• cybersandwich@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    There is a story of a guy in England who sent a letter to his friend in Los Angeles. He asked him to “pop in” to New York City to see how his daughter is doing.

    The LA guy wrote back and said it would be faster if he went himself.

    I really don’t think Euros have a solid grasp of the scale of the US.

    • Event_Horizon@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Here in Australia, during the 80’s, 90’s before widespread internet. There would be several European’s who needed rescuing each year as they decided to try and walk between major cities, because it looks close on a map.

      I remember one German guy who needed rescuing while trying to walk from Sydney to Adelaide…that’s 1200km away…in a straight line.

      • HardlightCereal@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Also in Europe if you get hungry you can pick mushrooms, skin a boar, or pop in to a town. In Australia you got… witchetty grub

      • irmoz@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Lmao just looked on a map, and it’s quite easy to see that that distance is comparable to walking from Great Yarmouth to St Davids… twice

    • The Picard Maneuver@startrek.websiteOPM
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      1 year ago

      Lol, that’s great.

      I’ve also heard of Europeans planning vacations in the US, expecting to see New York, Florida, Texas, LA, etc. without realizing how much travel that is.

      • gazter@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        I met a foreign exchange student in Australia. I asked what they were planning to do for their break.

        They’d recently taken up surfing, and couldn’t decide if they wanted to surf the east, west, north, or south coast. So they had decided they would stay in Alice Springs, basically in the middle of all of them, and do day trips to each one.

        I didn’t have the heart to tell them that to get to the nearest ocean from there takes about two solid days of driving. Add another day to get to a beach with decent surf.

      • Punkie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Found out the same between Tokyo and Okinawa. It’s like flying from Washington DC to Miami. “Just take a train,” is 32 hours, plus time on a ferry.

        Not a really a day trip, even though it “seems like Japan is a small country.”

        • BOMBS@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That’s more like saying to catch a train from Miami to Puerto Rico. No one is gonna build all that train line over the ocean for hundreds and hundreds of miles 😆

    • RagingNerdoholic@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Canada has a highway that goes between the most easterly and westerly points of the country. If you drove from end to end, stopping only for gas and drive through meals, it would take you about a week.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      That guy just have been a huge idiot, I’m pretty sure the vast majority of people know how far away New York and Los Angeles are from each other.

      • cybersandwich@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I read that story in a book about the history of England: English history made brief, irreverent, and pleasurable.

        The letter was from the 1800s I believe so maybe we can cut him some slack for not really knowing.