hello there everybody and welcome back to an american who says every seventh word in a london
accent my name is evan edinger and i hope you like the new setup shooting with a 24 mil hopefully a
little bit more bouquet a little bit more closed in i'm literally losing my mind here at this
airbnb but hopefully it'll all be worth it when i have my own place fast forward a couple weeks am i
right but today's video is not about my current predicament it's about the predicament of many
people from europe who visit the us and go whoa that's quite shocking it's a reddit video there's
a thread here on ask europe there's no role in europe but i try which is people have been to
the usa what was the biggest culture shock to you i like making videos about this i like learning
about the little interesting differences that we find in cultures and so here we go uh the first
one comes from op that says i went to the u.s in 2014. we landed in san francisco and had to rent
a car we thought we're in america let's rent a big car so uh we rented a big car then joined the 101
and we were the smallest car on the road so with our redefined car we went up to the golden gate
bridge but we were hungry so we stopped by a diner my brother ordered a burger and a small 7up he got
a liter of seven up he wasn't even halfway done and the waitress came to ask for a free refill
to quantify the bigness would be an insult to the bigly bigness of american lifestyle certainly
a shock for me so op has some very stereotypical things that uh people are shocked about in america
if we address the one about the car i do think that's an interesting one that mostly comes
from the fact that our our roads are quite wider you know the us was built for cars annoyingly so
lobbying blah blah blah yes there there's much wider roads and americans actually have i think
an even worse culture shock when visiting europe because the roads are more narrow than they're
used to and they're like how would you even expect to get your truck down the road because
no one really drives pickup trucks here i watched a really interesting video i'll link above uh the
other day about why pickup trucks aren't a big thing in the uk and europe but are massive in the
us uh and too long didn't watch of it is basically the u.s you know ford they they really championed
it it's supposed to be that like american freedom tailgating like you can tow with it very useful
but they're so wide right they're ingrained in our culture but the streets are just not capable of
holding trucks that big in countries over here in europe and so they're just really not as popular
because why would you buy something that's not as useful my friend kim actually specifically told me
at one point when i was considering getting an suv here that if i do people will cut me off on
the road because i'm driving such a behemoth and that's just basically don't drive big cars in the
uk specifically because people will hate you but further on the second point yes we all know that
u.s portion sizes are massive but what i think is most interesting about what they said here
was that the waitress came when they were halfway done the drink to refill it i still consider that
good service maybe you'd think differently if it was a smaller cup and you'd be like oh thankfully
because it just shows that your waiter is actually attentive now you could argue because they're
forced to be really nice to you and try and give you the best service possible because they're paid
a slave wage essentially but i would agree with you actually if you're someone that is interested
in finding out why the us pays such horrible wages for the serving staff 213 per hour by the way i
have made a video about this which uh very proud of so give that a check so next up we have anytime
in the states i'm always shocked by the amount of homeless people especially in san francisco
and los angeles yeah growing up in a suburb of you know new jersey of philadelphia i guess you
could say i didn't really get to experience much in terms of homelessness there weren't really many
homeless people in my suburb and most everything i learned about you know california was through
films and tv shows which don't really portray how incredibly extensively bad the homelessness crisis
is obviously there are homeless people around the world in every country give or take and i
know that there definitely are homeless people in london but it's more like you see them and you're
like oh there's one oh there's one whereas in like los angeles specifically there are parks
that are just there's nowhere for them to go they just lie around all over the place and it's tragic
i just don't think the system is working then it's working as intended money goes to the top
but i just personally don't think that's a good idea strangers talk to me for no reason i could be
walking in the street and a total stranger would come up to me and say nice jacket or something
similar i've said this before that's nice i guess it is surprising if you're not used to that
it's like one of those positive stereotypes we have as americans is that we are a bit
more outgoing i'm also expecting lots of comments because my hair looks ridiculous right now but i'm
kind of vibing with it i'm growing it out might get a little little bun going on eventually the
water level in the toilets this is my friend luke was freaking out about this i walked into three
different cubicles in jfk that were seemingly blocked until i realized the states the water
level in the toilets is basically half of the bowl uh whereas in europe it's just a little about
little butter it's a little bit of water i always found that wasteful i remember at one point i was
at a diner with my friend luke and he said his penis dunked in the water and i was like wow
big boy but also i don't know why they're made that way why do we have so much extra water in the
toilet it really makes it so that when you do poop ka sploosh it goes right up the way it came out
not fun that's because our toilets use a different flushing mechanism oh that's not the photo that
i was expecting to see in regards to flushing mechanisms there's a man on the other side of
american toilets in europe the water is just a small amount in the bottom and then everything
is pushed down whereas there's just a lot more in the u.s you know you didn't expect to learn a lot
about toilets here but my channel is a bit [ __ ] teens addressing adults by first name is that a
thing in the u.s as much i was just freaking out about that being a thing in finland in denmark
i'm not used to that when our school bus driver invited my 16 year old self to just call him dave
oh okay that is a bus driver thing i feel like i've not experienced that much places but as a kid
i do think my bus driver also is like just call me sharon and i'm like i don't want to call you
at all actually i'd i'd rather just be playing my gameboy back there thank you or doing homework for
the next class because that's always the type of student i was my wife was shocked by all of the
open space and how we horizontally fill up much of it with low hastily built buildings strip malls
hey that's a big thing in jersey and such it's like you have more space you know what to do with
it it's true she was more astonished that you can drive through dozens sometimes hundreds of miles
of empty nothingness with nothing but the road you're driving on to indicate you're still in
civilization it's a big country i feel like you could say that as a culture shock thing
if you visited russia just long swathes of roads assumably and canada on their only road from
east to west but i guess yes that must be a huge cultural shock coming from europe where it's much
more densely populated much more smaller towns and things than winding roads i was doing this
so that you knew what i was talking about okay i'm about to do some sort of dragon ball z move i
witnessed a mother opening several packs of sugar and sprinkling it into their kids coca-cola i'm
speechless that's in my opinion child abuse first of all giving your child coca-cola this might be
very unpopular opinion for you guys don't do that i wouldn't feed my child cake daily so why would i
feed it something even worse than cake so there we go not being sponsored by coca-cola anytime soon
to be honest the flag salute in school i could not comprehend it sorry you just i'm a fan of
patriotism i had flashbacks to videos in history class made me feel super uncomfortable it makes
sense as a culture shock thing especially if you're someone that's used to not doing that
and i can't really argue anything in favor of like why it's a thing because it was implemented to
instill nationalism and patriotism and just wasn't removed after world war ii and yes it is freaky
but i honestly don't think there's a way to remove that sort of like brainwashy style cult stuff
from schools because any attempt to do so would probably just cause people to be like oh whoa
this guy hates america that's like that's not tell me if you vibe with this but it just kind of feels
like we're living in some sort of arthur miller play except irl troubling i was not shocked but
surprised with how dirty the public buildings like airports were and how low quality the doors floors
windows and everything in buildings including plumbing and electric installations and private
buildings were sizes in general weren't as large as i expected especially cars which
were much smaller than i thought well there we go someone said they were the biggest and uh someone
from germany said cars were not as big as they're expecting but interesting that they thought it was
really dirty i've not really found that to be too much of the case sure the streets are absolutely
full of garbage in places like new york but uh interesting they thought everything was dirty
uh the windows here they only opener clothes they don't kip at all how do you people live
i i was mind blown when i found out that most windows that i've had in the uk not only open
up but they also fully open sideways so you can kind of kip i guess the expression is which is
so convenient to counter that you all don't have screens okay window screens or netting
whatever you want to call it here big culture shock for me huh not sure if this counts as a
culture shock to the circumstances but i say it anyway when i was a young child i went on holiday
to florida i remember going to a museum and seeing non-guns sign at the entrance was this french my
mom was trying to explain to young me that the u.s people regularly carried guns around and it blew
my mind pulling out my pendants for this one yeah signs that say no firearms allowed inside read
like don't carry a bomb inside to us it's almost like saying like no dogs no dogs no firearms
someone from poland says i dated two american girls one here in europe and one in the u.s
chicago area uh first story things got a little heated you know i pull my dick out and she starts
to undress and suddenly i saw that she hesitated and idk i started to feel weird i asked her if
everything was okay and she said no i asked her what was wrong i know where this is going and
she said it's weird that i'm not circumcised she said cut which i didn't immediately understand
and that it's kind of gross oh second story pretty much the same i pull out my pants and uh see that
the girl is clearly surprised again it turns out that many many many americans are circumcised not
only if they follow jewish or muslim religion and that it's very common to be circumcised
whether you're circumcised or not circumcised i don't think is the big issue i think the issue is
how these people dealt with it their shock of seeing someone it was it was their cult
shock but to say that's disgusting is bizarre because it's literally the human body that is
for all intents and purposes unmutilated but also when i found out that i was the only man i know
that was circumcised out of everyone that i know in the uk it kind of makes me feel a little bit
uh a little bit strange to be very honest i mean most people that have seen my penis are like wow
it's got a helmet and i'm like i know it doesn't really protect it though
i think they look cooler only because i'm biased men love their own penis this video doesn't have
a sponsor because talk about penises i was a 17 year old french guy visiting california
and i was mostly annoyed how much people wanted a hug for no reason y'all don't like hugs i mean
i don't really hug that often but if it's someone that i know of or maybe we've met i i like to hug
hugging is nice obviously in the coveted times a little bit different is that an american thing
please tell me uh in the comments if you're from a different culture are you pro-hub anti-hug with a
stranger it depends on how much alcohol it has oh my foot is asleep no me gusta some of these may be
region-specific but the poor quality of building standards that's the second time that's come up
is that such a big thing i mean i in the states i lived in a couple places that were just drywall
and i think that's supposed to be a bad thing but i always view that as convenient because you can
just quickly hammer through walls and put things up really fast but it's very cheaply made i never
would have thought that i'm actually learning more despite the fact i make this type of content all
the time subscribe obviously if you haven't yet we have how popular weed is with older generations
like people's bosses in work openly smoking wheat i think you might have been in like
colorado maybe california older people from my experience don't my mom is like i will never touch
the devil's lettuce because i haven't before and i will stay that way and i'm like ma it's fine don't
worry about it a little stressed a little bit of a decent thrust not my biggest culture shock but
i felt so strange to see windows the size of doors that i could fully open and anyone could fall out
no safety barriers or nothing at a six-story level hey that goes against the normal stereotype that
america bans a lot of things to protect the stupid people and children like candy with toys in it so
that's kind of nice reverse culture shock there dangerous sketchy bad neighborhoods just steps
away from the main street i always found this bizarre like in philadelphia you could be on like
a temple university and it's like full of university students and then one street over it's
like you will hear gun violence speaking of which i've seen the notorious tenderloin area oh my god
and some fellow travelers were freaked out then we see a pack of american young girls bad english
young american girls uh ambling down the streets talking loudly amongst themselves as if they were
walking through a shopping mall i've stayed at the tenderloin because the cheapest part
of san francisco to stay in i will highly if as an influencer recommend you do not do that
i heard screaming every single night and i saw people walking around not an exaggeration like
zombies dragging their legs and crying out from some sort of drug overdose all around
the streets it was freaky and it is just crazy that that is one of the most affluent cities
in the u.s also has that on the first night of my first trip to the usa we ended up in a restaurant
which pretty much all the customers openly carried handguns that was quite a shock i have yet to be
in a situation in the states like that so that that's kind of like a wild thing i think i would
be shocked as an american who's been living abroad for so long that yeah i would feel uncomfortable
i'm just not really comfortable with the concept you know of guns in these days especially because
sure you're like oh well they have the right to do that and i'm like yeah it's literally like it
is a murder weapon just held out there to protect us from ourselves but a lot of american friends i
know are just very passionate about keeping the gun laws so it's one of those opinions that you
can have and i can be like oh i think it's a bad idea people can disagree with me and in
the meantime lots of schools will continue to um have problems in the u.s exclusively which
it's so frustrating that not a single country has managed to figure out how to stop shootings if
only there was some other way just wish i knew but hey europeans i hope you feel seen today you've
been represented if you're interested in another type of content like this i did make this one
pretty similar but yet quite distinct i hope you enjoyed that if you want to give that a watch
otherwise i'll be seeing you next week hopefully for my final video in this flat but who knows uh
anyway thank you so much for catching up with me and i'll see you guys next sunday goodbye
you