People shared the things that shocked them most when they first visited the US – 17 transatlantic eye-openers

If you’ve never visited America, it’s fair enough to think that you have a good idea of what to expect. After all, the country is all over the media and the shared language means they can’t be too different, right?

Well, despite all that, the States are still full of surprises, and they’re often found in the most everyday of places. SensitiveCorner2379 wanted to learn more, so they asked r/AskReddit users to share the biggest shocks they encountered when visiting the US for the first time.

And to get the ball rolling, they even shared a suggestion of their own:

‘I’ll go first, the fact that tax isn’t included the items until you get to the register.😭😭’

Here are the parts of American life that caught people most off guard…

1.

‘The size of Lake Michigan. I asked other passengers what ocean we were flying over’
-Eknoom

2.

‘I came from a small island. The fact that you can drive in a straight line for hours is so weird.’
-pookela_kini

3.

‘How difficult it was to exist without a car.

‘I could see the store from my hotel, but there was no pavement, no safe crossing, and a six-lane road between us.

‘It was physically close and somehow a 20-minute drive away.’
-Kindly-Reality4804

4.

‘To be honest, people were way nicer than I expected. I don’t mean the service staff etc. People in general were nice to us and each other. Had no weird interactions during our visit.’
-Drevstarn

5.

‘How BIG everything is. Roads, buildings, food portions, people, attitudes, tourism, tips, voices, drama …. everything.’
-coffee_and-cats

6.

‘How unbelievably humid it was in New Jersey and then, after a 30 minute drive over the state border heading towards upstate New York, how clear the air had become and how radically different the landscape was.’
-MusicusTitanicus

7.

‘This isn’t the East Indies’
-doublegoodproleish

8.

‘I wouldn’t call it “shock” exactly, but when I asked visiting cousins from Australia what they found most surprising, they said “…that school buses are real.” They thought they were basically a movie/TV trope.’
-jondru

9.

‘Seeing squirrel and deer roam freely’
-Middleofnowhere123