I agree with this. I grew up in the mid-Atlantic of the U.S. and feel comfortable anywhere from D.C. up to say...Toronto. Similar enough culture, language, food, architecture, etc. that I don't feel out of place anywhere in that stretch.
Go to North Carolina or Georgia? I may as well be in Greece for how at "home" I feel there.
Similarly the stretch from SF to Vancouver (Canada) feels relatively homogeneous to me (as an outsider) but distinct from the stretch I grew up in. It's only similarity is the relative wealth. But everything looks and feels different.
While San Simeon, CA on south feels like yet another distinct place.
Texas is southern but very different than say Kentucky. And Colorado and surrounding have a distinct feel as well.
Maybe it's because I've moved around too much (and also lived in Europe for a bit), but I don't actually find urban areas in the U.S. that tied to their geographical area. Atlanta is different from Los Angeles, sure, but in broad strokes they share a lot of similarities, certainly more than either one shares with Paris, Rome, Tokyo, or Copenhagen---or with the rural areas 100 miles away from each.
Heck, Americans move around so much that most people I've met in urban areas are not "from" that state in the first place. Some of the friends I made in Atlanta were from New York City, others from San Francisco, others from Iowa. Some of the friends I made when I lived in the Bay Area had grown up in the Midwest. For my part, I grew up in a mixture of Chicago and Houston, but don't feel any more "at home" in either one than in the Bay Area or Atlanta.
I agree. I think the urban areas in much of Europe are a much better reflection of their surrounding areas than those in the U.S. Atlanta for example really is different than surrounding Georgia. But I wouldn't say that Atlanta feels anything like Minneapolis for example.
Also many of the European cities have such a different flavor than U.S. ones, how they're laid out for example, that going from Munich to Paris is a tremendously different experience. More than Atlanta to Minneapolis? Yeah I think so. But likewise Paris to Tokyo is even more of a difference than any other comparison above.
> Go to North Carolina or Georgia? I may as well be in Greece for how at "home" I feel there.
But the language is the same, the newspapers are the same, the political parties are the same. Compare that to Europe where there are, what ? 23 languages for 27 countries, political parties specific to each and news sources totally different.
Umm, sort-of. I have relatives whose local dialect is almost incomprensible to me. (They can understand me because they can understand "TV American".)
> Compare that to Europe where there are, what ? 23 languages for 27 countries
How many of them have a significant number of people who are monolingual? To put it another way, how many languages do I need to know to talk to 95% of Europeans?
> How many of them have a significant number of people who are monolingual? To put it another way, how many languages do I need to know to talk to 95% of Europeans?
You would be surprised. Half the people in France speak only French (and maybe one local dialect). And it is far from being the worst country. So with English, French, German and maybe Russian you would maybe get close to 80% but far away from 95%
By "newspaper are the same" I meant that you have national newspaper that one can find everywhere. I didn't travel a lot in USA, but I remember that USA today was available everywhere I went to (mainly west coast I admit) I doubt it is the only newspaper in that case. Science, National Geographic are two publication that I believe must be nation wide. There is no EU-wide publication.
By "same political parties", I mean that you know which is rep and which is dem. Which one will support your current president and which won't. Arguably, we begin to have a similar structure appearing in EU. It is recent and still approximate, but EU MPs now try to share some labels.
> I didn't travel a lot in USA, but I remember that USA today was available everywhere I went to
"everywhere I went to" is a long way from "find everywhere".
I've only seen USA Today in hotels and airports that were in fairly major cities. Outside of travel, most folks don't see them.
> Science, National Geographic are two publication that I believe must be nation wide.
The Financial Times is available by subscription, just like those pubs. Does that make it national? How about the Bolivar Herald Free Press (from Bolivar Missouri)? Like every small town newspaper, it's available by subscription. Are they all national?
Heck, I can even get the London Times by subscription anywhere in the US. Is it a national newspaper of the US?
Your definition of "nation wide" is absurd.
> There is no EU-wide publication.
What? I can't get the London times throughout the EU by subscription?
Not only is your definition absurd, but you're not even applying it consistently.
>By "newspaper are the same" I meant that you have national newspaper that one can find everywhere.
Actually there are about 5. But 3 are really local metropolitan papers that happen to cover cities that are of interest to the rest of the country (New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post).
But to give you an idea of perspective, USA Today, which circulates nationally, only moves about 1.8 million copies a day (in a country of over 300 million people). Local papers are far more important to most people and circulate many more copies than any of the national papers touch.
>By "same political parties", I mean that you know which is rep and which is dem. Which one will support your current president and which won't.
At the local level this isn't always true. Local politics in the U.S. can be tremendously parochial and can often not map well to national platforms. For example, in my area the local Republicans have been more focused on raising tax revenues to fund mass transit expansion than the Democrats -- almost the exact opposite of the National parties' focus. And I'm not talking about State level. County and District politics are local...or in cities districts or wards. It can be maddening to try and explain local or national political behavior by using one to explain the other.
"But the language is the same, the newspapers are the same, the political parties are the same."
I don't disagree, but only if you generalize at a high level. It's absolutely amazing how much of the world you can cover with something not much more general than this -- all you need is a fluency in English, the BBC/Al Jazeera and a working knowledge of the basics of left/right politics.
I've personally managed to get by just fine in most of Europe, parts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa with these three. It takes about as much work to figure out, for example, the local politics in Paris, France as it does the local politics Angelina County, Texas and have a competent discussion with a local.
All that being said, growing up in a the more industrial and densely populated part of the U.S. I feel more at home Paris than I do in Angelina County.
Remember, only about 80% of Americans speak English as a native tongue, we have as many dialects and accents as the U.K. (and some are not mutually intelligible to outsiders). Some dialect of Spanish is the second most common. But it's as varied as dialects in Spain are.
In the more metropolitan areas, I suspect the percentage of native English is much lower. In the area I spent my childhood in (just outside of Washington D.C.) I was the only child under 18 who spoke English as my native language...and the parents of my friends spoke languages as diverse as Turkish to Korean -- often with little or no English. Only one of my university friends spoke native English, the rest were Persian, West African, Turkish, Arabic, Vietnamese, Korean and Indian.
I've gone weeks without eating "American" or Western European food without even it being an effort or something I noticed much later.
That flavor, that huge variety, is a hallmark of the area I identify with...and I can find an area that feels like that from D.C. to Toronto. Angelina County, TX doesn't feel like that. It also looks different. The ethnic groups are all different, all the place names are different. Politics changes and suddenly boarder control and water rights are major topics of discussion. Head over to San Antonio to get some urban flavor and it still doesn't feel like home.
London on the other hand feels more like where I grew up than Houston. Lots of the Television is the same, the politics at least sound familiar in some sense (lots of the same names show up), the ethnic breakdown feels similar, food variety is about right. Sure cars drive on the wrong side and the money looks funny. But it feels similar and the buildings kind of look similar.
Minneapolis? As out of place as I was in Paris.
I've digressed, but I think the original point still stands. The U.S. shouldn't be thought of as 1 country or 50 countries, but maybe about 5-8.
Go to North Carolina or Georgia? I may as well be in Greece for how at "home" I feel there.
Similarly the stretch from SF to Vancouver (Canada) feels relatively homogeneous to me (as an outsider) but distinct from the stretch I grew up in. It's only similarity is the relative wealth. But everything looks and feels different.
While San Simeon, CA on south feels like yet another distinct place.
Texas is southern but very different than say Kentucky. And Colorado and surrounding have a distinct feel as well.