Rather than hijacking Heather's post, I'll ask my question here.
The pay toilet has long since disappeared from American public life, but is still common on Europe, a fact which often strikes visiting Americans as barbarous. I feel similarly about paying high prices to drink water in European restaurants. Other surprises I have found in my travels—for these are first-world, modern, and wealthy countries—is home refrigerators the size of those in U. S. college dorms (and no separate freezers), severely restricted laundry hours in apartments (sometimes as infrequently as once every two weeks), and the scarcity of clothes dryers.
There are, of course, many more things I've found delightful in all the countries we've visited, but the question of this post is: What do visitors to the United States find barbarous or bizarre here, that we accept without a second thought? To some friends visiting from Brazil it was being required to stop at red traffic lights even when there was no visible cross traffic. To others I'm sure it's the lack of clean and convenient public transportation. The Swiss must be shocked at the unreliability of schedules here.
What can you add to the list, dear foreign readers and those who have friends from other countries?I meant to check at Veronica's place, but forgot at the time - we never saw a small refrigerator except at Stephans - both Richard and the Dutlers had "regular" size refrigerators and freezers.
And note that we never paid for water while in Europe (except for Porter at the Frankfurt airport, which we did later see drinking fountains in other parts of the airport, so just that wing was "special") - just the normal eye-rolling that American waitresses give the customers when the entire table asks for water, particularly when one person orders water for everyone.
I have heard people wonder about stop signs and red lights where it is clear that there isn't any traffic.
Peter mentioned the other day about all the rules and regulations that he experienced when coming to the US from the Philippines. We came to the conclusion that a lot of it has to do with the lawyer-syndrome, where Americans like the ability to sue anyone for anything.
Though, I think my favorite (disfavorite?) quote from Switzerland was the person who said (when talking about more and more stores being open on Sundays), "I guess it is always better to have more regulation than less" - so I'd say Switzerland is heading the way of the US - perhaps the high minimum wage prevents people from aspiring to be a highly paid lawyer. :)
I have heard comments regarding low speed limits, which I agree.
A guy from Switzerland, living in the States now said that no politician will ever raise a speed limit since he'll be blamed for the next accident that occurs, so we are interminably stuck with speed limits that are way too low, and the police can selectively enforce them whenever they feel like, and the system ends up "punishing" people who follow the speed limits, since they are the only ones who drive slowly.
