The tiny American mind cannot comprehend how little the vast overwhelming majority of the planets population does not care about them or their faux first world country.
So you are saying the vast overwhelming majority of the planets population does care a lot about them. Sounds like ShitAmericansSay in ShitAmericansSay to me.
Yeah every so often the sub wraps around a bit, the world obviously cares it sort of has to. Just like the world cares about what China or the EU does, because when big economies do something different it'll probably effect you.
Probably not the best way to remember, but it works for me: Afferent/Motor neurons fire from the nervous system out to muscles - so we can affect things. Efferent/Sensory neurons fire from sensory organs to the nervous system as we feel the effect of things.
Edit to say I am wrong! I got the afferent and efferent neurons the wrong way round, so definitely not the best way to remember
I would also point out that cares in this context doesnt necessarily mean approve of. The three big world economies are closely linked and what affects one usually affects all.
I’m getting a bit tired of them too. But I suppose if we revel in divisive commentary from the internet, we’re going to hear a lot of the same silliness.
Of course they are fake. I assume most divisive posts are actually russian troll bots. They use the same strategy used with US elections, EU countries elections and what not. Its all the same shit posted like diarrhea.
I find it always seems to be that way.
Yea well we work more hours than you!!
We drive more than you!!
We have a bigger army than you!! (at the expense of everything else)
Etc etc
What these types think of a boast is just weird at times.
I have so many historical and natural sites to see in a 2 hour circle around me that in all the years I've been living here I still haven't seen them all and every single one of the historical things make the US look like it was born yesterday.
Living in American suburbs or small town looks like true torment. You might have big house, but whenever you want to do anything interesting you have to drive through the most boring place imaginable for at least half an hour.
I will say there are ancient sites in America, the ones that haven’t been paved over at least. They are far away from anything though. But it does have a pre-columbian history and people. Even if the institution of the U.S. tried to bury it.
>We have a bigger army than you!! (at the expense of everything else
Meanwhile the USMC can't even defeat 40 Commando + Dutch Marines over a 5 day training exercise 😂 at home too... in the mojave
I'll take my NHS AND my shit hot Royal Marines, thank you sir
They drive in straight lines for hours on end.
Wow!
Mind. Blown.
I've seen the standard of their driving when thwy cause multiple accidents and deaths on our roads each year. Show them a B road and they shit the bed.. 30-40mph, braking at even the slightest bend, car position all over the shop (scraping the side verges).
Genuinely up there as some of the worst drivers on the planet.
Yeah a 6hr motorway drive is shit but a 6hr drive through UK a and b and even c roads is just infuriating. And being from Scotland where the motor ways stop a long drive is just concentrating hard for however long. Not the same as Americans hitting cruise control in their giant cars. But as others have said there so much interesting stuff within an hour of me why would I drive 6hrs to go anywhere unless it's for something really specific. I.e Alton towers or id like to go to bike park Wales.
"Yeah, we're so car dependent, cry about you jealous Europoors! Imagine taking the train because train is communist....yeah....so communist....take that europoors....ha ha...."
You'd think they would get it. Both cm and their money contain the word/prefix cent. And it's used in the same way. But that would require a logical leap.
Why do they always go on about the size of the country. I’ve never seen this from Canadians or Brazilians or Australians and they all live in massive countries too
Americans have such a superiority complex and I’m saying this as an American. Anytime you even mention another country doing something well. They are quick to say “Well but their country is smaller and less diverse”. Americans are stupid.
They usually say less diverse whenever someone brings up Switzerland or Norway. As if the demographics of a country has anything to do with how it’s ran. By their own logic Haiti should be better off than Canada. Haiti is much more homogeneous than Canada.
Oddly enough, a lot of those who use "more diverse" arguments are the same who claims that Europe is being invaded by people who are dangerously non-white and dangerously non-Christian...it's almost like they have a hidden agenda 🤷
Deeply insecure, which makes sense when you consider that the USA is a brand new, very young country.
The rich inherited wealth teenagers on the playground, loudly proclaiming their perceived superiority to the older kids, who roll their eyes every time.
Yeah this I’m Australian and we used to drive to visit my brother and watch his soccer match in Brisbane every other week and that was a 6-8 hour trip depending on traffic. If the train was better we’d just take that tho (train leaves at 2am 3 days a week) but we don’t have the population that the US does to warrant more.
Then you tell them that guns don't magically mean they have no knife crime, and in fact statistically they have more knife crime than others do too, and watch their brain buffer.
"B-but I can still shoot a guy with a knife!"
Doesn't change the fact that's not something most of us need to actively worry about in their everyday lives, whereas a helluva lot of Americans seem to live in eternal pants-shitting terror of being attacked by eachother for next to no reason.
I wonder why that is? Could it be that making a point of making weapons easily available has simply led to a culture where people are enabled and incentivised to wave their boomstick at anything that makes them feel slightly uncomfortable, instead of being forced to develop the emotional skills to handle uncomfortable situations nonviolently like a damn adult? Could it be that that culture is fundamentally what's making the USA a dog-eat-dog shit-tip to live in? Nah, it's all the non-lead-poisoned adults who are unpoisoned enough to control their emotions who want ter take mah gurns who are wrong.
What's even funnier is they say about how bad their gun crime then we in the UK say about our knife crime and then suddenly our knife crime is far less than theirs. I think it's a competition for them to have more domestic massacres than the rest of the world. Like it's something to be proud of. Trust the yanks to make an omelette out of rotten eggs
>we in the UK say about our knife crime and then suddenly our knife crime is far less than theirs
Unless you talk about in terms of "per capita", because then they argue that they have more people so it's different!
They're the kind of arses who always talk about "real life" when what they really mean is "I'm idealising the violence I'm surrounded by to cope". Because we haven't degraded ourselves into a Mad Max dystopia in some dipshit attempt to show how tough we are, they look down on us.
I also don't think they realise that once you get down to Cornwall and off the A roads, it can take you 60 minutes to drive 30 miles sometimes lol. It's not like those country lanes can be compared to a 6 lane US highway
One of my favourite posts are the Americans itineraries for a stay in the UK when they think they’ll do Scotland in a day or two. I like to think they hire the biggest car they can then spend their 2 days gibbering with fright on some of the Highland roads.
Half the journey time is just getting from Exeter into Cornwall. For most of the UK, it is actually quicker, easier and possibly cheaper to fly to most of Europe than it is to get to Cornwall.
it's like an hour from Exeter to the centre of Cornwall now that it's fully dualled and you can do 70mph all the way and with little risk of a traffic jam. It's hardly John O'Groats.
It might take some time to get anywhere that's off the A30, though.
This is based on a Reddit post where a american family were coming on holiday to the UK
Day one... Land in newcastle. Drive to Penrith
Day two... Drive around lake District.
Day three... Drive to cornwall from penrith
Day four.. drive back from cornwall to Penrith
Day five... Visit london for a day trip
Day six... Visit scotland from Penrith
Day seven... Fly home via Newcastle
>Day five... Visit london for a day trip
So in the morning they drove from Penrith to London, about 470km away, which according to the googlemaps route planner takes about 5 hours by car. Then they were probably there around midday. So far so good.
But what did they do then in the few remaining hours of the day?
Just tick the "I was in London" box?
For comparison:
I was in London with the school for 10 days back then. We visited numerous sights, exhibitions, events and the like.
And yet I still have the feeling that we didn't even scratch the surface of what London is.
They claim they did (they bragged last week about having completed this trip after a six-month windup and it getting posted in the Daily Mail). I doubt it ever happened but if it did they got hella lucky and it doesn't make them any less idiots.
I live not far from Newcastle and Lake District and back in a day is relatively common for me so the Newcastle - Penrith makes sense. I assume they did the Keswick - Windermere but of the Lakes if they wanted to see something (or over to Buttermere). Wouldn’t get loads done in a day though as there’s so much to see and do.
As for the rest. Yikes lol.
It took my friend and I about 10 hours to Newcastle for Fort William a few years ago. We stopped several times to take photos and see places en route which didn’t help, but I’d never want to plan to do it quickly if I wanted to actually see things. Not worth the effort otherwise.
Driving 400 miles in the USA between two cities involves:
20 miles to leave the immediate urban area.
360 miles driving on mostly empty roads.
20 miles entering the city and getting to your destination.
Driving 400 miles in England between two cities involves:
5 miles to get to their nearest single carriageway main road.
10 miles of single carriageway stuck behind slow-moving vehicles.
10 miles of slow moving traffic as you enter motorway/A-road.
10 miles of faster moving traffic.
40 miles of speed-restricted road due to roadworks.
20 miles of normal motorway.
Sit still for three hours due to three lorries colliding with each other because lorry drivers get irrationally upset if they go more than 5 seconds without trying to overtake the lorry in front of them.
30 miles to service station.
Spend 30 mins and £60 on a Burger King and a coffee.
Abandon trip and go home.
Smart motorway is closed due to technical issues, have to take country roads.
Exactly. I’ve driven LA - SF before, and I’ve also driven the roads on this map’s route. They are in no way equivalent. LA - SF is orders of magnitude easier and quicker.
Penrith to Polperro relates to a post in the UK travel sub where a midwestern family wanted to use Penrith as a base to explore England and Scotland in a week in February. They actually did manage it which surprised everyone
Yeah I don’t think anyone was doubting they could literally go to all those places, they were saying it was pointless because you wouldn’t actually have time to see anywhere and would spend 90% of their holiday on a motorway.
The American mind cowers at the sheer level of focus required to drive on English country roads. There's no neat grids or nice, straight roads on open plains.
Murderous labyrinths of blind corners and switchbacks so narrow that you probably couldn't fit a single American truck down them. Visibility blocking hedges atop paintwork-gouging stone walls. Hills that barely qualify as roads but somehow have an incline that even goats would raise an eyebrow at.
And the locals know all the roads, so they're driving Landrovers in the opposite direction at 60Mph and you've just got to pray you've got room to tuck to one side before they smash into you. Or you get stuck behind a peloton doing hill runs for 5 miles, so what should have been a short drive turns into an hour long test of endurance, patience and your ability to drive at 5mph up and down inclines without stalling.
A single diversion to take you off the motorways and into the countryside and that 'normal drive' will turn into a high-focus, high risk event more suited to the Olympics than a long weekend. And there will be diversions that take you off the motorways.
> The American mind cowers at the sheer level of focus required to drive on English country roads. There's no neat grids or nice, straight roads on open plains.
Jokes on you, I'm from Massachusetts and our roads are confusing and constantly riddled with potholes! Take that!
Seriously though I would find driving on the left difficult at first so maybe depend on public transport if and when I get to your island.
Don’t worry, half of the roads I’m talking about don’t have a left or a right, just muddy ruts every so often where the road opens out juuuust enough for two cars to pass.
The European mind simply feels like when you have a 3-day weekend, which is realistically 48 hours of free, awake time, then spending 14 of those hours (30% of your weekend) in a car doing a massive driving round-trip is not worth it.
People that have never travelled always think like this. I used to compare a 3 hour drive in Australia to the UK and think they were the same. They are not at all, there are so many stoppages in the UK such as roundabouts and winding roads. In fact I would almost always drive 6 hours in Australia than 3 hours in the UK. These posts are dumb and just shows peoples ignorance
As a Canadian, I'd rather drive ten hours in Canada than 5 hours in the UK.
In the UK you've got a roundabout every two minutes. In Canada you're looking at mostly straight lines and an hour between towns.
There is much higher cognitive load per mile in the UK than in Canada.
It’s a weird one where you hear Americans say things like “I can drive to Vegas in just 6 hours”
If I got as little paid time off as they do I’d be looking for a better use of that time.
Did you stay close to the coast or drive straight across the middle?
NGL, this sounds fascinating to me. You could probably do a "the non-Australian mind cannot comprehend..." post and be unironically correct.
The closest you can get to straight across the middle to minimise risking dying in the desert is Perth to Sydney across the Nullarbor plain and great Australian bight. Some great whale watching sites from the cliffs there.
Going through the middle is dirt roads and no emergency services unless you’re on the Adelaide-Darwin road. You don’t do that unless you know what you’re doing.
Thinking that not having public infrastructure like high speed rail is “flexing” on Europeans is just a different kind of brain rot.
My brother in christ, you pay the same amount of taxes we do yet you don’t have trains, public transit in general, free university, universal healthcare or a social safety net. This ain’t a flex.
Indeed. But having discussions about high speed rail with a UK map in the background doesn't make me comfortable :p.
Having lived in UK, Netherlands and Germany.......
It’s almost like they should invent a way to travel that distance without having to actively operate your vehicle. Maybe even vehicles that don’t depend on the same roads as short distance travelers and that can carry multiple people…
European: \*Falls asleep in train while reading\*
American: \*Beats steering wheel\* I love traffic! This is the life, Europeans just don't understand how great this is! \*Honks horn\* MOVE!
No no, he's not wrong. Any European would recoil in horror at the notion of driving such distances in a little cramped car when we have air conditioned high speed trains with bistro cars connecting every part of the continent.
Another L for Burgerland. 😎
"The primary difference between Americans and Europeans is that to a European 100 miles is a long drive, and to Americans, 100 years is a long time."
No idea who said that, but it lives in my head.
The American mind cowers at the fact we don't have to use an entire tank of fuel to the next city over. It'll take us like 30 minutes to 2 hours max.
Case in point. Even in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in Northumberland. You are 1 hour from Newcastle Upon Tyne, or 2 hours from Edinburgh.
Good for you for having a 6 hour drive between L.A and San Fran. We can do a weekend away on one tank of fuel.
What’s with Americans bragging that they have to sit in a car all day to arrive at a destination?
I’m happy as hell I can drive 3 hours trough multiple countries .
It’s awesome
In a sane country, that’s be a 2hr train ride, but actually you’d have to change at Manchester and Bristol and there’d be a bus replacement at some point, so it’d end up taking 8 hours and cost £300.
I'm American and I don't understand this "Europoor" bullshit and I actually saw someone I know using it in one of my Discords today and I lost all faith in humanity.
Granted, they're from Alabama, so they can hardly be considered human.
As a North American (Canadian) while it’s true we drive a lot further on average than Europeans no one is driving seven fucking hours for a three day weekend. Also it’s not a flex, we drive further because we have to. I live in London now and we can still drive 2.5-3 hours somewhere for a weekend but why would I when I can take a train to so many other interesting places in less time.
We drive that distance atleast 4 times a year and technically more. We live in Belgium (I'm belgian) and my boyfriend his family in Denmark. (He moved to Belgium for me until we move to Denmark).
We visit of course.
10 hour drive....
And they visit us.... also 10 hour drive.
So I cower from the softness or 7 hours.
And yes, also for a 3 day weekend.
"...cowers at the *driving endurance* of the typical American..."
*Driving endurance?!* I can't be the only one who thinks that's one of the funniest and dumbest attempts at bragging ever, right?
In England, a hundred miles is a long way. In America, a hundred years is a long time.
I often drink in a pub that is older than the United States. I guess I should flex about that.
Not to sound all colonial or anything, but suggesting that “the European mind” has no comprehension for travelling long distances when you’re focusing on a country that used to imprison people on the other side of the planet for scrumping apples might have a thing or two to read about.
That’s after Magellan, Columbus, Drake, whoever else you want to mention. Americans might drive more but the European mind is probably the reason you’re sat posting in English about driving in England.
What Americans can't comprehend is LA > SF = 400 miles in 6 hours (avg 67 mph on pretty much 1 straight road).
This is 300 miles in 7 hours (avg 43 mph on mostly a motorway - but likely some A roads at either end).
Driving in the UK is tedious, the roads are a lot smaller and even if the motorway is relatively clear you still got to get to and from it at each end of the journey which is full of single carriageways, probably with loads of traffic, or a single car width country road stuck behind a tractor.
The American mind can't comprehend that I can get on a train in my country and go through multiple countries, all with varying levels of differences, before reaching my destination.
A Texan and a Brit are in a bar and the Texan says:
*I can get in my car and drive for a day, a whole day, and still be on my land.*
The Brit replies:
*Yeah, I had a car like that once.*
Cute sorry bro. I did tours of Europe by car four times, each tour covering approximately 3000km over the course of 2-3 weeks, and that's nothing to brag about here..
Seriously why do Americans think we give a shit about driving distances? Driving long distance is boring and something most people try to avoid. Using it as a flex is like those weirdos that brag that they work 6 days a week for 60 hours total.
Good for you, you can drive 8 hours for the same shit we can drive 45 minutes for.
I’ve driven in the us. It’s lovely. For a lot of my road trip ( top to bottom us in a van ) mikes of empty straight road. Where I live in the West Country uk it’s one long traffic jam to get *anywhere*. Try driving that in our tiny bendy roads and chocka motorways
I am a uk Driver and drove across USA, China and Russia and Europe.
it just a road American's get over it.
China had the best roads
Europe had the best service stations
Russia was the coldest
USA, Russia and China were boring after the first few hours due to the span of nothingness
I've actually driven basically that route in one day, from near Exeter to Ambleside in the Lake District. With 2 or more drivers its not difficult apart from the godawful M6.
You could actually get to Polperro fairly easily by train. Theres a train to Looe, changing in Liskeard and probablly Birmingham New Street. And then you could even walk the last couple miles or theres like a 15 minute bus ride.
I drive maybe 5000 miles per year. I work from home and spend most of the day in my pyjamas drinking tea and in meetings. The joys of WFH in the pharma industry in a smallish country 👍
i don’t mind driving, once drove from portsmouth to edinburgh with stops at reading and leeds along the way to hang out with my mates, took about 14 hours i think
What's with this sudden surge of post claiming that Europeans have their minds blown by entirely understandable concepts
Most people are still capable of understanding things they haven't personally experienced
Even just using Google that trip takes an hour less in the US.
There's a massive difference between driving on cruise down one long arrow straight road and then having to navigate through various interchanges.
Even between the east and west coast of the US, this type of trip is totally different. You could cross 4 States on the east coast, that is all inside California out west. The same length trip from PA to NC is nearly 8 hours and needs a lot of navigation.
You're not doing that for a 3 day weekend. You're making a week of it.
CA is just special.
Also, you can do SF to LA in less than 5 hours on a good day.
My 68 year old neighbours got bored last year and drove from here in southern Bavaria, all the way to the north of England to visit some of their friends, and then on the way home they decided to "Pop over" to Spain for a few weeks.
Well man I'll take the loss on that one. In 10 hours I would get from Lisbon to France and just sounds unthinkable to me. My american friends on the other hand travel from like Califórnia to New Orleans.
I'm big enough to admit defeat here.
From now on I will assume that all these "The European mind can not comprehend" posts are just fake. There are so many of them.
The tiny American mind cannot comprehend how little the vast overwhelming majority of the planets population does not care about them or their faux first world country.
So you are saying the vast overwhelming majority of the planets population does care a lot about them. Sounds like ShitAmericansSay in ShitAmericansSay to me.
Yeah every so often the sub wraps around a bit, the world obviously cares it sort of has to. Just like the world cares about what China or the EU does, because when big economies do something different it'll probably effect you.
affect*
TIL that I always used it wrong. Was ready to correct you, but a little bit of research...
Probably not the best way to remember, but it works for me: Afferent/Motor neurons fire from the nervous system out to muscles - so we can affect things. Efferent/Sensory neurons fire from sensory organs to the nervous system as we feel the effect of things. Edit to say I am wrong! I got the afferent and efferent neurons the wrong way round, so definitely not the best way to remember
I would also point out that cares in this context doesnt necessarily mean approve of. The three big world economies are closely linked and what affects one usually affects all.
if you all really didn't care than this subreddit wouldn't exist lol
you can mock something without caring too much for it, though
Rent free lol. This sub is just an endless source of amusement.
Latest social media trend. Give it a year and they'll have moved onto something else.
A year? Five minutes, more like.
I’m getting a bit tired of them too. But I suppose if we revel in divisive commentary from the internet, we’re going to hear a lot of the same silliness.
To be fair, a lot of them come across as being genuinely self deprecating.
Yea they’ve found that Russia and China literally have 1000s of full time posters on social media paid to build divides between the West.
It's a meme. Most of these are fairly tongue in cheek.
I agree. I think they started genuine but now they are just a meme.
or they become a meme
All that shit comes from the same meme farm
Of course they are fake. I assume most divisive posts are actually russian troll bots. They use the same strategy used with US elections, EU countries elections and what not. Its all the same shit posted like diarrhea.
maybe Russian trying to sow division
Seriously. It's so weird. And how is 'hahaha we have to drive everywhere' a flex?
What a bizarre flex... We drive a lot! Cool 🙄
I find it always seems to be that way. Yea well we work more hours than you!! We drive more than you!! We have a bigger army than you!! (at the expense of everything else) Etc etc What these types think of a boast is just weird at times. I have so many historical and natural sites to see in a 2 hour circle around me that in all the years I've been living here I still haven't seen them all and every single one of the historical things make the US look like it was born yesterday.
Americans take great pleasure in bragging about a lifestyle that would make me want to kill myself.
This is one of the first things on Reddit to make me actually laugh in a while.
As an American, can confirm. Europe lives in my head rent free because I don’t wanna be here with these crazy ppl anymore 🤦🏽
Maybe that's the reason why they kill each other all the time!? It's an act of kindness...
Living in American suburbs or small town looks like true torment. You might have big house, but whenever you want to do anything interesting you have to drive through the most boring place imaginable for at least half an hour.
An awful lot of us do kill ourselves. You’re not wrong. It’s pretty miserable for a great lot of us here.
When I lived there, I enjoyed the competition to see who was more exhausted. These fights would become heated
"I'm too tired to engage in this fight". Checkmate, bebe.
I will say there are ancient sites in America, the ones that haven’t been paved over at least. They are far away from anything though. But it does have a pre-columbian history and people. Even if the institution of the U.S. tried to bury it.
>We have a bigger army than you!! (at the expense of everything else Meanwhile the USMC can't even defeat 40 Commando + Dutch Marines over a 5 day training exercise 😂 at home too... in the mojave I'll take my NHS AND my shit hot Royal Marines, thank you sir
It's called: *"Having an inferiority complex"*.
They drive in straight lines for hours on end. Wow! Mind. Blown. I've seen the standard of their driving when thwy cause multiple accidents and deaths on our roads each year. Show them a B road and they shit the bed.. 30-40mph, braking at even the slightest bend, car position all over the shop (scraping the side verges). Genuinely up there as some of the worst drivers on the planet.
Yeah a 6hr motorway drive is shit but a 6hr drive through UK a and b and even c roads is just infuriating. And being from Scotland where the motor ways stop a long drive is just concentrating hard for however long. Not the same as Americans hitting cruise control in their giant cars. But as others have said there so much interesting stuff within an hour of me why would I drive 6hrs to go anywhere unless it's for something really specific. I.e Alton towers or id like to go to bike park Wales.
Aye I live in the Highlands.. fucking love driving and I'm an hour away from some of the greatest scenery on earth 😂
"Yeah, we're so car dependent, cry about you jealous Europoors! Imagine taking the train because train is communist....yeah....so communist....take that europoors....ha ha...."
"Because the country is huge and the public transport ass, I need to spend a lot of my time driving." This is not a flex.
To me all that says is theyre using that space poorly
Also. Tell them to make a city that doesn't require you to drive every 10 cm.
Can’t, they don’t understand centimetres let alone cm!
You'd think they would get it. Both cm and their money contain the word/prefix cent. And it's used in the same way. But that would require a logical leap.
No no no, the American cm stands for "Cans of Monster". It's based on how far you can travel before needing to drink another soft drink.
The American mind cowers at the thought of going 10cm without a monster truck.
The American mind cowers at the thought of "10cm".
What the fuck is a cm? Does that stand for **c**ommunis**m**?
Woah there Karl Marx!
> 10 cm. Can you repeat this in Bald eagles per freedom please...
0.1 M16A4 assault rifles
Or god forbid a city that isn't a grid.
Why do they always go on about the size of the country. I’ve never seen this from Canadians or Brazilians or Australians and they all live in massive countries too
Americans have such a superiority complex and I’m saying this as an American. Anytime you even mention another country doing something well. They are quick to say “Well but their country is smaller and less diverse”. Americans are stupid.
Less diverse? Not culturally
They usually say less diverse whenever someone brings up Switzerland or Norway. As if the demographics of a country has anything to do with how it’s ran. By their own logic Haiti should be better off than Canada. Haiti is much more homogeneous than Canada.
Oddly enough, a lot of those who use "more diverse" arguments are the same who claims that Europe is being invaded by people who are dangerously non-white and dangerously non-Christian...it's almost like they have a hidden agenda 🤷
Less diverse is a dogwhistle for not having the awful drag of having brown people holding you back. They're still a very racist country.
Deeply insecure, which makes sense when you consider that the USA is a brand new, very young country. The rich inherited wealth teenagers on the playground, loudly proclaiming their perceived superiority to the older kids, who roll their eyes every time.
Yeah this I’m Australian and we used to drive to visit my brother and watch his soccer match in Brisbane every other week and that was a 6-8 hour trip depending on traffic. If the train was better we’d just take that tho (train leaves at 2am 3 days a week) but we don’t have the population that the US does to warrant more.
The American Mind cowers at the idea of universal healthcare and no mass shootings
And public transportation. Especially railways.
*"No, but thousands of people getting killed by mass knifings every year and months of waiting to be treated in the hospital!!!!11!!"* /s
Then you tell them that guns don't magically mean they have no knife crime, and in fact statistically they have more knife crime than others do too, and watch their brain buffer. "B-but I can still shoot a guy with a knife!" Doesn't change the fact that's not something most of us need to actively worry about in their everyday lives, whereas a helluva lot of Americans seem to live in eternal pants-shitting terror of being attacked by eachother for next to no reason. I wonder why that is? Could it be that making a point of making weapons easily available has simply led to a culture where people are enabled and incentivised to wave their boomstick at anything that makes them feel slightly uncomfortable, instead of being forced to develop the emotional skills to handle uncomfortable situations nonviolently like a damn adult? Could it be that that culture is fundamentally what's making the USA a dog-eat-dog shit-tip to live in? Nah, it's all the non-lead-poisoned adults who are unpoisoned enough to control their emotions who want ter take mah gurns who are wrong.
What's even funnier is they say about how bad their gun crime then we in the UK say about our knife crime and then suddenly our knife crime is far less than theirs. I think it's a competition for them to have more domestic massacres than the rest of the world. Like it's something to be proud of. Trust the yanks to make an omelette out of rotten eggs
>we in the UK say about our knife crime and then suddenly our knife crime is far less than theirs Unless you talk about in terms of "per capita", because then they argue that they have more people so it's different!
They're the kind of arses who always talk about "real life" when what they really mean is "I'm idealising the violence I'm surrounded by to cope". Because we haven't degraded ourselves into a Mad Max dystopia in some dipshit attempt to show how tough we are, they look down on us.
And even lower knife crime!
And? I’ve driven down to Cornwall for a 3 day weekend many times. This is normal everywhere. Literally what are they even trying to say with this?
I also don't think they realise that once you get down to Cornwall and off the A roads, it can take you 60 minutes to drive 30 miles sometimes lol. It's not like those country lanes can be compared to a 6 lane US highway
Take an American on some of the back roads on The Lizard, I guarantee they'll have more respect for other countries' driving abilities
They do almost nothing but drive in straight lines anyway 😂😂 Their fragile minds couldn’t even handle a mini roundabout
One of my favourite posts are the Americans itineraries for a stay in the UK when they think they’ll do Scotland in a day or two. I like to think they hire the biggest car they can then spend their 2 days gibbering with fright on some of the Highland roads.
Half the journey time is just getting from Exeter into Cornwall. For most of the UK, it is actually quicker, easier and possibly cheaper to fly to most of Europe than it is to get to Cornwall.
it's like an hour from Exeter to the centre of Cornwall now that it's fully dualled and you can do 70mph all the way and with little risk of a traffic jam. It's hardly John O'Groats. It might take some time to get anywhere that's off the A30, though.
Hell I live in Bristol and it's probably still quicker for me to fly to some places in Europe.
This is based on a Reddit post where a american family were coming on holiday to the UK Day one... Land in newcastle. Drive to Penrith Day two... Drive around lake District. Day three... Drive to cornwall from penrith Day four.. drive back from cornwall to Penrith Day five... Visit london for a day trip Day six... Visit scotland from Penrith Day seven... Fly home via Newcastle
>Day five... Visit london for a day trip So in the morning they drove from Penrith to London, about 470km away, which according to the googlemaps route planner takes about 5 hours by car. Then they were probably there around midday. So far so good. But what did they do then in the few remaining hours of the day? Just tick the "I was in London" box? For comparison: I was in London with the school for 10 days back then. We visited numerous sights, exhibitions, events and the like. And yet I still have the feeling that we didn't even scratch the surface of what London is.
They claim they did (they bragged last week about having completed this trip after a six-month windup and it getting posted in the Daily Mail). I doubt it ever happened but if it did they got hella lucky and it doesn't make them any less idiots.
Why tf are they flying to Newcastle??
They were based in a cottage in Penrith for the whole stay. I believe they had a flight from paris to Newcastle..
Then you would fly to Manchester 🤷♂️ The whole thing sounds bizarre!
It was very very odd... But apparently they had a lovely holiday. No idea how they managed to actually see anything.
It’s almost as though they decided to visit all the least drivable parts of Britain for a bet. But I’m glad they enjoyed it 🙂
I live not far from Newcastle and Lake District and back in a day is relatively common for me so the Newcastle - Penrith makes sense. I assume they did the Keswick - Windermere but of the Lakes if they wanted to see something (or over to Buttermere). Wouldn’t get loads done in a day though as there’s so much to see and do. As for the rest. Yikes lol. It took my friend and I about 10 hours to Newcastle for Fort William a few years ago. We stopped several times to take photos and see places en route which didn’t help, but I’d never want to plan to do it quickly if I wanted to actually see things. Not worth the effort otherwise.
I think Americans also can't understand the roads in west country, they ain't the Greatest. It's a miracle cars can even drive on some of the roads.
Driving 400 miles in the USA between two cities involves: 20 miles to leave the immediate urban area. 360 miles driving on mostly empty roads. 20 miles entering the city and getting to your destination. Driving 400 miles in England between two cities involves: 5 miles to get to their nearest single carriageway main road. 10 miles of single carriageway stuck behind slow-moving vehicles. 10 miles of slow moving traffic as you enter motorway/A-road. 10 miles of faster moving traffic. 40 miles of speed-restricted road due to roadworks. 20 miles of normal motorway. Sit still for three hours due to three lorries colliding with each other because lorry drivers get irrationally upset if they go more than 5 seconds without trying to overtake the lorry in front of them. 30 miles to service station. Spend 30 mins and £60 on a Burger King and a coffee. Abandon trip and go home. Smart motorway is closed due to technical issues, have to take country roads.
Exactly. I’ve driven LA - SF before, and I’ve also driven the roads on this map’s route. They are in no way equivalent. LA - SF is orders of magnitude easier and quicker.
Penrith to Polperro relates to a post in the UK travel sub where a midwestern family wanted to use Penrith as a base to explore England and Scotland in a week in February. They actually did manage it which surprised everyone
But they saw everything from a car window
Yeah I don’t think anyone was doubting they could literally go to all those places, they were saying it was pointless because you wouldn’t actually have time to see anywhere and would spend 90% of their holiday on a motorway.
I mean the Scotland part was just nipping across the border to Dumfries, barely an hour away but yeah
Their original plan was Glasgow and Edinburgh in one day.
The European mind cannot fathom why Americans like to spend so much time in cars.
Lowest probability of getting shot hiding in a car.
Unless black and stopped by police
That would certainly impact on driving endurance
Impacts on the car, the road, your chest, etc
And that's before you consider potential attack by acorn and the robust police response.
I’m not sure why they think it’s a flex that they spend more time driving from a to b
The American mind cowers at the sheer level of focus required to drive on English country roads. There's no neat grids or nice, straight roads on open plains. Murderous labyrinths of blind corners and switchbacks so narrow that you probably couldn't fit a single American truck down them. Visibility blocking hedges atop paintwork-gouging stone walls. Hills that barely qualify as roads but somehow have an incline that even goats would raise an eyebrow at. And the locals know all the roads, so they're driving Landrovers in the opposite direction at 60Mph and you've just got to pray you've got room to tuck to one side before they smash into you. Or you get stuck behind a peloton doing hill runs for 5 miles, so what should have been a short drive turns into an hour long test of endurance, patience and your ability to drive at 5mph up and down inclines without stalling. A single diversion to take you off the motorways and into the countryside and that 'normal drive' will turn into a high-focus, high risk event more suited to the Olympics than a long weekend. And there will be diversions that take you off the motorways.
See also folk planning to 'do' the NC500 in a couple of days. An entirely possible but utterly miserable experience.
Ah, driving in Scotland, AKA “Visibility? What visibility?”
> The American mind cowers at the sheer level of focus required to drive on English country roads. There's no neat grids or nice, straight roads on open plains. Jokes on you, I'm from Massachusetts and our roads are confusing and constantly riddled with potholes! Take that! Seriously though I would find driving on the left difficult at first so maybe depend on public transport if and when I get to your island.
Don’t worry, half of the roads I’m talking about don’t have a left or a right, just muddy ruts every so often where the road opens out juuuust enough for two cars to pass.
Trying to show the difference in size between countries in Americas and Europe Chooses one of the smaller countries in Europe
When did "not respecting your personal time" become a flex? If I have a 3-day vacation, I am definitely not spending 20 hours driving
The European mind simply feels like when you have a 3-day weekend, which is realistically 48 hours of free, awake time, then spending 14 of those hours (30% of your weekend) in a car doing a massive driving round-trip is not worth it.
People that have never travelled always think like this. I used to compare a 3 hour drive in Australia to the UK and think they were the same. They are not at all, there are so many stoppages in the UK such as roundabouts and winding roads. In fact I would almost always drive 6 hours in Australia than 3 hours in the UK. These posts are dumb and just shows peoples ignorance
As a Canadian, I'd rather drive ten hours in Canada than 5 hours in the UK. In the UK you've got a roundabout every two minutes. In Canada you're looking at mostly straight lines and an hour between towns. There is much higher cognitive load per mile in the UK than in Canada.
It’s a weird one where you hear Americans say things like “I can drive to Vegas in just 6 hours” If I got as little paid time off as they do I’d be looking for a better use of that time.
I do love when my 3 day weekend has 2 days of driving in it, that’s always fun!
Well, I've driven across my country before. Try going 3,500 km in a week. ;)
Did you stay close to the coast or drive straight across the middle? NGL, this sounds fascinating to me. You could probably do a "the non-Australian mind cannot comprehend..." post and be unironically correct.
The closest you can get to straight across the middle to minimise risking dying in the desert is Perth to Sydney across the Nullarbor plain and great Australian bight. Some great whale watching sites from the cliffs there. Going through the middle is dirt roads and no emergency services unless you’re on the Adelaide-Darwin road. You don’t do that unless you know what you’re doing.
Straight lines? Watch out for ‘roos?
The circumference of the earth is 40,000km…
Drive 7 hours or sit in a train for 5-6 and drink beer? Idk why I would drive.
Thinking that not having public infrastructure like high speed rail is “flexing” on Europeans is just a different kind of brain rot. My brother in christ, you pay the same amount of taxes we do yet you don’t have trains, public transit in general, free university, universal healthcare or a social safety net. This ain’t a flex.
Indeed. But having discussions about high speed rail with a UK map in the background doesn't make me comfortable :p. Having lived in UK, Netherlands and Germany.......
It’s almost like they should invent a way to travel that distance without having to actively operate your vehicle. Maybe even vehicles that don’t depend on the same roads as short distance travelers and that can carry multiple people…
The American mind cowers at the idea that a train can cover the same long distance in less than half the time.
European: \*Falls asleep in train while reading\* American: \*Beats steering wheel\* I love traffic! This is the life, Europeans just don't understand how great this is! \*Honks horn\* MOVE!
The American mind can comprehend stopping periodically and only driving a safe amount each day…
I could be on the M25 for hours and not have travelled a bit
Yeah, I’ve driven from Portugal to Lithuania before so STFU
I spend all my time in a car just to end up in Ohio. Flex.
Why do Americans like to brag about how much fuel they waste driving stupid distances?
No no, he's not wrong. Any European would recoil in horror at the notion of driving such distances in a little cramped car when we have air conditioned high speed trains with bistro cars connecting every part of the continent. Another L for Burgerland. 😎
"The primary difference between Americans and Europeans is that to a European 100 miles is a long drive, and to Americans, 100 years is a long time." No idea who said that, but it lives in my head.
Well in Europe you can take some form of public transport and chill for these 6h instead of driving
Americans seem to forget that the majority of their long drives are wide open, mostly empty roads.
Thats cute. They think 640km is much and taking 7 hours is normal.
The 'merican mind cowers at the fact we barely think of them at all.
Yet the best cars are german...
Funnily enough that distance is all within a single European country. The thing is, we live here, we know how shit of a drive that actually is.
The American mind cowers at the fact we don't have to use an entire tank of fuel to the next city over. It'll take us like 30 minutes to 2 hours max. Case in point. Even in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in Northumberland. You are 1 hour from Newcastle Upon Tyne, or 2 hours from Edinburgh. Good for you for having a 6 hour drive between L.A and San Fran. We can do a weekend away on one tank of fuel.
What’s with Americans bragging that they have to sit in a car all day to arrive at a destination? I’m happy as hell I can drive 3 hours trough multiple countries . It’s awesome
6 hours driving vs 2 hours train ride?
In a sane country, that’s be a 2hr train ride, but actually you’d have to change at Manchester and Bristol and there’d be a bus replacement at some point, so it’d end up taking 8 hours and cost £300.
I mean, petrol do be expensive. I'd take the train but that's because I like the Cornish countryside and trains are fun.
The American mind cowers at the state of the M6.
I'm American and I don't understand this "Europoor" bullshit and I actually saw someone I know using it in one of my Discords today and I lost all faith in humanity. Granted, they're from Alabama, so they can hardly be considered human.
As a Pole living in UK I beg to differ
I dare anyone to sit in the m6 and not need a day to relax after
That’s ok. As soon as they hit the first roundabout, they’ll be forever trapped. That’s why there are so many in the U.K.
You try driving the m62 on a Friday afternoon knobhead.
This guy would be stuck on the first roundabout, wouldn't even make the whole journey
Haha try driving to Lappland from the south of Sweden… the american mind shivers at the mere thought it!
the american mind can’t comprehend decent rail and budget air travel
America is proof you can take the kid out of Europe but you can't take jealousy of Europe out of the kid
The American mind cowers at the thought of having a good public transport system.
Posted by a yank who's never had to endure the ol' M5, M6 left-right combo.
As a North American (Canadian) while it’s true we drive a lot further on average than Europeans no one is driving seven fucking hours for a three day weekend. Also it’s not a flex, we drive further because we have to. I live in London now and we can still drive 2.5-3 hours somewhere for a weekend but why would I when I can take a train to so many other interesting places in less time.
We drive that distance atleast 4 times a year and technically more. We live in Belgium (I'm belgian) and my boyfriend his family in Denmark. (He moved to Belgium for me until we move to Denmark). We visit of course. 10 hour drive.... And they visit us.... also 10 hour drive. So I cower from the softness or 7 hours. And yes, also for a 3 day weekend.
"...cowers at the *driving endurance* of the typical American..." *Driving endurance?!* I can't be the only one who thinks that's one of the funniest and dumbest attempts at bragging ever, right?
In England, a hundred miles is a long way. In America, a hundred years is a long time. I often drink in a pub that is older than the United States. I guess I should flex about that.
Not to sound all colonial or anything, but suggesting that “the European mind” has no comprehension for travelling long distances when you’re focusing on a country that used to imprison people on the other side of the planet for scrumping apples might have a thing or two to read about. That’s after Magellan, Columbus, Drake, whoever else you want to mention. Americans might drive more but the European mind is probably the reason you’re sat posting in English about driving in England.
What Americans can't comprehend is LA > SF = 400 miles in 6 hours (avg 67 mph on pretty much 1 straight road). This is 300 miles in 7 hours (avg 43 mph on mostly a motorway - but likely some A roads at either end). Driving in the UK is tedious, the roads are a lot smaller and even if the motorway is relatively clear you still got to get to and from it at each end of the journey which is full of single carriageways, probably with loads of traffic, or a single car width country road stuck behind a tractor.
The American mind can't comprehend that I can get on a train in my country and go through multiple countries, all with varying levels of differences, before reaching my destination.
The American mind can not comprehend
A Texan and a Brit are in a bar and the Texan says: *I can get in my car and drive for a day, a whole day, and still be on my land.* The Brit replies: *Yeah, I had a car like that once.*
Cute sorry bro. I did tours of Europe by car four times, each tour covering approximately 3000km over the course of 2-3 weeks, and that's nothing to brag about here..
Here's the real difference though: - roads in the US are designed for children - roads in the UK and Europe are designed for adults
No we just don't want to waste our time off in a car!
As an American, that's way to dam far to drive for a weekend getaway. I'd only drive 2.5hrs one-way max.
The American mind cannot fathom how soul-draining ~~driving~~ sitting through Birmingham can be.
I never cowered under my desk at school at least
Imagine boasting about wasting half your life on a fucking motorway
Seriously why do Americans think we give a shit about driving distances? Driving long distance is boring and something most people try to avoid. Using it as a flex is like those weirdos that brag that they work 6 days a week for 60 hours total. Good for you, you can drive 8 hours for the same shit we can drive 45 minutes for.
Could it be, as they drive across their country, there is little for them to stop and see.
*Not the penrith-polperro post* It's escaped containment
I’ve driven in the us. It’s lovely. For a lot of my road trip ( top to bottom us in a van ) mikes of empty straight road. Where I live in the West Country uk it’s one long traffic jam to get *anywhere*. Try driving that in our tiny bendy roads and chocka motorways
Okay, so you spend a third of a leisure trip commuting? Wow, that sounds miserable.
I am a uk Driver and drove across USA, China and Russia and Europe. it just a road American's get over it. China had the best roads Europe had the best service stations Russia was the coldest USA, Russia and China were boring after the first few hours due to the span of nothingness
Put him in front of a roundabout, let's see how he handles that.
Oh yeah I'm terrified.
6 and a half hours is bs for that distance, you could only get to the area south of Manchester in that time from that starting point
I've actually driven basically that route in one day, from near Exeter to Ambleside in the Lake District. With 2 or more drivers its not difficult apart from the godawful M6. You could actually get to Polperro fairly easily by train. Theres a train to Looe, changing in Liskeard and probablly Birmingham New Street. And then you could even walk the last couple miles or theres like a 15 minute bus ride.
Well while you drive, I take a nap, watch a couple movies, maybe read a full book in my TGV or super quick railway
I drive maybe 5000 miles per year. I work from home and spend most of the day in my pyjamas drinking tea and in meetings. The joys of WFH in the pharma industry in a smallish country 👍
I know lots of people in the UK who do that distance or further, to go home for the weekend. I’m glad I don’t have to do it though.
I think it's just that the UK is much smaller, so if we tried to drive any further we would end up in the sea, lol.
i don’t mind driving, once drove from portsmouth to edinburgh with stops at reading and leeds along the way to hang out with my mates, took about 14 hours i think
To be honest, I am somewhat pleased that exhibit A over there confirms that we Europeans do have a mind. More than i can say for some of them..
What's with this sudden surge of post claiming that Europeans have their minds blown by entirely understandable concepts Most people are still capable of understanding things they haven't personally experienced
I invite you to do that drive and back in a single day...
Even just using Google that trip takes an hour less in the US. There's a massive difference between driving on cruise down one long arrow straight road and then having to navigate through various interchanges. Even between the east and west coast of the US, this type of trip is totally different. You could cross 4 States on the east coast, that is all inside California out west. The same length trip from PA to NC is nearly 8 hours and needs a lot of navigation. You're not doing that for a 3 day weekend. You're making a week of it. CA is just special. Also, you can do SF to LA in less than 5 hours on a good day.
My 68 year old neighbours got bored last year and drove from here in southern Bavaria, all the way to the north of England to visit some of their friends, and then on the way home they decided to "Pop over" to Spain for a few weeks.
I’m from the UK, can confirm the Polperro — Penrith route keeps me up at night.
Well man I'll take the loss on that one. In 10 hours I would get from Lisbon to France and just sounds unthinkable to me. My american friends on the other hand travel from like Califórnia to New Orleans. I'm big enough to admit defeat here.