The 5 Things That Creep Me Out About America as A European

But don’t make me love it any less.

1. The level of delusion

Before visiting the US, I always imagined those lines that you keep seeing in movies about how America is the greatest country in the world were nothing more than that: lines in movies.

I was so wrong.

When I went there I was shocked to see that Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that they do live in the best country in the world and they’re lucky to be there. And this motif has been pounded into their national consciousness since they were children.

It’s only Americans who don’t know that’s an impossibility.

The rest of the world knows America is not better or worse than other first-world countries. It doesn’t have better hospitals, better people, or better systems. Some are better and some are worse, but there are great things everywhere on earth. They’re not all gathered on one continent.

It just happens to be my favorite, but that’s just a personal opinion and whenever I say it out loud (which is a lot), it is met with a little bit of shock by other Europeans.

I found nobody else who even remotely likes the US. Not in Europe, anyway. It’s kind of sad to me that I can’t share this love for America with any of my friends, but I’m used to it by now.

And while delusion is usually regarded as a bad thing, America somehow managed to make it work for them.

It’s this delusion that kept Americans working harder than most, buying American products to support the economy, and sending young men and women to fight and die in war zones to protect their country.

It’s really quite vexing what levels of self-sacrifice Americans will go to for the beloved American dream that none of them ever lived.

It makes me love them more, like you love an innocent child who hasn’t yet hit his head against the hard concrete pavement of life.

2. The extra-mean authority figures

Not just the cops! All authority figures! Even bus drivers!

In Europe, police treat you like an individual and you treat them likewise. In the US, they treat you like you’re presumed guilty.

In Europe, policemen behave like public servants (which is exactly what they are). In the US, they put on the straight face of an entitled bully.

Whatever you did or didn’t do, you will be stone walled (at best) before you even start talking.

In Europe, if you have an encounter with a police officer, you talk to him like you do with a shop assistant. One party asks, the other answers, and then they switch. There is chatting, smiling, a natural conversation, and the feeling that you are safe.

In the US, they talk to you like you’re the scum of the earth. They look down on you, their face is immobile, and your attempt at a normal interaction falls on poker faces and rigid demeanor.

When I first entered the US through the LAX airport I thought they were going to send me back just because. Just because what? Well, I suppose I looked suspicious. I had just gotten my visa 1 month prior and was traveling alone to meet people I had never met before.

I guess nobody informed them that women do travel alone these days.

They escorted me to a back room, took away my phone, and kept me there for 2 hours while they went through all my records to figure out if I was America-worthy or not.

They checked my bank accounts and if I owned property. Luckily, I did. I guess that’s how they knew I wasn’t coming there to sleep under a bridge, take up prostitution, or shoot up a bunch of people.

I suppose Americans already have those covered and they didn’t need aliens stealing their jobs.

After this initial encounter with the American way, I noticed everybody in the slightest position of authority pretty much had their resting bitch face on and was enjoying the power they had over others.

Now mind you, they weren’t doing anything wrong. They just looked really mean. Bus drivers stared at me (and everybody else) like I smashed the 10 commandments, but they still let me ride the bus although I was missing a few cents or my card expired.

Pharmacy clerks pointed me to the right aisle, but if looks could kill I’d be dead by now.

Maybe it’s their way of showing that they’re taking the job seriously, or maybe they deal with a lot of people that they need to keep in line.

But to a European, it just looks like very unfriendly overkill.

3. The massive amount of sugar in the food.

All foods in the US are actually desserts!

Breakfast? Have some pancakes drowned in syrup. Oh, you like eggs? Here’s some jam next to them. Bread? We only have the kind that’s half flour/ half sugar, because life without sugar is a barren land and no American wants to live there.

From the bacon covered in maple syrup to the broccoli swimming in honey in Asian restaurants, Americans will eat their sugar with a side of sugar and ask the waiter to put some sugar on it.

One morning my American friends and I were having breakfast in this quaint little pancake place. I don’t do sweet breakfasts (I know, the horror!), but they did have savory toppings too, so I asked for the sausage-stuffed pancakes.

Little did I know that just because they had the sausage in there doesn’t mean they’ll exclude the sugar. When the order came, my pancakes were filled with hearty chunks of sausage and sprinkled with a generous amount of powdered sugar.

Right on top of the sausages and everything.

You should have seen the shock on my face. And the wide grin on theirs. They already knew.

Next to the mountain of pancakes, there was this little ball of something white and sort of fluffy.

‘OMG, they gave me ice cream too!’ I exclaimed in dismay.

The whole table roared with laughter.

‘Mona, dear, that’s butter…’

4. The religious fanatics

Now I knew America was diverse but had no idea quite how diverse until on my first day on Hollywood Boulevard, as I was walking along, minding my own business and checking out the starts with celebrity names, I had to stop.

The whole huge entrance in front of Dolby Theatre, plus the sidewalk and half the street were blocked by a massive group of Asian people warning about Christ’s second coming.

The scene seemed surreal.

They were mainly women, dressed in red T-shirts and black pants, armed with megaphones and screaming into our ears: ‘Repent! Christ is coming! Rapture is here! Repent!

I come from a pretty mystical and religion-oriented country, but I’ve never seen anything like it. Never seen people get all up in your face, screaming at you to adopt their god as your own.

I quickly crossed the street to avoid being yelled at for not being god oriented enough, when I fell right into the leaflets and calm voices of 2 guys from the Church of Scientology, who were trying to convert the rest of us who escaped the red uniforms from across the street.

Did I mind it? Well, not really. They didn’t do much or hurt me in any way. It was rather a strange phenomenon but I didn’t mind watching it as an impartial observer.

I mind it more when they use the Bible as a history book or a way to police women’s bodies and trick them out of their rights. Other than that, it didn’t bother me one little bit.

5. The crime levels

While there aren’t many places in the world that are completely crime-free, Europe is America’s prude virgin cousin when it comes to crime rates, which are mostly made of pick-pocketing and mugging.

Sounds quite silly when compared to America’s violence, guns, drugs, and other elements that make us all watch in shock and dismay.

Nothing bad happened to me specifically, but here are a few nuggets of Hollywood-style entertainment that happened right under my nose.

The 7 of us (5 Americans and 2 Europeans) were living in an Airbnb right off Hollywood Blvd and close to Vine — basically, a dead-end little street that felt more like one of those bad alleys in the movies than anything else.

We were on the third floor and my American friends would turn the AC on every time we went to bed, although we could have easily opened the windows — LA nights are cold!

They said we shouldn’t, though, because somebody could climb up the building and into our apartment or climb down the building and into our apartment. I stared and blinked slowly a few times. So that’s a no-no, then.

Maybe they were right because every night our little Hollywood alley suddenly became a very trendy drug scene. Or at least that is what we presumed was happening.

A long black car would come over at about 11 PM and park right next to the entrance to our building.

It didn’t have to wait long, because minutes later the car would become the Mecca of waves after waves of people, who could come over, either alone or in groups of 2 or 3, get in the car, stay there for a few minutes, and leave.

This went on well into the late hours of the night that almost touched the morning when the boulevard seemed to quiet down and tourists and locals alike would go to sleep just to start again as soon as the smog rose up above the city of angels.

The movie-worthy part, however, happened one night right after the mystery car left, when they started to look for some runway/ fugitive/ criminal or whatever he was, we never knew.

And they were looking for him using… helicopters!

It must have been about 2 AM and we were all perched on our tiny 3rd-floor balcony, some of us smoking and the rest enjoying each other’s company and the crisp Los Angeles night, laden with the unmistakable scent of rubber, purple lights, and fleeting fame.

As we were there laughing at each other and life’s odd twist and turns, we were suddenly turned silent by the overwhelming presence of 2 helicopters that were flying so low they seemed to be close enough to touch.

They turned on the lights and were hovering above us, turning the night into a lit movie scene, where barriers between reality and fiction became blurred in the twist of a second, and there was nothing more but the wild roar of helicopters above, a mysterious drug scene below, and the whole scene drowned in supernaturally bright light.

If you enjoy the thrill and intensity of movie-like crime happening in parallel to your everyday existence, you’re going to love the US.

So far I have found 0 Europeans who weren’t freaked out by that crazy scene. Still looking.

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