this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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There is a story of a guy in England who sent a letter to his friend in Los Angeles. He asked him to "pop in" to New York City to see how his daughter is doing.
The LA guy wrote back and said it would be faster if he went himself.
I really don't think Euros have a solid grasp of the scale of the US.
Here in Australia, during the 80's, 90's before widespread internet. There would be several European's who needed rescuing each year as they decided to try and walk between major cities, because it looks close on a map.
I remember one German guy who needed rescuing while trying to walk from Sydney to Adelaide...that's 1200km away...in a straight line.
Joke’s on him for wanting to go to Adelaide, honestly.
And remember, never go to Adelaide. It's a hole (Not the Sunscreen Song)
Also in Europe if you get hungry you can pick mushrooms, skin a boar, or pop in to a town. In Australia you got... witchetty grub
Lmao just looked on a map, and it's quite easy to see that that distance is comparable to walking from Great Yarmouth to St Davids.... twice
In the US, 100 years is a long time.
In England, 100 miles is a long distance.
In star trek, 100 miles is a lot of transporter chiefs.
Hey now he got promoted once
In the delta quadrant, 70,000 years is a long distance
Lol, that's great.
I've also heard of Europeans planning vacations in the US, expecting to see New York, Florida, Texas, LA, etc. without realizing how much travel that is.
I met a foreign exchange student in Australia. I asked what they were planning to do for their break.
They'd recently taken up surfing, and couldn't decide if they wanted to surf the east, west, north, or south coast. So they had decided they would stay in Alice Springs, basically in the middle of all of them, and do day trips to each one.
I didn't have the heart to tell them that to get to the nearest ocean from there takes about two solid days of driving. Add another day to get to a beach with decent surf.
Found out the same between Tokyo and Okinawa. It's like flying from Washington DC to Miami. "Just take a train," is 32 hours, plus time on a ferry.
Not a really a day trip, even though it "seems like Japan is a small country."
That's more like saying to catch a train from Miami to Puerto Rico. No one is gonna build all that train line over the ocean for hundreds and hundreds of miles 😆
Canada has a highway that goes between the most easterly and westerly points of the country. If you drove from end to end, stopping only for gas and drive through meals, it would take you about a week.
The most easterly and westerly points on the mainland. You're not getting from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland by highway.
There are ferries.
That guy just have been a huge idiot, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people know how far away New York and Los Angeles are from each other.
I read that story in a book about the history of England: English history made brief, irreverent, and pleasurable.
The letter was from the 1800s I believe so maybe we can cut him some slack for not really knowing.
Ah right yeah fair enough! I thought you meant it happened in the past 15 years or something!