Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus: they agree on little and understand each other less and less.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We were from totally different social backgrounds. This is what is very hard for an American to understand, but we could have been five guys from Mars.
Americans are people who prefer the Continent to their own country, but refuse to learn its languages.
Americans are as they are. We have to accept this. Lots of Europeans forget that.
Well-meaning Europeans sometimes argue that unlike the U.S., their countries are traditionally 'homogeneous' and have little experience with immigration.
Perhaps Europeans are a bit more skeptic whereas Americans are more believers.
Americans are a quarter of a billion people who have almost nothing in common except for the fact they've been told they have lots in common.
Yet another thing Canadians and Europeans have in common is an obsession with the United States, and with distinguishing themselves from it, often by crude stereotyping.
Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.
Everyone thinks England and America are the same, as we have the same language, but I felt like an alien as an English person living in America.
I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose.