Europeans Vs Americans

While spending almost half of my life in Europe I noticed many things Europeans do differently than Americans. One of them being Americans are more sensitive than Europeans. Today we can not be honest because of people being overly sensitive and it might hurt their feelings. While I was in Europe it socially acceptable to be honest. For example you would be able to tell someone something like they are gaining weight without them getting upset. In some ways life in Europe is so much easier because you don’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing.

Another way that Americans are different to Europeans is that in Europe people tend to genuinely say thank you and please. In America I’ve been to restaurants and have seen kids, teenagers, and adults that will not thank their waiter for their drinks or food. In Europe I don’t ever remember not hearing someone say thank you. It is the social norm to thank someone for the simplest things, which people in America don’t always do.

The last way I noticed that Europeans were different was the way they stand in line. This may sound very weird but there was a huge difference in this. Usually in American when you stand in line you have a good amount of space between you and the people in front and behind you. In Europe they stand very closely together. I recall standing in line with a few inches between me and the people behind and infront of me. Europeans stand very close together because if you leave any space between the people around you someone will cut you in line because in their eyes it looks like you aren’t in line. This did happen a lot when my family and I first moved over to Switzerland. Since we were so use to standing with room between the people in line it looked like we were not line.