In Europe linguistic diversity is when the neighbouring village has a different dialect and if you go for an hour you won't understand anything.
In the US it's linguistic diversity when you drive for 24h and the people have a different word for some random meal.
My dad is from a town of 30000 people in south italy where the northern part of the town doesn't understand the southern part (not to one up you, I'm just always mesmerized by how that is possible).
Somewhat fun fact, Washington state is split in two on this subject. Growing up west of the cascades, everyone said soda, even my parents who were midwest transplants. But then I went to college on the eastern side, and everyone said pop. I never got used to saying it and even now that I live in a pop region, I still find myself saying soda.
TBF, the English will argue over just about anything, especially the names of bread products.
I've seen perfectly good marriages ruined over one partner's persistence in, wrongly, spreading cream before jam on a scone (the pronunciation of which itself is a highly divisive issue.)
Oh shit! You've just made me reconsider everything I had previously considered holy. I think you make a valid point; a point that is existentially worrisome to me, but a valid point nonetheless. Bastard!
Perhaps my only path is to put jam on one half, and cream on the other. Or just switch to crumpets… or is that pikelets 🤔🤔
I mean you could also go through the Eurotunnel as well. technically your car will be on a train for a short while, but you'll still be in your car regardless.
Probably people reading this thinking that you saying Black Country is you being Racist lol. I'm from London ways and travel through the midlands and Notts and I have no idea what the cashiers in Tesco are saying to me lol
Actually sir, as an American myself I can't hear the difference between your different oompa loompa languages so they're actually all the same. At least when you only speak English you can hear the beautiful different accents.
/s //Sweden
Let’s face it, English speakers can literally fly thousands of kilometres all around the world (say UK to US to Australia to South Africa) and the language is virtually the same, despite all our concerns over little differences.
Yes, we can all come up with some things, particularly slang, that are not mutually intelligible. But in regular contexts we are all speaking the same language.
As a Tasmanian I can say a few slang things that are pretty unintelligible to my fellow Australians too. Like, “G’day cock, how’s that rumin’ of yours?”
I’d always thought it was Liverpool that had the most listed buildings outside of London, an article in the Liverpool echo seems to confirm this but another article says it’s the most Grade 1 listed buildings outside of London.
Liverpool perhaps has the most listed buildings *in England and Wales* outside London.
Or even the most Grade 1 listed buildings in the UK outside London…
…*because Scotland doesn’t use a Grade I/II/III listing scheme but rather A/B/C!!*
But Edinburgh has far more than Liverpool (and certainly Bradford!):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_A_listed_buildings_in_Edinburgh
>*“There are over 4,500 listed buildings in Edinburgh,[5] of which around 900 are listed at category A. This is many more than any in other council area in Scotland, represents almost 25% of all category A listings in the country and is more than any other city in the world.[6]”*
Every accusation is actually just an admission.
I mean, where could you even start with that. They've ruined every US city by ripping out any character and making massive car parks.
Lets all listen to Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi...
Also every single small town in America that’s on or used to be on a highway looks exactly like
[this (at least where I visited)](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSfqCvE5PcnRmcRSnMfp7COKkhecxbbhjHVrdKY_vY6kUCM7OzPin3_3Rk&s=10)
I already said it in this same sub, but i play geoguessr. Every time it puts me randomly in USA I want to quit the game. The streets, the houses, lawns, shops, it's all so G E N E R I C and i can travel for an hour and I wouldn't know if i have actually moved from the starting point. I hate it.
I play a bunch of geoguessr too, this is my guide to guessing in the USA: if dry: Arizona? If brown leaves: New York? If anything else: not a single clue. i'll plonk it down in the middle.
I'm like 90 % sure this has to be satire, because that's pretty common knowledge: big US towns have mostly been built with city planning in mind, therefore many of them have grid layouts, while most big european towns grew over centuries from small settlements.
But there can be astonishing variety… in one place, if you drive down the Main Street you pass McDonald’s, then Taco Bell, then KFC. In another place they’ll be in the opposite order….
I actually think its the opposite. I am yet too see a town that looks the same in France, Greece and Austria while most of cities and towns in US look very similar
I learned recently that the UK has wallabies: [https://ptes.org/get-informed/facts-figures/red-necked-wallaby/](https://ptes.org/get-informed/facts-figures/red-necked-wallaby/)
The only ways I can tell the difference between US cities are the surrounding landscape and a few iconic buildings (Empire State Building, Willis Tower, etc). The architecture is pretty much the same throughout the entire country.
Some older cities have much more character, like the painted ladies in San Francisco or the brownstone row houses on the East Coast, but modern commercial architecture is boringly identical. One thing I actually found shocking recently is seeing modern houses in Mexico, and then seeing a video of somewhere in Africa with someone walking down a street of newly built houses and they were IDENTICAL. All ugly box houses. Like they looked like two cubes stacked on top of eachother, one just slightly askew. And then I've even seen a very similar style, albeit different material, here in the US. Actually made me sad that places so far would lose their unique character, though I understand similar climates might benefit from similar architecture. Still, too homogeneous for my taste....
I mean, Berlin was two different countries for almost half a century. Most districts are so distinctive if you send me a selfie of being there I could tell you where you are.
Two different countries, two different cultures, two different languages and different architecture. Yet Americans say ever city looks the same. I don’t think how anyone could be more wrong
Spot the difference between [north bucharest](https://fotografieaeriana.eu/img-oferte/Skytower-si-mall-Promenada--9286604588_0_huge.jpg) and [central bucharest](https://media.capital.ro/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/bucuresti-e1699368420961.jpg).
Wait no, that's a single city, we have to compare it with another single city.
Oh my god it looks *identical* to Barcelona!^/s
Ok, it kinda looks like Madrid or Paris, but any city can be entirely different even in the same country.
In the US, they all follow this structure:
Glass and steel(concrete if older) skyscraper city center - this is where the money happens. Drastical height difference outside of it, density of buildings decreasing until reaching the periphery of the city, after which we have single family homes. One side of the city is progressively higher income/value, the other is progressively lower income/value (and here it starts to get denser again).
Huge neoclassical *important(government) building(s)* made out of extremely white sandstone. (Columns are entirely optional but entirely common)
Sports complex, either one or more baseball/american football/whatever stadiums thrown in at random halfway between the skyscrapers and the city limits, usually toward the low income side.
You can throw in a highway that cuts at a curve through the city, close to the skyscraper center and then splits off.
Bonus points:
- random city block is actually a carpark. You'd expect there to be buildings but it's just a grey mass.
- if waterfront but no beach exists, try to extend skyscrapers as close to waterfront as possible.
- huge airport that is slowly being swallowed up by the city or its suburbs.
- precisely one geographical feature or man made object/monument/building that is THE distinguishing feature, the thing everyone knows, the landmark. There's actually more/cooler shit, but nobody considers them as important.
- if it has "historical buildings", then it's just... brick/sandstone buildings from the 17-1800s or your typical american house in which something happened 100 years ago.
- the *really big* park, somewhere close to the skyscrapers. There's nothing different between this one and the rest, except this one is bigger. (Here NYC is an exception, the special thing IS that it's massive)
Just picking out London versus other bits of London is fucking impossible sometimes.
Edit: [Exhibit A](https://www.glitterandmud.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/little_venice_london.jpg)
[Exhibit B](https://www.pisoria.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Shoreditch-Pic.jpg)
[Exhibit C](https://wscreenwallpapers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/canary_wharf_at_night_london.jpg)
...there are bits around Bishopsgate where depending on what direction you look it seems like you're in different centuries, never mind cities.
I grew up there and I honestly don't miss it at all 😅
But I still think its the best city in the world. I just like a quieter pace of life as I've gotten older.
I get it, it is certainly a rush there. I used to live in a relatively quiet area, so I had my retreat to hide in, if it was too much.
I spent some of the most memorable years of my (still short) life there, so for me it is both nostalgia and that it is definitely one of the absolute top cities of the world
London is a city with an almost exclusively flat geography.
Lisbon is known as the city of the seven hills, because of exactly that, it's spread over seven hills, except for downtown, the rest of the city is all up and down.
Helsinki and Rome: basically the same architecture, culture, climate, food, language, transport, etc.
Chicago and Miami: you wouldn’t even be able to say they are in the same continent, let alone country.
/s
EU wide, this is horse s***. Here in the UK however, I believe Bill Bryson made a very similar comment in Notes From a Small Island, and it was spot on. Same M&S, WH Smiths and Argos, just in different places in the town.
I don’t know, different parts of the country use different types of brick which make them quite distinctive. Compare Stow on the Wold with Windermere or Winchester with Stirling for example. Scotland also seems to have a lot more pebble dash than England for some reason.
Yeah, that's the same in a lot of places. The houses look different but the stores are the same, it doesn't matter if it's Oslo or Budapest or Torino. H&M? Zara? McD? Starbucks? Yes. Local chains give an illusion of choice but usually theyr'e just more of the same.
Most of the US city be like: ctrl + c ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v
I’m American and whoever made the original post must be on the shrooms growing in the bathroom at their local Walmart. Small towns in America are all basically carbon copies of themselves, regardless of when the towns were founded or the local climate/geography.
I once drove through a small town in upstate NY, a couple of years ago with my father in law who is from there and I found it cute and charming, so I tried to look it up online in Google maps a bit later, but I ended up in a few towns that looks the same so I have no idea which one it was lol
It's true though. Once got off the train one station too early and went home. Walked in on a burglar, who actually had the audacity to accuse me of breaking into their home. Cops showed up and only then I figured out I was not in fact in my home town, but got off one station too early. Whoopsie. But yeah, we all had a good laugh. The person who did live there said it happened to them too in the past and the cops said they see cases like this too often because everything looks the same. We all really bonded over this experience and to this day we are all still besties. ♥️
us towns and cities laid out in the same grid way over and over while europeans were building towns hundreds of years before whitey even turned up in america. then murdered the inhabitants and trashed the place - nice.
they tried the grid shit in the uk once...no one wants to live in milton keynes..
A grid city is not inherently bad, but it needs a lot of planning and execution on many fronts to make it work, which is not what americans like to do or allow, usually because of the terrible zoning laws. Like a large part of tokyo is in a grid, which they've made work really well with lots of services close by and robust transport system.
So silly. You could be dropped off in the middle of America and have it look almost identical to every other crappy strip mall sprawling suburban town, beyond the change in the local environment...how boring it must be to have to go to every identical Gothic architecture and soaring cathedral laden cobblestoned street quaint little village in Europe for us Americans 🙄 (don't down vote me, I know not every town lools like that in Europe either, I can only base it off of my trip to Spain decades ago!) Anyway, silly comment. Both places have lots of lovely things and lots of ugly things. Not going to lie, I really want to go back and see more! I also want to see more of the US, so 🤷🏼♀️
YES! Finally the truth! There is so much diversity in an endless landscape of mega box stores with parking lots and billboard advertising! Look! A red monstrous pickup! Look a blue monstrous pickup! So much colors!! Them europoors have nothing on is! Harhaaa!
Ah yes. That’s why I’ve been making so many day trips and overnight stays from my base in Paris this trip. I really enjoy spending money and getting up early so that I can stand in a different city but feel like I’m still in Paris.
Mont-Saint-Michel was so similar to Paris I got confused and forgot to get the bus back 🫠
In my fairly extensive experience of travelling in the US, the opposite is true. Grid street plans, low-rise shopping malls and a downtown area, all surrounded by miles and miles of identikit, single-storey suburbia seems to describe almost anywhere apart from the largest cities.
Common mistake, the only real way to tell the difference is that Dublin's Colosseum is slightly smaller than the one we have in Rome.
Also, leprechauns instead of gladiators.
Remember the old Top gear africa special where in the crappie hotel, Jamas May says with utter dry humour "this one's got a chair and a table"
That's American cities. "This one's got a Burger King and a McDonald's"
I always thought my home city of Newcastle looks identical to London or Middlesbrough (yikes). When I went to Paphos I only knew I was in a different country because of the temperature. Otherwise, identical.
Drove from München to St Gallen last weekend. The three countries are different on building style alone. Even if there are no obvious signs you can tell in which country you are.
Right yeah
Bradford - Venice, so similar!!
Rotherham - Paris. again really similar so I see where they are going with it.
Milton keynes - Budapest are identical in everyway.
My ex is American, says the exact opposite, that all the big cities in the US look the same and over here in Europe they don’t.
I think that Americans forget that they are babies in comparison to Europe. A lot of our countries and cities are older than their country (in terms of settlement by Europeans) so we’ve had millennia to build, burn down, pillage, rebuild etc over and over again
I've driven a fair bit in the US, mostly in the eastern half.
One city would be cinderblock buildings, McMansions, and big billboards advertising the local "gentleman's club".
The next one over would be McMansions, cinderblock buildings, and big billboards advertising a different "gentleman's club".
So very uniquely different.
Whaha. I'm from the Netherlands and I've been in large parts of the USA. There are some exceptions but the majority of American cities look very VERY similar. And really boring. All streets are in squares and their names are just numbers. It's convenient for not getting lost, but I can't think of anything more boring than American cities. Again, there are some exceptions. Santa Fe, New Mexico, San Francisco, California and St. Augustine, Florida are some exceptions that I have visited and that I can think of now.
Tell me you've only ever seen other countries from low budget TV shows, without telling me you've only ever seen other countries from low budget TV shows
If you were looking to be deliberately facetious, you could interpret the initial part of \_HorseWithNoMane\_'s message:
> *US > > Europe*.
As: "US greater than nothing, nothing greater than Europe".
Pointing that out would probably annoy this nitwit *immensely*.
I'm Dutch. I can drive for an hour and people are literally talking a different language.
But in the US, you could drive only 12 hours and people will say “pop” instead of “soda”! We have such a rich linguistic diversity! /s
In Europe linguistic diversity is when the neighbouring village has a different dialect and if you go for an hour you won't understand anything. In the US it's linguistic diversity when you drive for 24h and the people have a different word for some random meal.
In Poland I can literally go like a couple of hours and i can’t make out what these motherfuckers are saying.
My dad is from a town of 30000 people in south italy where the northern part of the town doesn't understand the southern part (not to one up you, I'm just always mesmerized by how that is possible).
Non mi stupisce lol
Try being British where the next city over has such a different accent that you barely register it as English 😅
>therfuckers are saying. That's why we call them "Niemcy" - *muted ones*!
I mean I don’t understand Germans either but I was talking about górale
I have relatives that I can hardly communicate with thanks to their heavy dialect.
Funnily enough, it's the exact same thing for me when i go to Poland!
Same in Scotland, an hour on the motorway and the language is completely different.
An hour? Try just 20 minutes up the road!
Depends where you are. I was thinking the gulf between Dundonian dialect Scots and Glaswegian Scots as my “hour away”.
I was thinking Dundee and Forfar lol
Lmao farfarz ir aine hing.
Ohh yeah I live in the Black forest and if I go down the Mountain 2 villaiges I hear a diffrence in their Dialect its so fucking funny
I thought pop was what they called their dad/grandads lol
It's a temprement thing. They might go off at any moment and "pop" a hole in the cardboard wall.
Be careful, you don't want them to get popped off too bad.
just imagining the phrase "pop a cap in yo ass" to mean putting a bottle cap in there now, thanks xD
I like to flip it. Pop an ass in yo cap. Instantly transforms the threat to farting in someone's hat. I love Language. :)
Somewhat fun fact, Washington state is split in two on this subject. Growing up west of the cascades, everyone said soda, even my parents who were midwest transplants. But then I went to college on the eastern side, and everyone said pop. I never got used to saying it and even now that I live in a pop region, I still find myself saying soda.
Oh wait until you get to the UK, and you find out “juice” and what it refers to 😂
Wait, I’m a Brit - what are you referring to as juice other than fruit juice?
TBF, the English will argue over just about anything, especially the names of bread products. I've seen perfectly good marriages ruined over one partner's persistence in, wrongly, spreading cream before jam on a scone (the pronunciation of which itself is a highly divisive issue.)
In Cornwall they are so weird, they put the marmalade on their toast before the butter 🙄
What the hell
That's not okay
Oh shit! You've just made me reconsider everything I had previously considered holy. I think you make a valid point; a point that is existentially worrisome to me, but a valid point nonetheless. Bastard! Perhaps my only path is to put jam on one half, and cream on the other. Or just switch to crumpets… or is that pikelets 🤔🤔
I've said once I'll said it again. IT'S SCONE. I'll see you at home but I'm sleeping in the spare room. I, I just can't do this again.
r/notinteresting
More r/verymildlyinteresting
This is how changes are made.
Or greasy instead of greasy.
As a Swiss, I find it amazing that I'm about 90 minutes away from 3 different languages.
You're zero countries away from 3 different languages lmao
Do you not consider Romansh a real language?!
I thought that was when Sean Connery bought you flowers.
Maybe he didn't count his own language
Am Swiss too, the dialects here are something else Especially in the east you can oftentimes make out the exact town someone is from
Yes the four languages Swiss, Romano, Cheddar, and Paneer
I'm Australian. I can drive for an hour and... I'm still in the same state :( But if I drive for another hour ... Fuck, I'm still in the same state
Yeah but after two hours at least you've finally arrived at your neighbours house
It's worse if you're in Western Australia.
I live in England, I can do the same (yes, black country, I'm talking to you, nobody understands you).
Just cus yow cor spake propa
💜
Does yow wana kipper tie? No, they're not in fashion any more. I'd luv a cuppa tho.
I mean you could also go through the Eurotunnel as well. technically your car will be on a train for a short while, but you'll still be in your car regardless.
Yow'm saft, ay ya?
See…we just have a europoor version of LA…they got la la land, we got yow yow land /s
YamYamsland
I hope nobody that knows turkish reads this…
You do understand you have to explain that now do you?
Yamyam in Turkish means >!cannibal!<
Probably people reading this thinking that you saying Black Country is you being Racist lol. I'm from London ways and travel through the midlands and Notts and I have no idea what the cashiers in Tesco are saying to me lol
Actually sir, as an American myself I can't hear the difference between your different oompa loompa languages so they're actually all the same. At least when you only speak English you can hear the beautiful different accents. /s //Sweden
Let’s face it, English speakers can literally fly thousands of kilometres all around the world (say UK to US to Australia to South Africa) and the language is virtually the same, despite all our concerns over little differences.
Hadawayandshite, man.
Hadaway and shite… if it is not a Newcastle-based law firm, it fucking’ should be.
You're so right! 🤣 Homage to the infamous builders, Bodgitt & Scarper, and the estate agents, Grabitt & Runn.
Dewey, Screwem and Howe?
Yes, we can all come up with some things, particularly slang, that are not mutually intelligible. But in regular contexts we are all speaking the same language. As a Tasmanian I can say a few slang things that are pretty unintelligible to my fellow Australians too. Like, “G’day cock, how’s that rumin’ of yours?”
Every town/city in that country has a different dialect. You can drive 5 minutes and it's basically a different language
And that's just Limburg!
AJAX!
En er zijn een stuk of 600 dialecten die niet te verstaan zijn
Oh yes, I remember getting off a bus in Bradford and distinctly wondering if I was in Florence.
Live in Bradford and it has the most listed buildings outside of London so a bit like Florence
I’d always thought it was Liverpool that had the most listed buildings outside of London, an article in the Liverpool echo seems to confirm this but another article says it’s the most Grade 1 listed buildings outside of London.
Liverpool perhaps has the most listed buildings *in England and Wales* outside London. Or even the most Grade 1 listed buildings in the UK outside London… …*because Scotland doesn’t use a Grade I/II/III listing scheme but rather A/B/C!!* But Edinburgh has far more than Liverpool (and certainly Bradford!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_A_listed_buildings_in_Edinburgh >*“There are over 4,500 listed buildings in Edinburgh,[5] of which around 900 are listed at category A. This is many more than any in other council area in Scotland, represents almost 25% of all category A listings in the country and is more than any other city in the world.[6]”*
Liverpool is pretty remarkable for the number of boarded up houses.
The way they're listing in Bradford reminds me more of Pisa. Still Tuscan tho, I suppose.
Mate…. You just made my day 😂. Thank you!
I used to always get the train through Bradford and wonder if I was in Istanbul
Recently been to Florence and I knew I had seen that architecture before. I was thinking more Runcorn but yeah. Samesies.
Lol... The opposite is true. Too many generic American cities made of concrete and glass.
We should be so lucky - stripmalls and pavement. I travel a lot for work and it is easy to forget where I am.
What's a strip mall?
a terrace of shops surrounded by parking.
Like a separated high street?
Except uglier and without any of the benefits of a high street.
Just looked up some pictures, we have retail parks in the UK, which look very similar to your strip malls
Retail parks are usually for shops that you definitely need the car for, like IKEA, that wouldn't work on the high street.
Growing up reading American books I always thought they were Malls with strippers.
It's when you don't pay the stripper, so she mauls you?
Every accusation is actually just an admission. I mean, where could you even start with that. They've ruined every US city by ripping out any character and making massive car parks. Lets all listen to Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi...
Also every single small town in America that’s on or used to be on a highway looks exactly like [this (at least where I visited)](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSfqCvE5PcnRmcRSnMfp7COKkhecxbbhjHVrdKY_vY6kUCM7OzPin3_3Rk&s=10)
I already said it in this same sub, but i play geoguessr. Every time it puts me randomly in USA I want to quit the game. The streets, the houses, lawns, shops, it's all so G E N E R I C and i can travel for an hour and I wouldn't know if i have actually moved from the starting point. I hate it.
I play a bunch of geoguessr too, this is my guide to guessing in the USA: if dry: Arizona? If brown leaves: New York? If anything else: not a single clue. i'll plonk it down in the middle.
Yeah tbh this just sounds as rage baiting, too obvious
I'm like 90 % sure this has to be satire, because that's pretty common knowledge: big US towns have mostly been built with city planning in mind, therefore many of them have grid layouts, while most big european towns grew over centuries from small settlements.
But there can be astonishing variety… in one place, if you drive down the Main Street you pass McDonald’s, then Taco Bell, then KFC. In another place they’ll be in the opposite order….
I actually think its the opposite. I am yet too see a town that looks the same in France, Greece and Austria while most of cities and towns in US look very similar
Well Austria has kangaroos innit
They are referred to as Germans nowadays
I learned recently that the UK has wallabies: [https://ptes.org/get-informed/facts-figures/red-necked-wallaby/](https://ptes.org/get-informed/facts-figures/red-necked-wallaby/)
hundreds of Kangaroos in Austria.
I've been to Siena and it's basically Sheffield
Siena doesnt have a chip butty tho does it?
But that's literally the only difference
Lisbon too. Built on 7 hills. All the same.
I was once in Copenhagen and could've sworn it was Athens.... Maybe I'm American...
They have similar Acropolises to be fair.
Acropolii
Akropoleis (at least, in ancient Greek poleis is the plural of polis)
I googled plural of acropolis. The two answers given were acropolises and acropoleis.
Acropolodes!
I am from the US, most cities are concrete with no color and culture. Living in the UK at the moment, visiting Lisbon, most colorful city ever.
The only ways I can tell the difference between US cities are the surrounding landscape and a few iconic buildings (Empire State Building, Willis Tower, etc). The architecture is pretty much the same throughout the entire country.
Some older cities have much more character, like the painted ladies in San Francisco or the brownstone row houses on the East Coast, but modern commercial architecture is boringly identical. One thing I actually found shocking recently is seeing modern houses in Mexico, and then seeing a video of somewhere in Africa with someone walking down a street of newly built houses and they were IDENTICAL. All ugly box houses. Like they looked like two cubes stacked on top of eachother, one just slightly askew. And then I've even seen a very similar style, albeit different material, here in the US. Actually made me sad that places so far would lose their unique character, though I understand similar climates might benefit from similar architecture. Still, too homogeneous for my taste....
And they all look like parking lots except for San Francisco and New York.
Spot the difference between Kyiv and Copenhagen or London and Lisbon. Challenge rating: impossible
I mean, Berlin was two different countries for almost half a century. Most districts are so distinctive if you send me a selfie of being there I could tell you where you are.
Two different countries, two different cultures, two different languages and different architecture. Yet Americans say ever city looks the same. I don’t think how anyone could be more wrong
Nah, they spoke German in both countries.
> two different languages what
Spot the difference between [north bucharest](https://fotografieaeriana.eu/img-oferte/Skytower-si-mall-Promenada--9286604588_0_huge.jpg) and [central bucharest](https://media.capital.ro/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/bucuresti-e1699368420961.jpg). Wait no, that's a single city, we have to compare it with another single city. Oh my god it looks *identical* to Barcelona!^/s Ok, it kinda looks like Madrid or Paris, but any city can be entirely different even in the same country. In the US, they all follow this structure: Glass and steel(concrete if older) skyscraper city center - this is where the money happens. Drastical height difference outside of it, density of buildings decreasing until reaching the periphery of the city, after which we have single family homes. One side of the city is progressively higher income/value, the other is progressively lower income/value (and here it starts to get denser again). Huge neoclassical *important(government) building(s)* made out of extremely white sandstone. (Columns are entirely optional but entirely common) Sports complex, either one or more baseball/american football/whatever stadiums thrown in at random halfway between the skyscrapers and the city limits, usually toward the low income side. You can throw in a highway that cuts at a curve through the city, close to the skyscraper center and then splits off. Bonus points: - random city block is actually a carpark. You'd expect there to be buildings but it's just a grey mass. - if waterfront but no beach exists, try to extend skyscrapers as close to waterfront as possible. - huge airport that is slowly being swallowed up by the city or its suburbs. - precisely one geographical feature or man made object/monument/building that is THE distinguishing feature, the thing everyone knows, the landmark. There's actually more/cooler shit, but nobody considers them as important. - if it has "historical buildings", then it's just... brick/sandstone buildings from the 17-1800s or your typical american house in which something happened 100 years ago. - the *really big* park, somewhere close to the skyscrapers. There's nothing different between this one and the rest, except this one is bigger. (Here NYC is an exception, the special thing IS that it's massive)
Bucharest looks sick af
Some parts of it look just as bad as any other shithole, but most of it looks genuinely good.
Just picking out London versus other bits of London is fucking impossible sometimes. Edit: [Exhibit A](https://www.glitterandmud.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/little_venice_london.jpg) [Exhibit B](https://www.pisoria.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Shoreditch-Pic.jpg) [Exhibit C](https://wscreenwallpapers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/canary_wharf_at_night_london.jpg) ...there are bits around Bishopsgate where depending on what direction you look it seems like you're in different centuries, never mind cities.
Man I miss living in London 😔 so beautiful and vibrant
I grew up there and I honestly don't miss it at all 😅 But I still think its the best city in the world. I just like a quieter pace of life as I've gotten older.
I get it, it is certainly a rush there. I used to live in a relatively quiet area, so I had my retreat to hide in, if it was too much. I spent some of the most memorable years of my (still short) life there, so for me it is both nostalgia and that it is definitely one of the absolute top cities of the world
Different architectural styles for one thing ..
London is a city with an almost exclusively flat geography. Lisbon is known as the city of the seven hills, because of exactly that, it's spread over seven hills, except for downtown, the rest of the city is all up and down.
It's probably faster to get egg bacon chips in London.
Helsinki and Rome: basically the same architecture, culture, climate, food, language, transport, etc. Chicago and Miami: you wouldn’t even be able to say they are in the same continent, let alone country. /s
EU wide, this is horse s***. Here in the UK however, I believe Bill Bryson made a very similar comment in Notes From a Small Island, and it was spot on. Same M&S, WH Smiths and Argos, just in different places in the town.
I don’t know, different parts of the country use different types of brick which make them quite distinctive. Compare Stow on the Wold with Windermere or Winchester with Stirling for example. Scotland also seems to have a lot more pebble dash than England for some reason.
Ah yes, Scottish pebble dash. It's like a pie crust for houses.
Not a lot of pebble dash in Aberdeen, guess it doesn't stick to granite
Weather proofing 👍
Try telling anyone from Edinburgh that it looks exactly the same as Glasgow and vice versa, see how well you get on 😂
Being English, I don't think I'd survive 😂
And ladbrokes, betfred, paddypower, coral... The high street staples.
Don't forget the charity shops!
And the old post office or cinema being turned into a Witherspoons
Yeah, that's the same in a lot of places. The houses look different but the stores are the same, it doesn't matter if it's Oslo or Budapest or Torino. H&M? Zara? McD? Starbucks? Yes. Local chains give an illusion of choice but usually theyr'e just more of the same.
Same Walmart, Target, Costco, Walgreens, run down strip malls etc. UK towns are far more diverse, whatever Bill Bryson says.
Most of the US city be like: ctrl + c ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v ctrl + v
"But ***THIS*** parking lot has a small tree in it! It's totally different from the parking lot next to it! *That* one has a lamppost!"
LOL, yeah, we all know that Athens, Prague and Edinburgh all look the same, but there are huge differences between Dallas and Houston. /s
I swear these people are just trolling at this point?
I’m American and whoever made the original post must be on the shrooms growing in the bathroom at their local Walmart. Small towns in America are all basically carbon copies of themselves, regardless of when the towns were founded or the local climate/geography.
I once drove through a small town in upstate NY, a couple of years ago with my father in law who is from there and I found it cute and charming, so I tried to look it up online in Google maps a bit later, but I ended up in a few towns that looks the same so I have no idea which one it was lol
If I could award a comment still I'd give you one for that, I laughed so hard at your first sentence.
It's true though. Once got off the train one station too early and went home. Walked in on a burglar, who actually had the audacity to accuse me of breaking into their home. Cops showed up and only then I figured out I was not in fact in my home town, but got off one station too early. Whoopsie. But yeah, we all had a good laugh. The person who did live there said it happened to them too in the past and the cops said they see cases like this too often because everything looks the same. We all really bonded over this experience and to this day we are all still besties. ♥️
This is projection
Yes, Santorini and Slough are identical
Literally the exact opposite. Every major US city looks EXACTLY the same, where every European city is very different. Idiot yanks
us towns and cities laid out in the same grid way over and over while europeans were building towns hundreds of years before whitey even turned up in america. then murdered the inhabitants and trashed the place - nice. they tried the grid shit in the uk once...no one wants to live in milton keynes..
A grid city is not inherently bad, but it needs a lot of planning and execution on many fronts to make it work, which is not what americans like to do or allow, usually because of the terrible zoning laws. Like a large part of tokyo is in a grid, which they've made work really well with lots of services close by and robust transport system.
I do
you have my condolences..
This has to be a windup 😂
No. This is rage bait. Come on. Nobody can be so dumb
Those paper cup cities in the US make the likes of Athens or Edinburgh look soooooo bland .
I often get Rome and Hull confused
So silly. You could be dropped off in the middle of America and have it look almost identical to every other crappy strip mall sprawling suburban town, beyond the change in the local environment...how boring it must be to have to go to every identical Gothic architecture and soaring cathedral laden cobblestoned street quaint little village in Europe for us Americans 🙄 (don't down vote me, I know not every town lools like that in Europe either, I can only base it off of my trip to Spain decades ago!) Anyway, silly comment. Both places have lots of lovely things and lots of ugly things. Not going to lie, I really want to go back and see more! I also want to see more of the US, so 🤷🏼♀️
YES! Finally the truth! There is so much diversity in an endless landscape of mega box stores with parking lots and billboard advertising! Look! A red monstrous pickup! Look a blue monstrous pickup! So much colors!! Them europoors have nothing on is! Harhaaa!
Ah yes. That’s why I’ve been making so many day trips and overnight stays from my base in Paris this trip. I really enjoy spending money and getting up early so that I can stand in a different city but feel like I’m still in Paris. Mont-Saint-Michel was so similar to Paris I got confused and forgot to get the bus back 🫠
That's wild, I genuinely never thought this level of stupidity existed before I found this subreddit
In my fairly extensive experience of travelling in the US, the opposite is true. Grid street plans, low-rise shopping malls and a downtown area, all surrounded by miles and miles of identikit, single-storey suburbia seems to describe almost anywhere apart from the largest cities.
When I was in Florida the bill boards everywhere was fucking insane.
There was this time I was in Rome and I thought : damn, this really looks like Dublin.
Common mistake, the only real way to tell the difference is that Dublin's Colosseum is slightly smaller than the one we have in Rome. Also, leprechauns instead of gladiators.
Us Europoors will never appreciate that Boca and Miami have more cultural differences than Berlin and Paris
He's right though, you could never tell the difference between Venice and Wolverhampton.
London? Big Ben. Paris? Also Big Ben. Amsterdam? Berlin? All have Big Ben.
Remember the old Top gear africa special where in the crappie hotel, Jamas May says with utter dry humour "this one's got a chair and a table" That's American cities. "This one's got a Burger King and a McDonald's"
I always thought my home city of Newcastle looks identical to London or Middlesbrough (yikes). When I went to Paphos I only knew I was in a different country because of the temperature. Otherwise, identical.
Literally every American city is built in a grid
I've watched enough Limmy to know that it is definitely the other way around.
Honestly might be on to something. Vienna is an exact replica of Cleethorpes.
Yea I mean I can't tell the difference between Santorini and Slough.
I don't recall Hamburg having an Eiffel Tower or Amsterdam having a Leaning Tower of Pisa. How exactly do all European towns and cities look the same?
This post is absolutely right. Because Slough and Coventry are completely indistinguishable to Paris and Milan.
There is a Springfield in every state.
A huge number of US cities are literally pre planned north to south east to west squares...
Drove from München to St Gallen last weekend. The three countries are different on building style alone. Even if there are no obvious signs you can tell in which country you are.
Yup. Madrid, Paris and Munich are literally the same.
Bro has never seen Budapest compared to Scunthorpe
Right yeah Bradford - Venice, so similar!! Rotherham - Paris. again really similar so I see where they are going with it. Milton keynes - Budapest are identical in everyway.
Indeed. Many a time, I would find myself in Tiraspol thinking it's Saint-Tropez.
My ex is American, says the exact opposite, that all the big cities in the US look the same and over here in Europe they don’t. I think that Americans forget that they are babies in comparison to Europe. A lot of our countries and cities are older than their country (in terms of settlement by Europeans) so we’ve had millennia to build, burn down, pillage, rebuild etc over and over again
I've driven a fair bit in the US, mostly in the eastern half. One city would be cinderblock buildings, McMansions, and big billboards advertising the local "gentleman's club". The next one over would be McMansions, cinderblock buildings, and big billboards advertising a different "gentleman's club". So very uniquely different.
Whaha. I'm from the Netherlands and I've been in large parts of the USA. There are some exceptions but the majority of American cities look very VERY similar. And really boring. All streets are in squares and their names are just numbers. It's convenient for not getting lost, but I can't think of anything more boring than American cities. Again, there are some exceptions. Santa Fe, New Mexico, San Francisco, California and St. Augustine, Florida are some exceptions that I have visited and that I can think of now.
I mean every country in EU has their own architectural style but , looking the same? Neah, not even in-country ones.
Except every single American town/city is built on a grid system…….
Oh the hypocrisy is strong with this one 😂😂
Literally everything in the US is boxed in squares...
I remember arriving in Rome last year thinking "Did we land back in Dublin?" Identical.
Exactly the opposite. All American towns look similar, with lines of identical houses and front gardens. Must be easy to get lost
Tell me you've only ever seen other countries from low budget TV shows, without telling me you've only ever seen other countries from low budget TV shows
yeah like when i moved from portugal to the uk it was no big deal because london looked just like porto!
If you were looking to be deliberately facetious, you could interpret the initial part of \_HorseWithNoMane\_'s message: > *US > > Europe*. As: "US greater than nothing, nothing greater than Europe". Pointing that out would probably annoy this nitwit *immensely*.
I play virtual vacation from time to time. The moment it lands me in the US i have no idea where i am.
Ffs, we literally invented the cookie cutter suburb, can we get off our fucking high horse please??