25 Things Non-Americans Love About The United States
"The Smithsonian Museums. Very cool and very fun to walk around and see. And they're free."
"National Parks."
"Your wildlife. Lots of beasties on that continent."
"If you guys want, you can go to pretty much any climate without a passport. You have tropical, desert, oceanside, lakeside, and mountain climates."
"Drinking fountains everywhere. Nearly all public toilets are free."
"The amount of nature. Mountains, forests, valleys, deserts, waterfalls, etc. Where I live, we've got a few hills and there's no place anywhere in the country that is completely untouched or so far from civilization that you can't hear traffic."
"Verbal communication skills. When people are interviewed on TV, they can really explain in detail what happened, and it is easily understood. It's like everyone has a communication major."
"The scale and grandeur. I'm used to nature being small, but everything in America is bigger: bigger storms, bigger mountains, bigger horizons. Even the sky seems...more. People in America are casually dealing with everything from alligators to bears, pitching tents on the sides of cliffs, and walking their dogs through literal wilderness; I genuinely feel like a hobbit watching Aragorn saunter through Middle Earth like it's nothing while I've never been beyond the end of Farmer Maggot's farm before. I love it."
"It's so big. Like, to be real, if you wanna do a road trip that's like two weeks. Maybe more."
"Cornbread."
"The arts. Jazz, rhythm and blues, and the early rock and roll that inspired the British Invasion. The authors. The films."
"King's Hawaiian sweet rolls."
"NASA is America's best PR. Sure, they could really use triple the budget to seriously get things done, but what they do is admired globally."
"Southern cuisine, from BBQ all the way to Creole type stuff...you guys know how to eat down there."
"Films and TV shows."
"I always hear complaints about the portion sizes, which is fair, they're big. But we gotta give America credit for how socially acceptable it is to take the leftover food home. As a frugal Dutch person, this mesmerizes me, and I'm very sad this is not as acceptable here."
"How madly diverse it is. Admittedly, I've only seen it on TV, but the fact that the Bronx and Texas are in the same country is mind-boggling."
"I love how spread the infrastructure is across the country. Literally, massive multinational companies are headquartered in so many smaller cities. Manufacturing can occur in even more towns. Here in Australia, our population is so concentrated in our three biggest cities, it's difficult for big businesses to survive elsewhere, so they move to the big cities and perpetuate the problem. Half our population is in those three cities."
"I'm from Portugal and living in the US right now. One thing that really impressed me when I got here was how green the US is, and how many trees they have."
"How the national identity is so culturally mixed. It seems like if you move to France, you don't become French; you just become a foreigner. But everyone who lives in America at all is American."
"Fruity pebbles."
"I like how open-minded the people are and how much they seem to enjoy varied interests. I've found in my country, we tend to be pretty judgmental of anything we aren't used to seeing, and most people have basically the same hobbies."
"Americans always know how to get a conversation going! 'Hey, where are you from?' and then they are genuinely interested in hearing the answer, even if perhaps they've never heard of that place. They are great at small talk, and friendly (doesn't matter if it's 'fake' sometimes, e.g., the server in a restaurant, it is still a skill to be that friendly and welcoming, in my opinion). They make people feel like a million bucks."
"Some of the best roller coasters on Earth."
And finally: "New York City. Hot Dogs. Your friendliness. Hollywood. Yellowstone. Baseball. Ford GT. Road trips. Coca-Cola. NASA. Southern BBQ. Burgers. Yosemite. Your infectious love of the outrageous. Jaws. Your love of English accents ;). Harrison Ford. Rock and fuckin' roll. Nike. Magic Mountain. Pamela Anderson. Red Vines. The video game and animation industries. Dr Pepper. Maine lobster rolls. Skateboarding. Ralph Lauren. The Sopranos. Jack FM. Baskin-Robbins. Car park cookouts. Wakeboarding. Ruby's Diner. Long Island (Iced Tea). Eddie Murphy. Technological innovation. Soul. Southern California. Star Wars. Ford Broncos. Key lime pie."
It's kinda nice hearing all these positives, IMO. What do you think? Tell me about it in the comments!
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