I don’t know why, but I think some Americans don’t realise how big the UK is….
American Customer: you’re English right? Do you know the bookshop between Wales and Bristol that has lots of books in?
Me in my head: yeah mate, I know that one. Classic. Love to pop down there on a cheeky break between work. What a wanker…
the continuous 48 states are is almost 39x the size of the isle of great britan
that’s your answer
For reference:
That’s JUST Texas.
I’ve had Europeans ask me if Orlando is close to me when I told them where I live in the US.
I live in California.
Orlando, Florida is a 39 hour drive away from me.
Like almost 4,300 km.
Like all humans do this sort of thing, dude. None of us know anything about each other.
rebloging for that last point
Also, we have very different cultural relationships to distance. Example: I have a friend in Bristol. I asked if he’d ever been to the Beatles museum and he said no, it was too far away. Bristol to Liverpool is about 135 miles, as the car drives.
In the United States, that’s a day trip. You leave at 7am, get there by 9:30, leave after supper and you’re back home by 9pm. I’ve driven three times that distance to go to a museum (albeit for a weekend trip). Hell, 100 miles doesn’t even get you from one end to the other of my metropolitan area!
England, however, is a more compact space, and far less spread out. Americans, consider the opening of the first Harry Potter movie—have you ever seen a suburb like that in the US? We’d call it crowded, tiny; in England, though, that’s apparently pretty solidly middle-class.
Our relationship with size and distance is totally different. That’s where confusions like this come from.
I have driven 4 hours, to another state, just to go to Aldi. As a day trip.
Hilariously I do know a bookshop between Bristol and Wales that has a lot of books in it. It’s on the borders and has like 250,000 books. Good place.
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