I am a Swede that moved to Vienna some ten years ago. I am also sad for the lack of kangaroos in the streets. I saw some at Schönbrunn zoo, but they didn´t even jump.
You can cheer yourself up by finding an American. Tell them you used to ride a kangaroo to school when you were young. Unfortunately, all the kangaroos were eaten during the potato famine. It was the saddest experience of your life walking to school with a sandwich made from your former pet. You can then consider yourself an honorary Australian if you can tell a story like that with a straight face.
Though neither born nor raised there, my ancestry is entirely Welsh and Cornish. During my first visit to the US in 1960, on a concert tour, we visited DC. One of the plaques on the Washington Monument reads, "Fy Iaith, Fy Ngwlad, Fy Ngenedl". The guide explained it was in Patawomek, the tribe of the Potomac River. My 10-yr old voice called out, "No, it's not. It's Welsh and means My language, my nation, my land. It was put here to honour the fact that six of the signatories to your Declaration of Independence were Welsh, as were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams." About half the tour group wouldn't believe me.
Two Swedish guys on holiday in NY, wanted to exchange swedish kronor to us $ at their hotel. It went very well. They got the exchange rate from Swiss franc to US $. Swiss franc and US $ has about the same value, but it takes 10 Swedish kronor to buy one US $. They thought it was a very good deal.
Same here. On our last days of a vacation in the US in the late 1980s we needed some money, so we wanted to exchange ATS 2000 (Austrian Schilling), equal to about EUR 150 and at the time equal to about USD 120. The clerk immediately called the manager and while waiting in her office for the official exchange rate she looked at the new bills and said admiringly: "Pretty!" (in opposite the the than usual "green stamps"...). After getting the rate by phone she asked if we prefer small or large bills ("mixed, please"), fetched the money, counted it in front of us, handed us the bills in an envelope and we said our goodbys. But something felt wrong. Back in our motor home our brains started to work. How much did we get? Counting the money once again we nearly got an heart attack. About USD 2000. Instead of about USD 120. After a short discussion if one person personally could be hold responsable for this error we went back inside. Now the manager had her heart attack when we said there is something wrong. After the whole explanation, thousand thanks and wild discussions on the phone we got our corrected amount according to the new exchange rate. No, it wasn't just a good rate, there was again wrong data. This time we didn't argue and went our way with about USD 300 (again instead of about USD 120).
Being close to a group of tourists at the Acropolis museum in Athens, I could not believe my ears when a lady from USA asked the astonished tour guide "how come the ancient Greeks had so many disabled people?" (Many of the excavated statues exhibited there were found with missing hands, nose or legs, some of them even without a head, which is a highly interesting version of disability)
Mate, i grew up near Epidavros. I lost count how many times they asked why the plays weren't in English and trying to "correct" our pronunciation of ancient classics.
depicting muricans in Ancient ages so precisely? I finally have an idea how great Greeks were and why Romans adore them, and missing head (hollow one) is more annoying than interesting disability (maybe some prophets told them)
"Every authoritarian government that keeps their population ignorant and uneducated succeeds in achieving a perpetual subservient people that are easier to propagandise"-TS
I find that fascinating, really. A friend of mine (German) has the sharp S in his last name (ß). Let's call him Keßner. He tries to sign up for this boating competition in Florida and the lady taking his details says "Kebner?" He says: "No, it's pronounced Kessner. That ß is actually a double S." She looks at his ID: "No, that can't be. Are you sure you're not Kebner?" _Yes, lady, they have been mispronouncing their family name through generations. How lucky one of them finally made it to the great US of A so they were taught how to properly pronounce their surname. Geez!_ xD
Romanian here, I met a USA patriot which was asking why any one here speaks English. Told him welcome to Romania were we mainly speak Romanian, French, English and Russian. We are not obligated to speak English on our daily basis. He was furious and started making a tantrum. 3 min later police came and pick him and arrested it for public disturbance.
What a shame that you don't have any of those hell prisons that the American movies say "all those foreign prisons are" to put him in for a few minutes. Just to not destroy all his ideas in one go.
@@alanhilder1883I wished for something like that. No long ago we had a public enclosure were people like this were placed to shame them like in the medieval era but now is considered to harsh for a punishment. Well if anyone wants to come here we are really nice people but if you are an a****** it would be better to stay home. Because we have a strong respect for the other we try to help but if the attitude is bad we really ostracize anyone due to the big connection we share as citizens of the same country.
Same here in Montreal were most everybody speaks French. I heard a tourist in Old Montreal which is very French complaining that "why can't they speak American like everybody else".
I (polish) live in Ireland now and while on a day trip to Belfast i learned from one of the guides that they unusually often have to explain to Americans that Titanic was in fact a real ship & catastrophe. Apparently ton of people think it's a movie fan museum.
As someone from Southampton, I can confirm this does happen more than you'd think. Even going through the museum where the impact of the sinking on the cities population is thoroughly explored. A significant proportion of a generations fathers from the city were lost that night.
I'm Portuguese and I worked at the Expo-98 in Lisbon as a security and sometimes visitors would ask us questions about not only our country's pavilion but mostly about other countries. A group of Americans asked if Portugal had frontiers with any other countries. I said we only had a frontier with Spain. One of guys had this amazed look on his face and asked: Spain? They speak Spanish? I replied: Yes, they speak Spanish. The guy just looked at the group, turned to me asked: "When did the Mexicans conquered Spain? To this day I still don't know how I didn't belt out a heartfelt laugh. 😂
That is just excellent! It seems to be the case that because Spanish obviously is spoken in Mexico and Most of South America, a lot of Americans who know little geography nor history (beyond a few centuries at best) they regularly question white Spanish Nationals as to how they are white and speak Spanish. It appears to be satire at first but the truth is much more worrying. It's a true indictment of the education system there being very American-centric (just made a word up while criticising their education system 😮). Obviously not all Americans think like this but it's amazing any do. Spanish and Spain shouldn't confuse anyone who knows Soain exists as a country. It's entertaining either way.
A nice American lady on a Glasgow to London flight asked me why it wasn't seen as rude in Britain to still call African-Americans black. I was a bit confused at first, until she said, “What’s the *polite* word for African-American British?” I said, “British.” She just looked at me. I said, “Or Black British, if the conversation’s about ethnicity. Or Afro Caribbean. Unless their family came straight from Ghana or whatever.” The next five minutes passed in total silence. I could hear the cogs turning.
She was American so there were no cogs turning. What you saw was the vacant expression of empty space. There are two ways to learn about the world. You either read and learn or you travel and learn. For some reason, most Americans have problems with either method.
@@oles_bohdan From what I heard, recently, Elon is an illegal immigrant. He is an African. Nothing American about him ( maybe the arrogants, though not all Americans are arrogant )
I have a friend in USA that moved from Africa to Australia (where I live) then he moved to USA with his wife. He annoys people a lot over there calling himself African American. He's white but has duel Tanzanian & US citizenship making him more African American than 99.9% of those whose great grandparents never even stepped foot in Africa. Being black doesn't make someone African American.
Worked at a golf cart/moped/bicycle rental business in Key West. Big Latino family came in, no one spoke English. Manager asked me to go and talk to them (I was the bike mechanic). So I did. Went back in and told the manager I couldn't help them, I didn't know any Spanish. He thought, because I was foreign, I could speak Spanish. I had to explain I was English, and didn't know any Spanish.....
An Australian living in U.S.… store clerk YELLED across the store for help “ bcos she (me) don’t speak no English” Funny, cos based on that sentence, neither did he!
Funny thing is we speak closer to real English than they do, i get mistaken as someone from England (i'm Tasmanian) nearly every time i speak to someone American.
@@rjswas I’m English and never been mistaken for something as specific as Taswegian in the US but I’m regularly asked which part of Australia I’m from. Thing is I hold dual UK/Oz citizenship, lived there for some years, return regularly and so can switch from Brit-speak to ‘strine mid-sentence. It confuses the fkkk out of them.
Ian it takes a lot of restraint not to react to Americans in the wild. I was in a restaurant in Málaga and an American tourist asked me where I learnt to speak Mexican when I ordered my food in Spanish. I explained to him that I have lived in Spain for 12 years. He looked so bemused the willful ignorance of Americans knows no bounds.
The reason we get so annoyed is that they are so arrogant in their ignorance. Most of us will take note when corrected but no, they know best. A woman in front of me at JFK many years ago was witching incessantly at how rude Parisians were and they should be grateful because of the Marshall Plan, etc. Parisians are known throughout the world as being rude to ANYONE that speaks with a non-Parisian accent.
One US guy asked me, if Hitler is still in charge of Germany and if I am a Yazee (because I live in Germany). Another one asked me why we drink our beer warm (we don´t). Another one asked me why we do not have freedom (we have). I know a lot of Americans, most are ok, but some are so uneducated, they don´t know sh*t about anything of the world outside of the county they live in.
in fact compared to many americans we drink our beer warmer than they do they have beer nearly freezing cold ( but you know the saying if its cold enough you can drink nearly anythign mo mater how bad ) we have cellar cold or at least a few degrees more temperature than american standart AND there even is a thing as heated beer or at least it was in southern germany and as a winter thing there are even beer warmers you can find ( usually from times when beer was stored in ice cellars and it sometimes was toooo cold to enjoy and you can bring it to the 4 to 10 degrees celsius that are optimal for some beer types)
To be fair a small percentage of Americans don't know what is going on outside of the local regional area or state let alone the rest of the country. Can't expect them to know about the rest of the world too.
I just watched a RUclips tutorial on bookbinding, and the guy said "I'm doing the measurements in inches, because no matter wher you are in the world, everybody understands imperial!". Yeah. Sure. Makes sense 😂😂😂
Recently I was watching a "US college students can't answer simple questions" type of video where one of the questions asked was where is Hawaii located. Everyone in the video said it was in North America, so I posted a comment saying "despite being a US state, Hawaii is not in North America, it's part of the sub-region of Polynesia, located in Oceania". The first reply I got was from someone I'm 100% sure was from the US because they wrote this: _"Um, Hawaii is a U.S. state and the U.S. is in North America. Try again."_ 🤦♂
And? Did you tried again? 😀 Or kept you to the ruke: Don't start an argument with the fools. They will pull you down on their level and beat you with experience.
Told by U.S. HS teacher that as Australians we had never swum in the Pacific Ocean. Guess she thought it stopped at Hawaii. Explained the Pacific laps the shore along the east coast of Oz…stunned!
I met an American businessman once in Germany who was doing a round tour of his firm's subsidiary companies in Europe - from France to Germany, Italy, Spain and Denmark. He said that his head office couldn't understand why he needed seperate translators in every country - didn't everybody speak EUROPEAN ?😮
Australia here. Back when I first bought a computer, late 90’s. I found chat rooms. omg! I had one dude ask me if we had electricity in Australia, while I was chatting on my brand new computer! I told him no, I had to pedal really fast to get up to internet speed.
On Good Friday in australia fish and chip shops are flat out selling fish. The shop I worked Aton a small peninsula had at least a 3-4 hour wait. The locals knew this and put in orders well before Good Friday so that we could batter enough fish to do the orders. An American couple walked in, straight past the massive line of people paying and picking up their orders and said very loudly. We are American and can’t wait , you need to serve us first. We laughed and laughed and laughed. They were genuinely confused because we didn’t think they were special lol
@@dianneking3616 When hijackings were more common Americans wore a Canadian flag for safety. The terrorists would always pick out Americans immediately.
Me and my husband just returned from a 12-day long cruise. It departed from Fort Lauderdale. So many Americans were on that ship. Here are some of the conversations: A=American W=We 1. A:... so where did you and your lovely wife meet? W: at the office. A: So you are her boss? 2: A: Where are you from? W: Europe. A: I don't know that state. W: It's not a state it is a continent on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. A: Ok, but where in the States is that? W: It's not in the US. Do you know what a continent is? A: I know America is one. W: No the US is a part of the continent North America! 3: A: Where are you from? W: The Netherlands. A: What? W: Holland. A: Never heard of that. Is that a country? W: It's a country in Europe. A: Ok. Is that close to England? W: Yes. A: While I was in Europe I've been to England and Amsterdam. W: Amsterdam is the capital of Holland! 4. Another American told us that even an American he met had never heard of Indiana! We are still in shock 😂
I (German) lived in the USA for many years. I quite often got asked, if I speak German... I got asked if we have TVs in Germany... I got asked what I think about Hitler. And I once got told "OMG, somebody really should do something about that Hitler!" Working in a Hotel, I once made a joke with a British guest in connection with WW2, and a co-worker asked me "Oh, when was WW2?" I had a "D" License plate and Country Sticker on my Car in the US, with the German colors. Some people asked me if I am from Denmark. Often, Americans hearing my accent, called me Irish, or a "damn Mexican", or asked if I am from Boston.
@@matt47110815 A friend made the same expirience when he was in a chatroom in the 00's and stumbled across an american. As soon as the guy learnt about him being german, he immedeatly asked about if Hitler was still alive and if we can visit him. My friend told him, that Hitler was dead for over 40 years. The american condolensed with "Oh no. I am so sorry to hear that." That's the problem, when a country only circles around itself. An american couple, who moved from the USA to Germany explained, that the US News mostly focusses on the US itself. Only when something really big happens (like the Tsunamis in Sumatra or Japan or the war in the Ukraine [probably because Russia as the old enemy is involved]) it will be broadcasted
I was in Victoria in Australia at a tourist beach waiting for the penguin colony to arrive. we were sitting on the beach wall and next to me was an older American and his wife, The view was amazing, looking over the beach at dusk, Venus was really bright, The crescent moon just hung above the horizon and the constellation the Southern cross was displayed beautifully (its on our flag) I said him, "Oh your American, this would be a rare treat for you, you obviously cant see this from America" He looked shocked and said "why cant we see this"? umm your in the northern hemisphere you have a different sky" He wouldnt believe this and called his wife over, "Dotty this man says we have a different sky at home" I looked at my friend shook my head and said, well, they meet the stereotype. Americans, basically rule the world, but know nothing about it. Wilfully and confidently ignorant
@@CasperV1982 I would expect this to be so. The description given is a big clue and becomes somewhat self- evident. It has been a few decades since I visited the State of VICTORIA - around 1980 - and I still remember where all the places are. Toured all over QUEENSLAND and to remote places (c) 1984 including the off-shore islands - and camping out in a tent under the Southern Cross / Zuider Kruis in Dutch
Twice i ordered something from an US vendor, just to wait half a year for the delivery to Austria. The Canberra Central Post office has a room dedicated where they collect all the parcels and letters for Austria coming from the USA and 2 or 3 times a year forward them in a container by the cheapest means possible (ship) to Austria. They don't get paid for that, therefor one has to be thankful that they do it even with that delay.
Um international mail coming into Australia does not all go through a post office in Canberra. I think someone is pulling your keg about the container of mail being sent to Austria at no cost. That’s not logical.
Yeah dont buy it, the post code and town/city would have far more impact on where something is sent then a spelling error on the country. Put a NSW post code and address on a parcel but write QLD the parcel is still being delivered to NSW. Plus even if they did do this they wouldnt ship all these parcels inland all the way to Canberra just to ship them back out to a port, they'd do it at a sorting facility by a port to start with.
I lived in the US for a year as an exchange student, I was 17/18 in 1980/81. I was in West Texas. To say that I spent the year with my jaw dropped to the ground would be an understatement. I simply could not wrap my head around how unlearned Americans of all ages and walks of were. To be honest I couldn’t pick the stupidest thing that an American said to me, because the list is far too long, and it was all gobsmackingly ignorant. Maybe the stupidest thing could have been the school King Pin, Captain of the football team who boasted to me how he could take the entire USSR Army down single-handed because they were just a bunch of Communism in green uniforms. First I thought really? Then I thought well, good luck with that buddy. They raved about how quickly I’d learnt the language and how well I spoke it ( I’m Australian, I speak English). I got so fed with dumb that, as someone there to be an ambassador for my country, I kind of failed, because the Australian in me kicked in, and because I so sick of dumb, I kind of played along, just to protect my sanity. Everytime someone asked me to speak Australian I simply rattled off a list of Indigenous place names. Like Wollongong Wagga Wagga Woolloomooloo..and they’d say “that’s amazing, what does it mean?” And I’d say “hello, it’s nice to meet you. When they asked if I rode a kangaroo to school, I told them that I had 2, and would ride one or the other, depending on the day. When my 23 yo host brother asked me if I’d ever seen anything as big as Texas? ( Texas would fit into Australia 11 times) I looked at him like he had 2 heads and said “ um..Australia?”. It was an enlightening year for me..
This got me to think of a guy at my school back in the 80s that came back from a year as an exchange student in USA. The story of his I remeber, is when he was asked at school if there are cows in Sweden so we can drink milk. He told them that we drink a lot of milk, but we dont have any cows, so we get it in pipe lines from Amerika. They totaly belived him.
How about the tourist in Japan who got a tatoo in Japanese with some slogan. He got back to the States and found out it said "stupid American tourist?.
My colleague told the following: For work he was in Canada, so on time off he visited Niagara Falls and went into the gift store. The girl behind the counter probably noticed the accent so she asked where he was from. He said he was from The Netherlands, a small country in Europe. He said that because The Netherlands was so small, everyone there knew each other and kept each other up to date on where everyone was all the time. He knew that 2 colleagues happened to have also been there an hour earlier, so for "proof" he gave a description of those 2 colleagues, and the girl was totally taken away. The Netherlands has 18 million inhabitants.😅
I have a niece who just started as a grad student at a university in New York State. other students keep asking her if she knows somebody because they are from her home state.
I've heard that the Austrian airport has an entire desk dedicated to helping people who thought they were travelling to Australia, not sure if that's true though lol
In Austria, the tourist shops sell a t-shirt that has the Australian road warning sign with a leaping kangaroo. The words on these are 'There Are No Kangaroos In Austria'. When I started laughing, the shop owner looked puzzled, and I said,'These are for Americans '. He smiled and said yes. I have met several Australians who have bought one of these because they love the joke.
We had an american exchange student when I was in 11th grade, and one of my first converstations with her was deadass about how relieved she was that we had electricity in Germany. Wow. Needless to say, noone was sad when she left...
Australian here. I come to these videos for the comments. They are hilarious 😂. I don’t have a story as such, I just know that Americans are much more tolerable at home than they are abroad. When my husband and I travel overseas, we talk quietly when we are together and try not to draw extra attention to ourselves. Americans on the other hand love to be the centre of attention and more than once have witnessed them getting the wrong type of attention. It’s so obvious they are loudmouth tourists and usually end up having their wallets lifted, then wonder why no one wants to help them.
😂 I am American but have lived abroad most of my life. The funny thing about my fellow Americans is that you can't really have a conversation without coming away from it half an hour later knowing their social status, their job, where their kids go to college, what political leaning they have, etc. It's all about showing you who they are, like they are establishing where you rank in the social order of things.
@@chronic2023 heard about it, never experienced it, but I also lived abroad and I could have a nice, long chat with someone not knowing anything about them. I was lucky enough my American lecturers were educated people and very fun people to be around.
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More than 25 years ago, an American asked me where I came from (Germany) "Oh, you have a war there" he said "No we haven't." I replied. "YOU HAVE World War 2 there - I know this." he insisted. I answered, that ended many years ago. " Oh really? Who won?"
What really blows my mind is that nowadays everybody walks around with a mobile encyclopedia in their hands - a quick Google would answer their stupid questions, but it never seems to occur to them !😫
I am bracing myself for visiting my brother next month after about 10 years. He has lived in California for 55 years. I have lived in France for 50 years. I will try to avoid a clash.
Have you ask him a few things before hand? Like if he knows how tariffs work. Could be good to know how this conversation goes before you meet him in person.
Once an US Co-Worker came to our German office and when he arrived he was furious. We asked him what happened and it turned out the taxi driver could not speak english. A fact that made him so angry he ranted for 30 minutes about how everyone should speak english, no matter where. Another one was quite unhappy, he could not bring his gun to germany and told us how unsafe he felt because of it. Disclaimer, these were two out of dozens of US Co-Workers visiting the office and almost all others were smart and wonderful people, these two just, stood out.
99.7% of North Americans would not know why the Statue of Liberty is on an Island surrounded by water. The reason it is so - is that it is significant from a legal perspective. Of course one first has to understand what Liberty actually is. For those who do not have a clue -- Ask a Sailor Then one can connect the dots and discover the reason.
I work in a museum in Denmark. There was an American lady who was angry at us for not having any brochures/maps in American. I pointed her towards the section with the British Flag on it.....🫣🫣🫣
@@tommysellering4224 No, American history class, that should at least teach them it's a country, given the history of New York and the (most) amount of presidents from Dutch aka (foreign) origin.
I once worked for an American owned company in Sweden. One time the American owner came to visit and right before leaving back to home he asked “Where can I find that famous Swiss cheese?”. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was in Sweden (where the company he owned was located) and not in Switzerland.
American bosses buying European companies are often shocked when workers refuse to work extra hours everyday, and for free, and actually take their vacations, and don't come in when sick, and get their salaries anyway.
When I was on holiday in new York I had an American say to me after he asked me where I am from. I told him I'm Aussie. He sad "So you are from New Zealand." I replied to him"No you flamin galah I'm not a Kiwi." He said "I know that's a fruit."😂 I am sorry but I will admit that I just started laughing 😂😂😂😂😂 HOW DUMB!!!
I had my own experience as an Australian in the US, speaking with a hotel check in clerk in LA: I ended up writing out on a piece of paper what I actually asked her in ENGLISH.
Mate, good on you for taking the time to learn how to write in American. I mean, can you imagine that poor clerks face if you'd handed them a note writen in Australian? 😮
im austrian, and my dad tells basically the same story of a work trip to germany, nobody understood a word he was saying, even though he tried to speak "proper german" and he also barely understood anything they were saying... thats definitely not like that in all places, but we live in a very strong accented part of austria and that was a rather northern strongly accented part of germany... so very different to us.
@@marikothecheetah9342 I recall a famous joke when a worker stuck a giant valve handle in the ground. When the guide was saying it was about to blow that worker started cranking the valve handle.
Ok the education system in US is trash, I get it. What I do not get how in the times of internet when you can google any question or open google maps and stroll through many countries you know nothing... that is main character syndrome for sure
I think that's the things though. As a result of all of the societal, cultural, political changes over the years (including the weakening of their education system) the result is that many Americans, the ones that would make it into stories like those in the video and the comments here, believe what they are told and lack a lot of the required skills and experience using those skills to effectively find out and verify things for themselves and verify its accuracy. I can imagine that they do google things, constantly. But, without having been taught how to effectively critically analyse and disseminate the information they find when they do search for information, they are probably just as likely to read the top sponsored result and take it as fact. That's the saddest part about it for me, it feels like they really believe they are right. I feel like that's why they are often so quick to double down, why their reasoning can seem so bizarre, they really believe they know what they need to know and that it's correct and don't have any practice or experience in taking in new information and incorporating it into their perspective and understanding of the world around them. Which is something that elsewhere in the world they would have learned and practiced in school.
The number of times I get an idiotic gotcha reply that they could have been verified faster on Google. We carry phones which would have been supercomputers a couple of decades ago with access to the biggest repository of knowledge ever and access to everybody on the planet, but they know better.
The education system in the US does what is required of it, perfectly. It produces unquestioning people who make up a workforce that doesn't stand up for itself and a sea of consumers who always want the next, biggest, thing.
Funny story from my first time visiting the USA. I, my dad, my brother, and my two brother-in-law were on a 2-week trip to USA, starting in Memphis, going to Arkansas, up to Springfield along I-40, and following I-40 / Route 66 all the way to L.A. with a detour to Las Vegas. Our guide is Norwegian, but had a big ranch in Arkansas. On our way from Memphis to his ranch outside Little Rock, we stopped at a shop to buy some proper "cowboy" outfits. Boots, jeans, shirts, hats, whatever we wanted. We spent 3-4 days at the ranch, helping out a little, having fun, chilling, before we took off. Long story short: We arrive in Las Vegas. Check into the Stratosphere, and decided to go out to a bar or something. Me, my brother and the guide got in the first taxi, my dad and my brothers-in-law were in the next. We arrive at another hotel and while waiting for the others, an irish( if I remember correct ) couple showed up. They saw us, asked us where we're from and our guide just "Arkansas" in a thick accent. We posed on a picture with the irish couple, as "real cowboys", and we're all Norwegians 🤣🤣 I've tried searching IG and FB from time to time to see if that picture might pop up somewhere, but no luck. So if that couple reads this, I'd love a copy of it. I was wearing a black shirt with goldish-brown stiching, jeans, black and brown boots and a light coloured cowboyhat.
The dumbest thing an American asked me was in 1985. Travelling through Europe by train. She asked if she could get to Australia on her Eurail pass. I told her, not if she couldn’t swim. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
14:22 He probably thought he was in Germany where paying by card is much less a thing, not for lack of technology (obviously) but a mix of privacy concerns and shopkeepers not always wanting to give up a share of the money they make to the credit card companies...
I was born in Tasmania we had books, maps, atlases and globes, and exported goods to Europe! We also had travellers from all over Europe during our fruit picking season! I don't remember any Americans visiting our small town, but we watched many US movies and tv shows! I had a ex Russian ballet teacher, a ex German language teacher, and many diverse European neighbours - our beautiful river was discovered and named by a Frenchman! Most Americans don't even know anything about 'their own' European history?? 🧐
I had been working in America for about 7 years (2002-2009) , There were 4 of us in all (3 Brits and a South African) during which time a World Cup was taking place. One of our crew decided we would get some England flags for our cars. He found a website for a flag company not far from Cincinnati where we were working. However on the website they only showed the union jack flag. So he called the company up and asked if they had any England flags available. The reply was priceless ''Sir England isn't a country it's called Great Britain and their flag is number 23 on the list''.
@@antonycharnock2993 I know, I just chose to not be ana1:The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is commonly referred to as the UK including on the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland TV (Fan of QI, HIGNFY, Mock the Week RIP, and aaahhhhh Dara Ó Briain).
You could happily think that... until you ponder about the implication from the questions they are asking, then you get utterly horrified. For instance, take that guy asking if Poland has trains. If you had any basic knowledge about WW2, you should know that the Auschwitz and Treblinka camps were both in Poland, and in fact Treblinka (a purely extermination camp) was actually disguised as a train station. So the person asking the question is not just oblivious about normal, harmless stuff, he or she is also completely ignorant about history... and chances are, an holocaust denier (because millions of people can't possible walk to the concentration camps by themselves, am I rite?)
I live in Norway, and there were actually American tourists that came here to see the midnight sun during the summer in northern Norway. They wanted a refund and were really disappointed when they found out that it was the same sun as in America 😅 how many suns do you think the earth or our solar system has?
My wife and I went into the "Swatch Watch Museum" in Boston (MA) and while we were admiring some of the older examples the man working there asked if we were visitors to the City. Yes we are said and told him we were from England. He was around 60 so it came as a bit of a surprise when he said "Oh, are you Italian"? How on earth he managed to think that was to much, so we left.
Australian, travelling through the USA in 2007. A very friendly man on the bus asked "do you have vegetables in Australia!? what about meat, do you all have meat in Australia?!"
Telling pretty much anyone from Eastern Europe (minus Russians and Belarussians) that you thought the official language of their country is Russian and that you'd have to learn it to visit is beyond profoundly insulting and may put you in actual danger. People there still feel that the West abandoned them after WW2 to the waking nightmare that is life under a communist regime slaved to Soviet Russia. We don't allow the population to own weapons for the most part, but Eastern Europe can be an extremely violent place. Do take the time to know the overall history of the place you visit, at least for the past couple of centuries. You'll enjoy it a lot more and it may save your life.
Literally watched an African American person tell an Aboriginal woman she wasn’t black which was really weird. And they’ll call people African/American even when they’re literally African.
It's a shame coz there are many curious and open minded americans that get overshadowed and over represented by these guys :o that said, an american once forcefully reminded me that "The UK doesn't have beaches!!" ^^
@101steel4 This may be old school (literally - i'm getting on) but i had to learn to swim in infant school, that's 5-7 yr olds to americans. If that is still normal it makes us good swimmers, yes :p
I'm from Sweden and in all of 1800 to the beginning of 1900 we had a lot of people, around 1.5 million, migrate to America because of food shortage and some other things. I was going to my university one day and I noticed a man that had a problem buying a parking ticket so I stepped in and helped him. He was from the US and we started talking. He almost immediately asked me rather confused why there were so many people around. I was confused, especially because we were standing in a larger city center and he said "didn't like almost all of you move to America?"... I just told him that some did, some came back and most importantly people did not just stop making babies! I quickly left after that. He thought sweden would be mostly empty 🙃
An American work colleague asked me if my hometown of Birmingham was named after the Birmingham in Alabama ,our oldest pub was established in 1368 lollll. Serious question : Do Americans not study info about the country they visit or at the very least take a look at google maps to get a feel for places? Maybe it's just me but i end up knowing more about different countries than the natives sometimes lollll. . i use the little yellow man on google maps and walk around New Zealand / Africa/ China everywhere, even if i will never visit them.
that's just murrica brainrot. at least that's what I call it and americans that have a solely US centric understanding of the world. aka know nothing aside from the US *and* have your very common confidently incorrect attitude on top of it all. that flavour of americans is also the type that thinks the way their country works is best and no way it could be a exploitative corpo country/capitalistic dystopia full if corruption. also same people who asked me from which of the apparently 3 germany's I'm from, because angry mustache man is still alive and there are the republic of germany, communist germany *and* nazi-germany existing right as we speak. I--... I could've sworn when the east west split was *after* taking down the nazis, my parents in their late teens participated in the reunification protests that predominantly happened on the east side up the iron curtain fell in 1989. also that one famous quote/chant? "Wir sind das Volk"(we are the people) to fight the soviet dictatorship. ofc that's my country's history, but I know some murricans think Reagan broke open the Berlin wall abd not the millions of people protesting peacefully for their independence with tanks pointing their guns at them. murricans should learn to shut up and listen before blatantly disrespecting the extremely brave act/legacy of those everyday citizen. things could have ended like they did in Hong Kong barely a year prior during the ... frankly Tienanmen Sqare massacre. less murrica centric education for americans please
I'm from Aberdeen, north east Scotland, and have met quite a few Americans, mostly working in the oil industry, most of them have travelled a bit, and know some stuff, but I'd love to go to the US and watch some heads explode when I speak to the locals in my Doric Scottish tongue, love your videos by the way dude 👌
I went to Aberdeen a few times in the 80s and there were plenty of Texans who appeared to have walked straight out of Dallas. (The TV show, not the city!)
Indeed, my old boss in an oil company here in Aberdeen was called Marvin Wade Junior, and he was from Texas, cowboy boots, Stetson etc, top guy by the way 👍
Hold up. Let me park my elephant in the garage real quick. My cheetah went in for a service 😂😂😂. Lol in 2024 ppl still ask if we have wild animals in our street
@citedcanvas85 so, I live in a pretty lekker part of RSA, we had a porcupine get hit outside out house, was about 20kgs. We have leopard and hippos also roaming.
Hmmm, considering the interaction you have observed in relation to recent data from the International American Ignorance Database, I feel that this basic acknowledgement that other countries do not use United States Dollars as thier currency might actually be scientifically significant since previous data suggested a commonly held belief that European countries just used USD. Given that this concept of "foreign currency" is still at odds with thier broadly held belief other countries only exist so that Americans can visit them, it is possible that "outside dollars" is an intermediate step in the evolution of their vernacular and over time they will continue to expand on this as they come to understand that other countries use other currencies and integrate these new concepts into their language. This could very well be the intial signs of a broadening of thier understanding of the world. We should continue our observations. They may be learning.
15:15 Regarding Poland having trains - they not only have trains, they have an *extensive and dense network* of train lines. There is virtually nowhere in Poland out of reach of their train network. When I was there, 15 years ago, they didn't have super modern trains, but I think now they already have the beginning of a high-speed network.
In school (Sweden) we had geography in school, both national and international, mountains, lakes, oceans, islands, countries, capitals... you name it. So why can't you?
As a teenager I had a temporary job in a snack bar. One day a guest from the USA freaked out because I didn't speak English very well and he couldn't pay with US dollars. Greetings from Switzerland (Europe)
I'm in a seaside small city in Australia and Cruise ships dock here. My husband used to work in the local gun shop. He said Americans off the cruise would walk into the shop and stand gob smacked that we have guns here, then they would ask why the people behind the counter didn't have guns on their hips. Husband had to explain they don't need a gun, that our guns are generally not for protecting but for sporting shooting and removal of feral animals.
I come from a country village in The Netherlands. My brother and I were visiting Seattle in the nineties. When visiting a restaurant our accent was noticed. After explaining we were from Holland we got the compliment that our english was better than most Canadian (!). Short after that we got the question if it is true that in every restaurant in Holland people use drugs at the table whilst dining... I remember the disbelief on the waitress face when we stated that we have never witnessed anybody doing drugs in our life and we never had used any drugs ourselves.
The question about drugs almost always came up (or at least until other countries started legalizing cannabis). I got so sick of it, that when asked where I was from I said “I’m from Holland and don’t have drugs on me nor use it”.
Mexican here, from northern México 🇲🇽 I'm completely identified with the canadian girl, they US people can't believe I can be mexican and white oh and can speak english too. México is a big country so has diferent people too!!
I overheard a couple of American tourists in Edinburgh ask a local person if the castle ( built in the 11th century) is packed away each night and put together each morning. I shouldn’t have been surprised though. I was born in Ireland of Irish parents and I’ve had an American say that they were more Irish than I was because they had green eyes and mine are blue. They’ve never even been to Ireland.
There have been complaints from some Americans on Orkney about Skara Brae, to the effect that you have to walk quite far along a small path from the parking area to see this five thousand year old settlement - and that there aren’t other attractions or cafes on the site.
@ some really shouldn’t be allowed out without supervision. I haven’t been to Orkney but I know it’s an ancient settlement and would be respectful. I think some believe that everything outside the US is like Disneyland and is a tourist attraction set up just for them
@@eh1702 Add to that…met an American couple headed south thru the UK( we were 🚙 nth), in a 400 yo pub. They complained loud & long about the TERRIBLE narrow,winding,roads thru THE COTSWALDS…& said that a freeway shd b built, & they wd advise others not visit that part of England…THE COTSWALDS! 😮
It has to be remembered that in the US, Mt. Rushmore is regarded as a national monument when, in reality, it was created as just a tourist attraction and has no real significance.
@@eh1702 Can't you just put a McDonalds there, to keep them nourished on fat and sugar ? 2 McDonalds actually, one at the entrance and one at the settlement itself. Otherwise they'll never survive the return trip.
We were on Exercise Teamwork in Norway, surrounded by US Marines - I was in the Royal Air Force - and was asked if I could understand English! (I think they thought I was Norwegian; however even if I was, every Norwegian I had met spoke English fluently...)
My daughter was working in a treetop resort, dining room overlooking the river. New Yorkers sitting looking at this vista and people swimming and canoeing below them and actually asked her what time do they turn the water off! Another good one was when a friend was walking behind some visitors from US at the markets under huge mango trees...heard them say they wondered if they might be able to get a mango...Oz bent down and picked one up off the ground and said "here you go..a mango" Reply was oh goddamn that's what I like about Australia, everything grows on trees.
Ok, it's difficult with Luxembourg. If you want to drive to Luxembourg from Germany you have to brake in Trier (a german town), otherwise you are already through before the car comes to a stop.
I always approuch it from belgium the first part is uphill makes it way easier to stop. But to be fair yeah i can understand it if an american doesn't know Luxembourg.
Funny thing about Luxembourg: the King wanted more power, Parliament refused until he threatened to sell the country to Bill Gates, who was quite surprised.
i love how you try to clarify the whole "i love the US" thingy.. here's the thing though, nobody from any other country would say such a thing.. i know sweden is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better than the US, but that does not make sweden "good". i have never met a person, except for the US, where people proudly proclaim their nation.
I think the difference is that for people in the United States, pride in their country also means that their country is superior to all others. That's what makes it so uncomfortable and offensive.
@@Marina45711I agree. There is nothing wrong in loving your country, but that doesn't mean you have to think it's The Best Country there is. Just as you can love your parentes or siblings or spouse and still understand that they are not objectivly better than other people's families.
I’m Swedish here’s some dumb stuff Americans have said: -You have summer in Sweden? -(Context: I’m a teacher) You have schools in Europe? I thought it was only in America? -Oh you’re Swedish? Do you know were the nearest IKEA is? (Like I would telepathically sense where it was?) There’s definitely more like always getting asked if I’m Swiss, if I speak German or if I speak English but those are all the really bad ones I think :)
fun story i remembered from listening to the austrian/australien swichup at the end: a work college of my mother had to call the police because she saw something in her backyard. the call was something like "okay, i have to say first that i am not drunk, didnt take any drugs and that i am not crazy, BUT there is a kangaroo in my backyard" turns out that in the neighboring village there is a kangaroo farm and one has escaped, in the middle of the northern germany countryside 🤣 never say never i guess.
I absolutely love the comments under these kind of videos. The obliviousness of some people is mind blowing and hilarious at the same time. Explaining to those people where the Netherlands is: "It's the beautiful countryside around Amsterdam, with its tulips and windmills."
Australian here, I used to work for an American electronics company in Sydney many years ago and listening to product talks used to send me off into gales of laughter, usually getting me in trouble. The word that sets me off is “soldering” Americans drop the L and to my mind it has a totally different meaning hence the laughter. 😂😂
If it makes you feel any better, so many Canadians have asked my mom why she's white if she's Brazilian that she came up with a standard answer: Why aren't you a Mountie if you're Canadian? I've also been asked by a Canadian if Brazil is in Africa and when I told them it's the biggest country in South America they asked me where South America is. And then proceeded to try to mansplain to me about which countries count as Latino.
American girl ask me if we are envious of the moon in Europe or do we have our own.. She thought moon can be seen only from the US! I was too stunned to ask for reasons, my inner hobbyist astronomer took the wheel instead and tried to explain the moon to her, as my soul left my body, to laugh, obviously. Also, not abusing ambulances or free healthcare is always a weird conversation, like seriously, I don’t hurt myself on purpose, even if it doesn’t cost me.. people don’t go to hospitals for fun!
As a Brit the funniest thing I heard from an American was " Windsor Castle is beautiful but I don't understand why they built it under Heathrow Airport flight path"!!!😂
That she is. As a Tasmanian, I am proud of her, as are all Tasmanians. We even added her into our schooling for children, while learning about Denmark.
Oh, I witnessed one! I was in Paris France once covering a concert and doing an interview with one of the member of the band. I was checking in at the hotel (I live pretty far North West of Paris), when I saw a red faced customer wearing Santiags and a Texas belt buckle arrive. He was outraged that the booklet in their room was in French, English, German, Spanish and Italian, and not only in English. An Italian man behind me had to intervene very typically angry Italian-ish to have the guy backing off and realize that yeah, Paris IS in fact, in Europe. 🤣
For my personnal story i'm French i did a Roadtrip in America during the summer 2019 and i was to a Sportsbar in L.A. A girl came talking and asking where i'm from i said from France, she told me what language do you speak ? Spanish ? And i awkwardly turned my face towards the Screen
My colleagues in US asked me: 1) Do you have pizza in Europe? 2) Do you have war over there? when I specified I am from Slovakia (middle/easter part of Europe) I was asked if we have showers 😮😅 in meantime Americans still use cheques 🙄
As a Swede, even though it annoys me to no end when our countries gets mixed up, it's understandable. They are not THAT far apart, and both have a history of neutrality, so there are certainly worse things to get wrong.
Sorry, but no, it's not understandable. Since I was a small boy, I have known the difference between Sweden and Switzerland and where each country is located and even after all of these years, I have trouble accepting that Americans STILL can't tell the difference! Just as they can't tell the difference between my country - Australia and Austria! Americans have developed their own kind of stupidity and are hellbent on maintaining it!
Well, I assume that the guys who are mixing things up here have no idea about the distance between Switzerland and Sweden. And they certainly know absolutely _nothing_ about the history of independence of the two countries. So it indeed comes down to the fact that both countries start with "Sw"
@@axelk4921 No I doubt they even know the flags either. First comment was spot on. It's literally the fact that they both begin with the letters "Sw" and end in "n".
the best question I have ever heard was USA people were being asked what they thought of homosapiens. Not one of them knew that they are in fact homosapien. you can imagine what they thought it meant because of homo at the beginning. it was hilarious 😂
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
I´m an 55-year old Austrian and to this day the lack of Kangaroos jumping around our streets makes me incredibly sad.
they do have a habit of jumping out in front of cars though. Keeps the repair business in work.
I am a Swede that moved to Vienna some ten years ago. I am also sad for the lack of kangaroos in the streets. I saw some at Schönbrunn zoo, but they didn´t even jump.
Can we send you a few? We could do camels and cane toads too, if you like?
@tomtorres212 Excellent comment! No explanation required lol!
You can cheer yourself up by finding an American. Tell them you used to ride a kangaroo to school when you were young. Unfortunately, all the kangaroos were eaten during the potato famine. It was the saddest experience of your life walking to school with a sandwich made from your former pet.
You can then consider yourself an honorary Australian if you can tell a story like that with a straight face.
Though neither born nor raised there, my ancestry is entirely Welsh and Cornish. During my first visit to the US in 1960, on a concert tour, we visited DC. One of the plaques on the Washington Monument reads, "Fy Iaith, Fy Ngwlad, Fy Ngenedl". The guide explained it was in Patawomek, the tribe of the Potomac River. My 10-yr old voice called out, "No, it's not. It's Welsh and means My language, my nation, my land. It was put here to honour the fact that six of the signatories to your Declaration of Independence were Welsh, as were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams." About half the tour group wouldn't believe me.
I've always thought that the Welsh should make more of this. They were very influential during the early years of the USA.
you had to go and burst their bubble? XD
This is actually really interesting, thanks for sharing your fact check.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 go ur 10 yo self!
Most white Americans originate from the British mainland.
Two Swedish guys on holiday in NY, wanted to exchange swedish kronor to us $ at their hotel.
It went very well. They got the exchange rate from Swiss franc to US $.
Swiss franc and US $ has about the same value, but it takes 10 Swedish kronor to buy one US $.
They thought it was a very good deal.
OMG 😂😂🤦
Same here. On our last days of a vacation in the US in the late 1980s we needed some money, so we wanted to exchange ATS 2000 (Austrian Schilling), equal to about EUR 150 and at the time equal to about USD 120. The clerk immediately called the manager and while waiting in her office for the official exchange rate she looked at the new bills and said admiringly: "Pretty!" (in opposite the the than usual "green stamps"...). After getting the rate by phone she asked if we prefer small or large bills ("mixed, please"), fetched the money, counted it in front of us, handed us the bills in an envelope and we said our goodbys. But something felt wrong. Back in our motor home our brains started to work. How much did we get? Counting the money once again we nearly got an heart attack. About USD 2000. Instead of about USD 120. After a short discussion if one person personally could be hold responsable for this error we went back inside. Now the manager had her heart attack when we said there is something wrong. After the whole explanation, thousand thanks and wild discussions on the phone we got our corrected amount according to the new exchange rate. No, it wasn't just a good rate, there was again wrong data. This time we didn't argue and went our way with about USD 300 (again instead of about USD 120).
if I has Swedish kroner and could exchange them 1:1 to Swiss francs, I would of course also call it a very good deal😂
I would have said would you give me a better rate if I exchange more, then dragged out every kronor I had 🤣
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 good for the guys.
Being close to a group of tourists at the Acropolis museum in Athens, I could not believe my ears when a lady from USA asked the astonished tour guide "how come the ancient Greeks had so many disabled people?" (Many of the excavated statues exhibited there were found with missing hands, nose or legs, some of them even without a head, which is a highly interesting version of disability)
Also, why do we keep so many ruins in the city 😂
Mate, i grew up near Epidavros. I lost count how many times they asked why the plays weren't in English and trying to "correct" our pronunciation of ancient classics.
@@apmoy70Greece is clearly a very poor country, why would so much of the capital be in disrepair otherwise? 😉
depicting muricans in Ancient ages so precisely? I finally have an idea how great Greeks were and why Romans adore them, and missing head (hollow one) is more annoying than interesting disability (maybe some prophets told them)
I really want that to be true.
"Every authoritarian government that keeps their population ignorant and uneducated succeeds in achieving a perpetual subservient people that are easier to propagandise"-TS
Ssst there are maericanes watching thay might take offense if the truth is spoken so plainly.
Was going to say something, stopped myself in time, phew!
If the American people ever woke up they would insist on moving over seas.
@@surfaceten510n I think they would realize that it's time to use the 2nd amendment for what it was intended for first rather than moving.
@@surfaceten510n Not from Red States, they cannot believe their way of life might be inferior in any way.
The one thing I never understand is how some Americans can be so convinced that they know more about someone they just met than the person themself
Ignorance
I find that fascinating, really. A friend of mine (German) has the sharp S in his last name (ß). Let's call him Keßner. He tries to sign up for this boating competition in Florida and the lady taking his details says "Kebner?"
He says: "No, it's pronounced Kessner. That ß is actually a double S."
She looks at his ID: "No, that can't be. Are you sure you're not Kebner?"
_Yes, lady, they have been mispronouncing their family name through generations. How lucky one of them finally made it to the great US of A so they were taught how to properly pronounce their surname. Geez!_ xD
Romanian here, I met a USA patriot which was asking why any one here speaks English. Told him welcome to Romania were we mainly speak Romanian, French, English and Russian. We are not obligated to speak English on our daily basis. He was furious and started making a tantrum. 3 min later police came and pick him and arrested it for public disturbance.
What a shame that you don't have any of those hell prisons that the American movies say "all those foreign prisons are" to put him in for a few minutes. Just to not destroy all his ideas in one go.
@@alanhilder1883I wished for something like that. No long ago we had a public enclosure were people like this were placed to shame them like in the medieval era but now is considered to harsh for a punishment.
Well if anyone wants to come here we are really nice people but if you are an a****** it would be better to stay home. Because we have a strong respect for the other we try to help but if the attitude is bad we really ostracize anyone due to the big connection we share as citizens of the same country.
so, it was "la revedere" and "drum bun" (i used 50% of my romanian vocabulary)
it suits us people and it serves him right.......
Same here in Montreal were most everybody speaks French. I heard a tourist in Old Montreal which is very French complaining that "why can't they speak American like everybody else".
The combination of confidence and ignorance is a very dangerous thing! As this video shows!
are they confidently ignorant, or ignorantly confident. both I imagine.
I was gaming Saturday night and we had a new game called bonfire 😅 boardgames.
Tragically, they go hand in hand. Ignorance can make people confident 😅
The Dunning-Kruger effect.
I (polish) live in Ireland now and while on a day trip to Belfast i learned from one of the guides that they unusually often have to explain to Americans that Titanic was in fact a real ship & catastrophe. Apparently ton of people think it's a movie fan museum.
I can understand his question as every animal in Australia seems to be a hungry carnivore who sees you as dinner, without vegetables.
As someone from Southampton, I can confirm this does happen more than you'd think. Even going through the museum where the impact of the sinking on the cities population is thoroughly explored. A significant proportion of a generations fathers from the city were lost that night.
@@__-fm5qvI bet there are Americans that think the whole UK is theme park
A Harry Potter inspired theme park. It really irritates my when our beautiful architecture is likened to something from a Disney film or HP.
I'm Portuguese and I worked at the Expo-98 in Lisbon as a security and sometimes visitors would ask us questions about not only our country's pavilion but mostly about other countries. A group of Americans asked if Portugal had frontiers with any other countries. I said we only had a frontier with Spain. One of guys had this amazed look on his face and asked: Spain? They speak Spanish? I replied: Yes, they speak Spanish. The guy just looked at the group, turned to me asked: "When did the Mexicans conquered Spain? To this day I still don't know how I didn't belt out a heartfelt laugh. 😂
Jesus Christ 😩
That is just excellent! It seems to be the case that because Spanish obviously is spoken in Mexico and Most of South America, a lot of Americans who know little geography nor history (beyond a few centuries at best) they regularly question white Spanish Nationals as to how they are white and speak Spanish. It appears to be satire at first but the truth is much more worrying. It's a true indictment of the education system there being very American-centric (just made a word up while criticising their education system 😮).
Obviously not all Americans think like this but it's amazing any do. Spanish and Spain shouldn't confuse anyone who knows Soain exists as a country. It's entertaining either way.
Well, all that mexican gold invaded Spain ;-)
The same year Portugal was conquered by Brazil I guess... 🙂
@lesfreresdelaquote1176 Excellent comment! I'm surprised there aren't any Americans who thought they discovered England (I may be wrong).
A nice American lady on a Glasgow to London flight asked me why it wasn't seen as rude in Britain to still call African-Americans black. I was a bit confused at first, until she said, “What’s the *polite* word for African-American British?” I said, “British.”
She just looked at me.
I said, “Or Black British, if the conversation’s about ethnicity. Or Afro Caribbean. Unless their family came straight from Ghana or whatever.”
The next five minutes passed in total silence. I could hear the cogs turning.
She was American so there were no cogs turning. What you saw was the vacant expression of empty space.
There are two ways to learn about the world. You either read and learn or you travel and learn. For some reason, most Americans have problems with either method.
It's so strange to me that Americans call black people who have never lived in America "African-American"
@@Atzy I would be burned at the stake if I said Charlize Theron and Elon Musk were African-American. ))
@@oles_bohdan From what I heard, recently, Elon is an illegal immigrant. He is an African. Nothing American about him ( maybe the arrogants, though not all Americans are arrogant )
I have a friend in USA that moved from Africa to Australia (where I live) then he moved to USA with his wife. He annoys people a lot over there calling himself African American. He's white but has duel Tanzanian & US citizenship making him more African American than 99.9% of those whose great grandparents never even stepped foot in Africa. Being black doesn't make someone African American.
Worked at a golf cart/moped/bicycle rental business in Key West. Big Latino family came in, no one spoke English. Manager asked me to go and talk to them (I was the bike mechanic). So I did.
Went back in and told the manager I couldn't help them, I didn't know any Spanish. He thought, because I was foreign, I could speak Spanish.
I had to explain I was English, and didn't know any Spanish.....
An Australian living in U.S.… store clerk YELLED across the store for help “ bcos she (me) don’t speak no English” Funny, cos based on that sentence, neither did he!
Funny thing is we speak closer to real English than they do, i get mistaken as someone from England (i'm Tasmanian) nearly every time i speak to someone American.
@@rjswas Hey I got a question. Do babies have their second head removed at birth or is it a decision made later for themselves? 🍌
@@rjswas I’m English and never been mistaken for something as specific as Taswegian in the US but I’m regularly asked which part of Australia I’m from.
Thing is I hold dual UK/Oz citizenship, lived there for some years, return regularly and so can switch from Brit-speak to ‘strine mid-sentence. It confuses the fkkk out of them.
On a movie forum , an American said he had just watched Watership Down.
He said he didn't understand it as the voice actors were speaking "British"
We'll who does? It's time the Brits start speaking a real language. Like English or something.
Ian it takes a lot of restraint not to react to Americans in the wild. I was in a restaurant in Málaga and an American tourist asked me where I learnt to speak Mexican when I ordered my food in Spanish. I explained to him that I have lived in Spain for 12 years. He looked so bemused the willful ignorance of Americans knows no bounds.
omg lmao
so, you took mexican classes in Spain, South Dakota ?
"Wilful ignorance" was the exact correct expression to portray the mind boggling lack of general knowledge that seems prevalent in the USA.
The reason we get so annoyed is that they are so arrogant in their ignorance. Most of us will take note when corrected but no, they know best. A woman in front of me at JFK many years ago was witching incessantly at how rude Parisians were and they should be grateful because of the Marshall Plan, etc. Parisians are known throughout the world as being rude to ANYONE that speaks with a non-Parisian accent.
One US guy asked me, if Hitler is still in charge of Germany and if I am a Yazee (because I live in Germany). Another one asked me why we drink our beer warm (we don´t). Another one asked me why we do not have freedom (we have). I know a lot of Americans, most are ok, but some are so uneducated, they don´t know sh*t about anything of the world outside of the county they live in.
in fact compared to many americans we drink our beer warmer than they do they have beer nearly freezing cold ( but you know the saying if its cold enough you can drink nearly anythign mo mater how bad ) we have cellar cold or at least a few degrees more temperature than american standart AND there even is a thing as heated beer or at least it was in southern germany and as a winter thing there are even beer warmers you can find
( usually from times when beer was stored in ice cellars and it sometimes was toooo cold to enjoy and you can bring it to the 4 to 10 degrees celsius that are optimal for some beer types)
Even then..
To be fair a small percentage of Americans don't know what is going on outside of the local regional area or state let alone the rest of the country. Can't expect them to know about the rest of the world too.
The freedom thing bugs me. It's propaganda.
@@davidius74 the problem is not the lack of knowledge, but that these people often are celebrating their ignorance and USDefaultism
I just watched a RUclips tutorial on bookbinding, and the guy said "I'm doing the measurements in inches, because no matter wher you are in the world, everybody understands imperial!". Yeah. Sure. Makes sense 😂😂😂
And everybody outside the US knows how to use a search engine to convert stubborn stupidity into scientific measurements. 🙄
@@june4976 But fkng hate to do it! :D
😂😅
They even define inches differently to the UK - but weights and volumes are totally different.
Recently I was watching a "US college students can't answer simple questions" type of video where one of the questions asked was where is Hawaii located. Everyone in the video said it was in North America, so I posted a comment saying "despite being a US state, Hawaii is not in North America, it's part of the sub-region of Polynesia, located in Oceania". The first reply I got was from someone I'm 100% sure was from the US because they wrote this:
_"Um, Hawaii is a U.S. state and the U.S. is in North America. Try again."_
🤦♂
😂 _"Uuum aktually"_ generation 😂
And? Did you tried again? 😀
Or kept you to the ruke: Don't start an argument with the fools.
They will pull you down on their level and beat you with experience.
😂😂😂
Told by U.S. HS teacher that as Australians we had never swum in the Pacific Ocean. Guess she thought it stopped at Hawaii. Explained the Pacific laps the shore along the east coast of Oz…stunned!
They don't even know the square root of nine or the year the us got its independence .They are orange cats .
I met an American businessman once in Germany who was doing a round tour of his firm's subsidiary companies in Europe - from France to Germany, Italy, Spain and Denmark. He said that his head office couldn't understand why he needed seperate translators in every country - didn't everybody speak EUROPEAN ?😮
Beancounters will be beancounters. They just wanted a discount for a larger number of translations from the same supplier…
@@thomasalbrecht5914 in the true, capitalist way, the 'Murican way.
Here in the UK we celebrate the 4th of July not as independence day but more of we dodged that bullet day.
As a dutchie I'm quite glad we sold that piece of rock to you, back then.
Australia here. Back when I first bought a computer, late 90’s. I found chat rooms. omg! I had one dude ask me if we had electricity in Australia, while I was chatting on my brand new computer! I told him no, I had to pedal really fast to get up to internet speed.
On Good Friday in australia fish and chip shops are flat out selling fish. The shop I worked Aton a small peninsula had at least a 3-4 hour wait. The locals knew this and put in orders well before Good Friday so that we could batter enough fish to do the orders. An American couple walked in, straight past the massive line of people paying and picking up their orders and said very loudly. We are American and can’t wait , you need to serve us first. We laughed and laughed and laughed. They were genuinely confused because we didn’t think they were special lol
Well the Karens in the US do the same.
Yes I have heard this many many times “I’m an American” big fkg deal! 😡
@@dianneking3616 When hijackings were more common Americans wore a Canadian flag for safety. The terrorists would always pick out Americans immediately.
Me and my husband just returned from a 12-day long cruise. It departed from Fort Lauderdale. So many Americans were on that ship.
Here are some of the conversations:
A=American W=We
1. A:... so where did you and your lovely wife meet? W: at the office. A: So you are her boss?
2: A: Where are you from? W: Europe. A: I don't know that state. W: It's not a state it is a continent on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. A: Ok, but where in the States is that? W: It's not in the US. Do you know what a continent is? A: I know America is one. W: No the US is a part of the continent North America!
3: A: Where are you from? W: The Netherlands. A: What? W: Holland. A: Never heard of that. Is that a country? W: It's a country in Europe. A: Ok. Is that close to England? W: Yes. A: While I was in Europe I've been to England and Amsterdam. W: Amsterdam is the capital of Holland!
4. Another American told us that even an American he met had never heard of Indiana!
We are still in shock
😂
I really hope that while among them you made liberal use of that Dutch punctuation (Kvnt). They hate that word.
The Tasmania thing: The current queen of Denmark, wife of King Frederik X, was born in Tasmania... Is she then an actual fairy tale queen?
What about Errol Flynn the great actor? He was real! 😍
I (German) lived in the USA for many years. I quite often got asked, if I speak German... I got asked if we have TVs in Germany... I got asked what I think about Hitler. And I once got told "OMG, somebody really should do something about that Hitler!"
Working in a Hotel, I once made a joke with a British guest in connection with WW2, and a co-worker asked me "Oh, when
was WW2?"
I had a "D" License plate and Country Sticker on my Car in the US, with the German colors. Some people asked me if I am from Denmark.
Often, Americans hearing my accent, called me Irish, or a "damn Mexican", or asked if I am from Boston.
...did you ask for a clarification about what they mean with "do something about that Hitler"?
Did they think he was still alive?
My Swedish husband, born and raised in Sweden, to be asked if he spoke Swedish.
@@AtzyYes, indeed. They thought Hitler was still in power. 🤷♂️😐
A german working in a hotel, a british guest, a joke about WW2. Sounds like a reverse Fawlty Towers :-)
@@matt47110815 A friend made the same expirience when he was in a chatroom in the 00's and stumbled across an american. As soon as the guy learnt about him being german, he immedeatly asked about if Hitler was still alive and if we can visit him.
My friend told him, that Hitler was dead for over 40 years. The american condolensed with "Oh no. I am so sorry to hear that."
That's the problem, when a country only circles around itself. An american couple, who moved from the USA to Germany explained, that the US News mostly focusses on the US itself. Only when something really big happens (like the Tsunamis in Sumatra or Japan or the war in the Ukraine [probably because Russia as the old enemy is involved]) it will be broadcasted
I was in Victoria in Australia at a tourist beach waiting for the penguin colony to arrive. we were sitting on the beach wall and next to me was an older American and his wife, The view was amazing, looking over the beach at dusk, Venus was really bright, The crescent moon just hung above the horizon and the constellation the Southern cross was displayed beautifully (its on our flag) I said him, "Oh your American, this would be a rare treat for you, you obviously cant see this from America" He looked shocked and said "why cant we see this"? umm your in the northern hemisphere you have a different sky" He wouldnt believe this and called his wife over, "Dotty this man says we have a different sky at home" I looked at my friend shook my head and said, well, they meet the stereotype. Americans, basically rule the world, but know nothing about it. Wilfully and confidently ignorant
That must have been at Phillip Island.
The penguins are smarter...
@@CasperV1982
I would expect this to be so.
The description given is a big clue and becomes
somewhat self- evident.
It has been a few decades since I visited the State of VICTORIA -
around 1980 - and I still remember where all the places are.
Toured all over QUEENSLAND and to remote places (c) 1984
including the off-shore islands - and camping out in a tent under
the Southern Cross / Zuider Kruis in Dutch
Now you've done it! Someone is going to be down there soon trying to ship that sky back to the States.
I honestly believe that clog wog XRAF-633 could read this thread back to himself and still believe it wasn't arrogant at all
Twice i ordered something from an US vendor, just to wait half a year for the delivery to Austria. The Canberra Central Post office has a room dedicated where they collect all the parcels and letters for Austria coming from the USA and 2 or 3 times a year forward them in a container by the cheapest means possible (ship) to Austria. They don't get paid for that, therefor one has to be thankful that they do it even with that delay.
Um international mail coming into Australia does not all go through a post office in Canberra. I think someone is pulling your keg about the container of mail being sent to Austria at no cost. That’s not logical.
Yeah dont buy it, the post code and town/city would have far more impact on where something is sent then a spelling error on the country. Put a NSW post code and address on a parcel but write QLD the parcel is still being delivered to NSW.
Plus even if they did do this they wouldnt ship all these parcels inland all the way to Canberra just to ship them back out to a port, they'd do it at a sorting facility by a port to start with.
@@UFO-047 Probably as an import checkpoint as well.
@@marikothecheetah9342 Im not following what you mean
@@UFO-047 ", they'd do it at a sorting facility by a port to start with." - I mean import office would also be there, for convenience.
I lived in the US for a year as an exchange student, I was 17/18 in 1980/81. I was in West Texas. To say that I spent the year with my jaw dropped to the ground would be an understatement. I simply could not wrap my head around how unlearned Americans of all ages and walks of were. To be honest I couldn’t pick the stupidest thing that an American said to me, because the list is far too long, and it was all gobsmackingly ignorant. Maybe the stupidest thing could have been the school King Pin, Captain of the football team who boasted to me how he could take the entire USSR Army down single-handed because they were just a bunch of Communism in green uniforms. First I thought really? Then I thought well, good luck with that buddy. They raved about how quickly I’d learnt the language and how well I spoke it ( I’m Australian, I speak English). I got so fed with dumb that, as someone there to be an ambassador for my country, I kind of failed, because the Australian in me kicked in, and because I so sick of dumb, I kind of played along, just to protect my sanity. Everytime someone asked me to speak Australian I simply rattled off a list of Indigenous place names. Like Wollongong Wagga Wagga Woolloomooloo..and they’d say “that’s amazing, what does it mean?” And I’d say “hello, it’s nice to meet you. When they asked if I rode a kangaroo to school, I told them that I had 2, and would ride one or the other, depending on the day. When my 23 yo host brother asked me if I’d ever seen anything as big as Texas? ( Texas would fit into Australia 11 times) I looked at him like he had 2 heads and said “ um..Australia?”. It was an enlightening year for me..
This got me to think of a guy at my school back in the 80s that came back from a year as an exchange student in USA. The story of his I remeber, is when he was asked at school if there are cows in Sweden so we can drink milk. He told them that we drink a lot of milk, but we dont have any cows, so we get it in pipe lines from Amerika. They totaly belived him.
@@katam6471 🤣🤣🤣🤣
What an effort!! I really don't envy you 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
How about the tourist in Japan who got a tatoo in Japanese with some slogan. He got back to the States and found out it said "stupid American tourist?.
My colleague told the following: For work he was in Canada, so on time off he visited Niagara Falls and went into the gift store. The girl behind the counter probably noticed the accent so she asked where he was from. He said he was from The Netherlands, a small country in Europe. He said that because The Netherlands was so small, everyone there knew each other and kept each other up to date on where everyone was all the time. He knew that 2 colleagues happened to have also been there an hour earlier, so for "proof" he gave a description of those 2 colleagues, and the girl was totally taken away.
The Netherlands has 18 million inhabitants.😅
Totally, I got to know all the people when I went on a business trip to Rotterdam and Amsterdam. :P
Running joke for comedians is that every Canadian knows every Canadian. BTW most don't know that Holland isn't a country.
I love the Nederlandse 😂
I have a niece who just started as a grad student at a university in New York State. other students keep asking her if she knows somebody because they are from her home state.
@@kenbrown2808 That is a continual annoyance for Canadians.
Do you remember before the internet we thought the cause of stupidity was the lack of access to information? Yeah, it wasn't that...
Worked at an International Airport for 15 years and yes, so many Americans weren't aware that Australia and Austria are NOT the same country.
I've heard that the Austrian airport has an entire desk dedicated to helping people who thought they were travelling to Australia, not sure if that's true though lol
In Austria, the tourist shops sell a t-shirt that has the Australian road warning sign with a leaping kangaroo. The words on these are 'There Are No Kangaroos In Austria'. When I started laughing, the shop owner looked puzzled, and I said,'These are for Americans '. He smiled and said yes.
I have met several Australians who have bought one of these because they love the joke.
@@ZosiaDabrowskiaussie here, I so hope this is true, with abject apologies to Austrians, of course.
@@ZosiaDabrowski I'm pretty sure it's a myth, but I would dearly love it to be true.
@@ZosiaDabrowski It is a myth, comes from an ad. Copy the phrase into Google and you'll get the details.
We had an american exchange student when I was in 11th grade, and one of my first converstations with her was deadass about how relieved she was that we had electricity in Germany. Wow. Needless to say, noone was sad when she left...
Australian here. I come to these videos for the comments. They are hilarious 😂. I don’t have a story as such, I just know that Americans are much more tolerable at home than they are abroad. When my husband and I travel overseas, we talk quietly when we are together and try not to draw extra attention to ourselves. Americans on the other hand love to be the centre of attention and more than once have witnessed them getting the wrong type of attention. It’s so obvious they are loudmouth tourists and usually end up having their wallets lifted, then wonder why no one wants to help them.
😂 I am American but have lived abroad most of my life. The funny thing about my fellow Americans is that you can't really have a conversation without coming away from it half an hour later knowing their social status, their job, where their kids go to college, what political leaning they have, etc. It's all about showing you who they are, like they are establishing where you rank in the social order of things.
Same goes for Chinese tourists. High pitch noice.
@@chronic2023 heard about it, never experienced it, but I also lived abroad and I could have a nice, long chat with someone not knowing anything about them. I was lucky enough my American lecturers were educated people and very fun people to be around.
More than 25 years ago, an American asked me where I came from (Germany) "Oh, you have a war there" he said "No we haven't." I replied.
"YOU HAVE World War 2 there - I know this." he insisted. I answered, that ended many years ago. " Oh really? Who won?"
What really blows my mind is that nowadays everybody walks around with a mobile encyclopedia in their hands - a quick Google would answer their stupid questions, but it never seems to occur to them !😫
I am bracing myself for visiting my brother next month after about 10 years. He has lived in California for 55 years. I have lived in France for 50 years. I will try to avoid a clash.
that will be an interesting reunion...
Epic. Hope it goes well, you should film it. I know where I’d rather have lived these 50 odd years.
I think that will be a mission impossible.
If it goes to hell you should also film it 😂
Have you ask him a few things before hand? Like if he knows how tariffs work. Could be good to know how this conversation goes before you meet him in person.
Once an US Co-Worker came to our German office and when he arrived he was furious. We asked him what happened and it turned out the taxi driver could not speak english. A fact that made him so angry he ranted for 30 minutes about how everyone should speak english, no matter where.
Another one was quite unhappy, he could not bring his gun to germany and told us how unsafe he felt because of it.
Disclaimer, these were two out of dozens of US Co-Workers visiting the office and almost all others were smart and wonderful people, these two just, stood out.
About 17 years ago I met an american in Thailand, Frank from Vermont. He was quite intelligent and well-educated. I hope he's ok.
I sometimes think New England is not like the rest of the US... somehow like a little bit americanized England.
Same here, met a whole family of Americans 25 years ago in Northern Ireland. They where both pleasant and well educated on Europe.
An american uber driver ask me if we have cars in germany, he had a volkswagen (VW).
Did you really rub it in and tell him they were invented in Germany?😂
So, where does the USA put The Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore when tourist season is over?!!
In a storage locker , I'm waiting for the US government to default and see Mount Rushmore appear in an episode of Storage Wars 😅
Well ussually under the couch they are very foldeable.
@@arturobianco848 You sure? I thought Rushmore was inflatable...
I'm reminded about the American asking for the opening times of the Black Forest. It'sa region in southwest Germany, not an amusement park...
99.7% of North Americans would not know why the Statue of Liberty
is on an Island surrounded by water.
The reason it is so - is that it is significant from a legal perspective.
Of course one first has to understand what Liberty actually is.
For those who do not have a clue -- Ask a Sailor
Then one can connect the dots and discover the reason.
When an American asks me what my native language is I love to answer "Deutsch". Quite often the reply is "Oh, so you are dutch!" 😂
"I'm Dutch."
"So you speak German?"
"Ja, ein Bisschen, but my Dutch is better." 🤣
I work in a museum in Denmark. There was an American lady who was angry at us for not having any brochures/maps in American. I pointed her towards the section with the British Flag on it.....🫣🫣🫣
I'm Dutch and I had the same happen to me ... 'The Netherlands, where in the UK is that ?' Somebody skiped history class 🤐
USA: probably wasn't taught, I doubt the teachers would even know .... just come to Nieuw-Holland instead, we know where the The Netherlands are 🤣
Not part of the UK... Yet.
@@urbanshadow777that makes no sense 😂
You mean geography class?
@@tommysellering4224 No, American history class, that should at least teach them it's a country, given the history of New York and the (most) amount of presidents from Dutch aka (foreign) origin.
I once worked for an American owned company in Sweden. One time the American owner came to visit and right before leaving back to home he asked “Where can I find that famous Swiss cheese?”. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was in Sweden (where the company he owned was located) and not in Switzerland.
You should've gotten him some well matured Västerbottenost.
American bosses buying European companies are often shocked when workers refuse to work extra hours everyday, and for free, and actually take their vacations, and don't come in when sick, and get their salaries anyway.
When I was on holiday in new York I had an American say to me after he asked me where I am from.
I told him I'm Aussie.
He sad "So you are from New Zealand."
I replied to him"No you flamin galah I'm not a Kiwi."
He said "I know that's a fruit."😂
I am sorry but I will admit that I just started laughing 😂😂😂😂😂
HOW DUMB!!!
I had my own experience as an Australian in the US, speaking with a hotel check in clerk in LA: I ended up writing out on a piece of paper what I actually asked her in ENGLISH.
Man i'm glad me English is my second languege they alwys understand me. Just look a bot weird cause they can't place it as an americane acccent.
Mate, good on you for taking the time to learn how to write in American. I mean, can you imagine that poor clerks face if you'd handed them a note writen in Australian? 😮
My friend had a similar problem when she took a trip to the US. She had to write things down.
im austrian, and my dad tells basically the same story of a work trip to germany, nobody understood a word he was saying, even though he tried to speak "proper german" and he also barely understood anything they were saying... thats definitely not like that in all places, but we live in a very strong accented part of austria and that was a rather northern strongly accented part of germany... so very different to us.
@@Bunny_Aoife Crazy! What part of Austria? What's the accent like?
We remove ancent mega walls in the end of turist season,
like americans turns of the water on Niagra falls every night.😉
They put a timer on Old Faithful, clever ones.
@@marikothecheetah9342 I recall a famous joke when a worker stuck a giant valve handle in the ground. When the guide was saying it was about to blow that worker started cranking the valve handle.
Ok the education system in US is trash, I get it. What I do not get how in the times of internet when you can google any question or open google maps and stroll through many countries you know nothing... that is main character syndrome for sure
I think that's the things though. As a result of all of the societal, cultural, political changes over the years (including the weakening of their education system) the result is that many Americans, the ones that would make it into stories like those in the video and the comments here, believe what they are told and lack a lot of the required skills and experience using those skills to effectively find out and verify things for themselves and verify its accuracy.
I can imagine that they do google things, constantly.
But, without having been taught how to effectively critically analyse and disseminate the information they find when they do search for information, they are probably just as likely to read the top sponsored result and take it as fact.
That's the saddest part about it for me, it feels like they really believe they are right.
I feel like that's why they are often so quick to double down, why their reasoning can seem so bizarre, they really believe they know what they need to know and that it's correct and don't have any practice or experience in taking in new information and incorporating it into their perspective and understanding of the world around them.
Which is something that elsewhere in the world they would have learned and practiced in school.
The number of times I get an idiotic gotcha reply that they could have been verified faster on Google. We carry phones which would have been supercomputers a couple of decades ago with access to the biggest repository of knowledge ever and access to everybody on the planet, but they know better.
The education system in the US does what is required of it, perfectly. It produces unquestioning people who make up a workforce that doesn't stand up for itself and a sea of consumers who always want the next, biggest, thing.
Funny story from my first time visiting the USA.
I, my dad, my brother, and my two brother-in-law were on a 2-week trip to USA, starting in Memphis, going to Arkansas, up to Springfield along I-40, and following I-40 / Route 66 all the way to L.A. with a detour to Las Vegas.
Our guide is Norwegian, but had a big ranch in Arkansas. On our way from Memphis to his ranch outside Little Rock, we stopped at a shop to buy some proper "cowboy" outfits. Boots, jeans, shirts, hats, whatever we wanted.
We spent 3-4 days at the ranch, helping out a little, having fun, chilling, before we took off.
Long story short: We arrive in Las Vegas. Check into the Stratosphere, and decided to go out to a bar or something. Me, my brother and the guide got in the first taxi, my dad and my brothers-in-law were in the next. We arrive at another hotel and while waiting for the others, an irish( if I remember correct ) couple showed up. They saw us, asked us where we're from and our guide just "Arkansas" in a thick accent.
We posed on a picture with the irish couple, as "real cowboys", and we're all Norwegians 🤣🤣
I've tried searching IG and FB from time to time to see if that picture might pop up somewhere, but no luck. So if that couple reads this, I'd love a copy of it. I was wearing a black shirt with goldish-brown stiching, jeans, black and brown boots and a light coloured cowboyhat.
"If Europe is a couple of hours ahead of time of the US, why didn't they warn us about 911?"
The dumbest thing an American asked me was in 1985. Travelling through Europe by train. She asked if she could get to Australia on her Eurail pass. I told her, not if she couldn’t swim. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
14:22 He probably thought he was in Germany where paying by card is much less a thing, not for lack of technology (obviously) but a mix of privacy concerns and shopkeepers not always wanting to give up a share of the money they make to the credit card companies...
Aussie here, I got asked (by a yank) this year if I had an enjoyable thanksgiving...
I was born in Tasmania we had books, maps, atlases and globes, and exported goods to Europe! We also had travellers from all over Europe during our fruit picking season! I don't remember any Americans visiting our small town, but we watched many US movies and tv shows! I had a ex Russian ballet teacher, a ex German language teacher, and many diverse European neighbours - our beautiful river was discovered and named by a Frenchman! Most Americans don't even know anything about 'their own' European history?? 🧐
I had been working in America for about 7 years (2002-2009) , There were 4 of us in all (3 Brits and a South African) during which time a World Cup was taking place. One of our crew decided we would get some England flags for our cars. He found a website for a flag company not far from Cincinnati where we were working. However on the website they only showed the union jack flag. So he called the company up and asked if they had any England flags available. The reply was priceless ''Sir England isn't a country it's called Great Britain and their flag is number 23 on the list''.
Actually Great Britain is not a country, the United Kingdom is a country.
@@markojotic Actually...It's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Thankyou 😂
@@antonycharnock2993 I know, I just chose to not be ana1:The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is commonly referred to as the UK including on the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland TV (Fan of QI, HIGNFY, Mock the Week RIP, and aaahhhhh Dara Ó Briain).
@@antonycharnock2993 and Great Britain is the main island.
@@markojotic And Great Britain is not England...
It's always fun to laugh at americans but it is a bit like kicking a puppy 🙈🤣
A pit bull puppy?
Not a bit, if you've seen enough of them!
@@quinob Nah more like a chihuahua.
A puppy with nukes and the world’s reserve currency… which keeps its poor people stupid so the rich people have it easier to keep control.
You could happily think that... until you ponder about the implication from the questions they are asking, then you get utterly horrified. For instance, take that guy asking if Poland has trains. If you had any basic knowledge about WW2, you should know that the Auschwitz and Treblinka camps were both in Poland, and in fact Treblinka (a purely extermination camp) was actually disguised as a train station.
So the person asking the question is not just oblivious about normal, harmless stuff, he or she is also completely ignorant about history... and chances are, an holocaust denier (because millions of people can't possible walk to the concentration camps by themselves, am I rite?)
I live in Norway, and there were actually American tourists that came here to see the midnight sun during the summer in northern Norway. They wanted a refund and were really disappointed when they found out that it was the same sun as in America 😅 how many suns do you think the earth or our solar system has?
My wife and I went into the "Swatch Watch Museum" in Boston (MA) and while we were admiring some of the older examples the man working there asked if we were visitors to the City. Yes we are said and told him we were from England. He was around 60 so it came as a bit of a surprise when he said "Oh, are you Italian"? How on earth he managed to think that was to much, so we left.
Australian, travelling through the USA in 2007. A very friendly man on the bus asked "do you have vegetables in Australia!? what about meat, do you all have meat in Australia?!"
I somehow expected the american to ask, if you have to fight Kangaroos in a box fight if you want to go to school or to work^^
North Americans fail to realize that there are Cattle Farms in AUSTRALIA
larger in area than some U.S States
I'd say "we eat eucalyptus leaves and get drunk and have a chat with equally drunk koalas."
@@marikothecheetah9342 don't tell 'em about the drop bears...
@@robinthesan Okay, okay, I won't tell'em. Promise.
One of my all time favourite blunders was CNN's headline of "Australia building a fence at Slovenian border".
Africa is a country for a lot of US people 😂
As is Europe
It's a country for a lot of Africans.
Telling pretty much anyone from Eastern Europe (minus Russians and Belarussians) that you thought the official language of their country is Russian and that you'd have to learn it to visit is beyond profoundly insulting and may put you in actual danger. People there still feel that the West abandoned them after WW2 to the waking nightmare that is life under a communist regime slaved to Soviet Russia. We don't allow the population to own weapons for the most part, but Eastern Europe can be an extremely violent place. Do take the time to know the overall history of the place you visit, at least for the past couple of centuries. You'll enjoy it a lot more and it may save your life.
Literally watched an African American person tell an Aboriginal woman she wasn’t black which was really weird. And they’ll call people African/American even when they’re literally African.
Weirdest part about calling people "African American" ? In the rest of the world they would just be American .
There is apparently a "vibrant African-American culture" in Cape Town, South Africa. I wonder what that even means...
@@Maverick21491 It is racist when non Caucasians are identified by race first.
A few years ago when the American Indians were protesting the Keystone 2 pipeline somebody shouted at them to go home where they came from.
It's a shame coz there are many curious and open minded americans that get overshadowed and over represented by these guys :o that said, an american once forcefully reminded me that "The UK doesn't have beaches!!" ^^
I remember telling an American, that nobody in Britain lives very far from the sea.
He replied "You must all be good swimmers"
@101steel4 This may be old school (literally - i'm getting on) but i had to learn to swim in infant school, that's 5-7 yr olds to americans. If that is still normal it makes us good swimmers, yes :p
Apparently the UK hovers a lot and has no beaches, huh? It's an island. 🤣
I'm from Sweden and in all of 1800 to the beginning of 1900 we had a lot of people, around 1.5 million, migrate to America because of food shortage and some other things.
I was going to my university one day and I noticed a man that had a problem buying a parking ticket so I stepped in and helped him. He was from the US and we started talking. He almost immediately asked me rather confused why there were so many people around. I was confused, especially because we were standing in a larger city center and he said "didn't like almost all of you move to America?"... I just told him that some did, some came back and most importantly people did not just stop making babies! I quickly left after that.
He thought sweden would be mostly empty 🙃
An American work colleague asked me if my hometown of Birmingham was named after the Birmingham in Alabama ,our oldest pub was established in 1368 lollll. Serious question : Do Americans not study info about the country they visit or at the very least take a look at google maps to get a feel for places? Maybe it's just me but i end up knowing more about different countries than the natives sometimes lollll. . i use the little yellow man on google maps and walk around New Zealand / Africa/ China everywhere, even if i will never visit them.
Typical American behaviour 😂
They don’t look at accurate maps for a start. It’s a country that was built on the propaganda that they are the biggest and the bestest.
that's just murrica brainrot. at least that's what I call it and americans that have a solely US centric understanding of the world. aka know nothing aside from the US *and* have your very common confidently incorrect attitude on top of it all.
that flavour of americans is also the type that thinks the way their country works is best and no way it could be a exploitative corpo country/capitalistic dystopia full if corruption.
also same people who asked me from which of the apparently 3 germany's I'm from, because angry mustache man is still alive and there are the republic of germany, communist germany *and* nazi-germany existing right as we speak. I--... I could've sworn when the east west split was *after* taking down the nazis, my parents in their late teens participated in the reunification protests that predominantly happened on the east side up the iron curtain fell in 1989. also that one famous quote/chant? "Wir sind das Volk"(we are the people) to fight the soviet dictatorship. ofc that's my country's history, but I know some murricans think Reagan broke open the Berlin wall abd not the millions of people protesting peacefully for their independence with tanks pointing their guns at them.
murricans should learn to shut up and listen before blatantly disrespecting the extremely brave act/legacy of those everyday citizen. things could have ended like they did in Hong Kong barely a year prior during the ... frankly Tienanmen Sqare massacre.
less murrica centric education for americans please
It would appear that they don't even study their own country or they would know the origins of their place names.
@@professor1972 Bro some of them don't even know Hawaii is part of the US 😂
I'm from Aberdeen, north east Scotland, and have met quite a few Americans, mostly working in the oil industry, most of them have travelled a bit, and know some stuff, but I'd love to go to the US and watch some heads explode when I speak to the locals in my Doric Scottish tongue, love your videos by the way dude 👌
I went to Aberdeen a few times in the 80s and there were plenty of Texans who appeared to have walked straight out of Dallas. (The TV show, not the city!)
Indeed, my old boss in an oil company here in Aberdeen was called Marvin Wade Junior, and he was from Texas, cowboy boots, Stetson etc, top guy by the way 👍
My family moved from Montrose to Canada, and travelled the US. We learned to distract or remove Dad from encounters with Americans.
It sounds like Dad is exactly what they need!
As someone from south africa, we get the most ridiculous questions.
That we do!
Don't even start. I lived in the US for 11 years. My kaapie friend kept being called African American.
Hold up. Let me park my elephant in the garage real quick. My cheetah went in for a service 😂😂😂. Lol in 2024 ppl still ask if we have wild animals in our street
@citedcanvas85 so, I live in a pretty lekker part of RSA, we had a porcupine get hit outside out house, was about 20kgs. We have leopard and hippos also roaming.
I heard an American refer to euros as 'outside dollars' over the Summer.
outside from where?
Hmmm, considering the interaction you have observed in relation to recent data from the International American Ignorance Database, I feel that this basic acknowledgement that other countries do not use United States Dollars as thier currency might actually be scientifically significant since previous data suggested a commonly held belief that European countries just used USD.
Given that this concept of "foreign currency" is still at odds with thier broadly held belief other countries only exist so that Americans can visit them, it is possible that "outside dollars" is an intermediate step in the evolution of their vernacular and over time they will continue to expand on this as they come to understand that other countries use other currencies and integrate these new concepts into their language.
This could very well be the intial signs of a broadening of thier understanding of the world.
We should continue our observations. They may be learning.
15:15 Regarding Poland having trains - they not only have trains, they have an *extensive and dense network* of train lines. There is virtually nowhere in Poland out of reach of their train network.
When I was there, 15 years ago, they didn't have super modern trains, but I think now they already have the beginning of a high-speed network.
Whereas, the USA....
In school (Sweden) we had geography in school, both national and international, mountains, lakes, oceans, islands, countries, capitals... you name it. So why can't you?
I worked in a hotel in Winsor and an American guest asked me why they built such a beautiful castle right next to the 'damn airport!'
As a teenager I had a temporary job in a snack bar. One day a guest from the USA freaked out because I didn't speak English very well and he couldn't pay with US dollars. Greetings from Switzerland (Europe)
I'm in a seaside small city in Australia and Cruise ships dock here. My husband used to work in the local gun shop. He said Americans off the cruise would walk into the shop and stand gob smacked that we have guns here, then they would ask why the people behind the counter didn't have guns on their hips. Husband had to explain they don't need a gun, that our guns are generally not for protecting but for sporting shooting and removal of feral animals.
I come from a country village in The Netherlands. My brother and I were visiting Seattle in the nineties. When visiting a restaurant our accent was noticed. After explaining we were from Holland we got the compliment that our english was better than most Canadian (!). Short after that we got the question if it is true that in every restaurant in Holland people use drugs at the table whilst dining...
I remember the disbelief on the waitress face when we stated that we have never witnessed anybody doing drugs in our life and we never had used any drugs ourselves.
The question about drugs almost always came up (or at least until other countries started legalizing cannabis). I got so sick of it, that when asked where I was from I said “I’m from Holland and don’t have drugs on me nor use it”.
Mexican here, from northern México 🇲🇽 I'm completely identified with the canadian girl, they US people can't believe I can be mexican and white oh and can speak english too. México is a big country so has diferent people too!!
I overheard a couple of American tourists in Edinburgh ask a local person if the castle ( built in the 11th century) is packed away each night and put together each morning. I shouldn’t have been surprised though. I was born in Ireland of Irish parents and I’ve had an American say that they were more Irish than I was because they had green eyes and mine are blue. They’ve never even been to Ireland.
There have been complaints from some Americans on Orkney about Skara Brae, to the effect that you have to walk quite far along a small path from the parking area to see this five thousand year old settlement - and that there aren’t other attractions or cafes on the site.
@ some really shouldn’t be allowed out without supervision. I haven’t been to Orkney but I know it’s an ancient settlement and would be respectful. I think some believe that everything outside the US is like Disneyland and is a tourist attraction set up just for them
@@eh1702 Add to that…met an American couple headed south thru the UK( we were 🚙 nth), in a 400 yo pub. They complained loud & long about the TERRIBLE narrow,winding,roads thru THE COTSWALDS…& said that a freeway shd b built, & they wd advise others not visit that part of England…THE COTSWALDS! 😮
It has to be remembered that in the US, Mt. Rushmore is regarded as a national monument when, in reality, it was created as just a tourist attraction and has no real significance.
@@eh1702 Can't you just put a McDonalds there, to keep them nourished on fat and sugar ? 2 McDonalds actually, one at the entrance and one at the settlement itself. Otherwise they'll never survive the return trip.
We were on Exercise Teamwork in Norway, surrounded by US Marines - I was in the Royal Air Force - and was asked if I could understand English! (I think they thought I was Norwegian; however even if I was, every Norwegian I had met spoke English fluently...)
My daughter was working in a treetop resort, dining room overlooking the river. New Yorkers sitting looking at this vista and people swimming and canoeing below them and actually asked her what time do they turn the water off!
Another good one was when a friend was walking behind some visitors from US at the markets under huge mango trees...heard them say they wondered if they might be able to get a mango...Oz bent down and picked one up off the ground and said "here you go..a mango" Reply was oh goddamn that's what I like about Australia, everything grows on trees.
Idiocrazy, yet another version of a dystopia, got real.
Ok, it's difficult with Luxembourg. If you want to drive to Luxembourg from Germany you have to brake in Trier (a german town), otherwise you are already through before the car comes to a stop.
I always approuch it from belgium the first part is uphill makes it way easier to stop. But to be fair yeah i can understand it if an american doesn't know Luxembourg.
It's that country where you always have to ask yourself if you haven't crossed the Belgian, German or French border by accident.
I can recommend a good car mechanic 😂
Funny thing about Luxembourg: the King wanted more power, Parliament refused until he threatened to sell the country to Bill Gates, who was quite surprised.
If you see Vianden Castle you know you're in Luxembourg my dad used to say😂
i love how you try to clarify the whole "i love the US" thingy..
here's the thing though, nobody from any other country would say such a thing..
i know sweden is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better than the US, but that does not make sweden "good".
i have never met a person, except for the US, where people proudly proclaim their nation.
I think the difference is that for people in the United States, pride in their country also means that their country is superior to all others. That's what makes it so uncomfortable and offensive.
@@Marina45711I agree. There is nothing wrong in loving your country, but that doesn't mean you have to think it's The Best Country there is. Just as you can love your parentes or siblings or spouse and still understand that they are not objectivly better than other people's families.
I’m Swedish here’s some dumb stuff Americans have said:
-You have summer in Sweden?
-(Context: I’m a teacher) You have schools in Europe? I thought it was only in America?
-Oh you’re Swedish? Do you know were the nearest IKEA is? (Like I would telepathically sense where it was?)
There’s definitely more like always getting asked if I’m Swiss, if I speak German or if I speak English but those are all the really bad ones I think :)
fun story i remembered from listening to the austrian/australien swichup at the end: a work college of my mother had to call the police because she saw something in her backyard. the call was something like "okay, i have to say first that i am not drunk, didnt take any drugs and that i am not crazy, BUT there is a kangaroo in my backyard" turns out that in the neighboring village there is a kangaroo farm and one has escaped, in the middle of the northern germany countryside 🤣 never say never i guess.
I absolutely love the comments under these kind of videos. The obliviousness of some people is mind blowing and hilarious at the same time.
Explaining to those people where the Netherlands is: "It's the beautiful countryside around Amsterdam, with its tulips and windmills."
Australian here, I used to work for an American electronics company in Sydney many years ago and listening to product talks used to send me off into gales of laughter, usually getting me in trouble. The word that sets me off is “soldering” Americans drop the L and to my mind it has a totally different meaning hence the laughter. 😂😂
If it makes you feel any better, so many Canadians have asked my mom why she's white if she's Brazilian that she came up with a standard answer: Why aren't you a Mountie if you're Canadian?
I've also been asked by a Canadian if Brazil is in Africa and when I told them it's the biggest country in South America they asked me where South America is. And then proceeded to try to mansplain to me about which countries count as Latino.
13:42 No, there won't be any kangaroos dancing in the streets in Austria. Instead they'll follow traffic rules as everybody else there.
American girl ask me if we are envious of the moon in Europe or do we have our own.. She thought moon can be seen only from the US! I was too stunned to ask for reasons, my inner hobbyist astronomer took the wheel instead and tried to explain the moon to her, as my soul left my body, to laugh, obviously.
Also, not abusing ambulances or free healthcare is always a weird conversation, like seriously, I don’t hurt myself on purpose, even if it doesn’t cost me.. people don’t go to hospitals for fun!
The no train thing in Poland.. Yah that's... Ehmn... Err.. That's a history call back.. 🙄
As a Brit the funniest thing I heard from an American was " Windsor Castle is beautiful but I don't understand why they built it under Heathrow Airport flight path"!!!😂
Queen Mary of Denmark is from Tasmania.
She is our tasmanian angel.
So, Queen Mary is a fictional character invented by Warner Bros. The more you know...!
That she is. As a Tasmanian, I am proud of her, as are all Tasmanians. We even added her into our schooling for children, while learning about Denmark.
As a Dane we say thank you to Tazmania for our beautiful Queen
Thank you
@@koalameat9523 I,ll second that!!
There is always something new to find out - Yesterday I learned that the two 'Z' countries Zambia and Zimbabwe are actually neighbours...
Oh, I witnessed one! I was in Paris France once covering a concert and doing an interview with one of the member of the band. I was checking in at the hotel (I live pretty far North West of Paris), when I saw a red faced customer wearing Santiags and a Texas belt buckle arrive. He was outraged that the booklet in their room was in French, English, German, Spanish and Italian, and not only in English. An Italian man behind me had to intervene very typically angry Italian-ish to have the guy backing off and realize that yeah, Paris IS in fact, in Europe. 🤣
unless things have changed, you CAN get T-shirts in Austria that say, "there are no kangaroos in our country"
Thx for using US instead of America! 👍🏾😎 You're on the right way! 😁
For my personnal story i'm French i did a Roadtrip in America during the summer 2019 and i was to a Sportsbar in L.A. A girl came talking and asking where i'm from i said from France, she told me what language do you speak ? Spanish ? And i awkwardly turned my face towards the Screen
My colleagues in US asked me:
1) Do you have pizza in Europe?
2) Do you have war over there?
when I specified I am from Slovakia (middle/easter part of Europe) I was asked if we have showers 😮😅
in meantime Americans still use cheques 🙄
don't they have proper education about most countries that shows that most countries have what they got in the USA?
As a Swede, even though it annoys me to no end when our countries gets mixed up, it's understandable. They are not THAT far apart, and both have a history of neutrality, so there are certainly worse things to get wrong.
Sorry, but no, it's not understandable. Since I was a small boy, I have known the difference between Sweden and Switzerland and where each country is located and even after all of these years, I have trouble accepting that Americans STILL can't tell the difference! Just as they can't tell the difference between my country - Australia and Austria! Americans have developed their own kind of stupidity and are hellbent on maintaining it!
Well, I assume that the guys who are mixing things up here have no idea about the distance between Switzerland and Sweden. And they certainly know absolutely _nothing_ about the history of independence of the two countries. So it indeed comes down to the fact that both countries start with "Sw"
@@Born.Toulouse I think this has more to do with the fact that both flags carry a cross
@@axelk4921 No I doubt they even know the flags either. First comment was spot on. It's literally the fact that they both begin with the letters "Sw" and end in "n".
I used to mix them up until my late teens, I think the thing that most helps is remembering it's the Swiss alps
the best question I have ever heard was USA people were being asked what they thought of homosapiens. Not one of them knew that they are in fact homosapien. you can imagine what they thought it meant because of homo at the beginning. it was hilarious 😂
Or when they were asked if they thought Arabic numerals should be taught in schools and a majority said no..
@darkiee69 i forgot about that one 😂