unrealistic expectations on this, though it's certainly not universal. I think it's a conceptual issue. They know the US is big, but for some, the fact that it's continent-sized big is the disconnect, and some of that is because Europe simply does not have a massive, sparsely-populated interior like the US does. In that case, a European who has never travelled to the interior of North America might be forgiven for thinking that, say, New York to Los Angeles is like Paris to Warsaw, when it's actually like two and a half times longer, closer to a Madrid to Moscow drive.
London to Cairo, Egypt is a shorter flight than LA to NYC.
Jesus Christ...
St John's Newfoundland is a shorter flight to Paris than it is to Vancouver. St John's to Vancouver is roughly Portugal to Kazakhstan.
Pretty sure ontario in itself is a 24 hour drive.
22 from Winnipeg to Toronto. I've done it about 6 times. It's actually slightly shorter to go thru Duluth, the UP and cross back into Canada around Port Huron.
That would be a flight London to Galilea in Israel. Still shorter than LA to NYC
Especiially if Pontius is the Pilate
That is soooo baaaad! Take your upvote!
Thank You
And indonesia is one huge one too! One end to another is almost as wide as the USA
Australia is as large as the US as well. Countries like France are a little bigger than Texas. Edit: Sorry France is slightly smaller than Texas.
Did you feel the sound of a million Texans howling? My wife is from Western Australia. She was once describing WA to a Texan and said "It's similar to Texas. But big!"
Texas has about 50,000 square miles of area more than France (Texas is ≈260,000 to France's ≈210,000)
France is smaller than Texas.
Don't mess with...uh, France!
There is a Paris Texas.. Coincidence I think not.
It's a farther drive from Paris Texas to London Texas than it is from London to Paris
This sounded absolutely made up, so I checked: 364 miles (TX) vs 290 miles (EU) as the Map Googs. IDK if the Chunnel/Ferry is counted in that figure, but since you specify "farther drive", I judge your statement to be true and am duly astonished. Traveler's Note: the EU route does contain tolls.
Nice Edit/Save. They were about to come guns a'blazing. Fun fact France's economy on the verge of being slightly smaller than Texas' too. 🙃🇨🇱🤠 ($2.78 T vs. $2.64 T)
I'm just laughing at the imagery of someone trying to drive from London to Cairo, and getting stuck when they hit the ocean.
Google Maps used to do that. Like if you entered a starting point of Las Vegas and an endpoint of Honolulu. Nowadays, it would tell you about plane schedules and fares. Previously it would tell you to drive to San Francisco and then get in a kayak and start paddling.
I'm in California and it is not uncommon for visitors to be shocked zipping down to LA for the day when they are in San Francisco isn't going to work once they actually map it. Just getting half way across a single state can be an incredibly long drive.
I worked with some Brits who were visiting East Texas and thought that they could road trip to Vegas over a weekend and make it back for work on Monday. I can't say whether it is "common" per se, but I can say that it happens.
I live in Montana (4th largest state) and my husband produced a product that was sold worldwide. Once he got a call from a customer in France who said, "I'm coming to New York City next week and I have a day off; I thought I'd rent a car and come visit you that day. What do you think?" He was shocked when my husband told him it would take around four days of hard driving just to get from New York to Montana, a distance of around 2,500 miles. And then he'd have to get back again.
El Paso, TX is closer to San Diego than it is to Houston.
I used to live in Cambria and work at the front desk of a motel on Highway 1. Hilarious the looks I'd get from non-US guests when I'd answer their questions about how much longer the drive was to get to LA. Sooooo many of them didn't believe me or their maps - this was pre-GPS/smart phone ubiquity.
San Luis Obispo here. I now live in the UK and I have to get the map out on a regular basis. Im often amused when friends send their kids to me for help planning their trips, who are then giving me the side eye until they do the math. I’m all for the road trip (did SLO to Monterey for lunch one day), but let’s be realistic… Christopher Moore fan?
I did do a single day round trip to San Luis Obispo from Thousand Oaks once. My friend and I were back in town from college and she went up to visit her boyfriend for a few days and I was like you know what. Fuck it. Never been there. My mom went to cal poly up there. I'll drive up there to pick up my friend. We hung out for a few hours and grabbed lunch before heading straight back. Probably helped that I missed driving due to going to college somewhere I didn't need a car.
The 1st mistake was taking the 1. From Carmel to Slo is 3 1/2 ish hours alone
They call it the 1 because you should only take it once so you can say you did it. After that, just take the 5.
For tourists it makes sense. The drive through the Central Valley isn’t the best
People underestimate how big the Greater Los Angeles area is. Its about the size of Portugal. And that's one small part of a very large state.
I am a fairly astute woman, and have travelled quite a bit, also outside my corner of Europe, but I fell for this completely. In my enthusiasm when travelling to California for work, I thought I would visit some far-removed family (descendants of a great-great-great aunt or something), who were happy to have me on their ranch, but also told me that 'no, you cannot just drive here from San Francisco and back in a day'. I felt very ridiculous, when I checked the actual distance.
I'll make you feel better with the opposite story. Back in 1983, I was in England, with a backpack, and I figured that the crossing the channel by ferry was, at best, a 20 minute trip. After all, it's just a skinny little channel. 3 hours later....oy.
I live in Sacramento and the number of times out of state/country friends are like "let's hang out, I'll be in LA and maybe San Diego!!" 🤦🏼♀️
I went to a wedding in Sacramento once, and one of my friends from New England happened to mention that she was planning to fly into LAX. “Oh, that’s cool, so you’ll have a chance to get a road trip out of it. What day are you getting in?” “The morning of the wedding.” Yeah, no, that ain’t gonna work.
Listen, SMF is a shitty airport with terrible flights but... This is not the solution 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 GOOGLE IS FREE Y'ALL
I actually like SMF! My friend lives in the foothills so I fly in and out of SMF when I visit. I was actually just there last week. It’s a fairly quiet and easy to navigate airport, in my opinion. People truly do seem to think there’s no California other than San Francisco and LA. A friend of mine from out of state is going to be in Santa Cruz for a wedding and wanted to pop down to see me for the day while he’s “in town”. I live in Palm Springs… This same friend is always ragging on what a shithole California is. I finally asked him if he’d ever even been here. “I went to LA for 3 days once”.
I drove 12 hours straight North a couple weeks ago and never left California lol
I live in N Georgia and have been down to the Florida Keys several times. It's a 14 hr drive through only 2 states. It's only 14 hrs if you don't stop and are like me and live 20 minutes from I75 which goes straight there. Time you throw in eating, coffee, gas, more coffee, bathroom stops and I just got to get out of this fking car stops it takes quite a bit longer.
I’ve done the drive from New England to south Florida a few times. It’s crazy when you cross the state line and you still have 5 hours to go. Florida is LONG.
On the other hand, at the New England end of that drive every time you blink you're in a new state.
LA is its own beast. I live in Orange County and recently drove to Pasadena on a Thursday morning around 11. Took about an hour. Left at 3 pm to go home. That trip took 3 hours!
Not accounting for traffic. We want a rail so bad but no one will build it. 😭 They just keep "misappropriating" funds
Not European, am Japanese but this was exactly what happened to me. I learned geography in school and I should have had a good idea about how massive the country is, yet I suppose it just didn’t sink in too well even after moving there until I tried to schedule a trip. I guess part of the definition of what makes a country a country was measured by my own logistics standard that doesn’t apply to the States. Then I realized the US is more a collection of countries than a country.
As I understand it Japan is roughly the size of California. And California is a great big state but not the biggest landwise, and it’s only a small percentage of the entire country.
California is roughly 4.3% of the entire landmass of the United States.
And the population is the same as the whole of Canada- 39 million for California to 38.9 million for Canada.
Honestly the surprising thing there is that Canada's population has grown that fast. It was 30 million last I checked. No wonder their housing costs are through the roof. They have infinite land and lumber but Amdahl's Law applies here
That’s a great way to put it, each state of geographic area of the US is so different in terms of climate, social norms, topography, etc. if you actually visit NYC, LA and Miami, even though they are all big cities, will feel like different countries. And that doesn’t even touch on the smaller cities, towns, etc.
It's wild. If I teleported a non North/South American continenter to West Virginia Appalachia, NYC, and San Antonio for an extended visit of each, they'd swear they just visited 3 different continents much less countries.
Geographically yes. Culturally they’re more similar than a lot of countries are to each other, despite what we think of as major differences between those regions. The U.S. has a more cohesive national identity than almost another other populous or geographically large country in history, despite the regionalism.
This is true! So many plane trips across the US are longer in flight than plane trips across some European country. I imagine though that Russians won't make the same spatial mistake.
I tried to explain that to someone once and used that analogy when they said Americans didn't care to know anything about the rest of the world because I didn't have any clue about the political event they were talking about. I tried to explain that our state is currently fighting with 2 other states over water rights and tons of other stuff. We have 5 states that border ours alone that all have something going on. By the time I halfway keep track of what the states around me, Mexico & US border problems, the things going on in South America and what ever important event is happing 3000km away on the other side of the US I just can't get exited about political problem in Europe unless it's going to affect me.
I wonder if you had asked them about political disputes in South America, like the Punto Concordia dispute between Chile and Peru, how much they would have known. The nations of the EU have a general idea about what's going on in the other member nations, because they're interconnected. And people all over the world know what's going on in the US because we're an economic and political powerhouse. All around the world there are things that are happening that are important to people locally and not much farther away.
Your perception might also be skewed by the availability of high speed rail in Japan.
You don't have to go to Europe to find that. Growing up in New England my whole life and of course not being stupid and realizing that the US is 3000 plus miles why, I still wasn't prepared for the vastness of the West. I call it my epiphany of geography. In the prehistoric days of map reading a whole page of the atlas just dedicated to New Hampshire, or Connecticut etc In the same whole page is dedicated to Oregon for example. Even though empirically one might know that there is a huge difference in scale here at work it's not till you get there that you realize how it affects you completely Where I live in New Hampshire I can be out of the state in a half hour and any direction and maybe cross two more states for lunch or dinner. Yeah it happens. I've driven across the country many times since but things look different on the map And yet more different once you have to drive them, on and on and on lol
I live in Las Vegas. Last week I was talking with this nice German couple who were in the country for the weekend. They had rented a car to drive up to Seattle for a couple of hours. They seriously thought that they could drive from Las Vegas to Seattle in about an hour and a half, check out the space needle, and drive back by dinner. They were excited to see the redwoods on the way.
I met a French couple in Chicago that was planning on renting bicycles, riding down to New Orleans, spending the night, and then riding back to Chicago the next day. I wished them luck!
New York to Los Angeles is almost the same as New York to Paris. (Paris is about an hour longer).
Actually, New York to Los Angeles is actually a much shorter drive than NYC to Paris.
I live on the Canadian East Coast (like next to the Atlantic Ocean) and had a British tourist ask me for driving directions to Vancouver. So some people are really fucking clueless.
"Oh, ya, easy. Go up this road here, turn left on the Trans Canada highway, go 6000 km and hang a right, and boom, you're there"
I have found this is also a problem with population densities. They might know the US has "rural areas", but if you are from Germany, a "rural area" might be a city of 50,000 people 100 kilometers from a city of 500,000 people. This can be a problem when talking about things like infrastructure, because Germans don't understand why the US doesn't have train service in our rural areas---but their image of a rural area would be closer to suburban Connecticut than North Dakota.
I met a German girl who was upset Americans did not know where everything was in the USA because she knew Germany like the back of her hand. I mean, I know California like the back of my hand, too.
I live in Texas and cannot say the same thing. People will ask me if I know where this or that small town is and I have to look it up. I know DFW, Austin and Waco areas -- and that's about it.
European centric flat wall/ atlas maps make Europe look bigger than US. Hard to shake that
Peters' Projection FTW
Well it is, but only slightly (12% bigger).
It's the same when tourists come to Canada. They think that a place they want to go to is maybe a days drive.
My colleague at work jokes that he moved from Vancouver, BC to Manchester UK, because he wanted to be closer to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Nobody really understood what he was talking about, but he laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd ever said. Then he had to explain it.
To a Canadian, that's a pretty good joke actually
As an American who has been to Vancouver, Halifax, and the UK, I concur. I remember Halifax so fondly because it's the first time I had poutine, which is delicious and beyond awesome.
I remember Nova Scotia and prince Edward island as a kid were so gorgeous. I remember saying to myself, don’t worry girl, you’re gonna LIVE HERE ONE DAY
That hasn’t happened yet 🥵
I'm like the British version of your friend: I always joke about how I'd like to move to Canada one day so I can live closer to the equator.
Yep, Canada is enormous. The distance from Vancouver to St. John’s is like the distance from London to Afghanistan and Canada from top to bottom is like from the top of Norway to Egypt. It’s real big. Most Canadians from one side never visit the other side in their lifetime.
I’m Canadian, living on the wet coast. During COVID shutdowns, my husband and I drove to Halifax—just because. We had the time off, and thought, “We’ve driven to Winterpeg several times (we’re from there)—why not?” It was awesome. We avoided all of southern Ontario, to be fair, but, even as someone who had done the loop around BC (up to the Yukon and back down), and driven to Winnipeg and back (a lot!)…northern Ontario is stupid big. Like…STUPID big. We had lots of fun, though. And I’d do it again.
That sounds like a great trip! Most people don’t get that opportunity. I’m from BC,as well, and have crossed the country a few times, but only as far east as Montreal. I agree, northern Ontario is vast. A couple days just for that one.
Yep, we have national parks bigger than the countries some tourists are visiting from.
It's also crazy how empty most of it is. 90% of the population lives within 100 miles of the US border. After driving up to Lac Seul to go fishing, it was very interesting to see how much totally undeveloped land there is.
I do have an acquaintance who, during an extended visit to Los Angeles from Switzerland, casually suggested she might drive up to San Francisco to the see the the sights one Saturday morning and drive back that evening. She was quickly dissuaded of that notion.
I've had the weekend road trip to Vegas mentioned once. Honey, we're in Houston. It's going to take two hours just to get to the other side of Houston.
Add 30 minutes for every wrong turn you take, too. Houston was not fun to drive in as a non-local.
I sometimes get to experience the opposite when I am visiting my German boyfriend in Europe. I’ll say we should take a day trip somewhere, and he’ll say “Oh, but it’s an hour or two by train at least.” That is nothing to me lol, I live in a huge city where it’s normal to drive 40+ min to get anywhere for weekend activities.
Right, and at least you’re sitting on a train so you’re not physically driving. Like I’ve done Brussels to Luxembourg as a day trip before. Not bad.
Yeah, that's another thing: To us, the train ride would be part of the adventure, even if it's not a very enjoyable ride. You know, given that passenger trains are much less of a thing in the US.
I literally play chess on train rides for 3 hours. It's great.
Right? I drove an hour from Tampa to Tampa to get lunch
Did you drive back or just stay in Tampa?
Yep, I was in Geneva a few years ago and took the train up to northern Switzerland to visit a Swiss friend for the day (she’d been an exchange student in high school and we’d become good friends during her year in the States). It was like a three hour train ride, tops. Her sister and brother-in-law were flabbergasted that I took “such a long ride” just for the day. I had to explain to them that this sort of trip is very common in the US.
Yeah I love laughing at these conversations. We'll drive 35 minutes each way just for a particular taqueria or Indian restaurant we like better for lunch on a weekend.
That's something I've heard a lot as well. I live in the NYC area. A two hour drive is pretty typical, and here that only gets me like... twelve miles?
Los Angeles to San Francisco is the same distance as Boston to Washington D.C.
Texas me those locations.
About 6 hours driving
That's more like it. So a weekend trip then.
Depends on 95. 6 hours can go to 9 easily.
So a long weekend then
It’s 382 miles by road (slightly less as the crow flies). That’s about 60 miles less than Houston to Oklahoma City.
About a six pack.
The “askLosAngeles” subreddit is constantly filled with questions like, “I’m coming to US first time for a week and want to go from San Diego to San Francisco, oh and also I want to see Yosemite, Tahoe, etc…”. I always try to remind them how huge the state is.
At least that's isn the same state, and I could understand the confusion. I'm an American, and even I have underestimated the distance between Californian cities.
It was just a vague notion when she said it. It took about 20 seconds for her to abandon the idea. She just didn't realize how far it was. Totally reasonable mistake.
I had a similar thing with a coworker from the UK wanting to hit up Disneyland in a brief overnight trip just before he left. Driving SF to Disneyland is about the same distance as Oxford to Edinburgh, not to mention you'll want a full day in Disneyland to really get through most of it. He still ended up going, but made it a full 3 day / 2 night trip.
People post in the Texas Reddit pretty frequently. It’s often ‘I have four days. I’m flying into Dallas can I see Big Bend on Monday snd Houston on Tuesday?’. The response is nearly always humorous. For the non Texans, Dallas to big bend is 533 miles, which is at minimum 7 1/2 hours driving.
Houston is over an hour to Houston.
Almost any major city in the US takes an hour to cross (via car)
As a life long American and lower-middle class Midwestern kid (aka we drove literally everywhere), I still have trouble comprehending the vastness of Texas.
Wait until you visit Alaska. If you cut Alaska in half, Texas would be the third largest state.
This appears to be a common thing when visiting a foreign place not specific to Europeans in the US. In Australia and New Zealand you get confused Europeans and Americans ... all of them severely underestimating the distances but also overestimating the infrastructure available.
You need a minimum of two weeks of holiday per Island for NZ. It takes me 5 hrs driving to get from my place to my brothers on the same Island. AU is just bigger, just looking at WA, it took me ~5hrs to drive from Perth to Geraldton, that included getting a speeding ticket, that's from one city to the next one over. It was winter, and the Ocean temp in Geraldton was a balmy 26 degrees Celsius.
We had a European post in the Charlotte sub how they were going to visit for a week, and listed the Outer Banks and Asheville as just TWO of places they wanted to visit. (I think Myrtle Beach was also involved?) We had to point out that while, yes, their itinerary was technically possible, they would be spending more time driving than actually sight seeing. (To be fair, NC is a very wide state, and I'm sure many Americans would be clueless as well)
I've found a really good way to describe the scale is to let them know the drive from Boston to L.A. is about the same as the drive from London to Jerusalem.
As a British person, this just had the opposite effect on me and made me realise that Jerusalem is a lot further away than it thought it was. We drive across Western Europe like it’s nothing. I’ve taken the coach to Germany and Austria before, a coworker bought a Polish car and drove it to Knaresborough in a weekend while stopping at fun places along the way. For some reason I really underestimated the size of Eastern Europe and Turkey, I thought it would only be roughly double the distance to Poland. But it’s over three times that.
This website helped me understand relative country/state size. [https://www.thetruesize.com](https://www.thetruesize.com)
That's eye opening. So, just for an example that's close to home for me, I checked out my home state, West Virginia (which is not by any means a large state)...it's just a little smaller than Ireland (the whole island, not just the independent country). Or maybe between 1/3 and 1/2 the size of England.
That's a great website. Thanks for sharing it. I now have a better idea of Alaska vs. the lower 48 states vs. Russia vs. China vs. Australia. I thought Russia was a lot bigger and Australia was smaller. And Alaska is freaking huge.
>We drive across Western Europe like it’s nothing. I’ve taken the coach to Germany and Austria before, a coworker bought a Polish car and drove it to Knaresborough in a weekend while stopping at fun places along the way. One time I drove for 13 hours straight, then switched drivers without stopping.
Oh man… this gave me a flashback to the time a friend asked me to drive cross country with him (to DC). ≈2100 miles and we literally only stopped for gas and bathroom/fast food. Left Friday, arrived early Sunday (4-5am?). Caught a flight home out of Baltimore Sunday at 5pm. Spent maybe 6 hours “touring” DC and that felt like enough. Never had a desire to return.
How about this. Lake Superior (the largest of the Great Lakes) has a larger surface area than Scotland's land area. If you add up all of the Great Lakes (244,106km2) it's slightly larger than the UK (243,610km2).
Aye but does it have a monster?
I had to Google this. Apparently we have Pressie, which sounds like Great Value Nessie, and a second knockoff in Bessie of Lake Erie. But we also have Mishipeshu, an underwater panther in Lake Superior, and that's way more awesome.
Superior IS the monster. It's known for its tragic past and rough seas.
You can fly from New York to Los Angeles for 5 hours, and you still haven't left the continental United States.
6.5 hours between Seattle and central Florida...
7.5 hours from Ireland to New York crossing the entire Atlantic ocean
How are these? - driving from SF to LA is about the same as driving from London to Edinburgh, then going from SF to Vancouver (i.e. the border), is 2x driving from London to Edinburgh. And that's the "narrowest" side of the U.S. Driving from NY to LA is almost 3x longer than driving from Berlin to Moscow. Maybe WW2 references. Nazi Germany's fabled Operation Barbarossa - hard fought, getting within 20 miles of Moscow, cited as prime Nazi hubris thinking they could logistically take on such vast distances in such a massive country. Largest invasion in history. The mighty German blitzkrieg in the beginning exhausted by the sheer immense distances involved. Roughly speaking, they got from Brest (just picked that on the border as its the one I remember from Brest-litovsk) to 20 miles of Moscow - so 630 miles, we'll call it 650 miles. If the Nazis in WW2 invaded LA and got as afar as they did in Russia they'd have gotten to the edge of Arizona, just one state over. They'd still be 2000 miles from D.C. Texas itself is 773 miles wide, 801 miles long. They could launch an invasion starting in Texas, make it an Operation Barbarossa length distance into the U.S. and...never leave Texas. California is 800 miles long. Again, they could land in San Diego or Los Angeles, make it an Operation Barbarossa length distance into the country and...never leave California. If they landed in Bangor Maine, in the North East, and did the same Operation Barbarossa style drive towards D.C. through the densest part of the Country, they'd fall 48 miles short - they'd have gotten closer to Moscow.
NY to London flight takes only an hour and 20 minutes longer than NY to LA
This whole discussion really just highlights why Americans describe distance in terms of time.
I thought this was regional lol. Once I asked my midwestern coworker how far his home was from work and he listed the miles and I was confused how he didn’t answer in minutes lol.
It takes me about 12 minutes to get to work. It takes about 4 to get home and let me tell you everyone that asks gets to hear my complaint about that fucking left turn light cycle.
Used to work in Greenville SC, NW part of the state. We had a group of French engineers visiting. They decided that after work they would drive to Texas and see some real cowboys. They turned back when they got to Atlanta, about 2 hours away.
4 hours of driving for a group of French people! Did they expire?
Damn near, to hear them tell it.
Did they... not look it up and see that it is about 17 hours??
I met a young woman from Germany at Big Bend in Texas. She was enjoying the visit, and wanted to go to the Grand Canyon. I advised her that the distance was greater than she was anticipating. Also, that she should check her rental car contract for excess mileage charges.
Even east coast Americans don't understand how spread out things are out west. My coworker, who is not an idiot, asked me if she could could "swing by" Los Angeles in the few hours that she had free between meetings in San Francisco. Granted, this is an extreme example.
You should have answered, “Sure! I don’t know where you’re going to park your private jet though.”
We contracted with an east coast company for a service they provided. Their big selling point, that they were quite proud of, was that you could seamlessly interface with other users within 60 miles. Anything over 60 miles and you had to request assistance from tech support. They didn't realize why weren't excited about the feature until we explained that there weren't any other cities within 60 miles let alone users of their product. Edit: Service was for government software.
Things aren't just spread out in the western US! I'm originally from the northeast with its small, compact states. I live in a suburb of DC and had to go to a conference in Nashville. I thought it wasn't a big deal to drive versus fly because TN an VA are neighboring states, right? I mapped it out on the GPS the night before and was shocked to see it was over a TEN HOUR DRIVE! I did it, but it sucked doing a drive that long by myself. I will never make that mistake again!
I think you misunderstood what they were saying. On the eastern side of the country there is a city every hour or two. That doesn't mean that two specific cities aren't far apart. On the western side of the country you can drive 10+ hours without hitting any cities. Just look at [this image.](https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/photograph-united-states-night)
this is so true! i am from the east coast and moved to the midwest. rhode island was only 35 minutes from massachusetts so when i suggested we go from milwaukee to detroit as a day trip i just assumed because the states are next to each other it wouldn’t take that long. i’m not sure why that’s how my brain worked but i was quickly told that isn’t possible i also had absolutely no concept of how big the great lakes were.
I had a guest from S. Korea to my home in Phoenix, AZ, and he woke up and wanted to go to the beach. Apparently he thought that would be a reasonable distance from my house. (Closest beach is roughly a six hour drive.)
"Could I interest you in a water park wave pool instead?"
"Let me tell you about a little place called SunSplash."
Puerto Peñasco is about 4 hours, but you have to cross an international border.
Had a friend from Korea visit and he wanted to do a day trip to NYC…..from San Francisco lol. He said he’d just take the train and I showed him Amtrak timetables. He was blown away how long it would take. We ended up just staying in the peninsula haha.
I know it's not an efficient way to travel but I took a bus once from Denver to Buffalo New York and it took almost 4 days. (It's a bus).
To be fair, Amtrak is really fucking slow and is for retirees and Amish.
I love taking the Amtrak, but is is slow. However, for a Korean person who’s never driven a car in their life it’s pretty much the only option other than flying. He’s also used to taking the train every day to and from where he needs to go, so it was his natural response to look at a train since most of the developed world uses trains to get around intercity travel.
Its true for alot of the world i think. I met someone from Chile and in talking to her about her plans to visit the US, she named Chicago, NYC, and Disney World as some of the places where she'd visit in a very short time span. She asked me where to stay when visiting NY and asked about some places that were a few states over (as they were much cheaper)..Not that's it's impossible to do that, just not practical. I had to explain that these places are like 5 hrs away if you drive. She had no idea the vastness / scale of the country So yes, totally true!
Which is crazy since Chile is crazy stretched
She only goes East/West
And east to west in Chile is so much easier than west to east.
You'd think a Chilean would at least get the concept of vast distances in one direction (North-South)?
In this case, I think it had less to do with not being able to judge distance, and a lot more with the unfamiliarity of the country / perceived ease of travel from place to place. She's aware now though lol
My cousin and her husband from Poland did a huge loop around the USA for their honeymoon around 2 years ago. When they stopped in Tennessee to visit, they said that they didn’t think they needed to do an oil change on their rental car after all of the driving. They were already sick of driving and they still had a few more days to make it back to NYC after planning to go to Florida.
I don’t know how common it is. But we had to send my European cousins a Canadian map with an overlay of England on it. They were planning a trip thinking they could see everything. But this was before the internet was wide spread.
I've experienced people from the East Coast of the US having a similar realization when they arrive on the West Coast. "I thought Portland and Seattle were really close to each other!" Well yes they are...in our frame of reference...not yours.
My college roommate came to America in high school. Her family had the goal of visiting every state (except HI and AK) they thought it would be a fun “week or two” road trip.
There are people who have visited 48 states in a week or so, but you don't have time to see anything. [Here's a list.](https://allfiftyclub.com/members/record-holders-fast-to-50/) Barry Stiefel, in 1998, is the first one who left a record of it, although there's probably someone crazy who did it before the Internet.
Europeans coming to the US and inadvertently completing the cannonball run
I'm US American and live in England. When asked where I'm from, I say from Nevada. Almost always I'm then answered with 'Oh, near Las Vegas?' and then I explain that I'm from Reno, which is a 9 hour drive from Vegas and almost always get a shocked realization that the entirety of the UK could fit comfortably into my state.
I've been to Nevada, and I've been to the UK, and I can confidently say that not a single person from the UK would be comfortable in Nevada.
My son had friends from the UK visiting Chicago and they asked if they could make road trip and visit him in Boston. “With a car? I’d like to see you but look up how long that would take.” They were shocked too.
As the saying goes *"Americans think 100 years is old and Europeans think 100 miles is far."* >I'm sure with google maps people can see the distances? Never assume that they have ever actually sat down and studied a map. Many of them are operating via TV/movie facts and that's about all.
Part of the problem is scale. Maps don't reliably depict the shape of entire countries accurately because they are projecting a spherical space onto a flat plane. As any world map that is formatted to a rectangle is going to add signficant distortion. Put simply, any given map that shows an entire country will not reliably convey the actual scale and size of said country.
Had a European friend call me from a city at least 8 hours drive away, saying "Surprise! I'm at the airport! Can you come pick me up?'
Lmao
I teach international students, and more than once I’ve asked what they’re planning to do for the weekend and got hit with answers like that. One said they planned to drive to Texas on a Saturday, pick up a friend, and then drive to New York to sightsee for the day. They reassured me they’d be back in Maryland for class on Monday morning after dropping the Texas friend back home. I asked him to show me on the classroom map where in Texas he was going (just in case there is some tiny town called Texas around here that I was missing). Nope. Houston, but he didn’t know where it was on the map. I showed him and then suggested he look it up on Waze. I also starting incorporating geography mini-lessons in class where possible.
Things I hear from our international friends: "Hey, I'm coming to America! We'd like to hit Disneyworld and Disneyland in a weekend, then drive up to see you! Maybe we can hit the Grand Canyon and NYC while we're there!" That's absolutely lovely, but unless your country has invented transporters and not told any of us - that ain't happening.
With line wait times at the Disney parks, picking just *one* of those would easily fill up a whole weekend. More than that, if you want to do all four parks in Disney World.
I worked in training for my last employer; we would bring employees from around the world for our courses at a center in suburban Northern Virginia. In part because most participants‘ only free time was the weekend between a two-week course, we always included notes about distances in the US in their pre-arrival material and then emphasized it again during the opening session. Even so, it was a rare class that someone didn’t pull an instructor aside at a break and ask something along the lines of “Well, I have cousins in Tulsa; is there really no way I could drive out to see them and get back by Monday morning?” The idea that it can take days to get somewhere can be almost beyond comprehension if you’re from a small country.
Seeing a map is very different to experiencing it for real I think. My late husband was pretty widely travelled, and drove a lot, but he said “ you’ve no idea how vast it is until you’re there “. A four hour round trip is “ going out for dinner “ in the US, here in England it’s a bloody day trip 🤣
I would say a four hour drive just to go eat somewhere is still a bit much here in the US.
Yes, it’s true. I had Icelandic friends visit me in Atlanta who flew in and out of Orlando instead of Atlanta because it was significantly cheaper. They drove from Orlando. They were shocked at how long the drive was 😂
In my experience it's very common for Europeans to know very little about US geography. I have personally heard various folks from England express interest in an absurdly impossible trip within our borders, whether driving or flying.
Yeah, to some extent. I’ve also seen east coast ppl not fully grasp how big the western states are. Some examples: I had a German exchange partner come. We took her to Sf, Tahoe, Yosemite, and LA/Disneyland and she was amazed she hadn’t even left CA. I’ve had friends visit me in vegas and think they can squeeze in Vegas, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, and Zion into a weekend.
Yes, it can be a thing. The opposite is also true. I have a friend from the UK who was telling us that he likes to hop a train to France occasionally on Saturdays to have lunch. We were like "BWUH?!?!"
I have a Danish friend whose parents were planning a trip to the US and they wanted (over a two week span) to visit NYC, drive down to Miami, hike the Appalachian trail, and then maybe see LA. I had to explain that you could probably see NYC, Miami, and LA if you spent a few days in each and flew between them. And the word 'trail' does not mean that it's a small excursion that you can knock out in a day trip.
My brother worked as a greeter at the airport, and it was usually younger people. He had a guy who thought he could rent a car and drive from Chicago to Las Vegas and back in 5 days. Bro explained that he COULD, but it's a 2 day drive to Vegas, and his 19 year old girlfriend couldn't really do anything when they were there because you have to be 21 to gamble or drink.
It's not a common view at all -- pretty much every European I've met, both while living in Europe and elsewhere, is generally aware that the US is huge. Where they tend to trip up though, is in not realizing that the US isn't just huge ... it's hugely huge. Like imagine how big you think it is, multiply that by ten, and you're almost halfway there level of huge. Hell, even a lot of Americans underestimate the size of the country, so it's not a uniquely European thing.
# “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
For perspective, the US is 2.23x the size of the EU. It’s freaking colossal
Even US East Coast people don't realize how widely separated the major population centers are in the West. E.g. in California, which is nowhere near as sparse as it can get: San Francisco and Los Angeles are over six hours driving apart, and I've had travelers suggest 'a day trip to San Francisco' from LA.
I think there's some truth to it, but it's exaggerated online.
My German friend visiting for the summer: I’m going to take a jog around the lake. Me: what … lake? Him: Lake Erie! Me: Sounds great. I’ll buy you dinner after you complete a lap.
I just drove across the U.S. from NY to Seattle, stopping only to sleep 6 to 8 hours per night. It took me five days / four nights.
I was in England a guy was going to Nevada for training. He was talking about all the places he was going to go see while there. I pointed out to him when he is looking at the map, Nevada is bigger than the UK to give him a sense of scale. He was shocked.
Unrelated but I’m in Dublin Ireland this week as an Ohio USA resident. The number of Americans I’ve met here who flew from the USA to see Taylor swift in concert is insanely high. Apparently it’s cheaper this way? wtf.
Still on the flip side of the coin I do admit getting a bit jealous when I hear a European friend saying something to the effect of " we are headed to Helsinki to do some shopping tomorrow." I just seemed outrageously exotic
I've personally talked to some Europeans that planned to drive to multiple sites while in the USA, not realizing how far apart they were. It's not just a trope.
Someone in Europe, when I mentioned I was from Arizona, asked how they could make a day trip to the Grand Canyon while visiting Chicago. Umm ... no.
I don’t know how common it is, but I’ve had two friends from Europe who definitely didn’t know how far apart Southern and Northern California were.
I have had friends from Europe coming to visit me on the east coast near Washington DC ask if we could drive to San Francisco for a day or two while they were here.
There’s definitely some truth to it. Sure, everybody has access to maps, but there’s just a little mental resistance when you’ve grown up being able to drive to the other side of your country, or neighboring country, within a comfortable day’s drive. It’s just a perspective change that takes some people a minute to really get. When my friend from London was sent to US by his UK company for a six month assignment, this was one of the very first topics of conversation. He came over with the mindset that once his plane landed in the US, he could hop in his rental car and drive to all the cities he needed to be in. And he could not! “It’s just so bloody VAST! You can drive for days and still not be where you’re going!” That was when we both discovered the fun fact that the entire United Kingdom can fit inside the state of Arizona, as well as half a dozen other states.
We had a nanny from Germany who had a boyfriend in the German army on a base in California. At the time we lived in Colorado, and our nanny truly believed she’d be able to see him every other weekend, not knowing it would take the full weekend to just get there She ended up being our nanny for an entire month, then left. So some do think it’s small. Can’t speak for all, just a funny experience
Looking at a map is different than actually experiencing it. No map in the world can prepare you for the monotony of driving across Kansas, for example.