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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trying to walk to the grocery store would take like an hour and a half for me lmao

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the content I wanna see !

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

The fast food i could see the grocery store looks low

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

5:26 Germans: hold mein Bier.

YAYYYY NEW ERIKA VIDEO

I really love this content and its vibes

Thanks for your interesting videos, and... Yes, you always put in so much information that we are sure it requires a lot of research!

Love the tie and your content.

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

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

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

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

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

What do I really like about the U.S.A? Well, I'm an American, so while I might be biased, I also have had much opportunity to begin to appreciate some things. I would say 1. Charitable giving. 2. The sheer amout of research we have contributed the past 80 or so years. 3. Natural beauty, particularly in the West, well preserved. Just as an anecdote, in an office where I had a photograph of Saturn as my desktop background. One day, a janitor asked me if that was a painting. I said, "No, it's a photograph." He said, "It looks like its up close. Who has been close to that planet? Who did that?" I said, "We did that, or rather the U.S. Government did in our name. NASA. They sent an automated probe there to take pictures and send them back pixel by pixel via radio."

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

I prefer public transport than car however, my only worry is like I’m gonna have a kid soon, and I’m not sure how easy it is to go on a public transit with a zero month old or even a six month old

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

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

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

nice video - as always

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

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

11:41 😂😂appreciate zoom out and echo effects

ty for the fun video

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

I am an American and I love this.

Many years ago the Three Musketeers bar was segmented into three parts, which you could break apart. Each part was a different flavor of insides: vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate. You could swap out the parts with your pals. How many years ago? At least 60. I am very old, and enjoyed that candy a lot.

Love this😂

bathroom stall dividers! lol

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

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

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

I've never seen oreos in a tube-shaped plastic wrapper in the United States. Always as you had shown in your video.

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

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

2:41 "later scientists came up with a better way of measuring things that's more precise" I must correct you on that - fahrenheit is by definition more "precise" because there are more degrees fahrenheit per degree celcius, allowing for more precise measurement & communication (although they can both be equally "precise" if we allow for any amount of decimal places) I am american and I do use whatsapp, but only for some specific group chats. The huge packages of Oreos are genuinely popular at parties 198M fast food restaurants is not believable because that's more than one for every two people 22:35 urbanists in the US say "car dependent" I have never heard of any of those "salads"

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

Futurama & Simpsons wallpaper = you won life.

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

Hello Erika, I love your videos and they have been very helpful for me because I’m planning on moving to Germany. It is such a difficult language. Anyways, I’m curious as to what your current apartment looks like!! ❤❤

I am disappointed every time I go to the grocery store and can't get 2 gallons of the milk I drink

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

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

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

hey Erika, I love your eye makeup & hair, can you make a video regarding upcoming opportunity card?

Unlimited texting and calls (including international for some carriers) are included on most American plans. Things aren't getting bigger anymore - the US is going through shrinkflation. But they're big because of an economies of scale philosophy that started in the 1990s. "Bigger is always better" is an American philosophy, but after 9/11 or 11/9 lol not so much. I lived all over the USA and can answer all your questions. :D Pfiati, Erika!

"9th of november? wait-" oh i think you mean the 21st night of september! wait-

credit score is a thing everywhere, you just don't know it

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

Commenting as I watch so I hope my comments don’t become too annoying lol but I just wanted to bring up the fact that you brought up the big products in grocery stores. We have a big products I think because we go to stores less often. I have a friend that lives in Austria and she goes to the grocery store nearly every day. I live in Texas just outside of a big city and the closest grocery store to my house is just over 9 miles away which is a 16 minute drive. So we go less often than Europeans I think. Also I just got to the part where you mention sidewalks. My neighborhood has literally no sidewalks. I once walked from my house to the main street near my house and that took me an hour walking on the street

i'm from America! good points!

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

If they already change the mars bar to a milky way, they should also make it like 1000x bigger to be more accurat 🤔

There are two measurement systems in the U.S. metric and imperial, and we also use Celsius or Fahrenheit, it just depends on your profession.

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

Hey! American here!! America is heavily car cultured because unless you are in a big city like New York and Chicago, there is NO public transportation. No buses, taxis, Lyft, nothing! No sidewalks to walk on, and you can either walk in the ditch or on the road 😂 It is very different here and I don’t think you realize it until you’re actually here. Some streets don’t even have a shoulder for you to walk on or even ride a bike on.

19:20 On average, onions are like this in America (All the continent). Here in Colombia, carrots, onions of all kinds, bananas, potatoes and others tend to have a larger size and greater potency in their flavor. Thankful for that, really

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

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

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

ものすごく共感しました。貴重な動画ありがとう。

The reply to, how are you? Is, living the dream. Which of course means the opposite. And then we laugh inside, while also crying, because we get it.

18:50 In Belgium the milk is in packs of 12 times 1,5 liters. So a galon is really not that much.

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

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

In one way or another, credit scores exist in EU countries as well. For instance, in Germany there's a company called Schufa that handles this. In Romania, it's Biroul de Credit.

Credit Scoring exists in the UK. Love the video.

I'm from Omaha, Nebraska.The bus service goes from West only downtown.If you need to go anywhere else until you have to have a car

A few things, the first is driving age is completely different state to state, many laws in general are. America isn’t a unitary state, and states have a lot of autonomy and very different topography/demographics/culture/socioeconomic conditions etc. so law varies a lot even in the same regions. Driving laws in particular are one that vary quite a bit state to state. Drinking age is also technically on the state level, and the reason it was raised was it was proven to statistically lower drunk driving incidents. How they got every state to adopt it was that the federal government passed a law that would require states to raise the age to 21 if they wanted to receive their road funding from the federal government. Most states rely heavily on federal subsidization and this wasn’t a big enough issue to fight them on so they complied, however Louisiana did not for a few years so there were some hold outs. Most of the US is a car dependent society(there are exceptions like the North East corridor)so issues like drunk driving and underage drinking are a lot more of a focus point than they would be in Europe. Tbh a lot of this stuff varies a lot region to region, the US is as much of a monolith as Europe is. States have very different economies with very different histories and demographics, so what is normal somewhere is often not somewhere else. The federal government is also quite a bit smaller than most europeans realize, they have control entirely over foreign affairs but as far as domestic enforcement that’s a bit different. The IRS, our tax agency, for example has less than 1 million employees for a country of 330 million. Other agencies aren’t much bigger either. So state governments drive a lot of policy and are realistically more relevant on a day to day level for the average American than the federal government. States have their own laws and constitutions on top of the federal governments, and realistically with how little ability the federal government has to enforce law without cooperation makes the State have more power than the Feds in many situations though it does depend. Weed is legal in many US states for example but is entirely illegal on the federal level still. The federal government just lacks the ability to enforce properly in a manner to curb the legal defiance, especially since the states being enforced in would not be cooperating with their own agencies. So while there is some legal cohesion through the federal government, more often than not it’s playing catch up to policy that’s already implemented in many other states of one political ilk or the other. It does depend on the issue, some stuff is federal only, but more often than not issues fall to the states and that’s what causes the large lack of legal cohesion in the US, and why these kinds of perspectives are very similar to making broad generalizations about europe. it’s just not a homogenous place

Covid increased the eating in Car's technique a lot during that period. Of Course, you had fast food chains like Sonic, where you pulled in for you to eat out of your car. The waitresses come up your car window to serve the food to you on a tray. You order your food through the car window into the intercom, and you sit right there and eat the food in your car. There are fast food chains here in the US that use that design. That might explain what has flourished the tradition somewhat of this? Yes, the tipping needs to be re-thought out. On both sides of the Atlantic. I'm sure the owners/employers are influencing the outcome on this subject. But, there needs to be changes.

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

Biggest roast about Latvia - area next to Origo and Riga Terminal exists

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

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

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

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

Quick search says about 202,000 fast food restaurants in US. Not verified but probably a little closer. I live about 20 min walk to grocery store but I have to cross at a huge intersection twice (I’m on SE corner, store is on NW corner of six lane intersection.) so the heavy traffic dissuades people from going by bike or on foot.

the drinking age is 21 because an organization called Mothers Against Drunk Driving lobbied Congress to increase the drinking age in the 80s and they were successful, so Congress essentially forced all of the states to change it to 21 and they all eventually gave in. Now every 18 year old still drinks but with no adult supervision. It's really really stupid.