6 Things Living in Europe Taught Me About America
There are some things you can only understand with distance. American culture is like that — if you’re immersed in it, it seems normal. But as soon as you step away, you start seeing how weird things are.
I’m a half-Spaniard who has lived in the UK for eight years, Spain for two, and Germany for another year (with multiple holidays and trips throughout). I’ve learned far more about the States while living outside of it.
Quick caveat: you may have experienced this yourself without stepping foot in Europe. I’m very sheltered — I’ve never been to Asia, Africa, or South America, which is over 80% of the world’s population, so I imagine there’s even more to learn from seasoned travelers.
There are six things I only learned about America after living in Europe.
1. Americans Are Tricked About Healthcare
The United States of America has the dubious honor of being one of the wealthiest countries in the world that has successfully bamboozled its citizens into believing that universal healthcare is a bad thing that removes their freedom.
As a kid in the States, I believed American adults knew what they were talking about and simply preferred to pay lower taxes and have more options when it came to healthcare. But when I lived in Spain, Germany, and the UK, I quickly understood that this belief just isn’t true. In England, for example, I counted as an EU citizen and a student, but I could still access the National Health Service for free despite paying no taxes. If I wanted to, I could pay money and go to a private service. At no point was my choice removed. I had more options and freedom to get the best healthcare for myself.
In the States, marketing executives for healthcare corporations are paid a lot of money to persuade Americans that universal healthcare is bad. Coming back to work as an adult in the States, I was overwhelmed with options for my employer’s healthcare plan— but all of them were bad and unbelievably expensive.
The illusion of healthcare and freedom is strong, but as soon you experience universal healthcare, you understand what a scam the whole thing is.
2. The US is Freaking Huge
This realization came to me as a massive shock. I was in England and one of my friends had invited me to her house for the weekend. “It’s a bit far, though,” she warned me.
“How far?” I asked.
“About an hour and a half,” she replied.
I literally guffawed. My family and I would frequently make the four-hour trip north to visit my Grandma for a weekend, and I know other Americans who would not bat an eyelash at driving 5–6 hours for a weekend trip.
The UK is tiny, comparatively. The northern tip of Scotland is just 600 paltry miles from the southernmost beaches of Cornwall. By comparison, my home state of Georgia is 300 miles from north to south. My husband and I drove 22 hours from Atlanta to Boston and still didn’t go the full length of the country. Germany and Spain are a little bigger, but America is mind-bogglingly big in a way you can really only grasp once you’re looking at it from a much smaller country.
3. Schoolchildren Are Treated Like Criminals
I was sixteen when I lived in Germany. I can still vividly recall the first time I put my hand up to ask to go to the bathroom, because it was when I realized Germans expect kids to behave themselves as the default, rather than treating them like soon-to-be lawbreakers.
“What are you doing?” my friend Valerie hissed.
“I have to go to the bathroom!” I replied in my rudimentary German.
“Just go! The teacher doesn’t have to give you permission.”
My mind was blown. We had our independence in a lot of other respects too — the school was located in the city center, so kids ages 11 and up could wander into town to get their lunch. Hall passes weren’t needed. If you wanted to go home between classes, you were allowed.
In short, they treated us as responsible individuals. Not, as I realized they do at my public school in the States, like criminals.
At home, if a kid is in the hallway without permission, or leaves the building, or even gets up to attend to an errand of nature without the say-so of an authorized person, that kid gets into trouble, no matter what. I thought that was normal when I lived through it, but as soon as I saw how other countries treat their schoolchildren, I was flabbergasted.
4. College Education Doesn’t Have to Cost an Arm (or a Leg)
When I attended university in England, I had to pay extra fees since neither I nor my parents were taxpayers. I paid roughly 3x what any other British or European student paid to attend. And it was still cheaper than going to university in the States unless I’d stayed in Georgia to take advantage of the Hope Scholarship.
In Spain, Germany, and the UK, it’s not normal to go seriously into debt for your education. In fact, when England changed its fee system to triple university costs in 2010, there was an enormous political uproar that cost one of the political parties a great deal of their power.
And you know what? It still only costs £9,000 a year, or $12,288.42 dollars. Compare that to Harvard’s tuition, which was $51,925 in 2019–2020. And in Germany, some cities will actually pay you a small stipend to attend university there. It also helps that many European students live with their families instead of living in expensive and luxurious student centers.
It’s just another thing I took for granted that I realized doesn’t have to be like that.
5. American Cars Aren’t a Luxury, They’re a Necessity
In my youth, I really romanticized those little European towns where everyone walks to work and does their grocery shopping around the corner.
“Why can’t we be like that?” I complained to my mom, more than once, as I gazed upon the miles of strip malls that decorated our nearby highways.
To refer back to point 2, our country is massive. Massive. It’s not that Americans are especially lazy or horrible people — it’s that our country is built around the precept that everyone has a car. You can’t get anywhere without one. Our closest grocery store was a mile away, and we were fortunate! Even so, my mom did not have 40 free minutes to spend walking to and from the shops, to say nothing of the heaviness of the bags of food required to feed a family of four.
When I lived in Germany and Spain, I understood that cars in the States are not a sign of our moral failings as a country. It’s just that our cities and towns are not designed to be walkable.
6. America is Not a Utopia…But It’s Not Totally Garbage
I felt very jaded about the state of our country at the tender age of fifteen. I was sure that out of every country in the world, ours was the worst, the laziest, the most corrupt, etc etc.
I pictured quaint little towns and hamlets across the ocean, filled with neighbors who really cared about each other and supported one another.
I have news for anyone who believes that: every country has its issues. For example, I was shocked by the casual racism espoused by some of my classmates in Germany against Turkish immigrants. Spain had a much higher rate of antisemitism than I’d experienced in Georgia. The U.K. is currently having a massive transphobic panic that is causing real harm and danger to a lot of folks. Even with something like COVID, I expected the States would be far worse off than the vaccine havens of the UK and Germany. The data shows otherwise.
Guess what? People are crappy everywhere. People are also great everywhere. No matter where you live, you’ll find folks who are trying their best with the tools they have at their disposal.
Perspective is something that comes with age, wisdom, and distance. I’m still working on acquiring all three. I learned a lot about the United States just by experiencing other cultures first-hand, and I’d bet that visitors to the States will experience the same revelations about their own home countries.
I’m very lucky to have been able to see as much of the world as I have, even though I know there’s much more to experience. The most important thing I learned is that America isn’t as crappy as I thought it was. No country is irredeemable. We’re all people, at the end of the day, trying our best.
Since moving home, I’ve tried to be less judgemental about my country and better about working on the things I do have control over.
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