America vs Switzerland

Whenever I’m in America I see so many differences to my country. I actually wanted to write a post about them last year, but it’s much easier when I’m actually in the States.

I have put together some categories and will talk you through them:

-       Opening times: Shops in Switzerland are closed on a Sunday and during the week they close at 7pm, there is one evening where they’ll close at 9pm. Saturdays stores close at 5pm. On Sundays you can only go shopping the most important stuff at a gas station. Most restaurants have one day in the week, where they’ll be closed. It’s mostly a Sunday, Monday or sometimes a Tuesday. I like how in the States every thing is open almost 24/7 and also on Sundays!

-       Drive Throughs: We only have Mc Donald’s drive through in Switzerland. In the States there are drive throughs for everything: Starbucks, pharmacy, dry cleaner etc. That’s so crazy.

-       Ice Tea: Our ice teas are always sweet, wherever you go, in the States you usually get them plain. I love my sweet ice tea, so being in the States is always a bit weird.

-       Ice: Ice in the drinks is normal in the States. Well, not in Switzerland, you have to ask for it.

-       Streets/Driving: Streets are more narrow in Switzerland and on the freeway we get two lanes, maybe three going into one direction. We have a lot of just one lane for each direction street, we have lots of roundabouts and our rules are a bit different. Now the cars are also different, we have manuals and automatic ones and ours tend to be smaller, we see a lot of VW golfs or poos and there is a big variety of car brands, not so much in the US.

-       Downtown: Our biggest city is Zurich with a population of 400000, there is a centre, an old town, but no downtown. There are skyscrapers, but not that many of them and they are not high. So seeing a real downtown is great for me. I love all these big cities in the States.

-       Parking: Going to the grocery store, shopping mall, …, you name it. In Switzerland we have to pay for parking and it’s pretty expensive. I love how in the States you can just go somewhere, park your car and that’s it.  We pretty much pay for parking everywhere, except for at home and at work (if you’re lucky).

-       Lakes/Mountains: In Switzerland everything is so close to each other. You can drive from one lake to the other in 5 minutes, there are mountains everywhere and you can get from place to place in no time. In the States that takes a really long time. Of course the country is much bigger, everything is so wide.

-       Prizes: Yes, in most places you have the taxes on top of the prize, but things are still cheaper for us in the States. I get Nike, Coach or other brands in the States, because the prizes are much better.

-       Choices: The choices in supermarkets in the States are amazing, there are so many. The stores are much bigger and there is so much choice. Of course there are also things we can’t get in Switzerland, like Fruit Roll Ups, I love them!

-       Food: There is a big variety of foods in the States, you can get pretty much anything, in Switzerland, you have to look for certain places, they are just opening up now. Now, there is one thing: Americans might think they can get OUR chocolate in the States and it even says “Lindt” in the package, but it’s just not the same, you have to actually buy the chocolate in Switzerland.

-       TV: There are a lot of great channels in America like Homegate TV, DIY Network or Food Network. They are all so great, we don’t really have that. Also they way they show commercials is different: ours tend to be really long commercial breaks, whereas in the States they come more often, but they are shorter. There are some weird commercials out there in America though: the weirdest ones are these medicine ones, where they have to read all the side effects.

I think I could go on here, but these are the ones that really struck out. Any differences to your countries?!