Latest Round-Up of Differences between USA and Switzerland

Differences I noticed between USA and Switzerland, the weekend before last (based on visit to Chicago O'Hare and Wisconsin, May 2011)

Good Things About the USA

- Massive parking lots, easy to find parking, and easy physically to get the car in and out of the spot
- Super-wide highways, less stressful to drive on due to wider lanes and more of of them to share

- No speed cameras

- A/C in summer to stay cool

- English radio in the car! (also, Christian radio in the car - better yet, English Christian radio in the car: K-Love)

- 24-hour drug stores with every imaginable necessity (cereal, milk included)

- Grocery stores & casual restaurant chains that cater for parties at reasonable prices

- Malls all over the place, open weekends and holidays

- Less expensive, sturdier, machine-washable and -dryable clothes in a wider selection that don't shrink immediately

- Much bigger washers and dryers

- Garbage disposals

- Breakfast restaurants!

- Whole grain bagels with honey-walnut cream cheese!

- 100% fruit Smoothies!

- Free water automatically served

- Real Lemonade!!! Strawberry/raspberry lemonade. (NOT Sprite, which is the sort of thing you get if you ask for lemonade here)

- Cranberry juice at restaurants

- Free salads often included with meals

- Inexpensive meat ($8 burrito vs $30)

- Raccoons, chipmunks, squirrels

- Lots of friendly, open people

Good Things About Switzerland

- Highway speed limit 120kph instead of the American 90-105kph

- Better tasting tap water

- No standard ice in glasses of water (not too cold)

- Better-tasting milk

- Tastier fruit in the average hotel

- Better breakfast in the average hotel (not all pasty white stuff with high fructose corn syrup and no nutrients)

- Standardly unsalted butter

- Restaurant portions not consistently too big

- Fewer grossly overweight people

- No freezing A/C in summer

- Not TVs in every public place, constantly on

- Thicker toilet paper in public restrooms

- More (or total) privacy in public toilet stall door design

- Toilet design that never needs plunging

- Fewer very chatty phone trees

- Not as overwhelming in choice overkill

- People rest on Sundays (stores closed)

Neutral differences about the U.S.

- Water towers
- Front lawns with no hedge or fence
- Blinker sound of Ford cars - distinctly American
- Lower toilet seats
- You find out the name of your waitstaff

- People eat earlier (full restaurant at 6:30pm, people steadily leaving already)

- Birthday singers in restaurants

Other interesting things we saw

- A freight train with 116 train cars!!!! Hugest freight train ever.
- "Crash Investigation Site" is the name of exit 347 on Wisconsin's I-94. (???)

Posted via email from K's Café